The key point of the article appears at the end of the second paragraph, and pretty much explains everything that follows:
>...I simply can’t discern features of the field itself that have been put in place to perpetuate inequities.
If you don't understand how systemic inequity can persist without overt bigotry, then any kind of affirmative action is going to seem counterproductive to you. But bias is self-reinforcing; once it happens for any significant amount of time, it persists even among people with no conscious bias. If you don't actually see a minority doing a job, it becomes slightly more difficult to imagine them doing that job, and that small difference, aggregated across millions of people, adds up to a significant ongoing effect. Add in the economic consequences, and you have a further reinforcement. It's like a traffic jam that persists long after the accident that caused it is cleared. And of course, that assumes that there is no longer any conscious bigotry and clearly there is: there are still organized groups in the US publicly advocating white supremacy, for instance.
Your response imposes a specific view of "systemic equity", one that not everyone buys into, and one that has not been empirically verified. Furthermore, the author has consistently blogged about his support for affirmative action, so I'm not sure your rhetoric makes any sense.
The notion of bias being self-enforcing is questionable as well. Unconscious bias here seems like a catch-all for any kind of perceived injustices. For all you know, the effects of unconscious bias could have been reasonably mitigated by education, personality, and sound policies. I'm not stating that biases don't exist, or that they are inconsequential. My point is that using unconscious bias as a catch-all is not intellectually honest as it gives unearned merit to claims made without evidence. The way forward is more empirical work, not more rhetoric.
> The notion of bias being self-enforcing is questionable as well.
It seems obvious, to me at least, that people don't pursue careers in areas where no one looks like them, therefore creating a self fulfilling prophecy.
> one that has not been empirically verified
Historically women were excluded from many scientific fields. The effect of female role models has been studied (a lot [1][2]) and there's no denying the real world impact representation (or lack of it) can have.
Except affirmative action is not the solution either because now you’ve put less meritorious people where they shouldn’t be (I apologize for the phrasing, but I think it’s important not to sugar coat this) as representatives of their disenfranchised group. As far as I can tell, in every environment I’ve been in, this often only serves to reaffirm and even intensify the bias. And the beneficiaries of affirmative action are furthermore made to feel like human asterisks, even if they’re talented and entirely deserving of an opportunity.
> Except affirmative action is not the solution either because now you’ve put less meritorious people where they shouldn’t be...
There is a risk of this, true. But that same risk exists if you stick with the status quo, as better-qualified minorities are overlooked in favor of less qualified majority candidates. Certainly that happened in the past as well, when biases were enshrined in law.
There is no “silver bullet”. Tweaking one parameter and expecting a systemic problem to resolve is unrealistic (i dont care if you dont buy into it..consider the alternatve and read some history)
>...I simply can’t discern features of the field itself that have been put in place to perpetuate inequities.
If you don't understand how systemic inequity can persist without overt bigotry, then any kind of affirmative action is going to seem counterproductive to you. But bias is self-reinforcing; once it happens for any significant amount of time, it persists even among people with no conscious bias. If you don't actually see a minority doing a job, it becomes slightly more difficult to imagine them doing that job, and that small difference, aggregated across millions of people, adds up to a significant ongoing effect. Add in the economic consequences, and you have a further reinforcement. It's like a traffic jam that persists long after the accident that caused it is cleared. And of course, that assumes that there is no longer any conscious bigotry and clearly there is: there are still organized groups in the US publicly advocating white supremacy, for instance.