You -- and you know who you are -- need not apply

I've seen the people in the office over ours, and that's reason enough to fight against a glass ceiling.

 

Touche, Write-brained.

This is actually how I try to look at things and I don't usually get too caught up in this issue.

I was just sayin'...

 

Problem is, Joe, that you hear/type "Dr." and you think male. Conscious or not.
Masking the slight with a question of competency is smoke.

Same problem with readers. They hear/type journalist, they see middle-aged white males with little connection to their issues or lives. Conscious or not.

 

Sorry, I was on my soapbox for the entire thread. Only the first part was directed toward you.

 

Something else to note, I think, is how many black and women sports writers are there?

Sometimes I think there must be this super black or woman writer out there who seemingly takes every job that everyone has ever been up for.

Does it happen? Of course. But does it happen enough to be constituted a problem or concern? I'm not convinced. I have no way to back this up, but I'd guess 95-99% of the time you don't get a job it's for another reason.

 

Not to pick on our fictional kid from Connecticut, but look at all the words you just used to describe him. "More professional," and "a better thinker" and "more diplomatic." Can you really get all these things about a person out of a job interview? You would have to spend at least a week working alongside someone or have several in-depth conversations with previous employers. Hell, it would be like the FBI's vetting process.

Think about the unintended bias. White men are automatically assumed to have certain traits and levels of competency. Women and minorities have to prove it. It's always assumed women know nothing about sports until they prove it. It's assumed black men aren't intelligent and articulate until they prove it.

And even when they do prove it and do get hired, they often get hired at a lower wage than the white male would.

 

Not masking or smoking anything, fish. Don't go armchair-psychoanalyzing me. No, I just want the best doctor I can find. Or that my HMO allows me to access with minimal out-of-pocket expense. If I don't think male when I hear "fire fighter" or female when I hear "ballet dancer," what difference does that make? It allows some little kid to aspire to a certain profession in a more open environment? Marvelous. And irrelevant. So you get Calista Flockhart carrying you out of a burning building and I have to watch Charles Barkley attempt a grand plie.

Also, I contend that when most readers "hear/type" journalist, as you say, they first envision some white lefty trying to push a liberal agenda down their throats. Gender unspecific, for sure, age unspecific and increasingly race unspecific.

Agree with Meat up above that it is stereotyping in its own right to presume that one black hire can provide the black perspective in your newsroom, anymore than the next Asian hire captures the Asian perspective. Gee, where is the "white trailer trash who didn't graduate high school" perspective? Or the "right-wing but small-business" perspective? It's not as if we're working from a diversity factor of zero, either. I would make no case against the idea that some measure of diversity is valuable to a news organization. But I'm talking about the nth hire in a fairly diverse newsroom, as if more always is better. When can we finally leave the demographic boxes unchecked: 2010? Ever?

It isn't very persuasive, in the here and now, to say, "Well, someone down the block in a neighbor's family years ago benefited once from not being a minority, so I deserve to take one on the chin now in similar fashion." Two wrongs don't make a right, especially when you're not wronging the "right" person. Right?

And how many of the hiring managers would vacate their jobs voluntarily to further diversity? Or withdraw from vying for a promotion so a diversity candidate could get it? The noble cause always seems to stop with the job right below theirs.

Lastly, this isn't a matter of me griping about a particular snub. All I said was, I know the details of a situation, from the inside, and wondered how folks felt about it. I happen to think it is wrong to hire this way. I'm disinclined to work for bosses who see things so, literally, black-white. I wonder how much effort the manager put into ferreting out the race of faceless resume-submitters. Some folks don't think it is wrong. Some think it is quite proper.

My belief is that newspapers mght have been able to pursue agendas like this in the years before the financial panic in this industry gained momentum. To hire now for anything but razor-sharp skills, bright ideas and proven track record is fiddling while Rome burns. (I feel the same way about hiring the cheapest labor you can attract, too.)

 

I find it hard to believe you are so altruistic when it comes to subconscious gender bias that you don't envision a female when hearing "ballet dancer." Hell, even I need to be reminded that I, too, have bias. It's not escapable, but it can be brought to awareness.

 

Bringing to awareness, no problem. Bringing to awareness as a means to dismiss the larger points, I'm not interested in that.

That's why I acknowledged jgmacg's mention in the "his or her" instance. But Cadet citing that as game-set-match on my end of the conversation was a flawed leap.

 

Complaints about the "best" person not getting the job in these situations is almost always b.s. Is there really any tangible, measurable difference between the 28th-best beat writer in the country vs. the 36th best? Or the 56th-best page designer vs. the 125th?

 

And so we have writing contests . . . why?

 

No.

It also takes a great cover letter.