Yes, it did because you said yourself that you considered other candidates, particularly minorities. So you employed Affirmative Action without realizing it.
We very much realized it. As a government agency we are under AA guidelines. We considered other candidates because we sought the best candidates and sought to increase minority employment. But, my point was that if we wanted to discriminate we could have easily found reasons not to hire them. Also, we were not required to consider any minorities in choosing which candidates to bring in for interviews.
Of course, the race of the person is not identified on their application. But, once we choose those to be interviewed HR notifies us if no minorities are included and asks if we would like to consider additional candidates.
My question to you would be...how did you source those applications? Did you sit back passively and wait for people to apply, or did you actively solicit applicants? Because there's a difference.
It partially depends on the budget available. Ideally, we would advertise in the Chronicle of Higher Education which is a prime source for those seeking university positions. We would also advertise in publications of the particular discipline. When I was committee chair I would do additional steps such as advertising and seeking interviews at conventions and writing graduate departments addressed to new graduates seeking jobs. We did not have the money to lure good candidates away from other universities.
Now if you hired the white guy because you're a racist piece of shit, then that kind of practice is a Civil Rights violation and can be easily proved in court.
Not easily proved at all. We wouldn't say we didn't want to hire a minority but give some other good reason. If we knew who we wanted to hire up front we would write the job description narrowly so it would only fit his particular qualifications. This was one of my points; if people want to discriminate they can do so regardless of AA.
Then who is AA discriminating against?
It doesn't necessarily discriminate against anybody--I never said it did.
I did say abuses are caused not by AA requirements but by administrators who want to look good by increasing their minority employees who might hire a lesser qualified candidate often going against the choice of the selection committee. That is a type of discrimination because AA sets goals.
There is a current book called "Whistleblower" about a woman who won a large settlement from Uber. Employees with good job ratings were eligible to transfer to other positions. The male managers would lower the ratings of females so they couldn't transfer in order to keep their female numbers up.
I never said it required hiring minorities. I've been very consistent in what I've been saying about AA. All I've said it is, are a set of guidelines for federal contractors and employees only that are intended to make sure no one is frozen out of the employment/hiring process because of their race. So that alone prevents discrimination against minorities, and if those people are discriminated against that way, can sue the employer for discrimination and win, just like what happened to Wells Fargo when their racist hiring practices were finally litigated in court.
I didn't say that you said it requires hiring of minorities. I said that is one of the criticisms of AA that is not true. But it also does not prevent minorities from being frozen out if an applicant pool contains no minorities or none of them are selected to be interviewed. They could have sent in an application without AA.
