Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
I noted that decisions were made which appeared to be racist based solely on risk avoidance concerns. These decisions had discriminatory effects, but were not made with the intent to discriminate, but with the intent merely to "make money," as Adder put it. Part of making money is avoiding risk. You couch that however you like.
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Okay. I think I have this figured out. Risk avoidance is bad, at least as practiced in America today by bankers, insurers, employers, and any other economic actor that is large enough to be able to pretend that human beings are not responsible for their actions.
Decisions made "merely to make money" are inherently bad when the basis on which that risk avoidance is built is racially impacted.
Note that I did not say racially motivated.
I don't give a fuck that your model is based on the mathematical determination that boys who went to Choate are more likely to wind up as managers or subject matter experts than boys who went to any public school in America. Who gets into Choate?
Same thing, someone earning $150,000/year in Bloomfield Hills is 64% less likely than someone earning $150,000 in downtown Detroit. So what. Who lives where?
Again, big data is just a shitload of small data. Some asshole still sits at a desk somewhere and decides what each piece of data is worth. Whether it's being made in the name of maximizing profits or not, somebody is still saying the black-sounding name or the mexican neighborhood gets weighted less favorably.
The truth is, if people are still saying that "If I lend money to this black man or hire this Vietnamese woman, my risk profile is going to be X rather than Y," they are still saying nothing more than that colored folk is unreliable, and if they want to work here in America, why cant' they bother to learn to speak American.
