Comment by btilly

You'll occasionally see people point out that requiring a college degree has all the same legal problems as requiring a hiring exam does. And those people are correct in terms of the judgments that impose our terrible precedents. They're all just as negative on degree requirements as they are on performance requirements.

But as a matter of empirical reality, our enforcement system declines to prosecute employers who require degrees, because requiring degrees is morally good and requiring exams is morally bad.

The rules about what's allowed don't actually derive from the law. We have laws that forbid everything, accompanied by selective prosecution of only the things that certain people disapprove of.

> (My suspicion is that an ability test would lead to a less racist outcome than requiring college. Why? Because minority families struggle more to afford college.)

This might have been true when the United States was mostly white, and "minority" specifically referred to the black population who was mostly descended from slaves brought to the US mainland pre-1808, or to an even small number of native Americans. Today, when the US population is significantly more ethnically diverse, and "minority" just means "anyone nonwhite, regardless of where they came from or what their family history is", there's a lot more variation in exactly how ability to afford college correlates with ethnicity.

All of this is because academia and educational institutions have a tremendous amount of power this way. They can select for ideological compliance instead of actual competence. And this is a desirable property for the rulers because they can weed out those who are likely to destabilise them if they were able to show a valuable alternate path by example.

Why spend so much money on an "education" if you could become successful by simple being competent. The tech sector was like that at first, but then came the degree requirement and the HR ladies. It was a short run and now they are very mad that some people became successful without needing to bow to the dominant ideology.

and yet ... that's not what the case you referenced says at all. Justia's own summary, from your link:

> Even if there is no discriminatory intent, an employer may not use a job requirement that functionally excludes members of a certain race if it has no relation to measuring performance of job duties. Testing or measuring procedures cannot be determinative in employment decisions unless they have some connection to the job.

(emphasis mine)

>The problem is that any hiring test that blacks and whites pass at different rates, is presumed racist. Never mind that the real issue might be that the blacks went to worse schools and received a worse education.

Your first sentence is the result of bigotry against those with "enhanced" melanin content, not the cause.

The cause is laid out in your second sentence.

Resolve the systemic bigotry (not just against those with enhanced melanin content, but against those with the least resources as, at least in the US, most schools are paid for by local property taxes, making the poorest areas the ones with the worst schools) and put us all on a level playing field and we'll be a much fairer society IMNSHO.