scholarly journals Standardizing Biases: Selection Devices and the Quantification of Race

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 348-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Hirschman ◽  
Emily Adlin Bosk

Racial inequality persists despite major advances in formal, legal equality. Scholars and policymakers argue that individual biases (both explicit and implicit) combine with subjective organizational decision-making practices to perpetuate racial inequality. The standardization of decision making offers a potential solution, promising to eliminate the subjectivity that biases consequential decisions. We ask, under what conditions may standardization reduce racial inequality? Drawing on research in science studies and law and society, we argue that standardization must be understood as a heterogeneous practice capable of producing very different outcomes depending on the details of the standard and the organizational infrastructure surrounding its use. We compare selection devices—simple quantified tools for making allocation decisions—in undergraduate admissions and child welfare to highlight the complex relationships between race and standardization. Child welfare agencies adopted a colorblind actuarial device that attempted to predict which children were most at risk and then make decisions based on those predictions. In contrast, the University of Michigan’s points system explicitly considered and valued race, with the goal of increasing minority student enrollments in the context of promoting student body diversity. Comparing these cases demonstrates how actuarial standardization practices, including those adopted with the intention of reducing racial inequality, tend to reinforce an unequal status quo by ideologically reconfiguring mutable social structures into immutable individual risk factors. In contrast, nonactuarial practices that explicitly promote racial equality are vulnerable to political challenges as they violate norms of colorblindness and cannot be defended in terms of their predictive validity.

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Hirschman ◽  
Emily Adlin Bosk

Racial inequality persists despite major advances in formal, legal equality. Scholars and policymakers argue that individual biases (both explicit and implicit) combine with subjective organizational decision-making practices to perpetuate racial inequality. The standardization of decision-making offers a potential solution, promising to eliminate the subjectivity that biases consequential decisions. We ask, under what conditions may standardization reduce racial inequality? Drawing on research in science studies and law and society, we argue that standardization must be understood as a heterogeneous practice capable of producing very different outcomes depending on the details of the standard and the organizational infrastructure surrounding its use. We compare “selection devices” – simple quantified tools for making allocation decisions – in undergraduate admissions and child welfare to highlight the complex relationships between race and standardization. Child welfare agencies adopted a colorblind actuarial device that attempted to predict which children were most at risk, and then make decisions based on those predictions. In contrast, the University of Michigan's points system explicitly considered and valued race, with the goal of increasing minority student enrollments in the context of promoting student body diversity. Comparing these cases demonstrates how actuarial standardization practices, including those adopted with the intention of reducing racial inequality, tend to reinforce an unequal status quo by ideologically reconfiguring mutable social structures into immutable individual risk factors. In contrast, non-actuarial practices that explicitly promote racial equality are vulnerable to political challenges, as they violate norms of colorblindness and cannot be defended in terms of their predictive validity.


2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theresa Costello ◽  
John Fluke ◽  
Katherine L. Casillas ◽  
Donald Baumann

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marit Skivenes ◽  
Jill Berrick ◽  
Tarja Poso ◽  
Sue Peckover

2021 ◽  
pp. 104973152098484 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karmen Toros

This article explores child welfare workers’ experiences of children’s participation in decision making in the child protection system. The systematic review follows the principles of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses statement and includes 12 peer-reviewed articles published in academic journals from 2009 to 2019. Findings indicate that children’s participation in decision making is generally limited or nonexistent. The age of the child is an important determining factor concerning whether the child is given the opportunity to participate in decision making. Potential harm for children that may result from participation is considered when deciding on whether to include a child in the decision-making process.


Author(s):  
Marina Lalayants ◽  
Diane DePanfilis ◽  
Lisa Merkel-Holguin ◽  
Melinda Baldwin ◽  
Michele Schmidt ◽  
...  

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