This is a terrible, terrible comment. These guys are a recruiting service, and do not make hiring decisions.
Companies can continue to source candidates from wherever they want -- local high school, boat docks, Facebook, friends and family, whatever. Discrimination would theoretically happen if Facebook chose to ONLY source from Jopwell and ignore all resumes from anywhere else.
Since that's not going to happen in any universe, please keep the pearl-clutching to yourself.
An explicitly racially discriminatory recruiting firm is, as far as I can tell, a legal novelty. For example, I am of Hmong origin, which means my submitted resume would be ignored purely based on my race according to the stated "acceptable ethnic groups" on the website.
It may have some sort of precedent/protection in US affirmative action doctrine, but I'm not so sure a lawsuit would be immediately dismissed. Anybody with more US anti-discrimination law knowledge feel free to add in.
I'm trying to answer your question. Choosing who to list on a jobs website is not a hiring decision. The candidate does not work for Jopwell. Jopwell cannot fire them nor pay them anything. Hiring law does not apply to a recruiter, except for their own hiring decisions for their staff.
Thus, bringing up hiring law, which applies to employers, as an objection to this sourcing service is irrelevant.
However they are still doing business with candidates and it is well established that e.g. a restaurant cannot refuse customers based on race. Uber could not refuse drivers based on race, even if drivers are (theoretically) independent contractors and not employees.
This is outside my knowledge of law but my spidey sense is that they are not clearly on solid legal footing.
Fair enough, so your question is one of equal accommodation and not hiring. What this boils down to is how they implement their signup and sourcing process, which is something you're absolutely right that they'll need to do properly.
P.S. I grew up in central CA and had a lot of Hmong, Mien, and Lao friends in school.
There is a website that still exists called ChristianMingle.com. I just checked their signup process and for the question "how often do you go to church?" you have to choose between "on special occasions" to "every week". You also have to choose one of what they consider to be Christian sub-groups. You have to choose a race.
You cannot answer "never" or "atheist". You have to choose one of the options or they will not complete the registration process. They refuse to serve your dating needs.
This site and hundreds like it are totally legal in the US.
> This site and hundreds like it are totally legal in the US.
Maybe only because they haven't been sued yet? E-Harmony got sued in a class action lawsuit because they didn't support same-sex matching[1]. They ended up settling out of court and establishing a site that does same-sex matching, because it wasn't clear to them that they would win the lawsuit.
This is a more substantive question but there's a lot of evidence it's not a problem. According to your article, eHarmony was sued in 2008, created the "separate but equal" site, and then merged them in 2012 after more complaints.
However, 3 years later, they still have separate portals for people interested in dating specific people:
Those portals are nominally for finding someone else of that race/religion - they don't prevent you from signing up if you're not a member of the group (I checked). That is the part that seems like it might not fly under California law - Jopwell is a business; so I don't see how they can legally deny accommodations based on race. I don't think the issue is with a company using Jopwell to find candidates, but rather with Jopwell telling white people that they are denied service due to race.
If you think that is OK, I don't see how you could be against a recruiting company that always rejected nonwhite candidates for placement (but didn't have that as part of their explicit mission).
I think this is a fair question, and I'm sure they'll address it in whatever way is necessary. As a startup, it's best to have a focus, otherwise you're just another generic recruiter.
It's possible that they'll need to tweak how they express that focus in terms of site design and onboarding process. I mean, if a site as big as eHarmony had to change their approach, it's quite likely a startup will run into similar issues. (I haven't tried signing up with Jopwell to see how they implemented the workflow, so I have no idea what it says currently.)
I respectfully disagree that the comment is terrible, though as its author I may be biased. The gist of my comment was to ask questions. CTRL-F "?". This service is not necessary if a company wants to hire diversity, all they have to do is look at the candidate to see that the candidate is non-white (again, if hiring diversity is the goal of the company). That just seems racist though.
I do agree with your point that companies can source from wherever they want, but using a service that excludes one or more races is really not a favorable solution. As I mentioned in a previous comment, I cannot recommend this solution to my clients, as it has too much potential for litigation. If Jopwell simply allowed all candidates to apply, regardless of race, and let the client company apply a filter like "Black" or "Native American" or search by photo, if that is the criteria or purpose of their search, then it would make a bit more sense.
> This service is not necessary if a company wants to hire diversity, all they have to do is look at the candidate to see that the candidate is non-white (again, if hiring diversity is the goal of the company).
The purpose of this is not for companies who want to (illegally, I might add) make hiring decisions based on race.
The purpose of this is to provide an additional component to the funnel for companies that want to increase the diversity of the pool from which they are drawing candidates, so that their (hopefully, already race-blind) hiring process ends up producing a more diverse pool of selected employees.
Of course this is for companies that want to make hiring (or at least interviewing) decisions based on race.
Applicants can apply directly for race-blind selection.
The advantage this service provides to applicants is identifying them as members of underrepresented groups for special consideration; the advantage it provides to companies is identifying these applicants to improve corporate "diversity" (in the narrow identity-politics sense).
There are many problems that cause the population of tech candidates to be skewed, but one you may be overlooking is literally not knowing job openings exist or who to talk to.
I grew up in a small town, did not know anyone in the tech industry, and was largely self-taught. Once in college, I got lucky and got to know hackers on irc, and that led to jobs in the security industry. My first security job came from being recruited over irc for a company in Atlanta I had barely heard of and certainly never would have applied to without them contacting me.
I see Jopwell as like that recruiter, connecting with people that may not be as well connected so they even know a job exists to apply to. The candidate must still be good for the job, which is why companies hire.
Companies can continue to source candidates from wherever they want -- local high school, boat docks, Facebook, friends and family, whatever. Discrimination would theoretically happen if Facebook chose to ONLY source from Jopwell and ignore all resumes from anywhere else.
Since that's not going to happen in any universe, please keep the pearl-clutching to yourself.