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VR Tested by NFL To Confront Sexism and Racism (usatoday.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the Super-Bowl-of-hype dept.

More than $8 billion a year is spent on diversity training which a Harvard professor believes is largely ineffective. So later this year the NFL will also try using new VR scenarios from Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab. "We want to be known as the best place to work," says NFL vice president Troy Vincent," while Dropbox's head of diversity says she's also had conversations about eliminating bias in job interviews by conducting "blind" interviews using avatars. The Stanford lab's scenarios place users in unsettling situations -- for example, angry harassment by white avatars while the user's avatar is black. "I'm not saying, 'Put on a VR goggle and you've solved racism'," says the Stanford lab's director. "But I'm optimistic it can help."

3 of 178 comments (clear)

  1. Sexism and Racism by craigminah · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Calling an opponent a sexist or a racist are sure fire ways to ostracize them and shut them up. Ironic the left is so opposed to bullying then bullies people it disagrees with and calls them names. We're not all the same but deserve the same opportunities, nothing more, nothing less. Stop with the name-calling.

    1. Re:Sexism and Racism by khallow · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Singling out "the left" is inaccurate.

      Ok, who else calls opponents sexist or racist? Or uses that behavior as a means of ostracism? I just don't see the inaccuracy myself.

      The problems of the real world exist and are caused by history and economics which position classes at a disadvantage.

      The reason people die at 70 years of age instead of 1,000 is not because they were in the wrong class of people or economically disadvantaged. Sure, some of our biggest problems, particularly poverty and overpopulation, can be not too inaccurated viewed through the lens of class warfare, but a lot of other problems can't.

      Adjusting to eliminate that disadvantage requires changing biases in how individuals are judged for job placements and promotions.

      Changing biases to what? What I see here is replacing one set of biases with another (and the latter set may be more biased and more of a problem than the former).

  2. The first step for combating racism.. by Z80a · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is not being racist yourself, which you are if you support the so called "social justice", given the fact the thing basically make you segregate the general population by gender, race and sexuality, instead of taking care of actual individual problems like poverty, lack of education and oppression by governments and big corporations etc..
    There is no such thing as "positive racism".