It can’t be her abilities, can it?

My colleague and I are entering the APA Eastern meetings. She and I are co-placement chairs. This year, among our students are x – female – and y – male. Our department unanimously thinks of x as a stronger candidate, and her cv is clearly better. We run into an acquaintance – male, bright, generally liberal – and he asks how our university is doing in placement. We say x is doing great, something like 12 interviews; while y has only 3 but not bad ones, and begin to go through the others. He interrupts us to say “oh, wow, so I guess there really is some huge affirmative action going on.

The conversation, I’m happy to say, did not end there, and a great deal of educating on ignorant bigoted assumptions took place.