[HN Gopher] Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem o...
___________________________________________________________________
Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a
company
As a black man, I have some issues with the DEI (Diversity, Equity,
Inclusion) trend. As it exists within some (most?) companies, it
seems to perpetuate imposter syndrome significantly. For example, I
know I'm talented - I've got the projects, certs, and experience to
back it up. However, when I have to join a cheesy townhall once a
month to discuss diversity hires, it makes me feel like I have no
right to feel proud of any accomplishments I've made within the
company. "Why should I feel proud of my accomplishments, when the
accomplishments were spoon-fed to me by the company because of my
skin color? If I were a white man with the same experience, I might
not even be here?" In my opinion, it would be beneficial if DEI
initiatives were confidential and kept "hush hush" within a
company. Diversity is able to be seen. If you're actually a diverse
company, then people will notice. I could understand publishing a
quarterly report, but creating townhall meetings and parading your
black/brown employees around like show ponies is nothing short of
corporate virtue signaling. I realize this isn't the type of
content posted to HN usually, and I realize it is in 'rant'
territory, but I know a lot of managers in a lot of influential
companies hangout here, so I figured posting this could spark some
meaningful discussion.
Author : qzx_pierri
Score : 964 points
Date : 2023-02-06 13:45 UTC (9 hours ago)
| workOrNah wrote:
| [flagged]
| TheLoafOfBread wrote:
| Same issue with hiring quotas for women in Europe. Did she really
| get this job based on her merit or did she get it, because she is
| a woman?
|
| From my perspective, quotas are just covertly saying, that women
| are stupid children who needs to be pampered by society. I see
| quotas as degrading and disgusting and I hope that nobody will
| come with quotas for men.
| tmnstr85 wrote:
| I had my boss and the CTO (both Black) tell me I was no longer
| "part of their culture". This was after mid year reviews where
| attendance at DEI events was the center of discussion.
|
| There is a thin line between personal and professional when
| dealing with DEI, and it is a tough line to walk. I agree that
| two things can be true at once.
|
| I also believe that every individual has the ability to break
| cycles of hate and prejudice, regardless of what we have
| experienced and encountered. If we are to have hope in the human
| race, I pray the ability to choose peace is what saves us all.
| [deleted]
| throwawayacc6 wrote:
| I love DIE because I'm a quarter Black. I leverage every DIE
| initiative I can, in college, in software companies, everywhere I
| declare myself as "Black". When I finally stroll in for the first
| day, the HR coordinator and others are shocked that someone as
| White as Bill Clinton "identifies" as Black.
|
| And we've gone full circle: it's like I need to carry a card
| around to show my quadroon status because it's just unbelievable.
| We're back to brown paper bag tests and racial purity.
| malcolmgreaves wrote:
| You just have a problem with capitalism. Nearly all companies'
| DEI efforts are fake because they're about marketing. They don't
| care about using their resources to ensure that they have hiring
| practices that don't put a spotlight in the places where white
| people congregate. I got laughed out of the room when I pointed
| out that my company never attempts to find candidates at HBCUs.
| Or, frankly, any place that isn't Stanford or MIT. It's cheap for
| them to lie, saying "oh sure we give a shit!" and then literally
| do the same thing every brain dead recruiting team "thinks" up
| for a strategy.
|
| Also, until a company would fire someone for being racist, any
| DEI work there is meaningless. And I'm not talking hooded-klan
| level racism (that one you can just sue and win it's so cut and
| dry).
| damita111 wrote:
| [dead]
| lampshades wrote:
| Undermines the self-esteem of whites too.
| slowalgo77 wrote:
| I'm a black man working at a start up for the past 3 years and
| about 10 YoE at various companies.
|
| No one is forcing you to attend these meetings, at the end of the
| day you are there to make money for the business and solve
| problems. Sooner or later there might be one or two people at
| these meetings and leadership will 'get' the message. Usually
| these meetings have anonymous surveys where folks can give
| feedback. On the other hand, the company believes it is worth
| something for you to know that they are attempting a diverse work
| place, otherwise they wouldn't have the meeting. I assume
| positive intent until proven otherwise.
|
| If you want to figure out the 'spoon feeding' issue talk to your
| manager about why are you selected for tasks and why others are
| selected for tasks. I'd also change the 'spoon feeding' to
| something more positive. Spoon feeding has a negative vibe, like
| you are a helpless little crying baby just waiting for food. But,
| the reality is that you built a reputation to build software and
| deliver it on time. The business requires your expertise for
| certain tasks. The other part of spoon feeding is that there is
| 'food.' Who makes the baby's food? The CEO? The PM? Is it
| possible this baby could make their own food?
|
| Essentially, you want to understand how are certain tasks doled
| out. You should ask if there are certain tasks that are promotion
| worthy and are those tasks fairly distributed? What tasks are
| 'beneath' your level i.e. did you spend a quarter working on a
| highly esoteric distributed problem that not a damn soul cares
| about, did you solve that nasty race condition that's been
| haunting the code base for years? This can be hard to get right
| because some problems are much harder to solve at certain
| companies than others. This conversation should reveal bias
| and/or general lack of competence within your manager. Then you
| will have to figure out how to manage your manager to get what
| you want out of the business.
|
| There was one point at a startup where one engineer kept getting
| tasked 'big' issues and he delivered on them very well. I could
| have interpreted this as a fault of the company but I instead saw
| that he is a good engineer and can communicate and deliver on
| business items. On the other hand, he is also being spoon fed
| business objectives. Again, who is making all of this delicious
| food??? I had to grow in another way... I had to crawl into the
| kitchen, play with the ingredients, burn myself, and learn how to
| make my own food. From scratch mind you! I objectively look at
| the business without any hand holding and figure out where we
| could be more efficient, what we would change to save costs,
| risks/opportunities, and come up with a strategy to deliver. A
| good manager should give you hints about opportunities, but
| genuine curiosity can be a savior. I make the food now.
|
| On a more personal note it is nice to have allies/friends. These
| days it is incredibly easy for someone to do something that could
| be considered culturally insensitive. Not every interpersonal
| issue needs to go to HR. Sometimes it's nice to talk to a trusted
| colleague something that only your religion/race/upbringing would
| understand.
|
| Having worked at large enterprises and small enterprises I have
| witnessed and experienced a fair share of soft racism, weird
| random microaggressions/gaslighting, and people randomly being
| unpromotable/uncoachable/unhireable despite checking all of the
| boxes.
|
| In conclusion I decided to focus on me, my work, my own personal
| growth as engineer, and protecting my mental health. These are
| concrete things I can measure and control.
| atkailash wrote:
| [dead]
| broast wrote:
| I think part of DEI is to compensate for currently existing
| racial prejudices that are unknowingly disadvantaging your
| probability of hire. What you see as an advantage gained by DEI
| might actually just be the equalizer that brings you to equal
| footing with others
| programmarchy wrote:
| OP _already has_ equal footing based on his qualifications.
| _He_ doesn 't need an "equalizer". The people who would
| discriminate against him are the ones who need an "equalizer".
| In that light, companies who are celebrating diversity are
| essentially patting themselves on the back for not being
| racist. So when companies grift so hard off this, it's
| embarrassing everyone in the process.
| benmmurphy wrote:
| its probably a deliberate strategy in order to make you feel that
| you haven't earned your position but rather you are beholden to
| the people that gave it to you
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| I don't think that's right. Most people involved in DEI have
| good intentions, they're often just too short-sighted to see
| second order consequences of the way they do things.
| oaiey wrote:
| that assumes competency of someone to have a real strategy and
| then competency to conceal it because it is a timebomb waiting
| to explode.
|
| Too complicated ;).
| rvz wrote:
| These companies are chasing ESG points to show who is the most
| diverse company to get more investment, despite DEI being a
| useless trend that proves nothing but virtue signalling as you
| said.
|
| It is indeed nonsensical virtue signalling and an enormous and
| very expensive distraction.
| moomoo11 wrote:
| I'm Asian and grew up dirt poor. It's annoying af when people
| think of me as some math genius or whatever with parents who are
| doctors (they're not.. far from it). I had no choice but to do my
| best because as a kid I remember no running water and no
| electricity before we moved to the USA and lived in small
| apartment with bugs. My parents English is terrible and I saw
| them suffer here by not being able to afford visiting their
| family back home. My dad moved here and never went back, could
| only afford to send my mom a couple times and me once. I'm glad
| we are doing better today.
|
| I find a lot of these DEI policies to be very generalizing and
| uncomfortable to be completely honest.
| Zigurd wrote:
| What you are describing sounds performative, which doesn't mean
| it's tokenism, window dressing, or a bad faith put-on show. It
| could all be with the best intentions. However it's hard to
| disagree with your take that DEI results should be self-evident.
| If a company feels a need to be self-congratulatory, they might
| be doing it wrong.
|
| You put your finger on it right here: "I could understand
| publishing a quarterly report, but creating townhall meetings and
| parading..." Women and minorities in tech have their networks and
| know what's what. Accurate reporting of positive results is what
| makes a company welcoming to applicants.
| tjpnz wrote:
| Tangential to the current discussion but why do I always sense a
| reluctance to include matters relating to social class in these
| programs? When I bring it up during D&I discussions I'll usually
| get blank stares, and in one instance there were crude comments
| made about needing to beef up building security first.
| gizmo wrote:
| Because DEI efforts come from the Ivies that are vestiges of
| class privilege. It's hard for people to recognize they can be
| oppressed as well as oppressor, privileged and disadvantaged at
| the same time. Even though this is the entire point of
| intersectionality, it's still hard to be self-aware.
|
| The thought leaders of intersectionality, by virtue of their
| thought-leadership, have a privilege and a reach almost nobody
| else has. This does not discredit them, but it's awkward to
| acknowledge that those who preach about privilege are sometimes
| meaningfully more privileged than the people they preach to.
|
| When people point out this privilege it looks like derailing
| from their perspective. Because when unprivileged people talk
| about oppression nobody pays attention to them, but when
| privileged people talk about it their privilege is then used to
| discredit their arguments. They can't win!
|
| This exact effect poisons discussions about wealth inequality.
| When poor people talk about inequality they're ignored because
| they're sore losers. Rich people are ignored because they must
| be virtue-signaling hypocrites.
| gadders wrote:
| It's starting to get traction. For instance, this is a
| government-sponsored organisation in the UK trying to encourage
| it in banking: https://www.progresstogether.co.uk/our-purpose/
|
| There are similar orgs for consulting and law. Not heard of any
| for the FAANG/start-up/tech world.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| DEI took off right after Occupy Wall Street. The whole purpose
| is to destroy the class discussion entirely and use DEI issues
| as a weapon against anyone who brings up class. That's why DEI
| feels so disingenuous, because at its core, that's exactly what
| it is.
| AustinDev wrote:
| Bingo, much like the political brinkmanship that is the
| current left and right divide it's all a distraction from
| that moment of class clarity.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Because people believe that social class is your own fault.
| That people can just pull themselves up by their bootstraps if
| they weren't lazy. Not that I agree with this.
| rytor718 wrote:
| This. In US especially, the thought processes around race are
| just ...catastrophically delusional due to our terrible
| history with it. And by that I mean it seems to reduce us to
| rituals like DEI because we simply are terrible at reckoning
| with it in meaningful, material ways.
|
| But the resistance to dealing with race and class together is
| real, in part because class is seen as individual problem.
| Race is seen as more cultural, systemic, or the province a
| minority running around with sheets on their heads.
|
| I've personally only seen strong efforts to dissect them
| both, in earnest, at the same time, in the margins of
| society.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| It's easier to hang out with different colors of people from
| your social class and pretend like you've solved all the
| problems in diversity. People from lower classes also have icky
| views that don't align with yours so no thanks!
| LegitShady wrote:
| your employer doesn't want you talking about social class
| because they're the ones who have to pay you enough to get out
| of one class into another. It's much easier if they talk about
| your DIE 'identity' instead of paying you more.
| ericmcer wrote:
| Social class, attractiveness, intelligence, charisma, mental
| health, physical health, luck, etc. all play a big role in your
| success in life but we don't try to equalize those at all.
|
| Race and gender are probably just really easy to quantify vs
| "we have a program to make sure we hire people who are dumb,
| ugly and socially awkward".
| pessimizer wrote:
| Because the people hired in diversity programs and to run
| diversity programs are more extreme outliers in wealth relative
| to the groups they represent than the mean non-diverse
| candidate. Diversity outreach largely benefits the 1% of black
| people.
| kneebonian wrote:
| Because the focus on ID Pol came after Occupy Wall Street
| started threatening the people in charge, by changing the focus
| from class to race, sex, and sexual orientation they manage to
| keep the middle and lower classes fighting each other instead
| of pushing against the fact that during COVID was saw some of
| the largest redistribution of wealth imaginable in this
| country.
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| That's definitely true. As an example, if you're a low-class
| white male kid, you're actually quite disadvantaged compared to
| the general population (for example in educational outcomes).
| But the DEI initiatives in most companies won't recognize this,
| as they often don't look past skin color and gender.
| gadders wrote:
| I've started getting into socio-economic diversity, and
| having some success pushing it as a diversity characteristic
| at work. Whatever your other diversity characteristics are,
| coming from a lower socio-economic background just makes
| things harder.
| spacephysics wrote:
| My brother is about 8 years younger than I, and we both grew
| up in a small city, but city none the less.
|
| There really wasn't talk about sexuality/gender beyond
| someone being gay vs straight, or some group of kids being in
| a gang (there were a few subgroups depending on ethnicity,
| which they proclaimed themselves)
|
| He's nearly out of high school, and now it's very much
| focused on DEI. After the states standardized testing is
| accomplished, most focus is on equality of outcome talk,
| about how he being a young white male has oppressed groups of
| people unconsciously, and that he should feel guilty.
|
| Fortunately he's smart, and questioned this at a young age.
| And a family that accepts him and helps him. But I fear this
| stuff could make less well off kids feel excluded, shunned,
| and guilty, and could ferment vengeful ideologies against
| society, which we need far less of.
|
| It's sad how divided as a country we are. I hope for us to
| get past this, even as cliche this sounds, for the children.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| You can't see social class. Social class barely exists as a
| politically relevant group identity. None of this is about
| justice. It's about distributing spoils to politically relevant
| groups. People don't care because there's no benefit to them or
| their political coalition.
| CPLX wrote:
| This is a complicated question, but at least one aspect of it
| is that American culture has always had an incredibly difficult
| time admitting there is such a thing as social and economic
| class division and confronting it head on.
|
| At least some of this is probably cultural, it's part of our
| foundational myth that we broke the rigid class structures of
| the old world countries and we want to believe that is true.
| There is of course at least some kernel of truth to it, in some
| sense, for some kinds of people, historically speaking.
|
| The other reason is that there has been a multi-generational
| extremely well funded initiative to cultivate media and public
| opinion against the idea. It's everywhere and is the basis of
| much of the "culture war" signaling we see around us. Examples
| include the idea that driving a pickup truck or avoiding lattes
| is some kind of meaningful class marker, rather than things
| like who owns and controls the capital of this country.
|
| That effort has been highly effective, in part because it's
| been well executed and in part because of the total collapse of
| the concept of a labor party in this country, leaving us with
| two parties ruled by different professional classes.
| fmajid wrote:
| Minorities just can't win (although women are actually a slight
| majority of the population, so it's really white men who are the
| minority). Every now and then a woman like Marissa Maier or Carol
| Bartz will get a "Hail Mary" chance at the top job, and when they
| eventually fail, it's blamed on them being women.
| tohnjitor wrote:
| If only HR and executives understood the amount of resentment and
| distrust these policies grow in many of their employees.
| didgetmaster wrote:
| I remember seeing a cartoon of a dog typing at a computer with
| the caption of 'Nobody knows you are a dog on the Internet'.
| Unless someone goes out of their way to point out their race,
| gender, ethnicity, or age; you generally have no idea who is
| commenting or who wrote the software.
|
| I couldn't personally care less if my computer was created by a
| Japanese woman or if my software was created by a black gay man.
| I just want it to work properly. Same goes for nearly everything
| else I buy.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| Most marginally intelligent people understand that "DEI
| initiatives" are all about virtue signalling that do little to
| nothing except make people feel uncomfortable. Many people who
| study the issue have concluded that these "DEI initiatives"
| actually lead to _worse_ outcomes.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/11/opinion/workplace-diversi...
|
| Is it any surprise that contrived struggle sessions and compelled
| behavioral modification seminars aren't helpful?
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| DEI has become just another corporate metric for executives to
| game in order to optimize their bonuses. Same with ESG, NPS, and
| everything else before it - eventually the metric becomes the end
| unto itself and the original objective gets completely lost.
| avip wrote:
| DEI can mean 2 orthogonal things:
|
| 1. Affirmative action. I'll be mostly "against" this vague
| concept, as it seems incompatible with meritocracy.
|
| 2. Making sure workspace is a safe and pleasant place to work in,
| where people can generally be heard. This is almost
| unconditionally "a good thing" which should be actively
| encouraged.
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| Diversity should be natural, not forced. DEI forces diversity,
| which causes more problems than it solves and harms more people
| than it helps. It's been this way forever, including back when it
| was called "affirmative action." I suggest reading this book to
| see just how disastrous it's been:
| https://www.amazon.com/Affirmative-Action-Around-World-Empir...
|
| How do we improve natural diversity? Through persuasion, not
| coercion. That means, first and foremost, improving education for
| people and instilling the right cultural values so that they have
| the right skills and qualifications. When we have diverse people
| with the right skills, diverse workforces occur naturally in a
| free market system.
|
| Finally, people who think America has a huge racism problem
| should travel across the world now and also read history better.
| America is one of the least racist places overall in recorded
| history. It's something we can always improve on, bu, at this
| point it's just another problem among many, and our overemphasis
| on it is also causing far more problems than helping people.
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| Personally, I wouldn't link anything Thomas Sowell has written.
| He has literally claimed that Black Americans were better off
| during slavery than they are today [1].
|
| > America is one of the least racist places overall in recorded
| history [citation needed]
|
| [1] - https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/thomas-sowell-on-the-
| legacy-o...
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| Personally, I wouldn't blatantly tell obvious lies. I clicked
| on the link. Sowell didn't say that at all. But I have to
| admit, that's a new one. Falsely claim someone said something
| awful, then provide a link to make it look legitimate. It's a
| pretty vile and disgusting tactic, honestly. But that's what
| I've come to expect from people of a certain political
| persuasion.
|
| Anyways, I'll continue to link Sowell. I suggest you stop
| with the dishonesty, though.
| Eumenes wrote:
| Big tech companies openly discriminate in the hiring process
| towards non favored groups, this is a fact. People involved in
| the hiring committees at these companies know and this has
| downstream effects. DIE is perpetuating harmful stereotypes no
| doubt.
| joemazerino wrote:
| Not surprised we have arrived here on HN. After BLM, there were a
| flurry of posts supporting DIE as if it's the tyleonal to the
| racism headache.
|
| "If we hire non-whites, WE can solve systemic racism!".
|
| People didn't stop to think that it hurts everyone all around.
| White people are now ignored for hires based on their race (as is
| the Left's proposition towards black names on resumes) and
| minorities are paraded around as if they are corporate mascots.
|
| I feel for you OP. IMO the next hiring landscape is in anonymous
| handles providing superior results. Keep increasing your skills
| and climb above the DIE garbage hole.
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| I'm a tall white middle aged dude living in the US, so I am
| probably not the best person to comment. But to me DEI is mostly
| window dressing.
|
| I agree with OP that companies should have policies around this,
| but they should be aimed at being quietly effective, not
| something to trumpet in the quarterly corporate report.
|
| And emphasis on "effective".
|
| If we fold in environment and governance, I see too many
| companies doing things like planting a zillion trees to show
| their environmental savvy - which in reality are unfortunately,
| saplings which are eaten by deer within a few months and end up
| being a net loss to the environment.
| AdamN wrote:
| You shouldn't have to do this but if you're being asked to
| present at the DEI townhall, you might politely but firmly ask
| for a different panel makeup to reflect the power the company is
| putting behind the effort. These initiatives should be driven by
| the business units, is the VP of product there, the SVP of
| engineering, the officers of the company, board members even???
|
| This panel can talk about what they're doing to drive the
| initiative and ideally there are no DEI/People people on stage at
| all aside from maybe a moderator. If there is no diversity on
| that stage ... ask them what they're doing about it and if it's a
| goal for them to drive inclusion at all levels.
|
| Also, big monthly meetings are an anti-pattern. Once high level
| people are participating, you will hopefully see the frequency go
| down and the quality go up.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| > If I were a white man with the same experience, I might not
| even be here?
|
| I get this... but is the contrary worse? you've very possibly
| missed out on jobs at the expense of a less qualified white
| person. There's some evidence that even having a "black sounding
| name" results in resumes being looked over.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-29/job-appli...
|
| Inclusivity initiatives can be problematic, but prior to their
| existence a lot of the time it was "continue not even being fully
| aware that you only hire white people"
| joemazerino wrote:
| Applying real world hard from theoretical data is exactly why
| DIE should die. It is absolutely absurd to assume that data
| supporting racism (ie: black people can't get jobs because they
| are somehow handicapped) is more applicable than data showing
| equality of opportunity.
|
| Play this logic game: besides racism, why do you think these
| resumes are passed over?
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| It's not really a "logic game"... that seems like a
| dismissive way to approach this conversation and makes me
| feel like you may not be willing to entertain any ideas
| through the course of a discussion.
|
| There have been multiple experiments run using resumes with
| identical experience but different names, and it seems that
| "black sounding" names are consistently called back less
| often, in some cases 50% less.
|
| https://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/employers-replies-
| racial-n...
|
| This makes me feel like some kind of hard requirement like a
| quota might actually be corrective given that there are
| measurable biases in who gets called back for an interview?
|
| Or maybe to put it in a different lens, given this is a
| narrow scope of data that doesn't do much to support the
| vague idea of a "diversity initiative" -- perhaps the better
| approach would be anonymizing resumes during the initial
| outreach process?
| benj111 wrote:
| >corporate virtue signaling
|
| See, you do get it. Although TBF the 'progressive' left is
| basically nothing but virtue signalling at the moment.
|
| And you highlight the problem with putting 'diversity' front and
| centre. It disadvantages me if I don't get the job and end up
| annoyed at you, legitimately or not because you got the job. Your
| achievements are devalued because you don't know whether you got
| the job because of the colour of your skin, and neither do your
| work colleagues.
|
| Employers shouldn't care about the colour of your skin any
| further than potentially examining why they aren't attracting
| certain groups in the interest of getting the very best talent
| available.
|
| Equality should be the goal.
| mberning wrote:
| I feel like it has a chilling effect on everything. As you have
| pointed out, it can make people in the target group feel
| patronized. And at the same time it can make people in the non-
| targeted group feel less desirable or less useful to the
| organization. I could say a lot more about it and what I have
| seen first hand, but I'll leave it at that.
| warchowder wrote:
| [dead]
| antisceptic wrote:
| One problem with DEI is that many ethnicities get thrown under
| the white or white-adjacent umbrella and aren't given the same
| opportunities simply because the popular view of history doesn't
| seem them as historically oppressed when in fact they were. For
| instance, Armenians are a historically oppressed group, even
| genocided, yet they are not afforded any DEI perks in their
| career paths. Palestinians are also not included in DEI because
| it isn't politically expedient to side with them, even though
| they have lost their homeland and are generally treated like
| dogs. Many, many such groups exist but because they don't come up
| during AP US History, they have no mindshare.
|
| Another is that DEI seems to simultaneously accept that race is a
| social construct while also using race as a key criterion for
| purposes of inclusion, which is absurd. For example, a Black
| Swede, growing up in Sweden her whole life, would be considered a
| candidate that improves diversity in the workplace. However, I'm
| not aware of Swedes being an oppressed people. In fact, growing
| up in Sweden your life is probably better than in America. The
| judgment is made purely on skin color and lineage.
|
| Lastly, I also want to say that I know this is an ugly situation,
| because high paying jobs are often about connections, which have
| a strong correlation with ethnic background in the United States.
| In that view, it makes sense to have something like DEI shine a
| light on power structures within the workplace and make them more
| fair. So despite the above, I support DEI if it helps
| underprivileged people. After all racism still exists, and it's
| virulent. Many people harbor racist views and will lie through
| their teeth in order not to be canceled.
|
| I just hope eventually racism is extinguished so we could move
| forward to a purely merit-based system.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| > In my opinion, it would be beneficial if DEI initiatives were
| confidential and kept "hush hush" within a company.
|
| That arguably defeats the real purpose of why companies go along
| with DEI initiatives.
|
| First of all, a big part of companies promoting DEI initiatives
| is to boost a company's ESG score amongst investors like Larry
| Fink of BlackRock that focus on it. There's billions and billions
| of dollars in investment money directed just because of some
| peoples' hard-on for ESG scores. Courting investors well enough
| can be the difference between a company's survival or not.
|
| Second of all, it feels a lot like DEI initiatives are meant to
| serve as a shield/insurance against ever being called names like
| racist. Companies are just using DEI to playact as being good
| people. If they ever get embroiled in some dumb scandal that
| presents a real risk to their business, they can just point to
| their DEI initiatives and act like they're doing everything they
| possibly can to be anti-racist.
|
| The DEI Industry (and yes, it's an industry) goes along with this
| because it's a grift that's financially beneficial to them.
| tomp wrote:
| (We've told you so.)
| barbazoo wrote:
| > most
|
| I'm trying not to extrapolate. You might have more experience
| than me but I would not generalize here unless you have seen
| what's going on in the vast majority of companies.
|
| In my organization the DEI I am exposed to is, luckily,
| completely outside of hiring. It's about raising awareness for
| people that are interested, it's opt-in, and gives a safe space
| to share experiences, events, etc. It's not only about
| [deleted]
| afavour wrote:
| I don't want to take away from your personal experience and
| opinions but the title led me to believe its assertion was from a
| study or some other kind of statistically backed examination.
|
| If there is one I'd be fascinated to read it. Do the majority of
| PoC employees feel this way? That's the kind of question that
| can't really by answered by an HN thread.
| marknutter wrote:
| The replies to this thread are giving me hope that the DEI
| madness is starting to wane.
| itronitron wrote:
| When I was in graduate school, we had a guest speaker who was a
| diversity consultant come give a talk and ran us through one of
| the example exercises they do for clients. It basically involves
| everyone standing in a conference room, on one side of a line,
| and the diversity consultant standing on the other side. They
| iteratively make statements relating to personal attributes or
| experiences and anyone that chooses to identify with that
| statement step over the line briefly before returning back to the
| group (either before the next statement or not).
|
| For example, the first statement might be "I have served in the
| military" and veterans that don't mind being known for their
| military experience can step over the line. Other statements
| might be "I am the first person in my family to attend college",
| "I have questioned my sexuality", "I was raised in an upper class
| family", "I am vegetarian", "I am a recovering addict", ... etc.
|
| It's a good exercise for showing both the things people have in
| common as well as the breadth of experiences that might exist in
| a group.
|
| Interestingly, though I've never seen that exercise performed in
| an actual company in the twenty years since...
| cccybernetic wrote:
| Maybe I'm just more of a private person than some people, but
| I'm absolutely floored that people would volunteer such private
| life details to a group of random strangers. I'm not saying
| it's a bad thing either, it may very well be healthier to share
| more about ourselves, but I can't wrap my head around it.
| paweladamczuk wrote:
| I don't like any policies based on gender or skin color.
|
| I also don't like that my gender and skin color determine how OK
| it is for me to say that.
| NDizzle wrote:
| ~15 years ago, at a big 4 accounting firm...
|
| One of the network engineers that I became work-friends with, as
| he was leaving the office at 2:15 on a Friday...
|
| <Me> Man you always bail around this time, how do you get away
| with that? <Him> I'm a Mexican with a CCIE - what are they going
| to do, fire me?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| DEI is one huge attempt to make a right out of two wrongs.
| fastball wrote:
| This has been a criticism of Affirmative Action / DEI initiatives
| since they were first proposed.
|
| Unfortunately, I've never heard a good rebuttal to this argument.
| As long as such a system is in place, the potential beneficiaries
| of such programs cannot be sure if they are there because of
| merit or just to fill quotas; potentially causing harm to the
| exact people you're trying to help.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > I realize this isn't the type of content posted to HN usually
|
| This is because it's going to start a flamewar and get flagged
| off the front page. It's also suspicious that it might not be
| authentic.
| spacephysics wrote:
| I think these initiatives had great intentions, as the saying
| goes, "road to hell is paved with good intentions"
|
| We shouldn't be "color blind", but at the same time shouldn't
| raise (or especially demote) anyone for their skin color
|
| These initiatives are antithetical to what MLK preached, to much
| of the civil rights movement
|
| And just like the scrum cult, once these systems are implemented,
| they understandably have motive to keep themselves "alive" and
| worth the investment.
|
| That begs the question then, if there's perfect diversity in a
| company, why would you need DEI? You'd only justify the cost if
| it's a perpetual problem that will never be solved, one that
| every individual is conscious or unconsciously guilty of, and
| actions must be taken to curb the ever-encroaching perpetuation
| of anti DEI thoughts/behaviors.
| not_a_pet_rock wrote:
| > but at the same time shouldn't raise (or especially demote)
| anyone for their skin color
|
| thats literally what colorblindness is all about, recognizing
| people for their actions not their skin color.
| ecmascript wrote:
| Personally, I really dislike DEI initiatives and think they
| should be avoided. Just treat everyone the same. How hard is it,
| really? Unfortunately, because I am a white man that express
| these thoughts I am now a racist and a sexist even if the ones
| who actually commit the racist/sexist/etc acts nowadays mostly
| are the ones who claim to fight it.
|
| If more people would view people as individuals instead of some
| kind of collective, I believe a lot would be improved.
| ksec wrote:
| All roads to hell are paved with good intentions.
|
| People may want to look back, given most comments on HN are not
| deleted, between ~2014 to 2020. How DEI took over nearly every
| single Tech company, and then somehow spread across different
| domains and industry.
|
| Yes, Twitter along with MSM played a big part of it.
|
| And yes, it took until 2021 / 2022 before we (could?) had any
| push back. Remember when people were trying to cancel DHH? Most
| of what you wrote were true since Day 1. And it is not like
| anything is unforeseen or new. But we cant even talk about it,
| writing the above in 2018 you will have likely been labeled as
| Trump supporter even if you are not an American.
|
| Basically the hypocrisy level in unreal.
|
| It has die down quite a bit, I dont see an angry Microsoft
| employees shouting or tweeting in all caps about DEI and pronouns
| to non-native English speakers. ( It is somehow always Microsoft
| ) We have enough "influencers" backing the some of these Anti-DEI
| / Woke movements. ( Although the word Woke is now being used by
| Right Wing meaning something different )
| koonsolo wrote:
| We shouldn't care about the skin color of people. And when I was
| young, I thought we would evolve into a world were skin color
| wouldn't matter.
|
| But now it seems some people 'accepted' that skin color matters,
| and so we have to positively discriminate skin colors that get
| discriminated against. Their belief is that there will always be
| racism against colored people, and somehow it needs to be
| offsetted.
|
| If find this very strange. I would hope one day we could still
| evolve into a world where skin color doesn't matter. But it seems
| further away as we move along.
| ModernMech wrote:
| The problem is that as we started to transition to a world that
| didn't discriminate against racial groups based on skin color,
| the people who _wanted_ to discriminate against those groups
| changed tactics. They discriminated using _other_ signals
| strongly correlated with race, largely with the same effect.
| The coup de grace was then declaring racial discrimination
| "over", all the while maintaining the same racially
| discriminated power structures.
|
| Now we live in a world where racial groups can be targeted with
| surgical precision using such signals. The racists aren't using
| the N word out loud anymore, but the racial animus is still
| there. The promise of a colorblind world was naive, and it
| won't work.
| mabbo wrote:
| > In my opinion, it would be beneficial if DEI initiatives were
| confidential and kept "hush hush" within a company.
|
| The problem is incentives and selection bias.
|
| Let's imagine a company that has a pretty obvious diversity
| problem when anyone happens to look around the room. What kind of
| person is likely to either be assigned "fix the diversity
| problem" or take on the job on their own? Probably they're
| someone high up the corporate ladder who has learned how to play
| the game.
|
| That kind of person already knows that being "hush hush" about
| anything doesn't get them the next promotion, the big bonus. It
| doesn't achieve _their_ personal goals. That 's not how they got
| here.
|
| And if this person is someone who meets the 'diversity' label
| (because who else would they assign it to?) in a company that has
| a clear diversity problem that they don't seem to understand
| (usually caused by implicit bais the leadership have and will
| never acknowledge exist), then this person has already learned
| that being quietly successful gets them no where. The only way to
| succeed is to do so loudly, publicly, and undeniably.
|
| The goal isn't to increase diversity. It's to get the person in
| charge of increasing diversity a bigger paycheck.
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| I tried to bring this kind of issue up in an earlier Ask HN but
| it got flagged for some reason:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34526053.
| hnhamdani wrote:
| Reading DEI related threats, it's interesting that this phenomena
| happened in the US which impacting US institutions/companies.
|
| From the outside looking in, it kind of a consequence of treating
| the symptom which is not the permanent solution. The actual root
| cause of the bug is still not yet addressed, hence why you see
| the side effect of the bug fix.
|
| The root cause is multi faceted ofc, but some of them we could
| already identify. Economical inequality, social mobility which
| correlates with the given opportunity along the way. Once this
| fixed, the opportunity given to each individual will be fairer.
| moomoo11 wrote:
| I wish we would transcend to a point where we look up to people
| based on their achievements and separate their race from it.
|
| I'm Asian btw. I can relate to Lebron just as much as I can
| relate to Neil Armstrong or Satya or Matz or Woz or Marie Curie
| because they are all excellent at what they did/do.
|
| I want to be excellent like them. Because we all are humans.
| avip wrote:
| It's also funny to use the term "Asian". I'm also "Asian" (from
| Israel). There are hundreds of completely non-related ethnical
| groups in this vast continent.
| DrThunder wrote:
| It's because certain terms to explain other parts of Asia
| have been deemed not pc.
| foolinaround wrote:
| Asian has a different meaning in US Tech circles.
|
| I found that out, when I arrived in this country, and was
| informed that Indians are their own groups, and Asians
| referred to Chinese and Koreans (and others).
|
| The 'Asian' tag is a clear racist way, determined by the way
| one looks.
| goatlover wrote:
| Yeah, and what do you call a white Siberian? A large part of
| Russia is in Asia as well. Asia must have the most ethnic
| groups, along with the largest population, but somehow
| they're all one race to the West.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| You call a white Siberian a Russian, and Russia wasn't
| considered part of the orient by US immigration law back in
| the day.
| [deleted]
| HideousKojima wrote:
| I always get confused when people say they need to have people
| who look like them in prominent roles in order to feel welcome
| in a hobby/career/whatever. I'm a fan of boxing, and my
| favorite boxer is a black Muslim. I do some hobby-level game
| dev on the side, and most of my favorite devs that I look up to
| are Japanese. Young black men seem to disproportionately love
| Dragon Ball Z, with an Asian-appearing main character based on
| the Chinese epic _Journey to the West_ whose hair turns blond
| when he gets angry and powers up.
| balls187 wrote:
| Are you truly confused or is it that you choosen not to
| listen to the reasons "people" have for finding value in
| representation?
|
| Does your comment mean that because your human experience is
| different than other people that you find it difficult to
| understand how others may think and feel differently than
| you?
| strawpeople wrote:
| [dead]
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Assuming you're white and male: there are loads of white
| boxers and game devs! And you probably know some of them!
|
| Think about how men feel about traditionally femme activities
| which may be stigmatized for hetero men. If you see even one
| other straight man get their nails done at a salon it sort of
| implicitly opens that door to you.
| balls187 wrote:
| Not sure about getting a manicure, but speaking as a hetero
| man, getting a pedicure is amazing and I recommend every
| person with the means to, try it once.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| I was hoping someone would chime in with this!
| excerionsforte wrote:
| Dragon Ball Z was introduced into lower income neighborhoods
| via Cartoon Network among many other anime, so it was hard to
| miss. It was pretty hard to miss Pokemon, Dragon Ball Z and
| etc. in elementary school especially with the merch kids
| brought to school. Marketing, re-runs and perceived
| coolness/epicness, I'd say drove the continued popularity of
| it. Once you hit high school and college though, Dragon Ball
| Z/Pokemon are niche and less visible (it stopped being cool
| and a relic of age) at least that was my experience in low
| income neighborhood. DBZ is still awesome because of its
| familarity, but not something I will watch intentionally.
|
| Goku being Japanese and loved by people of lower income is
| like how Final Fantasy 7 is beloved in predominately white
| (western) countries. There's still discussions of people
| thinking Cloud Strife is white even though he is Japanese.
|
| Race, in general, isn't a big deal when you are younger since
| it is not taught in schools (shockingly to some people :O).
| It becomes an issue when people actively start generalizing
| and using tropes for the purposes to make you feel like shit
| (in)directly.
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| There's no country called 'Japan' in Final Fantasy VII, so
| I don't know why you're so confidently stating that. The
| closest analogue is Wutai, and Cloud's not from there.
| balls187 wrote:
| Cloud isn't Japanese. He is a fictional character from a
| fictional planet.
|
| And Goku isn't Japanese either; he is Saiyan, an Alien
| race.
|
| > Race, in general, isn't a big deal when you are younger
|
| It isn't a big deal, if you're not impacted by it
| (colloquially known today as 'privilege').
|
| However, what you might not believe is a big deal, is
| arguably a big deal to other people.
|
| A few examples:
|
| You may not be aware that black women in the US are 3-times
| more likely to pregnancy related issues than white women.
| There is a downstream impact on the children of those
| women. [1]
|
| Separately, there still exists a serious gap in achievement
| for Alaska Native / American Indian children.
|
| 1: https://www.cdc.gov/healthequity/features/maternal-
| mortality... 2:
| https://www.nsba.org/ASBJ/2020/December/condition-native-
| ame...
| excerionsforte wrote:
| Let's be honest here, a creator can make Apples be purple
| and slightly deformed and call it Banora Apples, but it's
| still an apple. Plenty of people who like DBZ or FF to
| debate with on how to classify said characters based on
| traits such as skeletal structure, influences from the
| creator, etc. These classifications, I don't think about
| much when playing games in general, not that much of a
| fanboy in trying to identify with any character. Gonna
| have to find someone else here to debate with on any
| particular character's race or racial influences.
|
| You clearly misread. Elementary and even some high school
| school kids don't think about "race" until it is pointed
| out in some way whether by a national event or cited as
| bullying reason etc. How you could extrapolate that to
| "race doesn't matter", I have no clue other than a
| misread whether intentional or not.
| balls187 wrote:
| Japanese isn't a race it's a nationality and/or
| ethnicity, and neither Goku nor Cloud are from Japan nor
| do they share any real cultural traits with Japanese
| people.
|
| You've changed crux of your argument (or perhaps
| clarified what you inteded to argue) to now be what
| school age children do or do not think; though that isn't
| very compelling as neither you nor I are capable of
| reading minds. However the comment I did respond to was
| clearly written--"Race, in general, isn't a big deal when
| you are younger..." and it clearly can be a big deal to
| young people; just perhaps not a big deal to you.
| excerionsforte wrote:
| Don't know how you can say that with a straight face. You
| got me laughing right now. [1] shows clear influence by
| Japanese culture. With Japanese language symbols in each
| creation, again, I can't see how your claim stands that
| there is no influence. I could never say that creations
| are not influenced in any way by the world we live in.
| Race/Nationality/Ethnicity tend to be used in an
| intertwined manner these days so I have to believe you
| are not being of good faith here. It's 2023, so you can
| read it as Pokemon and DBZ are of Japanese origin and
| leave out the fluff. If we really used the race term
| literally, it wouldn't be used at all to describe
| differences between people in the human race.
|
| I've changed nothing. You misread it and I clarified it
| for you to come to an understanding. Race/Skin
| Color/Nationality, whatever it is you want to read it as
| with the negative connotations assigned, isn't something
| any young-in thinks about on a daily basis without it
| being pointed out in some way.
|
| Anyway, I'm not interested in going on circles on this. I
| would know about said experience given my own culture and
| interactions. No one needs to reads minds to give
| anecdotes about their life experience and talk to other
| people in the same situation about their life experience
| and thoughts about things that happen(ed) to this day.
|
| [1] https://scontent-
| hou1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.6435-9/106206584_2...
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Not sure why your comment was greyed-out when I saw it.
| Voting patterns are truly bizarre and disconnected from
| truth.
| alocasia-1 wrote:
| Probably because there is no shortage of white boxers, and
| an observation about black people liking a cartoon isn't
| all that relevant?
| busterarm wrote:
| It's interesting to me seeing all asians and pacific islanders
| lumped together and excluded from most DEI efforts because HR
| departments think there's too many of you already and that
| you're too white-adjacent. Seems like blatant racism to me.
| AustinDev wrote:
| Pro-tip DEI is, by definition, a racist endeavor.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Also doesn't ever mention ageism, even in lip-service or
| passing.
| dcow wrote:
| In the 90s we did this.
| domain8543 wrote:
| Lebron's struggles as a black man in America are a huge part of
| his success story. Not just that he's excellent at what he
| does. Pretending that race doesn't exist does not actually work
| in practice. LeBron himself will tell you that.
| foolinaround wrote:
| IMHO, LeBron's struggle was one of an poor kid growing up.
|
| I would even say that being black was an advantage, and gave
| him great genetics that he took to the next level with
| discipline.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > "I would even say that being black was an advantage, and
| gave him great genetics that he took to the next level with
| discipline."
|
| Being Jewish was a great advantage to Einstein, and gave
| him great genetics that he took to the next level with
| discipline.
|
| Being French was a great advantage to Joan of Arc, and gave
| her great genetics that she took to the next level with
| dedication.
|
| LeBron may have great genetics. But if he does, it's
| because of his parents and luck, not his race per se.
| Otherwise everyone who is black would have a genetic
| advantage that they could take to the next level with
| discipline.
|
| It is racist as hell to attribute to race what are personal
| qualities. Other than, perhaps, traits that only certain
| races possess, such as the ability to breath at high
| elevations without taking weeks to adapt to the conditions.
| goatlover wrote:
| Lebron plays in a league that's majority black in the
| footsteps of Michael Jordan, who was the most famous athlete
| on the planet and on the way to being a billionaire and
| owner. Lebron was anointed Jordan's heir while still in high
| school, and he got drafted straight into the NBA with the #1
| overall pick. He's had numerous huge endorsements over his
| career.
|
| Exactly how did he struggle as a basketball player? White Men
| Can't Jump was a 90s movie, and back in the 80s, Bird was a
| the great white hope as redneck from Indiana, because the top
| players were mostly black, and Bird was even called out as
| unathletic by Dennis Rodman and Isaiah Thomas after he won a
| playoff game over them in Detroit.
| domain8543 wrote:
| I said his struggles as a black man. As in being raised in
| poverty in the midwest (not a lot of opportunity for people
| of his background) and having no real shot at success in
| America other than selling his body.
| GameOfFrowns wrote:
| >having no real shot at success in America other than
| selling his body.
|
| Selling his body? Are you serious?
|
| He wouldn't have been able to become a cop, a nurse, a
| clerk, a financial professional or any of the other
| thousands of professions that black people in the midwest
| find themselves in?
|
| LeBron's struggles seem less part of his success story
| and more part of a self-penned "rags to riches" legend.
| goatlover wrote:
| Selling his body? Is that what millionaire athletes are
| doing? Or just the black ones? You mean Lebron didn't
| want to play basketball but had no other choice? Unlike
| us office workers who grew up dreaming of being
| professional athlete, but weren't good enough at sports?
| [deleted]
| DrThunder wrote:
| This is exactly the way normal anti-racism was up until
| recently. It's how MLK wanted it to be and it's pretty much how
| the US was treating it up until the last decade. Somehow we've
| switched in the last few years to the point where skin color
| and/or specific race is the MOST important attribute someone
| has.
|
| Diversity based on skin color is absolutely asinine. You can
| have a multitude of poc in one room but if their backgrounds
| and the groups they associate with are all the same, then their
| thinking is all going to be alike.
| dcow wrote:
| People are impatient. Changes that take a few generations to
| notice are too slow. Instant gains now now now. We learned
| identity politics worked for LGBTQIA so we deployed them for
| BIPOC as well. The ends justified the means. The ends are
| undefined.
| ejstronge wrote:
| From a very sincere position, can you link to your sources
| for 'how MLK wanted it to be' and 'how the US was treating'
| DEI?
|
| Unless we were all in the same positions within our careers
| since the time of MLK to now (and I'll also ignore some other
| confounders, like the fact that many black Americans could
| not easily attend college in the time of MLK), I wonder
| whether a recency bias may explain the differences you are
| reporting.
| DrThunder wrote:
| A link to sources? Really? Come on man, you've got to do a
| little work yourself here.
|
| All you need to do is read what DEI is striving to do and
| listen to MLK's "I have a dream" speech when he
| specifically states he doesn't want a society where we
| judge the character of people on skin color but instead
| merit. This is something you should have learned in
| elementary school if you're an American. Are you trying to
| claim this isn't the case?
|
| Explain to me how making everything equitable and inclusive
| for specific class oppressed poc isn't basing things on
| skin color vs. merit? This is a logical test, not one that
| needs sources.
|
| Here's another test for you - explain how you make everyone
| equitable without lowering the higher achievers in society
| down to the average? Do you think it's possible to make
| under-achievers the same intelligence, physical capability
| as higher-achieving people?
| ejstronge wrote:
| I was being very charitable - it seems you are asserting
| knowledge of Dr. King's canon of work based on your
| memory of a very meme-ified quote.
|
| I also requested information about how the US used to
| treat racial equity better in the past; do you have any
| such evidence?
|
| > Explain to me how making everything equitable and
| inclusive for specific class oppressed poc isn't basing
| things on skin color vs. merit? This is a logical test,
| not one that needs sources.
|
| The quote you reference mentions character. The issues at
| hand are whether hiring ignores qualified candidates
| based on their skin color. I understand that you wish for
| a colorblind world but this is not the world we live in.
| I suspect that it is easy for you to forego a 'patch' in
| our current situation because the problems at play do not
| affect you. To rephrase, because you're not running an
| affected version of a problematic script, nobody should
| be allowed to install a hotpatch. Better to wait for the
| perfect v1.0 to be released.
|
| > Here's another test for you - explain how you make
| everyone equitable without lowering the higher achievers
| in society down to the average? Do you think it's
| possible to make under-achievers the same intelligence,
| physical capability as higher-achieving people?
|
| This is the perennial boogeyman and strawman. I think the
| reason it comes up is to make those who have enjoyed
| unappreciated benefits feel that their experience relates
| solely to their ability.
|
| One of the best pitchers in baseball history never had a
| chance to play in his prime. Why? Because of an accident
| of his genetics.
|
| With the arguments you set up, I surmise that you would
| argue that expending any effort to finding such good, but
| unappreciated, players necessarily debases all players;
| let's leave the greats in the dust to ensure that the
| sons of the wealthy get to play the game.
|
| I would say that it is a disservice to humanity not to
| explore every option to uncover wasted talent.
|
| We will disagree on this, but I encounter brilliant
| people whose life stories hinge on just one lucky break
| regularly. When I am confronted by the _mammoth_ systemic
| inequalities the United States has imposed against some
| of its daughters and sons for hundreds of years, I am
| motivated to spend an extra moment to find qualified
| candidates in unappreciated venues.
|
| Finally - your argument presupposes that every job search
| finds the best candidate. This may be a surprise to you,
| but as someone who hires, the candidate I end up with is
| as much defined by the vagaries of chance as by the
| candidate's ability. This is not controversial to any one
| who hires and is indeed a confound that we all must
| consider.
|
| One key factor in someone getting their foot in the door
| is knowing someone who can contact me. Is this fair? Do I
| lower the average quality of all candidates if I use this
| very common source of referrals?
| type0 wrote:
| Isn't it ironic that the most famous African-American in US is
| white?!
| onion2k wrote:
| _For example, I know I 'm talented - I've got the projects,
| certs, and experience to back it up._
|
| I think a lot of people who are relatively new to tech (less than
| 20 years experience) fail to realise that DEI measures were
| invented to tackle _literal racism and misogeny_ in tech hiring.
| Companies would routinely screen out resumes from people whose
| names weren 't white enough or who were a bit too feminine. You
| could have all the best projects, certs, and experience, but if
| you'd been in tech in the early 2000s you still wouldn't have got
| an interview at _quite a lot_ of companies if your face didn 't
| fit the perceived "this is what an engineer looks like ... oh
| looks it's a white dude!" mould.
|
| People started to complain, and other people listened. DEI is the
| result. There's a strong argument that companies do it in a tone-
| deaf manner today, and _maybe_ it 's now so much better in hiring
| that DEI isn't needed any more (a very dubious claim in my
| opinion) but it's definitely better now even if you have to do a
| shitty monthly meeting, because in the bad old days you wouldn't
| have had the job in the first place.
| trabant00 wrote:
| > Companies would routinely screen out resumes from people
| whose names weren't white enough or who were a bit too feminine
|
| Could you provide any details on this? I've been in tech for
| more than 20 years and never heard of anything like what you
| stated.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| More recent studies indicate the opposite, women's resumes
| are preferred over men at tech companies:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25069644
| hedora wrote:
| This still happens today. The easiest way for a computer
| programmer to see how is to consider the problem of building
| a non-racially biased hiring algorithm that takes resumes as
| input.
|
| Heuristic one: Pick candidates with first names that are
| correlated with high performance. This works because certain
| areas have better math education, and first names help filter
| on parents' incomes.
|
| It is obviously racist. Eliminate it.
|
| Heuristic 2: Look at educational experience. Public schools
| in the US are horribly racist/classist, so this doesn't work
| either.
|
| Heuristic 3: Look at work experience. Other employers used
| heuristic 1 and 2, so this inherits racism from them. Also,
| older hires are (hopefully) less diverse, assuming the field
| is improving.
|
| Heuristic 4: Objective performance based whiteboard coding.
| People with imposter syndrome are more likely to choke in
| high-stress environments. Scratch this.
|
| Heuristic 5: "Cultural fit" bonus points to fix up #4.
| Studies show this selects for things like drinking the same
| brand alcohol or enjoying the same sports. Strike it too.
|
| Heuristic 6: Tailor the interview for the specific candidate.
| Studies show that women/minorities tend to get "softball"
| questions like "how did you handle this", which accidentally
| puts them on the defensive. Men get alpha male planning
| questions "how will you grow this company".
|
| I personally prefer #3 graded on a scale from 1-4 with 0.5
| increments. I add 0.5 to nervous people's (women, or english
| as second language, mostly) scores and truncate the integer.
|
| On average, this corrects the bias inherent in the interview
| setup and in my monkey brain. It pisses off almost everyone I
| know though.
|
| If I controlled recruiters, I'd add women / minority quotas
| to the candidate stream, but not to the interview phase. I
| would also track job performance vs. ethnicity/gender, and
| loosen standards for any group that was outperforming the
| team.
| onion2k wrote:
| _Could you provide any details on this?_
|
| Not really. Nothing that can't easily be dismissed as
| anecdotal any way. But when lots of people have the same
| anecdotes you start to ask questions. People did, and now we
| have DEI initiatives.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Then here's my anecdote to add: I've repeatedly been
| instructed to favor women and URM applications over white
| and _especially_ Asian men. I 've also had managers that
| outright told me that racial and gender discrimination
| favoring the former is the norm, and any opposition to it
| would get me fired and blacklisted.
| cabbagesauce wrote:
| As a white european dude, who's ancestors never oppressed anyone,
| rather were oppressed by other white dudes through history. Can
| you ELI5 why the DEI exists and what problems does it solve, from
| but from a perspective of someone of my position?
|
| Not a troll-bait question, but I sincerely try to comprehend this
| as to me the mere term _people of color_ is the uttermost racist
| label imaginable. Also, that presumes I 'm from people of no-
| color...
| hedgehog wrote:
| In the US discrimination based on skin color is widespread and
| goes back to before the country's founding, and access to
| opportunities is very uneven based on wealth. The PoC term is a
| reflection of the general pattern of discrimination as
| practiced here. This situation both has strong inertia (easier
| to get access to opportunity if you have relatively wealthy
| parents and/or blend in with wealthier people who tend to be
| white) and is also reinforced by vested interests (demonizing
| Latinos and Asian immigration for taking jobs helps keep
| immigration regulations tight and labor costs down). DEI
| initiatives are one take on how to get the system to correct
| towards giving everyone a fair shot.
| ianhawes wrote:
| Discrimination in the US is based on socioeconomic status
| just as much as race.
| hedgehog wrote:
| There are both, and they are related. For example family
| wealth and wealth accumulation in the US is weighted
| heavily to home ownership and appreciation, the GI bill
| that powered a great deal of home purchases was structured
| to exclude blacks, and the combination of those facts
| shapes the distribution of wealth today. Expensive
| neighborhoods tend to have better public schools, the
| quality of that schooling is a lifelong advantage, yet
| redlining was only banned around 50 years ago. This
| directly affected the cohort of people in their 60s who are
| still part of the work force. Overall social mobility in
| the US is pretty poor compared to other wealthy countries
| but I'm not sure if there is any rigorous work to attribute
| causes.
| workOrNah wrote:
| > However, when I have to join a cheesy townhall once a month to
| discuss diversity hires, it makes me feel like I have no right to
| feel proud of any accomplishments I've made within the company.
|
| DEI doesn't prescribe monthly townhalls about to discuss
| diversity lol Why are you blaming the failings of your company on
| DEI?
| [deleted]
| spangry wrote:
| > If I were a white man with the same experience, I might not
| even be here?
|
| I can understand how DEI initiatives might undermine your self-
| esteem and I'm sorry you are made to feel this way, but take
| solace in the fact that you have a job. Imagine how the white guy
| who was excluded from employment because of his skin color feels.
| That's who the real victim is here - the person who was racially
| discriminated against.
|
| > In my opinion, it would be beneficial if DEI initiatives were
| confidential and kept "hush hush" within a company.
|
| Personally, I prefer companies to be loud and proud about their
| DEI initiatives so that I know which companies engage in racial
| discrimination, rather than it all happening behind closed doors.
| Spoznaja wrote:
| Right; the companies that are pro DEI are like the man at the
| bar with a swastika arm badge. Sure it's morally repugnant, but
| at least you know ahead of time what you're dealing with.
| malcolmgreaves wrote:
| YIKES
|
| > Imagine how the white guy who was excluded from employment
| because of his skin color feels. That's who the real victim is
| here - the person who was racially discriminated against.
|
| White guys are not discriminated against in tech. This is such
| a racist take.
|
| I bet you also think that reparations for slavery and Jim Crow
| -- literally, the government actually discriminating and
| harming people for their skin color -- would be bad because
| they somehow "hurt" white folks today.
| ejstronge wrote:
| [flagged]
| joemazerino wrote:
| No, it was decided to chastise the downtrodden minority
| class.
| ejstronge wrote:
| Yes - allowing blacks in America to attend college and move
| into neighborhoods without the threat of being killed was
| an act designed to chastise them.
|
| I think posts of this nature (including OP) reflect a fear
| of not belonging to the dominant 'caste' and of being seen
| as either losing status (dominant caste men not getting
| jobs they are 'the best' for); or, alternatively, lower
| caste men wanting to be seen as valuable in a space they
| continually feel they do not belong in.
|
| I say this as a someone who is a minority who regularly is
| discriminated against - and who has easily attained markers
| of success. There is no way to avoid feeling like we do not
| belong, but returning us to poverty and shutting us out of
| jobs is definitely not a way to attain a feeling of
| belonging.
|
| Finally, DEI initiatives are very public - nepotism, alma
| mater connections etc are not. Let's be careful in assuming
| that the only non-LEET code metric used to hire people is
| the color of the skin or their biological sex.
| alocasia-1 wrote:
| Thank you for pointing out that last part. I think folks
| forget how vital that foot in the door is/was, whether
| it's the school on your resume or the reference from the
| internship your uncle got for you. You might get 99% of
| the way there by hard work but if the other applicant's
| essentially grandfathered in (analogy intentional), what
| have you gained?
| factsarelolz wrote:
| [dead]
| azangru wrote:
| > Please take a moment and reflect on why these sorts of
| initiatives exist.
|
| These sorts of initiatives are trying to cure a racial or
| sexual bias with a different sort of racial or sexual bias.
| How does the question "why they exist" help those of us who
| think, in Kant's deontological terms, that racial or sexual
| biases are wrong?
| ejstronge wrote:
| Very respectfully, I do not read Kant - and I wish I had
| the opportunity to do so in the very poor high school I
| attended.
|
| Please consider an old house you may buy if you live in New
| England or Europe. Sure, if you were building a new house
| everything should be plumb and level. But the house you're
| able to buy in old cities is not brand new. So what does
| one do if you wish to have a level floor? We add shims to
| obtain some objective reasonable result, accepting that to
| get to a this result we must try to address systemic
| problems that are not our fault, but are now our
| responsibility.
| azangru wrote:
| > So what does one do if you wish to have a level floor?
|
| Let me offer you a different metaphor about levels :-) In
| Greek mythology, there was a character named Procrustes.
| He had an iron bed of a certain size, to which he
| strapped his captives, and if they happened to be taller
| than the bed was long, he cut off their legs to fit the
| bed; whereas if they were shorter, he stretched them to
| fit the bed tearing their sinews and muscles. That's what
| I think of when I hear about arbitrary levels applied to
| living people.
| ejstronge wrote:
| I appreciate your analogy and I will politely remind you
| that in American history, members of certain classes did
| indeed have limbs cut off or their body parts stretched
| for arbitrary reasons.
|
| In fact, this practice only really ended in the 1960s;
| controversially, one might even say that this practice
| continues to today.
|
| So what do we do when confronted with an anecdote from
| antiquity versus system inequities from our modern era?
| azangru wrote:
| > So what do we do when confronted with an anecdote from
| antiquity versus system inequities from our modern era?
|
| I guess, in the spirit of the analogy, your options are
| to either stop cutting off body parts from anyone, or to
| start cutting them off those who look like people who
| engaged in body cutting two or more generations ago. DEI
| prefers the second option. Some people would rather see
| the first.
| ejstronge wrote:
| I imagine that there are lessons in antiquity where a
| famous Greek or Roman thinker chooses a pragmatic option
| instead of a spiteful or absolutist option.
| syzarian wrote:
| I really like your phrasing:
|
| _problems that are not our fault but are now our
| responsibility_
|
| That's a very nice, concise way of summarizing the
| essence of the issue.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I don't know enough about the subject, but I will say that
| arguing on the basis of the purported reasons for creating a
| movement is totally irrelevant to the movement's effects.
|
| For example a white friend in South Africa has a daughter who
| years ago, when looking at university applications, was
| distraught because to study to be a doctor she had to hit
| over 90% in her exams, vs 70% for her black South African
| classmates. Does it matter to her that this wasn't meant to
| happen? Or is reality also worth talking about?
| jaltekruse wrote:
| Is the top comment on this thread seriously a reverse racism
| rant?
|
| You are right about something, affirmative action is racist,
| but I feel it is absolutely necessary to try to balance out
| current inequities. I strongly believe people making arguments
| like yours, people fighting against affirmative action need to
| propose an alternative rather than just complain about it.
|
| There are lots of people alive today that couldn't drink from
| the same fountain or use the same bathroom as white people, and
| people who had friends and family members lynched (and in the
| eyes of many George Floyd's death was a lynching). Their
| neighborhoods were bulldozed to make the highways and they were
| systematically excluded from housing by redlining. You won't
| convince me for a second that their children and grandchildren
| got an equal opportunity. There is so much evidence of systemic
| disadvantaging of PoC communities today too, underfunded
| schools because of how we fund schools with local property
| taxes, turning lots of the public school system into
| effectively fancy private schools for families well off enough
| to live in rich neighborhoods.
|
| So I will say it again, I do think at the surface level
| affirmative action is racist, but it's such a simple thing to
| realize it seems extremely pointless to even bring up. It is
| fighting centuries of truly heinous racism and genocide with
| just a tiny bit of an attempt at positive racism and white
| people still find a way to be pissed off they aren't getting
| everything the "deserve".
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| This is the general course of any thread concerning DEI on
| HN. It's filled with concerns about reverse-racism, and how
| "skin color shouldn't matter" and whatnot. The history behind
| why such initiatives exist is intentionally ignored.
| Spoznaja wrote:
| If racism is wrong (which I believe it is), then it is
| always wrong, no matter which groups are benefited or
| harmed.
| trabant00 wrote:
| > people fighting against affirmative action need to propose
| an alternative rather than just complain about it
|
| Not only is an alternative proposed, it's already implemented
| for quite a while: discrimination is illegal. Equal outcome
| vs equal opportunity. You can argue for any side you want,
| just don't pretend you don't see or don't understand the
| other position.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Equal opportunity as in paying reparations for slavery, Jim
| Crow laws, and the rest?
|
| Or no because the statute of limitations expires while
| white government was busy refusing to entertain the idea?
|
| Support for reparations is table stakes for anyone talking
| about "equal opportunity".
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| Us blacks only make up 7.4% of the tech industry. It's always
| amazing how if you were to take the anecdotes in DEI threads
| seriously, you would think there weren't any whites in the tech
| field as they had all been replaced by black people.
| hgsgm wrote:
| They were replaced by more qualified Chinese and Indians, but
| that's too awkward to complain about.
| chuckhendo wrote:
| This take is radically wrong, and you're just reinforcing OP's
| insecurities. How do you know that OP has a job at the expense
| of a white person? How do you know that OP isn't in fact the
| best candidate for the job? You're making a whole lot of
| assumptions here that are bordering on outright racism
| spangry wrote:
| That assumption was suggested by the OP, not me. Thanks for
| suggesting I'm racist, but I'm basically immune to such
| thought stopping non-arguments at this point.
|
| If disagreeing with making hiring decisions on the basis of
| skin colour is racist, then I suppose I'm racist.
| chuckhendo wrote:
| OP never said he was hired due to the color of his skin
| though. Not once. Is it possible that's the case? Sure. But
| for all we know, he was hired on merit.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Again with the thought-starting cliches that parent
| already explained they disregard.
| chuckhendo wrote:
| What are you trying to suggest with this? Are you saying
| that OP only has their job because of their skin color?
| [deleted]
| Taurenking wrote:
| [dead]
| catiopatio wrote:
| "Race aware" hiring is inescapably racially discriminatory,
| and it's not racist to point that out.
| azangru wrote:
| > How do you know that OP has a job at the expense of a white
| person?
|
| Which part of the parent's message says that he does?
|
| What it does say that if an organisation gives preferential
| treatment to a certain group based on their skin color, then
| it follows, inevitably, that people with non-preferred skin
| color will lose to those with the preferred one, all else
| being equal. And thus, there will inevitably be "the white
| guy who was excluded from employment because of his skin
| color" (or sex, or both). Whether it was OP or someone else
| who was preferred to that guy is unknowable, and thus
| ultimately irrelevant. But that must take place in an
| organisation that is truly committed to DEI; because
| otherwise this abbreviation is meaningless.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| While it's not certain that the OP was hired over a white
| person, it is _mathematically certain_ that DEI policies
| cause whites to be discriminated against in aggregate.
|
| 1. There are fewer qualified black and Hispanic candidates
| per capita (i.e. without a college degree, without the right
| experience, etc.) than white and Asian candidates. The cause
| of this is irrelevant to the argument, it is factually true.
|
| 2. There are a finite amount of positions at any given
| company paying any given amount.
|
| 3. If companies hire a larger percentage (beyond a certain
| margin of error) of black and Hispanic candidates than
| actually exist in the hiring pool then they must commit
| racial discrimination against whites and Asians in order to
| accomplish this. You can try to redefine racism and
| discrimination as "prejudice plus power" or whatever you want
| to justify the fact that you mistreat people on the basis of
| their skin color, but factually that is what is being done.
| chuckhendo wrote:
| It's completely fair to look at the big picture, but it's
| dangerous to look at specific situations and make
| assumptions is the only point I was trying to make. Without
| DEI, OP may have still gotten the position he has. We have
| no way of knowing that. I wasn't fond of the original
| replier making it seem like he got the position over a
| white person only due to the color of his skin, which is an
| unfair assumption to make
| hgsgm wrote:
| You're right. The US should end DEI/AA efforts and just pay
| reparations for the $trillions in debt owed to descendants of
| slaves and others who were oppressed and robbed by law for
| centuries.
|
| Or is that not what you meant?
| arcturus17 wrote:
| I'm as anti-woke as they come, but whoa.
| syzarian wrote:
| The U.S. has a long history of discriminating against brown
| people and an especially nasty history of discriminating
| against black people. This discrimination was so ingrained
| amongst the white population that after desegregation public
| pools declined. Blacks were discriminated against when it came
| to getting a mortgage. Whites fled the major cities to the
| suburbs leading to cities having gutted public schools due to
| lack of funding.
|
| How does a nation overcome that legacy with its accompanying
| negative effects on people of color? We aren't all equal when
| the effects of centuries of policies and attitudes can still be
| seen. I don't know the answer but I think it is OK for
| companies to be cognizant of these issues and attempt to go out
| of their way to hire qualified people of color.
|
| It sucks for one to feel they didn't get a job because they are
| white but I think this doesn't happen in statistically
| significant numbers. It's known that people with "black
| sounding" names are less likely to get interviews. I don't know
| the solution. I suspect that if we didn't tie health care to
| employment and had a better system for unemployed people then
| the issue of reverse discrimination would largely go away.
| Spoznaja wrote:
| Translated; "Racism is bad, so we're going to use racism now
| to counter balance previous racism." This won't end well for
| anyone.
| domain8543 wrote:
| Are you also vocal when Native American tribes are given
| things? Quite a bit of money goes to them directly -- that
| is racism to you, right?
| syzarian wrote:
| That is obviously not a valid translation. It appears you
| did not understand what I wrote.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Imagine how the white guy who was excluded from employment
| because of his skin color feels.
|
| The stupidest, least-qualified white man at a company that
| still employs more white men than they statistically should.
| He's getting affirmative-action too, it's just not official.
| Spoznaja wrote:
| What does "statistically should" mean? How skin pigment have
| anything to do with qualifications? Using skin pigment as a
| lens for "statistically should be employed", what are your
| thoughts on requiring the NBA to be more diverse?
| throwaway85858 wrote:
| On a tangent... but has anyone here had some success in
| correcting their unconscious biases?
| Symmetry wrote:
| There are some behaviors that society wants people to avoid. In
| most cases where you want to stop a behavior you have to be
| careful to not make it seem normal, with "It's bad but common"
| being the second worst message you can send after "It's good and
| common" in terms of trying to get people to stop. A social
| psychologist will say this is due to the power of norms and talk
| about the famous Petrified Forest National Park experiment. An
| economist will talk about how we can see punishments for
| behaviors better than their commission in many disapproved
| behaviors and so making them seem common makes it seem like the
| odds of getting caught are lower.
|
| But in any event in things like drug use, sexual harassment, or
| bribery we have pretty clear evidence of campaigns against these
| behaviors being counter productive with, e.g., D.A.R.E actually
| increasing drug use among high schoolers. So I'd just like
| anybody looking to conduct a DEI campaign to be careful of this
| effect.
| klik99 wrote:
| Living in Atlanta with an open mind and friends with different
| political opinions (though pretty clustered around "moderate" to
| left), this subject has come up a lot. I'm a strong believer in
| both moral and business benefits for diversity, but what
| surprises me is the universal dislike of these efforts.
|
| I believe the major problem is the role of optics in corporate
| environments. In a corporate environment people have to justify
| their existence, and visible efforts are prioritized.
| Unfortunately these visible efforts are not only superficial
| (they make the people running the initiatives look good, the
| company itself can posture, but not much changes internally), but
| also single out and "other" people. These initiatives can be
| doing good work behind the scenes too, but how do you judge
| someone doing a good job in this area? Metrics about hiring?
| Metrics about promotions?
|
| Maybe it would be better if these initiatives answer to and be
| judged by the people they should be helping, and not to some
| success metrics thrown out during a board meeting or company
| optics. Instead of focusing on diverse hires, focus on supporting
| the diverse staff you already have. If it's a good place to work,
| the hires will come out of that.
|
| I believe these efforts are ultimately a good thing, even if
| they're getting it wrong, but as a white male I hesitated to even
| write that, because I know how vastly different the experience of
| a minority in America is from my own, and from what I've heard
| it's a mixed bag. I always remember reading an interview with one
| of the little rock nine who said she felt forced to go to an
| integrated school and was still angry about it as an adult. It
| absolutely sucks to be in that position - something that's
| ultimately good for society but devastating for an individual. So
| while I think the general thrust of DEI is a good thing, it has
| to be tempered by the individual experience and always support
| people as individuals and not perpetuate lumping everyone in the
| "minority" bucket.
| [deleted]
| narrator wrote:
| If you're dissatisfied with this stuff, I wouldn't talk to
| management to solve this, but instead I'd work on communicating
| with ESG funds and ask them to change their guidelines for their
| DEI initiatives. Let me explain.
|
| The corporation you work for is just trying to get a better ESG
| score. The DEI initiative and programs were probably handed down
| in some quasi-government fashion from Blackrock and other ESG
| funds who chose investments and even board votes based on that.
| Your company's HR department might have had all this mandated
| from Blackrock who has a ton of control on the boards of publicly
| traded companies. Corporations have to regularly report their DEI
| initiatives to Blackrock and other ESG funds.
|
| "Last week, BlackRock released its 2021 proxy voting guidelines
| for the U.S. and other major markets ... These updated materials
| demonstrate how BlackRock intends to pair higher expectations for
| corporate responsiveness across a number of topics, including
| diversity, equity and inclusion and environmental risk, with a
| greater willingness to vote against management where these
| expectations are not met."
|
| "In 2021, BlackRock will expect disclosure of workforce
| demographics, such as gender, race, and ethnicity in line with
| the EEO-1 Survey, _along with steps being taken to advance
| diversity, equity, and inclusion_. Where BlackRock believes
| disclosures or practices fall short of market or peer practice,
| it may vote against members of the appropriate committee or
| support related shareholder proposals*. "
|
| https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2021/01/12/blackrocks-2021-p...
|
| If you look throughout Blackrock's governance documents they talk
| about "Stakeholder Capitalism" which is a world economic forum
| program[1] to bring all sorts of influences into the running of
| companies besides shareholder value. Thus, the bottom line isn't
| always the goal and often there are other reasons for all of
| this, so appeals to corporate profitability aren't even going to
| work here.
|
| [1] https://www.weforum.org/stakeholdercapitalism
| trieste92 wrote:
| I always thought the reason why companies all started doing this
| (pretty much simulataneously) is because they think it minimizes
| settlement liability or something
|
| It isn't about making people feel welcome, it's about making it
| harder to sue them and playing corporate politics
| docmars wrote:
| DEI is explicitly an anti-White conspiracy that unfortunately
| ends with it being anti-Black/Brown outcomes, both indirectly and
| intentionally.
| thorawayz wrote:
| Not to mention the non "diverse" members of a team. I feel
| marginalized for being a conservative technologist, even though
| I'm a PoC.
| steve1977 wrote:
| > creating townhall meetings and parading your black/brown
| employees around like show ponies is nothing short of corporate
| virtue signaling.
|
| That is the point of DEI for companies. Pretty much all HR
| initiatives are just virtue signaling.
| gabereiser wrote:
| As someone who loves to hire people with different backgrounds
| and experiences, don't see you being included in diversity hiring
| discussions as a negative. Don't see it as "Oh, they just want
| the black guy's opinion". Yes! They very much do! They also want
| to know how it all is perceived by you. You should tell them
| this. We, as humans, should celebrate our diversity. We should
| make it a culture where it's seemless (as you put it, "able to be
| seen"). We should NOT make it hush hush. This is how things
| become swept under the rug and issues not addressed. The fact
| that you are here, discussing this, instead of with your manager
| and (hopefully) your director is a sign that they are missing the
| point. Diversity is great. Inclusion is better. Participation is
| best. Go bring these issues up with your manager with ideas on
| possible solutions. You can't complain about not having a better
| system without presenting a better system.
|
| That said, it obviously feels to me like you have some
| sensitivity issues because of this, probably justifiably so. One
| of the cool things about tech is that when it comes down to it,
| it's the output that makes the "man" and not the skin color or
| their name or their religion or nationality. If you can write
| some clean, tested, code, I'm all for it! The fact that you are
| YOU, is even better! Why? Because I don't want a room full of
| white guys that just agree to what I propose. I want females, I
| want PoC, I want refugees, I want "I pulled myself out of
| poverty", I want "I would use this", I want "I care about the
| outcomes". Not in a cult like way, but in an empathetic to the
| customers problems way.
|
| Some companies have put metrics around this. Hire so much
| diversity... hit 40% something-or-other... Ignore these false
| metrics that are doomed to failure. They aren't approaching the
| problem right. Let them do what they think is right unless you
| have a better solution. Keep just doing you and look at their
| efforts as a good, not a negative, even if their methods are
| naive.
| nivenkos wrote:
| It's crazy how it's become so commonplace.
|
| I hope one day we can really reach the point where skin colour is
| as unremarkable as eye colour. Where people really are judged not
| by the colour of their skin but by the content of their
| character.
| ryanmentor wrote:
| I have heard first hand from trans hires that they KNOW their job
| is to 'be diverse', and there's no reason to grow technically or
| professionally - just coast and fail to get fired.
|
| Everyone reasonable hates that shit.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| The only people that have to worry about loosing opportunities
| due to DEI are the kind of mediocre white dudes who didn't
| previously have to worry about competition from anybody except
| themselves.
|
| If they lose out to a more qualified candidate because DEI made
| them look a little harder, well that's just how it's supposed to
| work. If they lose out to a candidate of similar qualifications
| because DEI made them look a little harder that might sting a
| little but considering how the deck has historically been stacked
| in their favor the fact that they're only 'similarly qualif[ied]'
| suggests that one candidate might have a little more gumption
| than the other, which is in itself grounds for making a choice.
|
| If they lose out to someone less qualified, well that's not
| great, but there's a whole lot more jobs out there, and if it
| keeps happening maybe you're not as qualified as you thought.
|
| I write this as a white dude who, when younger, didn't want to
| think he had been the beneficiary of the system, but with
| hindsight figured out the difference between 'not being at the
| top' and 'being at the bottom'.
| sequoia wrote:
| (a bit tangential to your point, but I think related:) "...that
| leads to what I call the Iron Law of Woke Capitalism: brands will
| gravitate towards low-cost, high-noise signals if these are
| accepted as a substitute for genuine reform."[0]
|
| Companies engage in these practices (IMHO) from a mix of genuine
| desire to "be good" and do the right thing, as a marketing
| exercise, and as PR insurance against charges of racism. If you
| get "called out" on twitter for being a racist company (for
| whatever reason) you will probably fare much better if you can
| point to your diversity initiatives & goals, diversity officer
| etc.
|
| That said I think most individuals are acting in a genuine well-
| meaning way.
|
| It is disturbing to me that (as you point out) the initiatives we
| have to promote inclusion may end up stigmatizing the people that
| are intended to be "included."
|
| 0: https://helenlewis.substack.com/p/the-bluestocking-woke-
| capi...
| stncls wrote:
| You're not alone. My partner has the same issue. They work in a
| field where performance can be judged somewhat objectively, but
| in which reputation still matters. They get not only impostor
| syndrome, but also the fear that other people will think their
| achievements are only due to DEI initiatives.
|
| Another issue is that senior minorities constantly get dragged
| into (useless, time-wasting, chore-like) committees that have
| representation quotas.
|
| > In my opinion, it would be beneficial if DEI initiatives were
| confidential and kept "hush hush" within a company.
|
| That would be great: "do the right thing but don't brag about
| it". Unfortunately, "keep doing the wrong thing but pretend
| otherwise loudly" seems more common.
| Taurenking wrote:
| [dead]
| _fat_santa wrote:
| Whenever my company has had conversations about DEI
| initiatives, I always come back to the same argument: "talk is
| cheap, we can talk all day long about how we are diverse. How
| about we shut up, put our money where our mouth is, and
| actually hire some folks from diverse backgrounds".
|
| DEI is something that is easy to talk about but actually kinda
| hard to implement. Part of the problem is the makeup of the
| industry in general. In tech for example it would be physically
| impossible for companies to be 50/50 male/female because the
| broader industry doesn't break down that way, same goes for any
| race, religion, background, etc. Companies love to scream from
| the rooftops about DEI because yelling about it is
| significantly easier than actually doing it.
| xienze wrote:
| > actually hire some folks from diverse backgrounds
|
| Because you're trying to hire from a small pool of candidates
| (minority software developer or whatever) that EVERY OTHER
| tech company is trying to get in a desperate attempt to not
| look bad (because not having a sufficient number of
| minorities on staff is a sin).
|
| It's simply a question of numbers. There's only so many
| minorities, and only a fraction of them are sufficiently
| talented, and everyone wants them. Your company may not be a
| big enough name to woo these folks. So it's not necessarily
| the fault of your leadership to act on their principles.
|
| Now there's a whole OTHER can of worms associated with DEI,
| which is that everyone wants minority employees => there's a
| lack of them => let's lower our standards to widen the pool
| we have to choose from, and your company certainly could go
| down that route if you think they're not doing enough.
| [deleted]
| pocman wrote:
| [flagged]
| frozenchrome wrote:
| Locally the pool of candidates might seem small. Globally
| it is much larger than one thinks or realizes.
| Macha wrote:
| To say that the company has a moral duty to file
| immigration paperwork or set up remote offices solely to
| increase diversity is a big ask.
| scythe wrote:
| When this topic comes up I always remember a friend's
| comments about Google shuttering their Atlanta office: they
| say they want to hire Black employees, but not "where they
| actually, you know, live". It's not _that_ hard to find
| employees of color; they just tend to live in different
| places. It 's also not necessarily easy to move somewhere
| nobody looks like you -- which I also experienced as a
| white guy in China.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| Yeah I look at it from a top level. Say that in the tech
| industry, 20% (totally made up number BTW) of your workers
| are black. It would be possible for some companies to have
| >20% of their workforce be black, but if you look at the
| top employers (GOOG, AMZN, MSFT, AAPL, etc), there would be
| physically impossible for them to hire >20% black workers
| because there are simply not enough of them out there in
| the broader workforce.
|
| The solution here is to drive more black people into the
| tech field, in order to raise that 20% figure that would
| then get reflected among tech companies. This is something
| that an individual company cannot solve, even at Google or
| Apple scale, it would have to be at the government level
| and even that is a complete crapshoot.
|
| TL;DR: Diversity quotas are hard.
| xienze wrote:
| > The solution here is to drive more black people into
| the tech field
|
| What's funny is everyone will agree the pool of available
| candidates to choose from is incredibly small due to
| (among other things) issues in education, but those same
| people won't cut companies any slack if they don't hit a
| certain percentage of minority employees. It then becomes
| a game of brute forcing minorities into every part of
| society where they're under-represented, all at once --
| because the "real fix" will take decades.
| jonathanlb wrote:
| Agreed that DEI initiatives are hard, but the picture is
| a bit incomplete.
|
| Quotas are the boogey/strawman that get trotted out when
| DEI initiatives are mentioned.
|
| Quotas _must_ be filled, and this serves no one, not the
| companies doing the hiring (because there aren't enough
| qualified candidates, and hiring unqualified candidates
| is bad for business), nor the candidates themselves
| (because they didn't get hired on their own merits, and
| imposter syndrome).
|
| Hiring _targets_, on the other hand, should be attained
| but can be missed due to lack of qualified candidates.
| When these misses occur, if the company is serious and
| capable about DEI initiatives, there's an investigation
| into why that is and if there's anything that can be done
| to remedy it, e.g. supporting educational/industrial
| pipelines, creating internship/apprenticeship programs or
| training opportunities for those changing careers, and so
| on.
| rajin444 wrote:
| > Hiring _targets_, on the other hand, should be attained
|
| How do you determine what those targets should be? This
| implies the we can determine the correct % of X
| race/gender/etc.
| benj111 wrote:
| >TL;DR: Diversity quotas are hard
|
| Diversity quotas are wrong.
|
| If you hire the black candidate because you have a quota
| to fill. How is that morally different to hiring a white
| person just because they're white?
|
| The only situation where I can think of quotas being a
| 'good' is to rectify a past self sustaining imbalance. If
| you made the case that the police are racist, because
| they're all white, therefore black people don't want to
| join, I would say that's a good candidate. But it isn't a
| good thing in and of itself, and shouldn't be an ongoing
| thing. Because it's corrosive in its own right.
|
| I would rather Google/apple/Amazon put effort into
| education if they feel there's an issue. I would guess
| the issue is one of poverty rather than colour per se.
| Targeting and helping schools in poor areas would
| actually be helping where it mattered, giving people the
| best start in life whatever their colour, rather than
| someone who already had that start, but happens not to be
| white.
| jonathanlb wrote:
| Quotas are a straw/boogeyman. Most companies have hiring
| targets. The difference is that quotas must be filled
| (which doesn't make business or social sense) whereas
| hiring targets are goals (which aren't required to be
| attained).
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Except those "targets" are often tied to things like pay
| and promotion. That really blurs the line between "quota"
| and "target". For example Intel docked people's pay
| unless they hit their totally-not-a-quota target of 40%
| women and URM hires:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34679982
| shtopointo wrote:
| Makes perfect sense.
|
| Unfortunately, anything that gets hush-hushed or moved to
| confidential may spark even more controversy than if it were out
| in the open.
|
| So imo you can only be in 1 of 2 states: all-in or not at all.
| f154hfds wrote:
| There are two possible goals. Affirmative action or color-blind
| meritocracy. Both will lead to diverse hiring practices (using
| the term diverse loosely - people who are not like those hiring
| them). Affirmative action makes sense to get momentum going but
| becomes its own worst enemy when acted upon for perpetuity. This
| makes it hard when designing policy because inevitably years will
| go by and you still haven't reached your diversity goals. Is this
| because your company is still 'biased' somewhere deep down or is
| it indicative of real group level differences that have deeper
| causes than your affirmative action policy can address? In our
| current navel gazing culture, we will always assume the former
| and the policy grows in scope.
|
| Our companies can't always fix these group level differences,
| they aren't even always 'problems' (for example, men and women
| are different and have different strengths and weaknesses, will
| _tend_ to be interested in different fields, etc.)
|
| In my view the way forward is color-blind meritocracy. Tech needs
| to look closely at the symphony 'blind' interview techniques and
| be very self-critical of 'culture fit':
| https://abilitymap.com/articles/recruitment/blind-hiring/
| canadiantim wrote:
| An acronym called DIE should give everyone pause for
| consideration...
| posdeiefforts wrote:
| All the people that came from non-colonial countries which are
| innocent bystanders of these fascist DEI efforts just told all of
| you that are in involved: Go Suck A Dick!
| fatnoah wrote:
| I think you raise some good points, and I think there are ways to
| handle DEI hiring well, and ways not to do it well. IMHO, when
| it's done well, DEI hiring isn't about filling quotas or giving
| anyone an edge, but it's about making sure that everyone has an
| equal chance. I've been part of DEI hiring at a couple companies,
| and my role has been much more about answering questions and
| making sure that candidates start the process on a level footing
| with everyone else. All of the candidates are fully qualified for
| the roles -- I wouldn't be talking to them if they weren't.
| rel2thr wrote:
| > it's about making sure that everyone has an equal chance
|
| How does that look in practice? In most companies it seems that
| means that under-represented people get green lighted at the
| resume screen step at a much higher percentage than over-
| represented people. But the bar is the same at the interview
| stage.
|
| But don't you see how that is a big dis-advantage for the
| median over-represented applicant?
| backzerman wrote:
| > But the bar is the same at the interview stage.
|
| If the bar is sufficiently high, the median applicant, over-
| or under-represented, won't get the job anyway. I've heard
| from people who work at companies (specifically big tech)
| that have diversity interview quotas (but not hiring quotas).
| In practice, you just end up interviewing more people: the
| candidates you would have interviewed anyway, plus some
| diverse candidates with closer-to-the-median resumes. And
| then you end up hiring the people you would have anyway,
| because interviews are much harder to pass than resume
| screens. It's a fairly pointless exercise that mostly
| disadvantages the interviewers, who have to spend more time
| interviewing, and the "lucky" candidates, who almost never
| outperform expectations in the interview.
| SargeDebian wrote:
| If you're doing this at selection time, you're already late.
|
| * Make sure you have a campus presence on a diverse set of
| universities. I'm not American, but as I understand it that
| could mean Historically Black Universities, and not just the
| Ivy League or a place where the current workforce went
|
| * In line with that, think through which organizations you
| partner with. An employer that traditionally hired
| from/sponsored fraternity-like organizations that are mostly
| white, could also work with student associations that
| represent a broader spectrum of potential talent, or that
| specifically represent underrepresented groups
|
| * One job ad I saw had a line "Did you know women are less
| likely to apply if they don't meet all criteria, whereas men
| are more likely to apply when they meet a few? If you think
| you can add value to our team, we encourage everyone to
| apply". I thought that was helpful.
|
| Anyone can still apply, and the best candidate gets picked.
| Just not the one that happens to come from a specific
| background.
| pnutjam wrote:
| I've sat in on group interviews where we usually have a side
| chat discussing the candidate. Wouldn't you know, every time
| a candidate of color was being interviewed one guy on our
| team would take much longer to convince they knew what they
| were doing. White women and men, got an ok much more quickly.
| I asked my boss if he noticed this, and he said he did not,
| but when I asked another PoC on the team, he definitely
| noticed. This is the way things usually go.
| bitwize wrote:
| That's not really DEI, though, that's equal opportunity. DEI is
| about putting your thumb on the scale for groups higher on the
| progressive stack, to redress the lack of social capital
| they've had due to systemic oppression and/or because if you
| just select for talent, experience, and drive, in certain
| fields like tech the candidate pool will just skew white/Asian
| anyway because of the established good ole boy networks.
|
| I'd really rather it stop at equal opportunity also but the
| world of finance -- where it really counts -- is all in on DEI,
| and companies demonstrating insufficient virtue will get
| clobbered on their ESG scores and hence, stock valuations.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I think it would be impossible to conclusively say people have
| an equal chance without having objective, quantifiable,
| measures of performance. Otherwise, it's easy to use subjective
| measures, even subconsciously, to make a biased decision.
| TylerLives wrote:
| Not a native English speaker, but my understanding is that the
| word "equity" is now used specifically to mean "equality of
| outcome", which is incompatible with giving everyone an equal
| chance. I found an article[0] explaining the difference:
|
| >Equality means each individual or group of people is given the
| same resources or opportunities. Equity recognizes that each
| person has different circumstances and allocates the exact
| resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome.
|
| [0] https://onlinepublichealth.gwu.edu/resources/equity-vs-
| equal...
| unregistereddev wrote:
| I agree; at least in the context of my employer's DEI
| conversations you are correct that "equity" is meant to be
| interpreted as "equality of outcome".
| sokoloff wrote:
| > when it's done well,...it's about making sure that everyone
| has an equal chance
|
| If that's the measure, then I think it's not done well in a lot
| of places (possibly most). Some places are biased one way;
| other places biased the other way; relatively few are dead-
| centered.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| About 10 years ago I had an incompetent colleague, but she was a
| woman of native American ancestry, with a lot of visible tattoos
| and she was a lesbian. She was passed on from one department to
| another every couple of years to check a lot of diversity boxes
| and not to spend too much time the headcount and budget of any
| department. She was actually a cool person, in my opinion, but
| she had a fame way bigger than the real person. I looked for her
| in the internal directory, but she is not around anymore or she
| changed the name.
|
| The big problem with diversity hires is that good people that are
| hired will be automatically tagged as bad people. It is hard to
| fight this image and prove it wrong, especially when it is
| widescale in some places and it not just based on race, but any
| diversity target. For example my country is almost exclusively
| white (with a couple of non-white celebrities as exceptions),
| there are legally no trans people so the pressure is to hire
| women, lots of them (70-80% is the desired target). That fires
| back visibly, the really good ones leave the company, the bad
| ones remain (to cash in on their gender) and this makes the image
| even worse.
| Vaslo wrote:
| We need to get started with recruiting PoC much earlier in their
| careers. I almost never get resumes from african americans beyond
| entry level. I get why this happens - I fell accidentally into my
| career - my parents were blue collar and knew nothing about
| careers in business and couldn't help me. I imagine this is the
| same for other groups. If people really knew what was out there,
| like if I knew what the path was in business for IT, Finance, etc
| I'd be further ahead in my career. Force your HR teams to get out
| to schools with minority groups and volunteer your time to visit
| these groups and talk about careers.
| notchatgpt wrote:
| I was admitted to university through an EOP (Equal Opportunity
| Program), which is in the same vain as DEI. One of the criticisms
| of the program was just that-- people felt like they didn't
| deserve to be where they are. A constant worry that people would
| view you as the "one that got in because of their
| skin/income/background, etc). Obviously this applies to DEI as
| well.
|
| As someone who benefited from EOP, it's weird for me to say this
| but in all honesty I think we would all be better off without it
| or perhaps doing it in a way where it isn't labelled or
| "celebrated" the way it is... it should be unobtrusive and not
| call attention to itself.
|
| I was one of three white people out of 350+ people that was
| accepted through EOP. If I felt that way as a white person I
| can't imagine how much more amplified those feelings would be as
| a person of color.
| OJFord wrote:
| I really strongly agree, but I'm a white man, so it can be
| difficult to confidently have a reasonable conversation about, or
| maybe I really shouldn't care/be talking at all.
|
| I think it was the actor Morgan Freeman who in an interview
| answered something like 'how do we fix racism/diversity' with
| 'stop talking about it'.
|
| But I'd go further, I find 'PoC' (person/people of colour) which
| you used yourself a _really_ strange term, I think I 'd hate it.
| 'Why aren't I just a P? Those white guys aren't called Pw/oC.'
| Your prerogative, of course.
|
| Trends come and go, I suppose - it just seems so close to
| 'coloured', which has itself been both a preferred 'PC' term and
| considered racist at different times. It's so similar to PoC that
| I'm honestly not sure where it stands now, I wouldn't use it.
|
| When the distinction actually does matter, do we need such
| euphemisms? At least in the UK, though 'PoC' seems to be catching
| on a _bit_ , people are and have long been happy with
| white/brown/black, IME.
|
| I'm not a 'manager in an influential company' but if I am ever
| running the show I don't even want a hush-hush programme - just
| hire good people and shut up about their heritage/preferences
| IMO. I realise there's a pipeline problem, but I think you help
| fix that by funding and otherwise supporting the early stages of
| it, not by being lax on merit or setting quotas for your late-
| stage admission process.
| hedora wrote:
| The sad thing about PoC is that using the grammatical synonym
| "colored people" has recently ended people's careers.
|
| The funny thing about PoC is that it (apparently) includes
| Asians.
|
| In California, Asians are greatly over-represented in colleges,
| etc.
|
| So, any effective equity system would mostly just be
| reinstating old-school quotas against hiring/admitting too many
| Chinese people (which UC correctly eliminated decades ago).
|
| Anyway, I suggest the UK revert to the global favorite of the
| 1990's: African American.
| tarotuser wrote:
| I've always found these telling when companies bandy around with
| "DEI great!"... All the while the C-levels are 'white male
| sausagefest' except for the DEI position, which is invariably a
| black woman.
|
| I like seeing real diversity at all levels of a company, and not
| the fake diversity pushed by DEI initiatives.
| adolph wrote:
| > All the while the C-levels are 'white male sausagefest'
|
| Aren't those the wurst? It's like they could at least include
| vegetables, like aubergine or something.
| tarotuser wrote:
| +1 for the funny joke!
|
| But as a story of "DEI" in real practice vs a company who
| fakes it:
|
| I worked as a system engineer for a gov contractor SaaS
| company with 4 C-levels. 2 were men, and 2 were women. The
| CEO was a second generation Italian. The CFO was a guy. The 2
| women were in charge of the core part of the business:
| development lifecycle (design, dev, QA), and customer
| experience (helpdesk, consultants, sysads). The lady
| responsible for dev was also a developer and designer, and a
| damned sharp one at that. The lady responsible for customer
| experience was a systems engineer by trade. More than a few
| times I consulted with her about company direction for our
| infrastructure and growth plans.
|
| There never really was public vocalizations in the company
| for DEI - it was about actually getting people from a wide
| background and putting them in power. And to that, our group
| reviewed potential hires, with all demographic details wiped.
| It was just the facts what they had done, to prevent us from
| focusing on demographics unchangable by us.
|
| When BLM hit news hard, our CEO said bluntly in our monthly
| meeting "We're not able to hire most black candidates because
| police regularly harass their communities, give them an
| arrest record or a criminal record, and that prevents getting
| a public trust clearance. We are also powerless to change
| this by ourselves." I've *NEVER* heard spokespeople say even
| close to that, and here's our CEO pulling the curtains aside
| to look at the meat grinder.
|
| Aside that terrible fact, the company did its best to hire
| diversely, promote from within, and put a diverse group of
| people in charge at leadership positions. Federal regulations
| GREATLY hamper good people with asinine decisions and local
| governmental harassment.
|
| Sadly, this company a year prior got in bed with a venture
| (vulture) capitalist. They, after assuring "no real changes
| will happen (HAH!)", sold us like a Pokemon card to a
| terrible company. You could feel the grease off of this
| place. Felt like a used car lot combined with a county
| carnival/fair.
|
| There were 8 C level positions in this 600 person company.
| For 7 of them it was "White male". The "DEI Officer" was a
| black woman. Doing this shows me you absolutely do not care
| about actual diversity, but only the thinnest veneer as not
| to be called out by other companies. (See? We have a token
| Black Woman on our C levels!) Like... You just "bought" a 200
| person company with 2 scary sharp women as proven C level
| leadership... and threw them away as their newest
| acquisition.
| adolph wrote:
| It is gratifying you enjoyed the humor. At the time I
| thought I was following your redundant usage of "male" and
| "sausagefest," the latter referring in metaphor to genital
| particulars. But maybe it isn't redundant in that the
| practice of SOGI informs that gender identity is different
| from sex assigned at birth. Thus perhaps you were
| attempting to say that the all members of the group had a
| gender identity that matched their sex assigned at birth?
| It is beyond my comprehension of what constitutes workplace
| communication to communicate such matters.
|
| I'm sorry to hear your federally regulated employer headed
| by an Italian, a guy and two scary sharp women who were
| ladies was bought out and sold to a terrible company.
| [deleted]
| pookha wrote:
| We need specifics...
|
| My view of racism: A specific and targeted activity aimed at a
| race of individuals with the aim of removing their ability to
| compete in the free-market.
|
| Examples: CIA backed rebels in South America sent (oddly) marked
| down\cheap product to Rick Ross and he proceeded to flood black
| neighborhoods with crack. The US then passed mandatory sentences
| during the war-on-drugs. Most of this affected black
| neighborhoods affected by Hubert Humphrey (Senator in the 60's)
| redlining.
|
| Nothing AT ALL approaching wholesale racism was EVER part of the
| early (unplanned) IRC scene. If you were new to tech it was a
| harsh environment and you would get housed on. But there was not
| a gatekeeper to IRC that channeled blacks into substandard rooms.
| There was no coordinated effort by the early internet to target
| black people online with threats and harassment or blacklistings.
| There was just a lot of dudes talking shit. Calling them racist
| is a slap in the face to the tech industry that we have in 2023.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| It boils down to a core philosophical difference - do you want to
| emphasize equal access to opportunity, or do you want to
| emphasize equal outcomes? Some would argue it isn't an either-or
| thing, and we can do both at once, but I argue mandated equality
| of outcomes is insidious and causes social strife.
|
| If you are a minority and get hired, and the company has an
| explicit policy of hiring N% of minorities, then you will always
| wonder (as will all other employees) whether you were hired
| because of your minority status or because of your actual skills.
| This is very bad for morale and self worth.
|
| I don't think the minorities themselves were consulted. Perhaps
| it is being instituted by a minority, but they do not represent
| the preferences of people they purport to help with these
| policies.
|
| I think the UC university system has it right because they ban
| racial preferences for admitting students. While overall the
| percentage of certain racial minorities is lower there, those
| that do get in feel accomplished and deserving. This is a better
| outcome for society and personal self worth.
| pessimizer wrote:
| This isn't a discussion about banning racial preferences in
| hiring, or about the real racism being affirmative action.
| jimbokun wrote:
| They are certainly closely related, though.
| surement wrote:
| The problem is companies do DEI as marketing, and equal
| opportunity is invisible. If there are fewer black ballet
| dancers it doesn't necessarily mean that there's discrimination
| or racial barriers, it could just be that black people are less
| interested in that career. Further, different communities vary
| greatly in age, for example. The median age for Mexican
| Americans is 25, compared with 49 for American Jews. So you
| would expect to see a big difference in distribution for, say,
| senior positions within these racial groups even in a world
| with zero racial discrimination.
|
| references:
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2011/07/14/ii-mexican-a...
|
| https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-jews-getting-younger-on-ave...
| hedgehog wrote:
| What does equal access mean? If I go to an all purple school,
| and focus my sourcing fro new hires on my school, then my
| company will by construction be more purple than the overall
| population without any explicit discriminatory treatment after
| that. If I broaden my sourcing is that discriminating against
| minorities? If I know that school B does a better job of
| interview prep than school A should I take that into account?
| Am I hiring for SAT scores or predicted performance on the job?
| It's much messier than just "equal access or equal outcome"
| because access and outcomes are continuous processes.
| spacephysics wrote:
| Fully agree. I think it's damaging to a society to assign a
| spokesperson for certain groups that wasn't "elected", but
| rather given the position, prestige, and reputation due to
| fitting in that group.
|
| Thus it perpetuates the in-group, and causes the symptoms
| you've mentioned with equality of outcome derived solutions.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >I think the UC university system has it right because they ban
| racial preferences for admitting students.
|
| The UC system only did so because they were mandated to by law
| (specifically a voter initiative), and they still try to use as
| many proxies for race as possible in order to try and be racist
| in their admissions policies.
| jimbokun wrote:
| > and they still try to use as money proxies for race
|
| But that's completely legitimate. If black people (for
| example) are systemically poorer than white people as a
| group, it makes sense to give them more help.
|
| It's favoring a wealthy black person over a poor white
| person, that's arguably problematic.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| But that's completely legitimate. If [Asian|Jewish] people
| (for example) are systemically [better at university] than
| white people as a group, it makes sense to [hold them to
| much higher standards than white people in university
| admissions].
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| No, it doesn't. Your statement assumes that a university
| population should have a certain makeup of races. Let in
| the best of the lot regardless of color. If that makes
| the university population mostly Asian or Jewish so be
| it. That means that everybody else is resting on their
| laurels and not actually competitive in the market for
| university positions.
|
| Every color of person is capable of performing at the
| same level as any other. However, not every person is
| capable of performing at the level some universities
| require. There are dummies and geniuses in every
| color/racial group. There are high achievers and low
| achievers in every group. Every single human attribute is
| a bell curve in the general population. By not picking
| the best of the lot regardless of how the result looks we
| are damaging the ability of the nation to compete.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| That was a typo due to autocorrect, I meant to write "as
| many."
| koops wrote:
| This is true. If you are from a bad class background, as a
| Maoist would put it, you are at a significant disadvantage
| when applying to the UC system.
| jimbokun wrote:
| I think we need to decouple the reparations discussion from the
| affirmative action discussion.
|
| You can make a case that descendants of slaves and victims of
| Jim Crow laws and red lining policies deserve some kind of
| compensation.
|
| But arbitrarily engineering the racial and gender composition
| of universities and industries is treating a symptom, not the
| underlying causes of current disparities.
| flippinburgers wrote:
| Obviously the only route to a healthy economy is one where
| everyone is paid the same wage /s
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| On the other hand, if you only emphasize equal access of
| opportunity you will never reach equal outcomes. White men have
| centuries of cultural expectations, family wealth, and other
| advantages, and minorities have none of those advantages, and
| may be only a few decades (if that) removed from illiterate,
| impoverished inequality.
|
| Give those groups equal opportunity and it's unsurprising when
| an inequality of outcomes is perpetuated, observe that
| inequality of outcomes long enough and you start to foment the
| idea that maybe those people aren't actually intrinsically
| equal.
|
| Our office has a similar problem as a woman-owned business...
| The WBENC seal is valuable for winning bids in the government
| and aerospace industries, where regulatory measures encourage
| taking contracts with us over those that are still in the "old
| boys' club." Are we actually providing more value than our
| competition? Are we as innovative and sharp as we think we are?
| Or is much of the work we build together only selected because
| it satisfies some regulatory checkbox?
|
| I don't know, but I'd rather suffer that social strife and
| doubt for a few decades in my generation, wondering about my
| own accomplishments and worthiness, than kick the can down the
| road and leave the inequality unaddressed. I believe that
| temporarily creating equal outcomes, while temporarily
| problematic, will be a much faster route towards long-term
| equality than doing nothing.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| And yet Asian Americans and Jewish Americans significantly
| outperform those white men. And in the last several decades,
| women have outperformed men in university and in the 2010s in
| the workforce, too. This analysis does not hold up to close
| scrutiny.
| [deleted]
| hedora wrote:
| Can you name a single place which has equality of opportunity
| and where black people were somehow still unable to prosper?
|
| In California, the equality of outcome groups in Sacramento
| are trying to lower the educational bar to the federally
| mandated minimum. The result is that most people reading this
| with kids in California will use their wealth to supplement
| public education (or pay for private schools), while people
| in poorer districts won't have that option. They already
| defunded science and art, state wide, and the equity brigade
| tried to defund high school calculus last year.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Why do you think it will stop after a few decades?
|
| What if by that point men are doing categorically worse in
| employment and entrepreneurship than women, and demand their
| own compensatory programs?
|
| Where does it end?
| rirze wrote:
| The only thing minorities lack is a proper value system.
| There are multiple immigrant groups that start from nothing
| and achieve upper middle-class status in a generation's time.
| Once we realize, as a society, that what minorities really
| need is internal support to reform their cultural systems,
| only then will minorities will empower themselves to do
| better.
| Animats wrote:
| _There are multiple immigrant groups that start from
| nothing and achieve upper middle-class status in a
| generation 's time._
|
| Irish, Italians, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Koreans...
|
| In Martin Luther King's day, the line was that all that was
| needed was equality of opportunity.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > In Martin Luther King's day, the line was that all that
| was needed was equality of opportunity.
|
| If you actually read and/or listen to King's speeches and
| writings, rather than just passively consume the
| propaganda image constructed by exactly the forces King
| railed against, you would know that it wasn't, at least
| not the way you seem to be thinking. King _explicitly_
| saw as necessary radical redistribution to acheive much
| greater equality of material condition (see, e.g., the
| "Three Evils" speech); he did not buy into the idea that
| material conditions that are the outcome of systems of
| distribution of scarce resources could be cleanly severed
| from "opportunity", such that you could have even rough
| equality of the latter with gross inequality of the
| former.
| goatlover wrote:
| Malcom X also said this and pointed to immigrants As
| examples to immulate.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _There are multiple immigrant groups that start from
| nothing and achieve upper middle-class status in a
| generation 's time_
|
| You can't compare an immigrant group, which is _most
| likely_ elite in their home countries (it is very expensive
| and very difficult to immigrate to the united states), to
| minorities in America who have seen their family units
| destroyed as recently as 60 years ago.
|
| You can point to the success of Nigerian-Americans; one of,
| if not the most educated[1] racial group in the US. If you
| are an immigrant from Nigeria, the second richest country
| in Africa by GDP, the US as a result of its immigration
| policies simply selects for the best and brightest.
|
| Minorities "lacking a value system" (??), isn't something
| innate to their culture. It's been a purposeful policy for
| America for most of it's lifetime. Just look at the Tulsa
| Race Massacre; it was an incredible destruction of future
| generational and cultural wealth for the people who you now
| say "lack a value system".
|
| > _minorities really need is internal support to reform
| their cultural systems_
|
| There are multiple ways to approach this but it tends to be
| labeled as socialism, woke-ism, CRT, or DEI.
|
| [1]
| https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-10-13/it-
| isn...
| stcroixx wrote:
| Equal outcomes is an evil goal which can only be ultimately
| achieved through forced labor.
|
| Much more humane to just provide equal opportunity to all and
| then let people decide for themselves what they want to do
| for a living.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It's a problem.
|
| In our town people went past "Black Lives Matter" to a lot of
| cheap pandering to the effect that "Black people are awesome" and
| maybe all of them are right out of Wakanda Forever. It comes
| across as not based in reality, not really sincere, and not
| really attending to black people in the community.
|
| I voted an Alumni Trustee ballot on the weekend and there were
| two black people on the ballot. One was a woman who'd done some
| of the biggest jobs in the biggest banks, the other was a man
| who'd leapfrogged from one "diversity officer" job to another.
| The first one was someone who proved black people could get it
| done, I'm afraid the second one may be perpetuating the problems
| of that community. You know who I voted for.
| GrinningFool wrote:
| > The first one was someone who proved black people could get
| it done
|
| This phrasing suggests an base expectation that a black person
| needs to prove they could get it done [like a white person
| could].
|
| What I think DEI tries[1] to do is normalize the idea that
| anyone of sufficient ability /can/ do the work by giving more
| opportunity to people who 'traditionally' have not received
| those opportunities. And in so doing, remove the [often]
| unconscious perception that says a black person needs to
| 'prove' something extra in the first place
|
| [1] at its best, which it often isn't.
| sciencesama wrote:
| Its all just corporate drama, its like an insurance when
| something shit happens with other senior execs !
| dougSF70 wrote:
| I had not realized this problem would exist.
| taude wrote:
| I was talking to a black woman friend about DEI recently. As a
| white man, I can't really share any of our discussions. But we
| both agree'd the whole thing does more damage than benefit to an
| org, especially the people, etc. My friend also added the slant
| of her escape from generational poverty, and the decisions she
| made in her life that her siblings, didn't. I wish she could come
| into companies and have an honest conversation about it.
| pnutjam wrote:
| Another angle, are you certain this person was comfortable
| having a real conversation with you? PoC are very accustomed to
| bending with the wind and playing their cards close to their
| chest. I know it's only caused me grief to speak out.
| alphabettsy wrote:
| Exactly. Go along with what the white guy says to continue
| being seen as one of the good ones.
| exohell wrote:
| Wow, so when a POC says something you don't agree with,
| you're rationalizing it by saying they can't possibly mean
| what they're saying. As a disabled POC immigrant who was
| born in a refugee camp, please believe me when I tell you:
| DEI is hot garbage, and it's full of people like you who
| refuse to take POC at their words.
| pnutjam wrote:
| Attack, attack, no room for discussion?
| taude wrote:
| Not claiming to be good. But I will say most my white
| friends don't actually engage with this conversations, nor
| do they even have friends of color, so....whatever.
|
| EDIT: BTW, I was only offering opinion to support what the
| OP was feeling and saying.
| pnutjam wrote:
| I was not intending to denigrate you, just opening up
| another possibility that could be overlooked.
|
| People in tech say question your assumptions, right?
| alphabettsy wrote:
| The prevailing HN demographic doesn't want their
| assumptions on diversity and race questioned.
|
| The opinions and views of minorities are only acceptable
| and elevated on HN when they support the existing views
| that maintain the status quo or revert to some inaccurate
| remembrance of a better past.
|
| Compare the comments and upvotes of this post to any of
| those discussing experiences with racism or lack of
| diversity.
| wereallterrrist wrote:
| What a great time for a thread like this to pop-up and remind me
| why I basically want nothing to do with this fucking community. I
| gotta stop making this mistake.
|
| Sorry to those that took the time to share their experiences and
| then were told "no, you're wrong, here's why". Nothing will
| change here, good luck.
| hondo77 wrote:
| I recently worked for a government organization. DEIA
| (accessibility) was omnipresent. That's not a bad thing, for the
| reasons others have pointed out. Lots of recruiting in non-
| traditional places, for instance. However, there was no need to
| trot out, as you called them, "diversity hires" because when they
| would announce the new hires, they would just be diverse. I'm
| trying to imagine your scenario and cringe.
|
| Have you thought of raising your concerns with HR or even
| townhall feedback, if your company has such a thing (one of mine
| did and they actually acted on some of my suggestions)? The
| actions sound well-intentioned but clueless so they just may need
| to be clued in.
| asimpletune wrote:
| Honest question for the crowd. Obviously DEI or affirmative
| action-esque initiatives are not perfect. But is there something
| better that could be done?
|
| Asking bc I went to a good school that had affirmative action. It
| was for years that I just assumed it was racist, even if it was
| helping poc. Then it dawned on me in my last year that it was
| also benefitting _me_. That if the govt hadn't done something to
| intervene, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to know any poc
| until I was an adult.
|
| (For those of you wondering, a lot of Americans are born in
| highly segregated communities, where there are few (or even zero)
| poc, like many suburbs, and it's not by choice or fault of their
| own)
|
| Anyways, without that experience and diversity in college, I
| would have been very deprived. So, I'm not saying OP doesn't have
| a point. I just want to share my pov and ask what else can be
| done? In an almost selfish way, as a white guy born in the
| suburbs, I am extremely grateful that I had a chance, even if by
| intervention, to go to a diverse college. I take it for granted
| now, but I shudder to think what school would have been like
| without that.
|
| So what's the better alternative to diversity initiatives? Which
| is the least evil option?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The problem you're describing is extremely rare in tech. The
| industry is full of immigrants and people of color; I've
| personally never worked on a team with more than 30ish% white
| people, although I've interviewed for a few and I hear they're
| more common in different specialties.
|
| But of course one of the key goals of diversity initiatives is
| to frame the discourse so people don't think this way. How
| often do you hear the Google diversity office talk about how
| proud they are to have a PoC as CEO?
| asimpletune wrote:
| Thanks for your response. I meant the question to be more
| broad than just tech.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It's less egregious in other contexts and other industries,
| but I still haven't ever seen e.g a college whiter than the
| state it's located in. I'm sympathetic to affirmative
| action as a solution to break up a true monoculture, and
| I'm sure there's some institution somewhere that would be
| 100.0% white if not for their valiant efforts to fight it.
| But I don't see any indication this is a common problem.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| > That if the govt hadn't done something to intervene, I
| wouldn't have had the opportunity to know any poc until I was
| an adult.
|
| Your greater comfort with the differently skin coloured members
| of your social class came at the expense of the people who
| would have gotten in under a colour blind system. That's fine
| as long as people are ok with the fact that different groups
| are being held to different standards. (Asians famously have
| "bad personalities".) But it's considered declasse to mention
| it. This is bad. Lying to people is bad. It leads to children
| believing the bullshit and then they grow up and believe the
| bullshit still.
| asimpletune wrote:
| The system in place at my university was color blind. The top
| 5% of students were automatically accepted.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| > Asking bc I went to a good school that had affirmative
| action.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34678203
|
| Which was it? Was your school colour blind or did they
| practice affirmative action? They can't both be true at the
| same time.
| asimpletune wrote:
| It is both. The top 5% of students from each high school
| doesn't mean the top 5% overall. There was even a recent
| supreme court case over this. Something can be
| technically colorblind and still be affirmative action.
| dbrueck wrote:
| A big part of the problem is that it's not really a problem for
| companies to solve. Or, put another way, it's nearly impossible
| for most companies to address the problem in a non-ham-fisted
| way; arguably they end up doing more harm than good.
|
| Opinions vary wildly on how much of a problem still needs to be
| solved, but to the extent that it's still there, it's a
| societal problem. The most effective ways to address it are
| going to be in the education of each new generation, both
| formally (in schools), but also informally (in family
| discussions, in media, etc.).
|
| Ultimately, anything that boils down to judging people based on
| something like the color of their skin has great potential for
| being harmful and counterproductive.
| blissfullynot wrote:
| I have a close friend who expresses similar sentiments sometimes,
| as someone who is sometimes the target of DEI initiatives.
|
| I've seen DEI hiring initiatives abused to paradoxical ends. Once
| department administration got into an attempt to basically hire
| someone using funds set aside for DEI, essentially with the plan
| to terminate them later, just to collect the support monies that
| came along with the position. The situation was complex but none
| of this had to do with hires' actual competence, it had to do
| with the available pool and this zealotry in unit aims at the
| time (basically the minority applicants were all working in areas
| different from the types of projects administration thought
| people should be working on).
|
| In any event, it created this disturbing situation where an
| attempt to increase DEI by the higher powers that be was actually
| having the opposite effect on a hire arguably, by creating this
| opportunity for unit management to use them for support funds
| with no actual intent to support them in their career or keep
| them around long term.
| dbrueck wrote:
| I'm so sorry that this is your experience, and I'm sorry that
| you're being used. This is one of the unfortunate outcomes of so
| many DEI initiatives - or at least every single one I've seen
| directly or heard about secondhand. It's wrong that they use you
| this way and, worse, by doing so they are effectively putting a
| little asterisk next to every one of your accomplishments, which
| is of course deeply unfair to you, but also to everyone around
| you.
|
| Hopefully not many DEI efforts are insincere from the outset
| (i.e. driven by a desire to not look bad), but it certainly seems
| that DEI efforts are cheapened by their publicity. Keeping them
| private might be an improvement, but human diversity has so many
| dimensions to it, and the fixation on relatively superficial
| things like skin color is largely unhelpful if the goal is actual
| diversity of things like ideas, perspective, and experience (as
| opposed to the goal of _appearing_ diverse).
|
| I don't know how to reverse the damage of past eras of things
| like racism and sexism, but diversity hiring does a lot of harm
| (and, at the end of the day, is really just more racism and more
| sexism anyway).
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > "Why should I feel proud of my accomplishments, when the
| accomplishments were spoon-fed to me by the company because of my
| skin color?"
|
| Because they're still your accomplishments. White people hardly
| ever ask if they should be proud of their accomplishments when
| they live in a society that assumes they should and will succeed.
|
| > "If I were a white man with the same experience, I might not
| even be here?"
|
| If you were a black man with the same experience, you also might
| not even be there. Many aren't. Statistically, most aren't (in
| the sense that relative to the population, black men are still
| extremely under-represented in tech).
| ChickenNugger wrote:
| > black men are still extremely under-represented in tech.
|
| Are they? Should be about 6% as black people are 12.1% of
| Americans (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_
| the_Unit...) and this source:
| https://www.zippia.com/advice/diversity-in-high-tech-statist...
| says black Americans (doesn't separate genders) are 7% of tech,
| and if 73.3% of which are men (same source) means 5.1% are
| black men, which is damn close 6%. Less than 1% off isn't
| "extremely under-represented".
| _trackno5 wrote:
| Heh, I feel the same way towards DEI: I'm from Brazil and this
| stupid DEI stuff keeps putting me in the "LatinX" bucket.
|
| I freaking hate that. I'm not a freaking latino. That is a dumb
| denomination created by the US.
|
| Yet I keep getting invited for dumb LatinX events as if that
| means anything.
|
| I want to be recognized by the stack of excellent work I've done.
| Not because I happen to be from a part of the world that is
| poorer than yours or because you decided I need some kind of
| nomenclature.
| ejstronge wrote:
| I'm a little confused - why do you say that Brazil is not part
| of Latin America? Is it because Brazil speaks Portugese (a
| descendant of Latin) instead of Spanish (another descendant of
| Latin)?
|
| I heard a very humorous and apt anecdote that there are no
| black people in Africa - maybe the same phenomenon is happening
| here, where the identity you have in Brazil (just a Brazilian)
| is different from the identity you are ascribed in the US
| (namely 'Latino/Latina')
| _trackno5 wrote:
| I'm not saying Brazil is not part of Latin America. What I am
| saying is I don't call myself a latino. Nobody in South
| America or Central America calls themselves latinos. That's a
| US made up term.
|
| We all call ourselves by our nationalities.
|
| The anecdote on Africa is probably correct though.
| ejstronge wrote:
| Yes - we are saying the same thing. Your identity from your
| home may differ from the identity with which you are
| perceived in a different nation.
| hgsgm wrote:
| DEI gets a lot of unfair hate because it's a fraught topic. It's
| a job, and like any job, some people do it badly.
|
| People here complain about hiring and "agile" and which language
| smarter people program in and whether unit tests are a good use
| of time, but it doesn't rise to the level of vitriol that is
| applied to missteps and bad ideas in DEI. To me that shows that
| DEI is important but hard. Maybe the problem is DEI doesn't pay
| enough to attract people who can do it well.
| px43 wrote:
| Unconscious bias is really really hard to get past in job
| interviews. People have this weird instinct where they want to
| work with the kinds of people that they've worked with in the
| past. A well implemented DEI program nudges the scales towards
| selection of candidates who are best for the role, rather than
| who are most similar to the interviewers. Implementing an
| effective DEI program is hard.
|
| The other side of that is also true. Candidates want to work for
| teams that include the kinds of people that they have worked with
| in the past. Because of this, having visible diversity in your
| teams is more likely to attract a wider candidate pool, which
| means more chances to hire good people.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| Reverse racism is a form of preventing racism from going extinct,
| of course.
| tootie wrote:
| I mean, you put it right in the first paragraph. This is just a
| version of Imposter Syndrome. Maybe being in a DEI initiative
| gives you an easy target to blame, but it's still just in your
| head. I think you have to understand what DEI is actually try to
| solve for and that's racial bias in hiring. As much the hiring of
| POC may have been foisted on HR, the opposite was likely due to
| inherent bias and legacy of cultural bias. Were you only hired
| because you're black. Were your white colleagues hired because
| they were white? And you're personally worried about what,
| exactly? What you think people think of you? Everybody worries
| about that in that a general sense. You're just worrying about is
| more specifically.
| bobleeswagger wrote:
| > If you're actually a diverse company, then people will notice.
|
| Yep. But the damage has already been done.
|
| At least you have a voice. I recommend using it to change what
| bothers you.
| User23 wrote:
| Become a founder. You might benefit from some early advantages
| raising seed money or getting picked for an incubator, but
| probably not appreciably more than founders like Gates or
| Zuckerberg from well connected families and communities. And past
| that first step if you succeed it's going to be because you made
| it succeed. And if you somehow end up founding the affirmative
| action unicorn because private equity gives you an undeserved
| valuation on the basis of your race, well so long as you don't
| sell your soul you may as well enjoy the ride.
| kohanz wrote:
| This is a great topic and I support the OP for posting it.
|
| However (and as a PoC myself), to me, "Tell HN" is generally
| reserved for alerting the community to statements of fact (e.g.
| "Tell HN: AWS us-east-1 is degraded").
|
| This post is an opinion - albeit an informed opinion based on
| experience. You might ask: "What's the big deal?". To me, the
| problem is that posting "Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the
| self esteem of PoC within a company" tries to make it sound like
| the post speaks for all POC.
|
| The post is a good one and it's an important discussion, but I do
| wish it would be framed a bit differently. For example, simply
| "DEI initiatives undermine the self-esteem of _some_ PoC within a
| company "
| NickC25 wrote:
| > _but creating townhall meetings and parading your black /brown
| employees around like show ponies is nothing short of corporate
| virtue signaling._
|
| It doesn't just undermine the self-esteem of a PoC, it undermines
| the self-esteem of white folks, too. Hiring or promoting people
| due to their skin color is just wrong, no matter what skin color
| that is. As a white dude, seeing my PoC teammates in the past
| celebrated not for their accomplishments, but for something they
| had no control over (their skin color) is sad.
|
| "John in Engineering is really talented, and works his tail off
| daily. He has come up with some really ingenious solutions to
| tough problems that have allowed us to grow as a company....but
| we're celebrating him because he's black, not because he's a
| kickass engineer". Seen things like this before, which make no
| sense. Celebrating an employee who is awesome at their job for
| being awesome at their job is great. You're a company, after all,
| not a social club. The goal is to grow and make money. Celebrate
| anyone who can do help with that, regardless if they are black,
| white, yellow, orange, green, pink, whatever.
|
| Diversity is cool, but when it's put into practice and not
| shouted from the rooftops, it's even better.
| version_five wrote:
| > PoC
|
| > White folks
|
| I just want to mention that one of the worst aspects of all
| this is trying to sort people according to (here apparently a
| binary) label. There is not really such thing as either of
| these categories - it's stereotyping of the worst kind, and
| takes us back many generations
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| Oh heck, let's not even address that saying "people of color"
| is respectful, but "colored people" is racist.
| CharlesW wrote:
| I'm assuming good faith, and that you truly don't
| understand the difference. I'd be curious to know if it's
| because you're old enough to remember when "colored" was
| "fine", or too young to have an understanding of the racist
| usage of "colored".
|
| https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/dahleen-glanton/ct-
| da...
|
| "While the distinctions can be complicated, the information
| is readily available for anyone willing to seek it out.
| That means reading and having meaningful conversations with
| people of different races."
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| What I truly understand is that if it is racist to say
| "colored person", then switching the terms around on the
| euphemism treadmill doesn't fix anything.
|
| Give it another decade, and I promise you that BIPOC will
| be a racial slur. I've just ditched it ahead of time, so
| I won't have to write apologies about how I "didn't know
| better back then."
| rayiner wrote:
| Sorry, both are racist--they're just two almost identical
| ways to say "not white." It's a term that gets used
| primarily by white people--most black people consider
| themselves black, not "poc," most Guatemalans consider
| themselves as such, not "poc," etc.--to erase all the
| differences and distinct interests between all these
| groups and reduce them to really the only think they have
| in common: that they're not white.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| That's similar to how "Asian" is used. Ask a Vietnamese
| person if they would include themselves in a group of
| Chinese people.
|
| Asia is half of earths population, so "Asian" cannot
| possibly mean anything.
| marknutter wrote:
| Yet the NAACP...
| ChickenNugger wrote:
| For anyone not aware, it stands for The National
| Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
| Founded in 1909, when polite society was at "colored
| people" on the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism#Eu
| phemism_treadmill for "African Americans". Or are we
| fully at BIPOC now?
| Plasmoid wrote:
| This is genuinely one of the less helpful comments I've
| seen on HN.
|
| Instead of simply saying the reason is 'X' or even
| providing a link to a resource that explains why. You
| have linked to an article that can be fairly summarized
| as "Educate yourself".
|
| This is possible even less helpful than LMGTFY link.
| Swizec wrote:
| I'll never forget a coworker explaining to me that in America
| she's PoC, but back home she's white. That really blew my
| mind.
| consumer451 wrote:
| > I'll never forget a coworker explaining to me that in
| America she's PoC, but back home she's white. That really
| blew my mind.
|
| I think that's a huge and extremely valuable lesson.
|
| That's because there is no such thing as "white" ethnicity.
| It is a word used to categorize us vs other. This is not my
| theory, afaik it's a fact. A fact which seems to upset a
| lot people. Based on previous conversations, it appears to
| be the most controversial knowledge which I posses.
|
| The generally accepted "white" ethnic groups have changed
| over time. Irish people were once not "white" in the USA.
| Neither were Slavic people. These two groups have the some
| of the lightest colored skin known to man.
|
| No one is white. Some people pass for white.
| Swizec wrote:
| On that topic, there's a fascinating essay by Benjamin
| Franklin explaining how Germans aren't sufficiently
| white* and shouldn't be allowed in America in such vast
| numbers.
|
| https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?psid=
| 85&...
|
| > What is perhaps most striking about Franklin's essay
| today is his sophisticated use of "social science" data
| to convince the British ministry to alter its colonial
| policies. Particularly jarring, however, is Franklin's
| plea that America be maintained as an entirely Anglo-
| Saxon society.
|
| *This was probably a few centuries before one would use
| the word "white" in this context. Too many pale folk who
| don't qualify. It was more about calling out ethnicities
| directly as people still do in Europe.
| flippinburgers wrote:
| Didn't you get the memo? We cannot "move forward" until we
| properly asses people based the the fantastically shallow
| marker that is skin color!
| oh_sigh wrote:
| It gets even worse, where people are pushing for BIPoC
| instead of just people of color, indicating that black and
| indigenous are of primary import, and the rest of the non
| whites are relegated to "other people of color"
| colpabar wrote:
| The goal of the bipoc label is to exclude asians from
| diversity stuff.
| rayiner wrote:
| Unless the goal is to make political hay of asians
| getting assaulted on subways, in which case asians are
| "people of color" who are "victims of white supremacy."
| _wolfie_ wrote:
| Yellow is not a color? I always assumed that Asians are
| included in PoC.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Side issue, but I grew up in Sweden thinking asians have
| yellow skin.
|
| After living and working with asians for decades in the
| Bay area, I have yet to meet a yellow one. To my eye,
| they're on the same white(pink)-brown-black spectrum as
| the rest of humanity.
| ChickenNugger wrote:
| Well yeah...
|
| White people are pale to darkly tanned
|
| Natives Americans are brown, not red
|
| Black people are brown, not black, some not even very
| brown
|
| Indian people are shades of brown too, and yet can be far
| darker than "black" people.
|
| Japanese people are brown, not yellow
|
| _None_ of the colloquial color terms for races are
| accurate when you sit down and think about it.
|
| The one time it might have been accurate is redheads are
| often pale enough to be white, so of course we call them
| gingers/redheads.
|
| It's all a bit silly.
| [deleted]
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| What we learned in school decades ago is no longer
| considered correct by some people. Also logic is not a
| strong point of DEI people, for them math is racist [0]
| and logic is the basis of most math, so it is also
| racist.
|
| Also white is a color and white people are not even
| white, but pink [1].
|
| [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29650790
|
| [1]https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Pink_skin
| colpabar wrote:
| Technically, white is _all_ colors.
| zdragnar wrote:
| So are Black and Indigenous. The point is to lump Asians
| into "other" and only pay lip service to their inclusion.
| f6v wrote:
| It seems that some Asians are already over-represented in
| certain fields, like sciences. I heard somewhere that
| being Chinese makes your chances of admission worse.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| I always understood bipoc to be used primarily in places
| where either black people or indigenous people (usually
| both) had way more oppression than any other race. America
| is a good example of where bipoc makes way more sense,
| because they literally stole indigenous kids right out of
| their homes and built an economy on making a race of people
| into property. There's something to be said that there
| wasn't a case where all indian people who immigranted to
| america systematically had a generation of their children
| taken, shoved into a school where many of them were
| renamed, abused, starved, raped, experimented on, and
| eventually died there, never to see their families again.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > He has come up with some really ingenious solutions to tough
| problems that have allowed us to grow as a company....but we're
| celebrating him because he's black, not because he's a kickass
| engineer
|
| The soft bigotry of low expectations.
| godshatter wrote:
| Why are you making the assumption that they added a silent
| "for a PoC" on the end of the first statement?
| JCM9 wrote:
| This is a challenging subject, but there's a lot of valid
| criticism of DEI efforts of many large companies.
|
| For one, these programs tend to be led by teams that are,
| ironically, not very diverse. They tend to focus too much on box
| checking while ignoring broad swaths of underrepresented
| populations. "Asia" is a big complex region of the world with
| those from this region often very underrepresented in the US and
| subjected to discrimination. However many DEI programs fail to
| recognize those from this region as underrepresented and the
| whole lumping everyone under the generic label of "Asian" is
| itself painting with a very broad brush that's insensitive to all
| the nuanced cultures in this region.
|
| They also tend to push messaging that is not broadly accepted,
| even by the communities they claim to be helping. For example DEI
| had a big push on saying the word "Latino" was offensive and
| insisted people must say "Latinx." Many Lantinos in companies
| were outraged and pointed out that in fact this concept of
| "Latinx" can in fact be extremely offensive to those it's
| attempting to describe. For one, it's suggesting that a gendered
| language is somehow inferior and must be corrected.
|
| As the OP indicates, putting people up in a pedestal when someone
| that checks a desired box is hired also diminishes that person.
| It sends the message that they're hired and celebrated in part to
| check the box vs the skills they bring to the team.
|
| The above is all complicated that people are terrified to discuss
| these matters because of their sensitive nature. Rather that
| creating an inclusive environment to discuss these issues DEI
| programs more frequently establish a culture of indoctrination
| into the thinking of a few (such as the Latinx example above).
|
| In short, DEI programs have a lot of self-reflection to do and
| need to be more aware that many of the efforts so far have caused
| more harm than good.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > They also tend to push messaging that is not broadly
| accepted, even by the communities they claim to be helping. For
| example DEI had a big push on saying the word "Latino" was
| offensive and insisted people must say "Latinx." Many Lantinos
| in companies were outraged and pointed out that in fact this
| concept of "Latinx" can in fact be extremely offensive to those
| it's attempting to describe. For one, it's suggesting that a
| gendered language is somehow inferior and must be corrected.
|
| IMHO, in almost all cases, DEI isn't about helping _anyone_ ,
| except white liberals who feel guilt they want assuaged.
|
| The Latinx example you cite is nice example of the
| contradictions of DEI: you can't actually "include" everyone
| without dominating them (colonizing?) and forcing a new
| identity on them, because different groups have mutually
| exclusive aspects of their identities.
| tomrod wrote:
| I see you and what you're saying. I always feel a bit awkward in
| these conversations because I feel I have received a lot of help
| in life and also am a complete dunce when it comes to race/gender
| and DEI discussions as a cis white male. So... if I haven't shot
| my own foot off yet, take my thoughts with a grain of salt and
| feel free to hit me with some better ways to see things if I'm
| dumb/ignorant?
|
| From my perspective, _everyone_ stands on the shoulders of other
| folks. Not one single person built what they have, know, and can
| do in a silo. I'm convinced that anyone that claims otherwise
| lacks introspection.
|
| I see the concern around thinking "I couldn't have done XYZ
| without help of others" and feeling patronized and concerned that
| you are unable to have accomplished the same under a
| counterfactual world without help. I feel this assessment misses
| that everyone else would have had "help" of similar variety as
| well to accomplish XYZ.
|
| And yes, townhalls parading around folks as tokens is abysmal. My
| undergraduate school, a notoriously bad-at-race-relations school,
| had a Multiculutral office from which the same 15 people were
| requested for dozens of brochures produced each year. In my mind,
| these are the same things and my friends doing the brochures
| didn't like being token folks. Doing so undermines the confidence
| of the people being paraded.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| While I was still employed, I recall filling fields in my yearly
| self-evaluation form to the tune of "ate rainbow-colored cake at
| an LGBTQI++ event - 2 times".
| debacle wrote:
| My first introduction to the DEI movement was in college, reading
| "None of This is Fair," which at the time reflected on the DEI
| initiatives on the 2000s poorly.
|
| Since then we've considerably doubled down on the things
| Rodriguez was critical of over 20 years ago.
| Zvez wrote:
| I knew a _very_ talented female software developer. And she was
| radically against any benefits based on her being female. For
| example she actively tried to avoid female discounts some
| conferences offered.
|
| It seems that people who drive DEI don't have real connection
| with people they are trying to 'protect'.
| ModernMech wrote:
| You cannot generalize an anecdote about a single person you
| know to draw conclusions about "people who drive DEI". By your
| own admission this person had a radical position. How do you
| know other women appreciate these benefits?
| fuckdei123 wrote:
| Hi, bitter Asian man here who constantly got rejected from
| FAANG/Unicorns because of DEI.
|
| I'm not bitter anymore though. I now work at a hedge fund, they
| pay cash, and they pay more than FAANG/Unicorns.
|
| And lots of layoffs are happening in FAANG/Unicorns, especially
| the DEI. Meanwhile I just got a raise.
|
| So, they (the DEI companies and the DEI hires) got what they
| deserve. I felt vindicated. There is justice after all in this
| world.
|
| Sorry not sorry. I'm out. No, no one's gonna change my opinion.
| Save your breath.
| samhuk wrote:
| The concern I have with DEI is that it's the manipulation of the
| natural function of a market - the jobs market. Just like others
| in this space such as quantitative easing, printing money, and
| "stimmy cheques", this often comes with positive _and_ negative
| effects.
|
| Personally, I have a few thouhts:
|
| * If we didn't have DEI (which in practice is really just the new
| AA (Affirmative Action)), would hetero-ethnic areas like Europe
| and US ever have balance in the workforce? Would society
| naturally trend towards ethnic balance in the workplace without
| DEI, or would we end up with a Gattaca? Is DEI necessary in that
| sense? Without DEI-like influences, would we just be stuck with a
| black valet and a white CEO?
|
| * Psychologists have known for decades about "the tyranny of low
| expectations" - the tendency for lower expectations to lead to
| lower performance in humans. I wonder if long-term DEI will lead
| to performance imbalances as those who are favored by DEI become
| reliant on it. It's a scary thought to imagine in the long term.
|
| * Personally, I think a _small_ amount of _temporary_ DEI
| exposure is required to offset the human 's natural tendency to
| be hostile towards those of a different ethnicity. I think that
| if DEI exposure is either acute (a lot in a small time frame) or
| chronic (little bit over a long time frame), it is likely to lead
| to systemic negative consequences, such as performative imbalance
| and/or aggression/hatred between those favored and unfavored by
| DEI.
|
| It's a really complex situation!
| maldev wrote:
| The curse of low expectations is real. I recently moved out of
| Baltimore because of the long term implications of DEI in
| education. There's schools where a gpa of 0.13 puts you in the
| top half of your class (https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-
| baltimore/calls-to-shu...). You also have 77 % of seniors being
| illiterate (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/77-of-
| students-at-...). I also dated a teacher for a bit, they can't
| even teach, it's daycare and the bar for a highschool senior to
| pass is literally being able to write their name. Teachers
| can't fail or require more.
|
| This is going to lead to decades of crime, most major cities in
| America are like this. And it's going to get worse and worse.
| The future is scary, and I wonder what the outcome will be.
| These are also largely black schools, what happens when these
| communities can't read and stay illiterate due to DEI in the
| school system?
| samhuk wrote:
| It's a pretty sad fact of life that sometimes you hurt the
| most by offering what you think is help.
| entwife wrote:
| An important consideration is that nobody performs better when
| you tell them that people like them are discriminated against, or
| often perform poorly.
| [deleted]
| backzerman wrote:
| I'm seeing a lot of claims here that DEI initiatives are about
| actively hiring under-qualified under-represented candidates to
| change the demographics of the company. I've sat through a lot of
| DEI sessions at work (as have many of my friends), and I've yet
| to hear of anyone actually _hiring_ under-qualified candidates
| for the sake of a quota.
|
| The DEI sessions I've sat through have focused heavily on the I--
| inclusion. Sure, they were corny, and there was plenty of virtue-
| signalling. But making a conscious effort to make sure everyone
| at the company feels socially welcome and fairly treated is a
| worthwhile effort.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| DEI is about factoring in race. Race should never be part of
| the decision making process. On top of being morally
| reprehensible its also illegal.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| DEI can also be about looking past stereotypes.
|
| A couple of decades worth of research has shown racial bias
| against URMs in hiring exists. Breaking past it with a
| requirement to interview and consider URMs is a start, not
| the finish.
|
| https://hbr.org/2021/02/research-how-companies-committed-
| to-...
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Alternatively, it could be ameliorated in a non-
| discriminatory way by anonymizing applications.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Sure. Which would require a specialized group of trained
| people at the company. This would involve such things as
| changing Alma Mater University to "completed degree". It
| would involve fudging things such as how long it took to
| graduate (which can be an indicator of familial status,
| in so far as people from poorer backgrounds are
| disproportionately likely to take longer to complete due
| to financial reasons).
|
| Genuinely anonymizing an application is a difficult task
| without losing pertinent data.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Both of the things you listed are as simple as text
| replacement.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| And how do you replace this text without losing
| important, non-origin context? What you probably need is
| an entire re-write. But a re-write, or even a bad text
| replacement, can make it look like the applicant is
| better or worse at grammar or writing in general.
|
| This is not as easy a task as a simple text replacement.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| The important content is their work history, projects,
| technical skills, etc. If the rewriting is awkward, it's
| affecting all candidates uniformly.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| A genuine bad rewrite would tend to affect all candidates
| uniformly (except those who have pre-anonymized their
| applications, thus gaming the process), but a find-
| replace is more problematic.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| If that's an issue, the companies could just tell
| applicants to pre anonymize their resumes to eliminate
| any potential gaming.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| I think it's worthwhile A/B testing your idea.
| pocman wrote:
| >> I'm seeing a lot of claims here that DEI initiatives are
| about actively hiring under-qualified under-represented
| candidates to change the demographics of the company.
|
| DEI efforts try to conflate ethnicity+gender, effectively
| trying to build the effort on the backs of black, hispanic, and
| indigenous populations -- _but_ try to count gender as well.
| Effectively, the DEI outcomes I see at companies end up being
| wealthy white women getting more opportunities, and the company
| conveniently checking off DEI as "done"
| [deleted]
| rsj_hn wrote:
| > I'm seeing a lot of claims here that DEI initiatives are
| about actively hiring under-qualified under-represented
| candidates to change the demographics of the company.
|
| This is _exactly_ what DEI is, and I guarantee you that your
| own company, if it is of any substantial size, systematically
| hires under qualified candidates because of DEI. It would
| require a hermetically sealed reality-avoidance filter to not
| notice this. While there are some people who walk around with
| these filters on, the vast majority of people do not, and will
| readily tell you exactly what DIE is about once they feel safe
| enough to speak honestly with you. Listen to them.
| SpeedilyDamage wrote:
| A problem a lot of tech/math minded people make is that there
| is some set of metrics, some set of tests or achievements or
| qualifications that make a candidate "objectively" the best.
| There isn't, not even a tiny little bit.
|
| The argument goes like: There's some objective rubric, and
| hiring a black person despite that rubric's indication that
| they're 2.345312% repeating below the best candidate, is DEI
| gone wrong!
|
| Anyone here who's ever hired for a technical role knows how
| wildly wrong that idea of recruitment is, but for engineers, we
| want to put a model to a system, and then we want to worship
| that model, so it's hard for some folks to grasp.
| bradlys wrote:
| We've hired people at my jobs (big tech to startups in SV) that
| were underqualified because of diversity measures. If we had
| ran them through the typical interview gauntlet with the same
| rubric, they wouldn't pass. We often changed the interview
| format or the rubric when presented with someone who was URT
| pool.
|
| I've talked to enough managers who complain about lackluster
| employees and how they're not fireable because the person is
| URT. It's a thing - even if we all like to think it isn't. Your
| best effort is to manage them out.
| oytis wrote:
| IMO the right way to implement diversity is to get more
| underrepresented people into the funnel, not lowering the
| bar. But it requires resources that startups might not
| have/might be unwilling to allocate.
| m348e912 wrote:
| >>the right way to implement diversity is to get more
| underrepresented people into the funnel, not lowering the
| bar
|
| This is the best comment in the thread. If you have a
| diverse funnel you will have diverse employees and as long
| as you maintain standards, they will be well qualified for
| the job. This includes internships and job training
| programs.
| bradlys wrote:
| Eh, the resume stack is fundamentally flawed. A lot of
| URT are never going to go into tech because they just
| don't want to. It's a large cultural issue.
| oytis wrote:
| Yes, that's why if a company is committed to diversity,
| it reaches out to candidates, promotes itself on events
| for underrepresented people etc.
| John23832 wrote:
| The solution is simple, hire better minority candidates.
|
| There are minority candidates who can thrive at all levels of
| tech. Nobody is telling your to hire subpar candidates.
| That's on your company's lazy implementation of their
| inclusion efforts, not on DEI.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Some places are targeting percentages of certain races that
| exceed that races representation in the general population,
| let alone the population within a given field. It may be
| that the demand exceeds the supply.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| As an under credentialed, relative to the general
| population very smart white guy, I doubt the demand for
| any group exceeds the supply. It just might involve
| searching outside of the range of the lamppost. Gasp,
| horror, it might involve internal training as opposed to
| expecting people to hit all the marks for a position on
| their prior labor and education. It might involve hiring
| _a lot more_ entry level positions than advanced
| positions, regardless of the needs of the moment.
|
| The best I've seen as a person who's not part of the DEI
| team is cultivating relationships with universities with
| large numbers of URM students. But that's really still
| just searching slightly outside of the range of the
| lamppost.
|
| Are you straight up going to small towns and offering
| scholarship opportunities? Going to college fairs (no,
| not hiring fairs at colleges, but the fairs that high
| school students go to to find a college) and marketing
| what jobs are available at your company for majors of
| certain degrees? These are just off the top of my head;
| I'm sure there are a lot better, and tested ideas out
| there.
| [deleted]
| willcipriano wrote:
| Let's say green people are 10% of the population to make
| the numbers easy and not call out anyone in particular.
| You have company A and they are killing it on their
| diversity goals, 20 percent of its employees are green
| people. Now you have company B, same size and industry as
| company A, they want to hire green people but their
| "share" of greens is already working at company A,
| perhaps they can pull greens from other industries but
| ultimately someone is going to be left holding the "you
| don't hire enough green people" bag.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > but ultimately someone is going to be left holding the
| "you don't hire enough green people" bag.
|
| This would be a good argument if we ever get to that
| point. But we aren't even close, and plenty of smaller
| companies and startups don't have diversity goals at all.
| There's plenty of room for some big names to go 100%
| green without being a tithe of a tithe of the full
| working population. Or even a tithe of a tithe of the
| working population of greens.
|
| Even Walmart is less than 1% of the total employed
| population in the US. Much more so for smaller companies
| such as Alphabet or Meta.
| seneca wrote:
| This is the classic excuse. "Bad outcomes aren't the fault
| of X, you're just doing X wrong" even though X always leads
| to the same bad outcomes.
|
| When an initiative fails, the solution is rarely to do more
| of it.
| John23832 wrote:
| If you don't think you can hire better minority
| candidates, then the implication is that there are no
| better minority candidates?
| SpeedilyDamage wrote:
| Except study after study shows that _good_ outcomes
| result from hiring diverse candidates...
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| My impression is that the mechanism is that
| racial/gender/etc diversity proxies for some amount of
| viewpoint diversity, and it's the viewpoint diversity
| which is improving outcomes. Assuming I'm correct on that
| point, my strong suspicion is that a lot of DEI programs
| in the US are not resulting in much more diverse hiring
| than their peer groups while simultaneously limiting
| viewpoint diversity pretty considerably (or if they're
| not limiting the viewpoint diversity of the people they
| hire, they're limiting the willingness of those people to
| express diverse views--probably a combination of the
| two).
|
| I'm also vaguely of the impression that at least some
| research is finding DEI initiatives to be neutral or
| perhaps even counter-productive, but I'm having a hard
| time finding those papers--if this is jogging anyone's
| memory, I would appreciate links.
| ModernMech wrote:
| > X always leads to the same bad outcome
|
| X does not always lead to the same bad outcome here
| though. That is, DEI initiatives that increase diversity
| while not lowering the hire bar do exist. That some
| particular company decided to lower their hiring bar
| doesn't indicate that DEI initiatives _always_ cause
| companies to lower their hiring bars.
| busterarm wrote:
| I've had HR force under-qualified people into my interview
| pipeline completely bypassing our technical pre-screen phone
| call.
|
| We even had an interviewee who only spoke an obscure language
| not spoken by anyone on our team _and_ had no work
| experience. This was for a staff engineer position!
|
| We hired someone despite some misgivings in the interview
| phase who turned out to be a pathological liar (and identity
| thief) and they proceeded to torment the entire company with
| insane false allegations for two years and did zero work
| while we couldn't get rid of them. Finally they quit on their
| own and this person just made the news recently for stripping
| down naked and violently attacking a convenience store's
| workers with a knife.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Find the legal definition of hostile workplace and skate just
| below that until the problems find solutions on someone
| else's paycheck.
| backzerman wrote:
| That's disappointing to hear. It also seems like a mixed bag
| for these lackluster hires, who get a paycheck but likely
| have a less-than-stellar work experience and little
| opportunity for advancement.
|
| Is there any effort at follow-up training? Seems like this
| interview strategy HAS to be paired with a long-term training
| strategy for taking less-qualified hires and turning them
| into very productive employees.
|
| If not, do you end up hiring more people in total? Do these
| lackluster employees just eat up time and budget, or do they
| also actively occupy a desk that you need to reclaim to hire
| more talented replacements?
| slackfan wrote:
| >Training Hahahaha, you dare suggest that we hired somebody
| underqualified? You can't make them feel like they are
| inferior, you utter racist.
|
| Yes, I have had a slightly less hyperbolic version of this
| actual conversation about less-than-qualified diversity
| hires. Good way to end your career.
| slackfan wrote:
| >actively hiring under-qualified
|
| Oh it's absolutely been done. I have very strict color and
| gender-blind hiring standards, because I want to hire the
| actual best people for the job. My filtering of candidates has
| absolutely been overruled by (white) upper management, because
| they needed to make the department I was in more $diverse, for
| whatever that means.
|
| The punchline is that I'm not white.
|
| I've since moved on from that firm, but I've run into this
| elsewhere. Really leaves a bad taste in ones' mouth, and hits
| the demoralization hard. The doublespeak is miserable. But I
| suppose I have literally these policies to thank for forcing me
| to strike out on my own to build something actually better.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| I think the idea is that even if blind hiring makes for the
| best possible employees on an individual basis in the short
| term, loosening that optimization in favor of diversity is a
| worthwhile pursuit because the company actually will thrive
| more when you look at long term collaboration (conversations
| and opinions that draw from a larger variety of life
| experiences can improve user advocacy, for example) and the
| possibility that amazing potential employees down the road
| might pass on applying to companies that aren't so diverse.
|
| I see the irony in using protected characteristics for
| profit, but it's a win-win...
| slackfan wrote:
| Yes yes, that is the sales pitch.
|
| In reality DEI in general doesn't give a shit about
| diversity of experience. There is zero investment into
| training programs to actually get people from non-
| traditional backgrounds into $company, because it's
| significantly less profitable in the short term. And when
| the training is set up, it is done in the most mealy-
| mouthed "equitable" way possible, where everybody gets a
| gold star, and then people act all surprised when the
| outcome is unproductive, virtually unfireable workers. And
| god help you if you are a "diverse" person who doesn't toe
| the DEI line, that is the fastest way to find yourself a
| pariah in an org.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Thomas Sowell pointed out two problems with the "idea" in
| _Discrimination and Disparities_.
|
| First, what evidence do we have that diversity does result
| in a company performing better, or gaining that amazing
| employee? He argues that this is an unfounded assumption.
|
| Setting that aside, his second point requires deeper
| consideration. Disparities are often caused by upstream
| circumstances, like fewer children having adults in the
| home that value education, leading to fewer candidates that
| meet diversity criteria to hire from in the first place. By
| laying quotas on at hiring time, people are wrongly
| assuming the problem to be occurring where it is detected
| (in hiring) and not where it originates (in-home attitudes
| to education and work).
|
| In the meantime, corporations hire consultants that emplace
| DEI "initiatives" that train workforces to detect
| "microaggressions," among similar evidence-free curricula.
| They do this, not because it solves a problem, but because
| it allows favorable public relations announcements.
|
| How about initiatives funding scholarships, and
| contributing to in home book programs? How about funding
| campaigns for supporting community libraries?
|
| These would go at the root of the issue, rather than the
| cosmetics of the issue. But then, they couldn't gain the
| indulgences for failing to actually be diverse as a
| corporate culture.
| SpeedilyDamage wrote:
| > First, what evidence do we have that diversity does
| result in a company performing better, or gaining that
| amazing employee? He argues that this is an unfounded
| assumption.
|
| It's not an assumption.
|
| > Along all dimensions measured, the more similar the
| investment partners, the lower their investments'
| performance. For example, the success rate of
| acquisitions and IPOs was 11.5% lower, on average, for
| investments by partners with shared school backgrounds
| than for those by partners from different schools. The
| effect of shared ethnicity was even stronger, reducing an
| investment's comparative success rate by 26.4% to 32.2%.
| [0]
|
| > Increased diversity in the healthcare workforce helps
| reduce or eliminate racial health disparities, according
| to a 2014 meta-analysis of 25 studies. [1]
|
| > A large-scale study of all Texas schools reveals
| diversity's impact in public education systems. They find
| student performance most-improved when there was greater
| management diversity, and a closer racial match
| (representation) between management and student. [2]
|
| > Most of the sixteen reviews matching inclusion criteria
| demonstrated positive associations between diversity,
| quality and financial performance. Healthcare studies
| showed patients generally fare better when care was
| provided by more diverse teams. Professional skills-
| focused studies generally find improvements to
| innovation, team communications and improved risk
| assessment. Financial performance also improved with
| increased diversity. A diversity-friendly environment was
| often identified as a key to avoiding frictions that come
| with change. [3]
|
| > Our latest report shows not only that the business case
| remains robust but also that the relationship between
| diversity on executive teams and the likelihood of
| financial outperformance has strengthened over time.
| These findings emerge from our largest data set so far,
| encompassing 15 countries and more than 1,000 large
| companies. By incorporating a "social listening" analysis
| of employee sentiment in online reviews, the report also
| provides new insights into how inclusion matters. It
| shows that companies should pay much greater attention to
| inclusion, even when they are relatively diverse. [4]
|
| > Using data from the 1996 to 1997 National Organizations
| Survey, a national sample of for-profit business
| organizations, this article tests eight hypotheses
| derived from the value-in-diversity thesis. The results
| support seven of these hypotheses: racial diversity is
| associated with increased sales revenue, more customers,
| greater market share, and greater relative profits. [5]
|
| This is just the tip. Study after study shows diversity
| improves outcomes of group work, it's really hard to
| justify believing otherwise, in light of the overwhelming
| data.
|
| [0] https://hbr.org/2018/07/the-other-diversity-dividend
|
| [1] https://www.ucdenver.edu/docs/librariesprovider68/def
| ault-do...
|
| [2]
| https://academic.oup.com/jpart/article/15/4/615/991022
|
| [3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30765101/
|
| [4] https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-
| and-inc...
|
| [5] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/000312240907
| 400203
| hunter2_ wrote:
| A pattern I'm seeing here is the possibility that these
| beneficial outcomes could be rooted in
| racism/sexism/etc.: having enough diversity among staff
| such that you can easily pair up people (provider and
| patient, fiduciary and client, or whatever scenario) who
| share personal characteristics can increase trust and
| synergy between them? Ugh!
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Great! All the more reason to focus on the underlying
| problem and not just where it's detected.
| crackercrews wrote:
| I haven't read all these studies but wonder if they claim
| causality or mere correlation. I see lots of correlation,
| which could be reverse correlation in disguise. Companies
| that are on a good trajectory decide to engage in more
| DEI than companies that are fighting to survive. Analysts
| conclude that DEI and success are correlated. They don't
| consider the possibility that the causal arrow runs the
| other way.
| jensensbutton wrote:
| > I haven't read anything, but I have opinions.
|
| Great contribution.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| True, and it could even be as simple as: well-educated
| people make companies more successful, and they pursue
| diversity more, compared to other people -- i.e., one
| input has these two outputs.
| voxic11 wrote:
| Well hiring under-qualified candidates purely for the sake of a
| quota (relating to a protected class) would be illegal in the
| United States. So its unlikely you will hear anyone explicitly
| saying that is what they intend to do.
|
| https://www.aclusocal.org/en/inclusion-targets-whats-legal
| sp332 wrote:
| For government contractors:
|
| "If women and minorities are not being employed at a rate to
| be expected given their availability in the relevant labor
| pool, the contractor's affirmative action program includes
| specific practical steps designed to address this
| underutilization."
|
| "Where, pursuant to SS 60-2.15, a contractor is required to
| establish a placement goal for a particular job group, the
| contractor must establish a percentage annual placement goal
| at least equal to the availability figure derived for women
| or minorities, as appropriate, for that job group."
|
| https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-41/subtitle-B/chapter-60/.
| ..
| busterarm wrote:
| We opened a director level technology position, were
| encouraged to apply and then we were told explicitly at a
| company meeting that it was only open to a female PoC (which
| could only possibly be filled by an outside hire based no our
| org chart).
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Here in America that would be completely illegal (And a
| lawyer somewhere would probably buy his next boat with that
| case!).
| nullc wrote:
| It's illegal. It's also at least somewhat common now.
|
| It's easier to leave a company for another, probably
| better paying, job elsewhere than it is to bring a
| lawsuit.
| busterarm wrote:
| Also if you bring a lawsuit, you'll pretty much be
| blacklisted from any company doing DEI, which is everyone
| that can pay well.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| This reads like high school bullying.
| busterarm wrote:
| We are here in America, and I was shocked when it
| happened. But also no lawsuit came of it, because
| everyone who stood something to lose buys into the idea
| in the first place.
| cm2187 wrote:
| I have seen in several UK firms the need for a waiver from
| HR to hire a white man for middle management level and up.
| I am not even sure it is legal, but in any case it is
| openly discriminatory. Imagine if you did that with any
| other category in the population.
| mst wrote:
| I've heard anecdotes from nonwhite Intel employees who
| claimed that that was definitely happening there and it meant
| they could basically only bother to do any work when they
| felt like it because nobody expected decent productivity out
| of them anyway.
|
| I don't claim to have remotely enough knowledge of the
| situation to know whether they were right or not, mind.
|
| It strikes me that your colleagues being acceptable, you
| being better but having high enough standards for yourself
| that they don't seem acceptable, plus a moderately apathetic
| manager could produce pretty much precisely the same
| observable results and then if you're already primed to
| expect diversity stuff to be stupidly implemented it'd be
| easy enough to draw an incorrect conclusion.
|
| It also strikes me that under the previous leadership Intel
| was kind of a shitshow in general so given that both
| possibilities seem depressingly plausible.
| kenjackson wrote:
| I've heard from white males at Intel that they didn't need
| to be productive either. I think this was an Intel problem.
| But interestingly I suspect POC think it's about their
| race. While white males assume this is the case for
| everyone.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| For context, Intel introduced quotas back in the mid 2010s:
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/04/why-
| is-...
|
| > Now, of course, the talk is of inclusion, not
| confrontation. And I was surprised to hear Intel--old-
| fashioned Intel--mentioned as one of the companies
| successfully innovating around gender. It had been
| releasing diversity numbers since 2000, though not with as
| much fanfare as some of its peers, and without much
| improvement. But in the past couple of years, Intel decided
| to try a few other approaches, including hiring quotas.
|
| > Well, not quotas. You can't say quotas. At least not in
| the United States. In some European countries, like Norway,
| real, actual quotas--for example, a rule saying that 40
| percent of a public company's board members must be female
| --have worked well; qualified women have been found and the
| Earth has continued turning. However, in the U.S., hiring
| quotas are illegal. "We never use the word quota at Intel,"
| says Danielle Brown, the company's chief diversity and
| inclusion officer. Rather, Intel set extremely firm hiring
| goals. For 2015, it wanted 40 percent of hires to be female
| or underrepresented minorities.
|
| > Now, it's true that lots of companies have hiring goals.
| But to make its goals a little more, well, quota-like,
| Intel introduced money into the equation. In Intel's annual
| performance-bonus plan, success in meeting diversity goals
| factors into whether the company gives employees an across-
| the-board bonus. (The amounts vary widely but can be
| substantial.) If diversity efforts succeed, everybody at
| the company gets a little bit richer.
|
| TL;DR: Intel docked your pay unless you met a quota for
| women and URM hires.
| seneca wrote:
| > I've sat through a lot of DEI sessions at work (as have many
| of my friends), and I've yet to hear of anyone actually
| _hiring_ under-qualified candidates for the sake of a quota.
|
| That's because it's often illegal, and most people find it
| immoral. It's the "quiet part", if you will. I've been in a
| hiring role for a decade, and I can tell you that it happens at
| every company I've been at that has a DEI program.
|
| Many of the larger companies even have manager bonuses
| dependent on diversity metrics of their teams. That's about the
| biggest weight you can possibly put on the scale.
| kenjackson wrote:
| I've seen just the opposite. We always hire the best
| candidate. Sometimes the question will come up. : "why were
| there no POC brought in to interview?" They want to know
| about where we recruited from. But our hiring was never
| questioned.
|
| That said I hired way over industry average in females. But
| under for POC. But I probably got slack for all the female
| hires. All of whom were the best we interviewed.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| > But making a conscious effort to make sure everyone at the
| company feels socially welcome and fairly treated is a
| worthwhile effort.
|
| Or it would be worthwhile if it actually worked. Note the use
| of the subjunctive tense.
| dbrueck wrote:
| > I've yet to hear of anyone actually _hiring_ under-qualified
| candidates for the sake of a quota.
|
| My experience is the opposite, unfortunately. Big companies
| know where the legal line is and are careful to not cross it
| too often, but here are some examples I've encountered first-
| hand:
|
| 1) My org's annual score had a prominent section highlighting
| the fact that our diversity was deemed low. Your org's score
| affected your annual budget for raises and bonuses, so I'm
| embarrassed to say that it was definitely a factor in hiring.
|
| 2) We'd have an opening to fill and sometimes would get a stack
| of resumes of just women. This would otherwise be fine (or even
| great - see #1, above) if there were some good ones, but
| honestly if you're a woman who is a great dev you'd almost
| certainly be able to get stellar offers elsewhere (this was a
| large-but-not-FAANG company). In one particular case, a guy
| friend of one of my employees applied for the same position and
| would have been a perfect fit at least on paper, but somehow
| his resume didn't make it past HR so he didn't get interviewed.
| We interviewed several from the pool we got and ended up hiring
| one who was an ok dev. Not great, but ok - we definitely
| "settled".
|
| 3) One time I needed a dev with a somewhat specific skillset
| and was soon told that they had found someone and had started
| the hiring process - even without an interview. I asked to at
| least see this person's resume (woohoo, it was an Asian woman -
| checking TWO diversity boxes!!). I pointed out that she didn't
| have the skill set we needed and nothing indicated that she had
| a background that would be good for it. I also pointed out that
| she didn't speak much English (it was literally a caveat listed
| on her resume), so I asked if we could at least interview her
| to try to assess if she'd be willing to pick up the skills we
| needed. Nope, the hiring was already done by then, and there
| she was in our office two weeks later. I have never felt so bad
| for anyone who has worked for me; she always seemed sad and
| lost, and I did a really poor job of figuring out how to help
| her. I'm still haunted by our extremely awkward 1-on-1 meetings
| (kinda hard to have much of a conversation when, you know,
| there's not a shared language).
|
| On the flip side, some of the most talented and brilliant and
| enjoyable people I've worked with have been people who check
| lots of the diversity boxes, but weren't hired as part of any
| sort of push to increase diversity.
| throwaway35934 wrote:
| I have absolutely been pressured to "reconsider" when I marked
| an intern in a diversity target group as a no-hire, and said
| intern was then switched into a different team.
|
| EDIT 1: The more effective mechanism that my company uses is to
| verify at the time of hiring a candidate that you can show you
| at least considered diversity target candidates (in
| engineering, basically women and non-Indian/Asian/white).
|
| EDIT 2: also definitely see diversity target group employees
| being flagged for second-look when identifying layoffs, PIPs
| etc.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| > "Why should I feel proud of my accomplishments, when the
| accomplishments were spoon-fed to me by the company because of my
| skin color? If I were a white man with the same experience, I
| might not even be here?"
|
| I'm not a PoC but I am disabled. I have uncorrectable low vision.
| My perspective is different. If they want to hire me and promote
| me because I'm blind that's fine by me. I'm just happy that for
| once, something I have no control over, is maybe giving me a
| boost instead of being a drag.
|
| But maybe it's because I'm skeptical of meritocracy. Not in an
| absolute sense. I have a strong suspicion that if I weren't
| delivering value, I'd be gone by now despite being a diversity
| hire. But simultaneously, I don't believe people are promoted one
| over another strictly due to performance, even when DEI isn't a
| consideration.
|
| There's plenty of research indicating that humans and especially
| organizations suck at evaluating job performance. And I've seen
| many cases directly where someone is filling a leadership role to
| everyone's satisfaction yet someone else gets promoted to the
| permanent position even though they are clearly inadequate for
| the job. Promotions already appear chaotic, political and quasi-
| random. Essentially, what does it matter if DEI is just one more
| wonky variable in quantum mechanical promotion engine.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| > I don't believe people are promoted one over another strictly
| due to performance, even when DEI isn't a consideration.
|
| I wish I could find the study but this one fascinating read
| pointed out that the greatest predictor of whether you'd get
| promotions/raises/etc. was whether or not you were 1) white, 2)
| male...
|
| Those 2 aren't surprising but then it continued:
|
| ...3) 6ft tall or taller, 4) "conventionally handsome" (very
| loaded to term I know), 5) well-groomed/dressed by whatever
| standards of the industry you were in.
|
| Height in particular had a ton of correlation.
|
| As you said, the meritocracy idea is kind of BS. It's a
| consideration, but it's not the _primary_ consideration.
| Presentation appears to have an outsized effect, whether you
| control it or not.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The bias is toward looking like a better version of your
| boss. Match him in everything culturally, but be cooler than
| him, better looking that him, _taller_ than him. As a black
| man, I 'm pretty sure I got more than one programming job
| because I played in punk bands in the 90s.
|
| This would be bad if the demographics of the people hiring
| were representative of the general population. They're not,
| so it makes it worse for specific groups.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| aabm wrote:
| If there's no actual problem to be solved here, isn't this just
| the same sort of virtue-signalling OP is accusing the entirety of
| DEI of? Which is ironic, because my understanding of the matter
| is that diversity has been studied and found to correlate with
| increased profitability. Even if you zoned out through DEI
| training, inclusion should be a no brainer-- you'll retain
| employees who feel like they are part of your organization.
| Equity is probably a little harder (and the part people get hung
| up on), but frankly, I haven't seen any numbers to convince me
| that we're approaching anything near equity so again I ask: what
| is the problem to be solved here?
|
| Is it really such an important goal for the IT industry in the
| U.S. that instead of having the 3% or 4% of our employees be
| black (by that I mean historically disadvantaged African
| Americans, descendants of enslaved people, a qualification which
| would _further_ reduce that percentage), that we bring that
| number down to 1-2%, or even lower? I'm sorry, but this is such
| an absurd problem to want to solve, and it just reeks of
| insecurity to supposed "high performers" bring it up.
|
| I don't want to dismiss this issue entirely because I know it's a
| sensitive topic for a lot of people, but it's pretty frustrating
| to see the constant anti-DEI posts in tech spaces when nearly
| every team I've been on in my 10+ year career has been almost
| exclusively white and male. Why are we clamoring to return to the
| days of total unmitigated unconscious bias and homogeneity?
|
| > However, when I have to join a cheesy townhall once a month to
| discuss diversity hires, it makes me feel like I have no right to
| feel proud of any accomplishments I've made within the company.
|
| Why in the world would you feel this way, after admitting that
| you have the chops? What does these "diversity hires" being
| simply _hired_ have to do with your actual material
| accomplishments within your company? It strikes me that perhaps
| the real problem here is that our most insecure colleagues are
| being threatened by unqualified employees stealing their jobs, in
| which case I would suggest that the real solution here is
| therapy, not returning to some idealized version of the past.
|
| I can only speak for myself, but my self esteem is not undermined
| by the fact that DEI could mean that there will be two black men
| on my team instead of just me, or that my small organization of a
| few hundred could have maybe four black men instead of three. If
| anything, my self esteem is undermined by the fact that those
| numbers are so low to begin with.
|
| - Another Black Man
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| For all the energy private companies do working towards DEI,
| think about how easily it could be transitioned into something
| you don't like. If the winds blow to a falangist anti-capitalism
| under not catholicism but protestant sects for example, all these
| little HR people will suddenly be touting the reasons not to hire
| women and get them back in the home.
|
| HR departments should not be cultural enforcers, and while you
| may enjoy it now or think positively of DEI, it can flip around
| just as easily to something not very nice
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Hiring preferences for PoC is discriminating against all not PoC.
| It is in practice exactly what these initiatives claim to be
| fighting, bigotry.
| tootie wrote:
| That infers the baseline is equality. The reality is that
| hiring without explicit guidelines will bias against POC. DEI
| is about counteracting unconscious (or conscious) bias.
| Dooflegna wrote:
| Exactly this. DEI isn't about ignoring race--DEI is
| -recoginizing- the impact that things like gender, race, and
| sexuality has on our biases.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > That infers the baseline is equality. The reality is that
| hiring without explicit guidelines will bias against POC. DEI
| is about counteracting unconscious (or conscious) bias.
|
| No, DEI is about replacing one bias with another in order to
| make a bunch of white people feel better about themselves.
| DEI doesn't consider Indians or South Asian looking people
| "People of color", because there are "too many of them in
| tech already". DEI is just institutionalize racism. So much
| that some Indians have to fake being black to get jobs in DEI
| corporations, cause white people can't always tell the
| difference.
|
| The baseline was never equality, however DEI is blatantly
| racist against people who objectively suffer from racial
| discrimination themselves.
| tootie wrote:
| I don't think any of that is true or at least I've never
| observed it. It's also entirely possible for a DEI program
| to be run incompetently.
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| Who is talking about hiring preferences? Why are you
| mischaracterizing diversity programs?
| jablongo wrote:
| Literally the OP
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| Where in the OP do they talk about hiring preferences?
| giantg2 wrote:
| "...it would be beneficial if DEI initiatives were confidential
| and kept "hush hush" within a company."
|
| "...is nothing short of corporate virtue signaling."
|
| It might be most beneficial for individuals if it's kept-low key.
| It's best for the company to scream it to the world. Or at least
| that's what the leaders think right now.
|
| Personally, I think any medium to large company that talks about
| DEI and isn't addressing the supply side issues are just just
| marketing. Without addressing that, it's just companies trying to
| outbid each other, and not using money but using virtue
| signaling. They should be putting their money where their mouth
| is and sponsoring scholarships/internships/apprenticeships.
| Instead of asking you talk at town halls, maybe they should be
| asking you to talk at high schools so the students can ask
| questions about your career journey. But hey, I'm just a dev so
| what do I know that these highly intelligent and highly trained
| CEOs/HR don't...
| wyager wrote:
| People fail to understand the entire point of DEI: avoiding
| hiring discrimination lawsuits. There's a tacit understanding
| that, if you spend enough money on DEI coordinators, and hire
| enough of the right people, you will not be punished by state
| or federal prosecutors.
|
| This has nothing to do with eliminating hiring discrimination
| or whatever; it's part of a political patronage network. You
| hire our most dedicated people, we don't bring the hammer down.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| I disagree - DEI is about upholding the prevailing form of
| political correctness so as not to get publicly shamed.
| Federal law still bans racial discrimination in hiring, so
| lawsuits are less of a concern than looking bad in the public
| eye.
|
| The irony is that DEI as a _worldview_ promotes and condones
| racial discrimination in many forms -- that is, treating
| people differently because of the color of their skin, not
| the content of their character, their skills, or their
| physical ability (for physically demanding jobs).
|
| Martin Luther King Jr. said "I have a dream that my four
| little children will one day live in a nation where they will
| not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content
| of their character." Based on statements like this, I believe
| he would be publicly against DEI if he were still alive (and
| he'd probably have been de-platformed by now).
| wyager wrote:
| I'm not disagreeing with you at an object level, but at a
| meta level you're at least 30-40 years behind what's going
| on with title VII legal strategy, and your grade school
| understanding of MLK is not helping things. I would suggest
| looking more into what he was actually about, rather than
| taking at face value a few words from his most popular
| speech.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| I have no doubt the federal government at large wants to
| adopt a woke/DEI legal framework, and that legal strategy
| is moving strongly in that direction. I just don't think
| Title VII legislation is all the way there -- it still is
| illegal to discriminate when hiring on the basis of
| certain protected criteria.
|
| > I would suggest looking more into what he was actually
| about, rather than taking at face value a few words from
| his most popular speech.
|
| I've listened to that speech over and over again
| throughout the years. I think he was utterly sincere in
| his desire for _equality_ and brotherhood between people
| of different racial backgrounds. Most of the time, the
| simplest and most straightforward reading of a text
| (keeping the context in mind - author, audience,
| circumstance) is also the most correct. I believe he was
| not being duplicitous.
|
| > your grade school understanding of MLK is not helping
| things
|
| If you're referring to taking things at face value, then
| I proudly stand with grade schools insofar as they teach
| children to take people at their word and take truth at
| face value. And I defy the university-level critical (or
| rather, cynical) theory that seeks to redefine all texts
| according to its rubrik of oppressor/oppressed.
| jcims wrote:
| I've seen quite a few people angrily push back on statements
| like 'pipeline problem' and I don't understand why. Obviously
| there's more to it than that, but it's also that (with hard
| numbers to back it up).
| cloudier wrote:
| I think it's because focusing on the pipeline problem focuses
| on the parts of hiring that a company doesn't have control
| over. Those decisions often happen in high school and tech
| companies don't have direct influence in these decisions.
|
| Instead, companies are better off focusing on making the
| later parts of the pipeline less leaky. Minorities tend to
| leave tech at a higher rate than average due to factors the
| company has some control over.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I generally agree. However, they should be addressing both.
|
| They should have outreach programs in high schools, partner
| with schools to offer intro to coding, or even help sponsor
| some students for after school coding classes. Sure, these
| won't necessarily convert these individuals into employees.
| But it would be part of being a good corporate citizen even
| if those students end up going to other companies. So there
| are things they can do. They aren't completely powerless.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > They should have outreach programs in high schools,
| partner with schools to offer intro to coding, or even
| help sponsor some students for after school coding
| classes.
|
| Here's the thing: by the time students reach high school,
| a lot of weeding out has already happened. I recall such
| a program where where they had something like 7% black
| students. All but one were children of wealthy Nigerian
| immigrants. The rest of the class was actually more Asian
| and White than the district.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> I 've seen quite a few people angrily push back on
| statements like 'pipeline problem' and I don't understand
| why._
|
| Well, some people think when a company says "pipeline
| problem" it's a PR-vetted way to announce they ain't going to
| do shit.
|
| Whether you think that's true probably depends on how cynical
| you are.
| throwaway35934 wrote:
| I mean, what are they _supposed_ to do?
|
| To take one obvious example: there's massive under-
| performance of black men (vs. any other group) at every
| stage of the educational ladder up to the tertiary level.
| There simply aren't enough qualified candidates for
| engineering jobs for firms to be representative of the
| relative populations at a national level.
|
| 36% of white men have at least a bachelors degree; only 19%
| of black men do. Black college graduates choose STEM majors
| at only two-thirds the rate of white graduates, and one-
| third the rate of Asians.
| hedora wrote:
| I've slowly come to the conclusion that talking about the
| pipeline problem is unacceptable precisely because the
| powers that be do not want any of the issues you describe
| to be addressed.
|
| I came to this conclusion by watching what the California
| government has done in the SF Bay Area over last decade
| or so.
|
| They keep narrowing commuter corridors, which
| disproportionately impacts low income workers. They only
| allow high density housing to be built far from transit
| corridors and walkable downtowns. They explicitly keep
| housing scarce via zoning restrictions, then have special
| ghetto projects for low income families.
|
| Public education has gone from top ten to bottom five in
| the country, but rich areas have excellent public schools
| because they let parents pay to add back educational
| programs that have been defunded in the poor public
| schools.
|
| Oakland has a special privatized police force for its
| downtown commercial district area so that the businesses
| there don't have to "subsidize" police coverage for the
| other (mostly black) parts of the city.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| The solution to this seems to be dumbing down the
| curriculum so that more kids "succeed". With things like
| "anti-racist math" [0] or "equitable math" [1]
|
| [0] https://equitablemath.org/wp-
| content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11...
|
| [1] https://reason.com/2021/05/04/california-math-
| framework-woke...
| noobermin wrote:
| 1. pay their taxes, so the government can fund public
| schools so that they can educate black kids in the inner
| city and poor suburbs better. That can be step one.
|
| Also, the GP did say they can do scholarships and such,
| there's that. Also (shudder) consider hiring from state
| schools and don't filter on where you got your degree,
| but the quality of education, which yes is much harder to
| judge. Also, fucking train your own hires, don't expect
| them to be brill out of the gate.
|
| There is a lot they can do that really is actually quite
| colorblind on the surface that will lift all boats, but
| will actually disproportionately lift PoC since they skew
| worse on the metrics, as you stated.
| [deleted]
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| >They should be putting their money where their mouth is and
| sponsoring scholarships/internships/apprenticeships.
|
| I worked at a BigCo that did all the usual DEI garbage and
| their only initiative that actually had results was the one
| where they spent a bunch of money sponsoring "women in stem"
| stuff at the high-school and college level.
| giantg2 wrote:
| My company at least used to bring high school students to the
| company for a women in STEM tour. I believe they stopped it.
| I have no idea if it worked or not. It certainly didn't work
| for the company since we weren't seeing any of them join
| after college.
|
| At least in the case of an intern we had, she went to some
| other company. Which in fairness, was the better choice. In
| the conversation we were having, the _manager_ even told her
| to go to any other company if she has the option because they
| will pay more. One of the best managers I 've seen and he
| wasn't even my manager. Of course he left for another company
| shortly after.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Yes, this is one of the funny things about DEI discussions
| to me.
|
| In a work conversation, a coworker mentioned recruiting
| more women to work for us. I basically said we're never
| going to win against FAANG companies competing for the
| limited pool of women software engineers, and he didn't
| have a response to that.
|
| Some companies may not be diverse because they don't want
| to hire from under represented categories, but because
| candidates from those categories have better offers.
| pocman wrote:
| >> a bunch of money sponsoring "women in stem"
|
| IME, a bunch of them were sweetheart good deals and giveaways
| to BigCo's own daughters, cousins, sister-in-laws. And the
| money sloshes around amongst the wealthy inner crowd.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| I'm unsurprised their only program was for the majority in
| education.
|
| Weird how there's programs for the majority (women) when the
| minority (men) succeed -- but no help for the minority (men)
| in any form. And this isn't some new issue... men have been
| the minority in education longer than I've been alive.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| They had many DEI programs dating back to before it was
| called DEI. The one targeting women who were predisposed
| toward stem careers and keeping them on that track was the
| only one that persisted over time because it was the only
| one that wasn't asinine when you actually looked at the
| results. Management basically said as much but less
| directly whenever they cut other programs but kept that
| one.
|
| The women hired as a result were far more socially diverse
| than people from the other hiring pipelines and I think
| that is of greater value than the fact that they were
| women.
|
| This is a big non-FAANG tech company FWIW
| lettergram wrote:
| > It's best for the company to scream it to the world. Or at
| least that's what the leaders think right now.
|
| After sitting in a room where we were told we needed to
| increase our "minority representation in upper management" (and
| I'm a mostly white manager). There were already 20% apparently,
| they wanted 40%.
|
| I asked my boss, "so what does that mean to me? To me it seems
| like you don't want me"
|
| Boss: "oh no, you're fine"
|
| Me: "I don't know, pretty obvious you want a higher
| representation of people not like me"
|
| I quit after that. I was manager of one of the most productive
| research teams, created the most IP for the company, had the
| top projects, and yeah -- lost me to this bs. I was joined by
| several other top people. Now they have a "diverse", but less
| passionate, less competent team. Good luck with this stuff.
| kenjackson wrote:
| Honestly your take seems a bit childish. I coach basketball
| and I say "we need more bigs". Should my smaller lightening
| quick point guard quit? No. I want a diverse team. The fact
| that you didn't get that would make me question if I wanted
| you on the team. Not your race/gender.
| lettergram wrote:
| > I coach basketball and I say "we need more bigs".
|
| First, yes I'd say that is ridiculous. There are shorter
| NBA players, the fact we target "bigs" shows a lazy coach
| who's incapable of assessing the best way to form a team.
|
| Second, size does play a factor [one of many] in
| basketball; In coding, neither the amount of melanin, hair
| color, eye color, nor gender play a role. We can argue a
| diversity of ideas or backgrounds are good. That's why we
| hired people with degrees in different fields; we hired
| people with different work experience. You don't want to
| say "we need less white people" or "we need less green eyed
| people". Sorry, but in your example it's equivalent to
| saying "I want more blonds in basketball" -- there is no
| relation.
|
| > The fact that you didn't get that would make me question
| if I wanted you on the team
|
| I did not want to work with bigots of any kind.
| kenjackson wrote:
| > First, yes I'd say that is ridiculous. There are
| shorter NBA players, the fact we target "bigs" shows a
| lazy coach who's incapable of assessing the best way to
| form a team.
|
| The fact that you speak so confidently about a topic you
| clearly know almost nothing about I think speaks to why
| maybe your old team seemed OK to let you go.
|
| > You don't want to say "we need less white people" or
| "we need less green eyed people". Sorry, but in your
| example it's equivalent to saying "I want more blonds in
| basketball" -- there is no relation.
|
| You clearly missed the point of the analogy. The point
| was that you can look for one attribute, while still
| having a need for another. You seem to have conflated
| this with an unrelated point. Maybe not surprising.
|
| But now lets talk about your latter point. You seem to
| miss one of the main points of DEI. Let's use another
| basketball example :-)
|
| Jeremy Lin. He went largely unrecruited in HS, despite
| winning the California state championship over powerhouse
| Mater Dei, winning Nor Cal player of the year and was 1st
| team all state. And basically had no D1 offers. Why?
| Largely because he was Asian.
|
| So, he goes to Harvard and has a good career there. He
| went undrafted despite great measurables -- including
| being one of the fastest people in the combine -- think
| Kyrie quickness and John Wall speed. He was in many ways
| a generational athlete. He eventually signed as a free
| agent after summer league to languish on the bench.
|
| It wasn't until one night, at the end of his contract,
| when he was likely done with his NBA career did he play
| and he played with a "if I'm ever gonna do it, I gotta do
| it now attitude". And he went on one of the most
| impressive runs in NBA history -- Linsanity. Go look it
| up.
|
| Now I tell this story because his whole life he was
| discriminated against because he was Asian. He never
| asked to be played over people that were better than him.
| Simply to give him a chance. He would never show up in a
| referral from John Wall or Kobe Bryant. He doesn't run in
| those circles. His last name doesn't evoke images of a
| ridiculous skilled guard. But he was.
|
| DEI is about saying, "you've done a sufficiently good job
| of demonizing everything that comes from POC -- so that
| you immediately discount the way they walk, talk, where
| they go to HS, go to college, etc... But set aside these
| biases and try to let some in the front door to at least
| give them a chance at the interview. Try not to assume
| because they went to Howard they are less than." Lin went
| to Harvard because no other D1s would give him a spot. He
| was a Duke level player at a low-level non-scholarship
| school.
|
| And the thing is that sports/basketball are among the
| most meritocratic activities on this planet. Yet racial
| bias reared its heard. You don't think this happens
| everyday in investment banking? Or for consulting? All
| the places where its so much harder to objectively
| measure the quality of work done.
|
| If you're a GM in basketball and you're not saying, "we
| need to look at more Asian player. We need to look around
| the globe for talent" then you're not doing your job. And
| coincidentally its now arguable that the four best
| basketball players in the NBA are all international:
| Giannis, Luka, Jokic, and Embid. Peoople had to open
| their eyes and see that it wasn't just an inner city
| game.
| lettergram wrote:
| It could equally be argued that alternative players could
| have been better than Jeremy Lin. Then they promoted Lin
| at the time because they wanted to enter new markets. As
| it expanded in popularity new demos entered they pitched
| the "over coming race" angle because new people joined.
| Imo using it to make an example kinda proves the real use
| of DEI - to give people feels and sell stuff.
|
| Teams are trying to sell seats. Businesses are trying to
| target various markets, but more importantly raise
| capital and get cheap labor.
|
| You could argue the same thing in my case, and that's
| fine. I won't play the race game. For reference, me and
| others were offered an exorbitant amount to stay. But to
| your point, give those opportunities to others, who by
| definition didn't earn their place.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| Unfortunately, I had an even worse experience.
|
| Boss: "You need to build a more diverse team."
|
| Me: "What are you talking about? I'm 1 of only 2 white people
| on the entire 12 person team."
|
| Boss: "Indians and Asians don't count as diverse."
|
| Me: "Really? I did not know that. I do have 2 Hispanics on
| the team though."
|
| Boss: "You're not hearing me. You don't have any black people
| and only have 2 women."
|
| It became clear that "diversity" was not the goal, but rather
| something much more specific, likely because the metric the
| company was tracking specified it that way.
| lettergram wrote:
| > It became clear that "diversity" was not the goal, but
| rather something much more specific, likely because the
| metric the company was tracking specified it that way.
|
| Indeed, it's not about "diversity" in the classic sense.
| dillutedfixer wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this. I feel the exact same way. Work at a
| state university. Found out at a big town hall style meeting that
| I was hired during a "diversity cluster hire." I know I am
| talented but I was sitting there questioning myself. I am
| hispanic. Everyone speaking about the cluster hire was white. I
| appreciate the overall push towards awareness of this issue but I
| agree this felt like we were being paraded around. I skipped the
| "DEI Luncheon."
| t344344 wrote:
| In reality you got like 10% salary boost. Just take it and be
| happy, or send that money to people in Africa. There is no need
| to make it personal.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > I realize this isn't the type of content posted to HN usually
|
| It was once very common, until a "no politics" rule was
| experimented with, where "politics" was largely a euphemism for
| "discussion of minority issues in tech." This rule was eventually
| abandoned, and just applied manually through direct moderation.
| After that point the only race/diversity stuff that gets through
| is _anti-diversity_ stuff. I assume this is being upvoted because
| it 's being mistaken for libertarian "race realism" from the
| title.
|
| You're saying that companies should stop parading their
| "diversity" in their PR, and especially stop focusing on
| individuals. I tend to agree, but if they stop using black people
| in their PR, they're probably going to stop hiring black people.
| They don't know any.
| etchalon wrote:
| As someone who hires people, I think this is a double-edge sword.
|
| Bluntly, without a sustained effort by managers, teams will
| default to hiring people who are as most "like them" as possible.
| Shared interests, vernacular, professional personas, etc.
|
| That's generally going to mean a lot of very homogenous teams,
| and in tech, that means very white, potentially very male.
|
| On the other side, I have a distaste for DEI being made so
| prominent as to make anyone feel their job wasn't earned. Which
| is never, ever the case. Unqualified people don't hired. Poor
| performers get let go. But given the subjectivity of the hiring
| process - there exist no objective metrics for the vast majority
| of jobs - you just HAVE to tip the scales sometimes.
|
| But it seems an impossible line to walk. If you keep it quiet,
| staff isn't aware of what you're doing, and may think you're
| doing nothing at all. That has a cost too.
| kbrannigan wrote:
| Are they parading them around, or are they just good at their
| job?
|
| Minority hires stick out because they look different. A fresh
| white hire being exceptional is just a kid being exceptional
|
| Is a black hire being exceptional and standing out only getting
| the attention because he's a minority?
|
| Let me me a wild assumption, you are used to being the only black
| guy dev at your company.
|
| Now that the company is making an effort to hire people, not just
| and endless stream of white people, you might feel a little
| threatened.
|
| You're no longer the special unicorn.
|
| On the other hand companies could humanize the process more, less
| bureaucracy.
| tcgv wrote:
| Thanks for bringing your experience and sentiment to the
| discussion. Its eligthening and makes perfect sense.
|
| DEI is a complex, multivarible subject. People have a multitude
| of different views and opinions on the subject. Companies have a
| bias for profit and for getting good PR.
|
| It impacts more predominantly people that are considered of a
| minority or underepresented group, such as yourself.
|
| I see DEI initiatives as a necessary measure for transitioning
| from a condition of structured inequality to a more balanced
| society. We can work and hope for a future in which we won't need
| these initiaives anymore (utopical?).
|
| It's a generational change. I see no path forward in which we can
| overcoe this issues in a shorter timespan, and that people from
| all backgrdounds won't have to face diffcult challenges, such as
| the one you shared.
| hnbad wrote:
| The purpose of DEI initiatives in most companies is not to
| actually create equity but to be able to demonstrate that you're
| doing something. If your company explicitly does "diversity
| hires" to hire people by skin color, they're clearly more
| interested in tokenism, which only serves the company, not the
| candidates.
|
| I think "diversity hires" are fine for marginalised communities
| analogous to grants but this would apply to paid internships or
| apprentice programs, not regular positions. Otherwise as in your
| case it clearly sends a message that the candidates wouldn't
| qualify otherwise.
|
| If a company takes DEI seriously, the best approach for diversity
| in hiring would be to recruit specifically from the target
| demographics via targeted advertising (the old-fashioned way, not
| Google ads). Having to apply a diversity filter to an already
| existing applicant pool will always create an impression of
| tokenism.
|
| Of course the elephant in the room is that these are usually
| companies founded by white guys, run by white guys, owned by
| white guys, who mostly initially hired other white guys. In the
| past decades you might also have some Asian (specifically Chinese
| or Indian) guys in the mix and some might be openly gay or bi but
| they'll almost always share the same upper-middle class rich kid
| background. Trying to bolt on "diversity" to that after the fact
| is always going to be more about optics than genuine concern for
| marginalised folks.
|
| The real thing to worry about is company culture as building a
| culture around a bunch of wealthy white guys is likely going to
| make it hard to be welcoming to people outside that microcosm, at
| least if you care about more than mere skin color. But from the
| sound of it, your company's attitude to DEI is more akin to that
| of a Victorian Englishman proudly presenting his "coloured"
| servants.
| mach1ne wrote:
| I know this has nothing to do with the subject of this post, but
| this is a prime example of why I greatly dislike the widespread
| use of obscure acronyms especially prevalent in the US. It took
| way too long to process that PoC meant "Person of Color" and not
| "Proof of Concept".
| harryvederci wrote:
| IANAL, but idk. It's not an issue, imo. You gotta stay on your
| tip top game with your GTL to stay FTD to keep 'em DTF in MIA.
| Just my 2c.
| rayiner wrote:
| I find the way DEI people talk about "people of color" to be
| demeaning. The language alone is bizarre: people will talk about
| an individual being "diverse," like they have multiple
| personalities or something. It's also extremely reductionist. As
| an immigrant from a Muslim country, I _do_ bring a very different
| perspective on many things than native-born white Americans. But
| that 's not really what they mean by "diversity." In practice
| they reduce "diversity" to the negative experiences darker
| skinned people may or may not have in a majority white society.
| "Tell me where the bad white people touched you."
| brodouevencode wrote:
| There's a God-shaped hole in many people's hearts. Unfortunately
| this hole has been filled with other ideas that are religious in
| nature, and DEI is one of them.
| parasense wrote:
| > However, when I have to join a cheesy townhall once a month to
| discuss diversity hires, it makes me feel like I have no right to
| feel proud of any accomplishments I've made within the company.
|
| I feel the same way, kinda...
|
| I'm male, and not a PoC, so perhaps maybe my perspective is
| different?
|
| I'm told that I'm privileged, but that's not how I feel.
|
| I'm told due to systemic bias that I'm probably unaware of my
| privilege, but I feel well aware of all the disadvantages I've
| actually experienced. And yet I'm open minded to exploring the
| way I could be oblivious to other people' problems.
|
| I'm not sure if I'm actually the bad guy, or if I'm being gas
| lighted.
| Dooflegna wrote:
| > I'm male, and not a PoC, so perhaps maybe my perspective is
| different? > > I'm told that I'm privileged, but that's not how
| I feel.
|
| Think of it this way:
|
| As a male and not POC, you're starting at the starting line
| with no inherent disadvantages.
|
| If you're a woman, you're farther behind on the starting line.
|
| If you're a POC, you're farther behind on the starting line.
|
| Privilege isn't supposed to make you feel -bad-. You didn't
| choose to be born male and white. It just happened to you. Your
| accomplishments are still your own, your life is still your
| own.
|
| But it's ignorance (willful or otherwise) to deny the inherent
| advantages of being male and white, as compared to women, or
| POC, or people who are LGBTQ.
|
| Put differently: if feeling bad about being privileged is the
| worst part of your experience where it comes to things like
| diversity, then you are a very privileged person.
| subjectsigma wrote:
| I've no evidence to support this, but I strongly suspect these
| kind of dog-and-pony shows are a result of there simply not being
| enough black voices. White people want to be inclusive but they
| consistently fail to understand what black people actually want
| out of DEI... because they're not consulting enough (or any)
| black people.
|
| The best thing you can do is speak up and make sure your opinion
| is heard in a way that is simple and direct. Doing it on HN is
| fine but that won't change your immediate situation, you need to
| talk to your leadership.
| concordDance wrote:
| > because they're not consulting enough (or any) black people
|
| They are, problem is those black women they consult are mostly
| DEI people. Who are very different from the actual worker.
| subjectsigma wrote:
| I would include that under "not consulting enough black
| people" but you make an important clarification & I agree
| with you.
| smcl wrote:
| Damn yeah it sounds like your company is really clumsy and a bit
| patronising in how they've implemented or communicated these
| initiatives. I think if I was in your position I would feel the
| same way. I wish I had some advice for you, I think only you and
| other PoC in your company would know whether mentioning this to
| HR would help the situation or make it worse and more annoying :/
| [deleted]
| dncornholio wrote:
| And thus, hiring for diversity is just another form of
| discrimination.
| stcroixx wrote:
| Unequal treatment based on skin color harms all of us.
| pjkundert wrote:
| And DEI programs are the most pernicious form of racism
| existing today.
|
| Nothing is worse than a group who believes they are
| harassing/oppressing you for your own good.
|
| There is no true diversity in human affairs apart from
| intellectual diversity.
|
| And if you look at the most DEI-compliant places -- they are
| desserts of intellectual diversity.
|
| Nobody interesting would want to work/study there.
| xwowsersx wrote:
| Interestingly enough, Pew Research ran a study[0] a few years
| back which found that the majority of whites, blacks, and
| Hispanics reject race-conscious hiring--even if it results in
| less diversity.
|
| I can only imagine what it would feel like to be a PoC in a
| company that has openly stated that their goal is to achieve a
| certain racial/ethnic composition regardless of standards. How
| would I not always have a sneaking suspicion that I was hired to
| fulfill some quota rather than on my own merits? Worse, I would
| feel that all of my colleagues are looking at me and wondering
| the same thing.
|
| Excuse the cynicism, but I think the reason these companies have
| to shout about their DEI initiatives from the rooftops is because
| they care less about diversity and helping disadvantaged groups
| and more about signalling their virtue to the rest of the world.
|
| [0]: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-
| trends/2019/05/08/america...
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| As a Hispanic man, I can say that I don't care about whether I
| earned my spot or lucked into it through my ancestry. Life
| isn't fair, and I'll gladly take whatever advantages I can
| scrounge up.
|
| The software interview process in particular is already so
| capricious that I feel absolutely no shame in tilting it in my
| favor in any way that I can.
| DrThunder wrote:
| You didn't "earn" anything if it was due to skin color and
| that's the point. I've gotten plenty of breaks in my life but
| I'm aware of what is earned and what isn't. It's one thing to
| be ok with the fact you got in but you need the awareness to
| understand the negatives of a system that gives you chances
| due to an innate characteristic you have no control over.
|
| The irony here is that if we all just accept the line of
| thinking you're using our society will go back to the exact
| "white male patriarchy" this DEI stuff is supposedly trying
| to fight. The only difference is that BiPOC or LGBTQ will
| replace the white male as the superior class. The next step
| is we can just ensure white males don't get a vote and can't
| own land or credit cards right?
| [deleted]
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| Man, it's really weird to find myself on the SJW side of
| this argument for once. I'm usually the token brown guy in
| Libertarian circles.
|
| Despite what you might've read on Tumblr or Fox News, I'm
| not planning to oppress anyone or commit white genocide.
|
| When I'm doing interviews or looking at resumes, I'll give
| an extra moment of consideration to anyone born in the USA
| who seems to have pulled him/herself up by their
| bootstraps. I personally think that's enough DEI from me,
| and I don't think it's something you should be too incensed
| about.
| DrThunder wrote:
| You're strawmanning a lot of what I said.
|
| My comment is just about what it leads to if we have a
| society that bases their hiring on specific skin colors.
| It seems like you're failing to differentiate between
| exactly what you're personally doing and the society wide
| affect of sitting back and accepting race based hiring.
| debacle wrote:
| You shouldn't feel bad about leveraging a system to your
| advantage. Life is hard.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Would you be okay with white and Asian people similarly
| applying in-group advantage towards their own races to the
| detriment of ours? The software interview process is
| capricious, but this doesn't justify racial discrimination.
| If we're so nonchalant about racism favoring us, we're
| hypocrites for criticizing racism favoring other groups over
| us.
|
| I am deeply troubled by racial discrimination favoring Latin
| people, despite benefitting from it in a narrow and immediate
| sense, because it makes people justified in carrying out
| their own discrimination potentially to my detriment.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| >Would you be okay with white and Asian people similarly
| applying in-group advantage towards their own races to the
| detriment of ours?
|
| This isn't a great take because there's tons of in-group
| advantages going on today that are deeply rooted in racial
| discrimination.
|
| The U.S. is still reeling from its deeply racist housing
| policies. What does this have to do with this DEI thread?:
|
| - Wealth is the _highest_ indicator of educational
| attainment, and in turn education is a high indicator of
| wealth. [1]
|
| - Zoning laws were explicitly racist and meant to keep out
| certain races from white neighborhoods. My parent's home
| built during the WWII era in the SFBAY had covenants
| attached to it that _stated under no uncertain terms that
| no PoC may live in the home_ (No longer enforceable of
| course). The racist roots of these laws is not a matter of
| speculation.
|
| - Most household wealth is through homeownership. [2]
|
| - High quality education is tied to housing via school
| districts, more expensive houses are located in schools
| with better funding and higher quality education.
|
| - Many zoning rules such as absurdly large minimum lot
| sizes, high setbacks, height limits (Designed to make it
| more expensive to buy for PoC in particular) remain in
| place _today_. It 's a positive feedback loop where those
| who had an advantage are more likely to retain that
| advantage.
|
| As OP stated, life isn't fair, and the rules are indeed
| rigged to favor those in power. Rebuking a group for using
| their limited advantages while ignoring the plethora of
| advantages for those up top isn't very equitable.
|
| [1] https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/page1-econ
| /2017....
|
| [2] https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-
| notes/disp...
| anon019293 wrote:
| [dead]
| kodah wrote:
| There's different reasons we design different systems to
| combat discrimination or lop-sided outcomes. White and
| Asian people, if that is their only identifying class
| characteristic, are not discriminated against generally. An
| argument could be made that white and Asian people from
| poor backgrounds don't make it into programming as much,
| but again - class lines. We probably should compensate for
| class more in discrimination laws.
|
| Black and Hispanic people do face more _active_
| discrimination. That has to do more with outward appearance
| and last names.
|
| Vets on the other hand are an example of a lop-sided
| outcome. It was discovered a while back that most vets
| often went into blue collar professions and didn't really
| climb that many ladders. They instituted a rule where
| campaign badge holders and disabled vets _must_ have their
| resumes reviewed first. Working on the west coast I can
| attest it 's rare to see vets at all. I've met more vets
| from non-US military in the tech world than I have from my
| own country (not complaining, but worth noting). There's
| definitely a small contingent of people who would put their
| political disposition into hiring if they saw a candidate
| was a vet, but military are coached to chop their military
| experience from their resume once they have a stack of
| experience to avoid this.
|
| All that to say, if I were OP I would not be okay with what
| you proposed just on a facade basis. If it incorporated
| class distinctions I might agree.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| I don't think I've ever been discriminated against for
| being Latin. Quite the contrary, I likely had significant
| advantages on account of my race in university
| admissions. I'm not sure if I've had such advantages in
| tech hiring, as I don't outwardly advertise my Latin
| identity precisely because I don't want progressive race-
| realists to use it as a factor in hiring, but if they did
| find it it probably did help.
|
| Unlike military service which has a discrete set of
| experiences and criteria, race is just something you're
| born with.
| kodah wrote:
| Every story is going to be different I think. Having
| tools that marginally shift our statistical outcomes
| makes sense to me. What doesn't make sense to me is the
| people who propose specific proportions as a set of
| diversity criteria, as it's difficult to determine _what_
| those proportions should be. At the moment I think most
| people are comfortable saying, "better than what they
| are".
|
| It also stands out in my mind that most of these
| statistics rely on self-identification. I don't know if
| anyone's dug into the validity of self-identification.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| Ah, well, I didn't want to go on some long tangent. I'm
| sure elsewhere in the thread people are hashing out the
| pros and cons of giving underrepresented people an unfair
| advantage.
|
| I just wanted to say that I don't think anyone should feel
| bad or like an impostor if they manage to get their foot in
| the door some way other than the traditional routes: you
| get lucky on a coding quiz, your dads meet at the country
| club, you bust your hump for 10 years in crappy jobs to
| work your way up to a good one, etc.
| conanbatt wrote:
| Argentinian here - this 100%.
| [deleted]
| hedora wrote:
| The concern is that there are places where minority hires are
| explicitly a lower bar, so those people get junk jobs and
| layoffs, regardless of ability.
|
| Personally, I think the problem should be pushed upstream
| whenever possible. (More funding for minority elementary and
| high schools, and candidate quotas for recruiters but not
| hires both are good examples of effective approaches).
| dayvid wrote:
| I agree 100%. I know many white and asian people who didn't
| get their foot in the door or opportunity solely because they
| had amazing skills and talent.
|
| Get in however you can and then work your ass off so no one
| doubts you.
| sinity wrote:
| > Interestingly enough, Pew Research ran a study[0] a few years
| back which found that the majority of whites, blacks, and
| Hispanics reject race-conscious hiring--even if it results in
| less diversity.
|
| Ideologues who are a tiny minority, which is overwhelmingly
| white, don't care tho.
|
| The Atlantic - Americans Strongly Dislike PC Culture -
| https://archive.ph/OXs6F
|
| It's a bit sad how little discussion it generated, because this
| data should be pretty damning.
|
| > 25 percent of Americans are traditional or devoted
| conservatives, and their views are far outside the American
| mainstream. Some 8 percent of Americans are progressive
| activists, and their views are even less typical. By contrast,
| the two-thirds of Americans who don't belong to either extreme
| constitute an "exhausted majority." Their members "share a
| sense of fatigue with our polarized national conversation, a
| willingness to be flexible in their political viewpoints, and a
| lack of voice in the national conversation."
|
| > So what does this group look like? Compared with the rest of
| the (nationally representative) polling sample, progressive
| activists are much more likely to be rich, highly educated--and
| white. They are nearly twice as likely as the average to make
| more than $100,000 a year. They are nearly three times as
| likely to have a postgraduate degree. And while 12 percent of
| the overall sample in the study is African American, only 3
| percent of progressive activists are.
|
| > While 83 percent of respondents who make less than $50,000
| dislike political correctness, just 70 percent of those who
| make more than $100,000 are skeptical about it.
|
| 8 percent of US population, who knows how tiny proportion of EU
| population (we're also on the Internets, you know). And they
| constantly pretend their views are default, and try to
| marginalize others online. With some success, sadly.
|
| Also, they blatantly discriminate against neurodivergent people
| - and if there's a single obviously beneficial diversity
| program, it'd be increasing neurotype diversity. Ways of
| thinking, not surface characteristics.
|
| Example: Damore, who was an aspie. You know, the disability
| where you have trouble with unclear communication that normies
| rely on. Which causes sth like 90% afflicted to be unemployed -
| because people insist on ignoring their issues. Tech is one of
| the areas where they can thrive - except in the name of
| "diversity", left wants to push them out. I don't understand
| how's that coherent. Who decides which identity group are
| worthy of protection?
|
| See "The Neurodiversity Case for Free Speech":
| https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58e2a71bf7e0ab3ba886c...
|
| > Administrators assume that the most vulnerable 'snowflakes'
| are always listeners, and never speakers.
|
| > Autism spectrum disorders are central to the tension between
| campus censorship and neurodiversity. This is because there's a
| trade-off between 'systematizing' and 'empathizing'.
| Systematizing is the drive to construct and analyze abstract
| systems of rules, evidence, and procedures; it's stronger in
| males, in people with autism/Asperger's, and in STEM fields.
| Empathizing is the ability to understand other people's
| thoughts and feelings, and to respond with 'appropriate'
| emotions and speech acts; it's stronger in females, in people
| with schizophrenia spectrum disorders, and in the arts and
| humanities. Conservative satirists often mock 'social justice
| warriors' for their 'autistic screeching', but Leftist student
| protesters are more likely to be high empathizers from the
| arts, humanities, and social sciences, than high systematizers
| from the hard sciences or engineering.
|
| > Consider the Empathy Quotient (EQ) scale, (...) it seems like
| a higher EQ score would strongly predict ability to follow
| campus speech codes that prohibit causing offense to others.
| People on the autism spectrum, such as those with Asperger's,
| score much lower on the EQ scale. (Full disclosure: I score 14
| out of 80.) Thus, aspies simply don't have brains that can
| anticipate what might be considered offensive, disrespectful,
| unwanted, or outrageous by others - regardless of what campus
| speech codes expect of us.
|
| > From a high systematizer's perspective, most 'respectful
| campus' speech codes are basically demands that they should
| turn into a high empathizer through sheer force of will.
|
| > The ways that speech codes discriminate against systematizers
| is exacerbated by their vagueness, overbreadth, unsystematic
| structure, double standards, and logical inconsistencies -
| which drive systematizers nuts. For example, most speech codes
| prohibit any insults based on a person's sex, race, religion,
| or political attitudes. But aspie students often notice that
| these codes are applied very selectively: it's OK to insult
| 'toxic masculinity' and 'patriarchy', but not to question the
| 'wage gap' or 'rape culture'; it's OK to insult 'white
| privilege' and the 'Alt-Right' but not 'affirmative action' or
| 'Black Lives Matter'; it's OK to insult pro-life Catholics but
| not prosharia Muslims. The concept of 'unwelcome' jokes or
| 'unwelcome' sexual comments seems like a time-travel paradox to
| aspies - how can you judge what speech act is 'unwelcome' until
| after you get the feedback about whether it was welcome?
|
| > When a policy is formally neutral, but it adversely affects
| one legally protected group of people more than other people,
| that's called 'disparate impact', and it's illegal. People with
| diagnosed mental disorders qualify as 'disabled' people under
| the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and other
| federal laws, so any speech code at a public university that
| imposes disparate impact on neurominorities is illegal.
| docmars wrote:
| Absolutely based, thank you for sharing this. I know my
| comment doesn't contribute much here, but if anything, a
| signal of validation.
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| My advice is to be a great engineer - not a diversity hire. Stay
| clear of all the DEI stuff.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| > In my opinion, it would be beneficial if DEI initiatives were
| confidential and kept "hush hush" within a company.
|
| They shouldn't exist at all. If DEI favored white people, it
| would be "problematic", and that tells you all you need to know.
| As if non-white people can't be successful on their own and need
| special treatment. Tokenizing human beings to get social-credit
| for your corporation is, frankly, disgusting and extremely
| racist.
| John23832 wrote:
| (Black man here)
|
| Two things can be true at once.
|
| I have built great things. I can stand on my own. My merits are
| great. I do not want to be the token employee that is trotted
| around for Diversity Points (tm). I do not like the diversity
| porn that a lot of these DEI groups get off on.
|
| That being said, I do recognize that I have benefited from these
| groups (at least at their most genuine). There are groups that
| are aimed at cultivating black people in tech. Prior to this, in
| the earlier internet age, you had to cut your teeth on IRC and
| forums. That was where technical people were in the computer tech
| space.
|
| Do you know VIRULENTLY anti-black (or woman, or gay) these
| communities were? I can't begin to describe it. That is totally
| off-putting to someone who has the ability succeed but does not
| want to deal with the hate. There's also the fact that most
| (read: all) of the computing pioneers are white. I respect all of
| those people, but it does help to have someone to look up to. I'm
| positive that Satya and Sundar are great motivators for indian
| kids to look up to (as they should be).
|
| These DEI initiatives aren't perfect in any way, but the goal is
| to give the affected groups the foundations to succeed. To put
| people in the affected communities out front as role models. I
| accept the annoyances for the sake of good and progress.
|
| EDIT: In the below thread are many people who personally identify
| as omnipresent IRC Gods, so my experience must have happened in
| an alternate universe. My bad.
| rayiner wrote:
| > I'm positive that Satya and Sundar are great motivators for
| indian kids to look up to (as they should be).
|
| I'm doubtful about that. At least among my cohort (first
| generation south asian immigrants to the east coast) there's
| not a strong sense of racial identity. There's strong identity
| in the sense of ties to religion, home countries, culture, and
| traditions, but not group identification or a feeling of
| collective destiny. I recently told my dad about being at a
| professional event where there were three south asians "at the
| table" so to speak. He was like "huh, that's interesting." He
| had a stronger positive reaction when I mentioned that Chris
| Sununu (governor of New Hampshire) went to the same high school
| as my brother and me. I have to think it's similar to Jewish
| Americans--they're not looking up to Mark Zuckerberg because
| he's Jewish.
|
| I also disagree that Indian kids "should" look up to Pichai or
| Nadella because of their ethnicity. Insofar as there is an "us"
| --a definable group with distinct interests--"representation"
| will never advance those interests. Pichai or Nadella will run
| their companies how white shareholders want them to, exactly
| the same way as a white CEO would. They wouldn't have been
| selected if that wasn't the case. The "representation" doesn't
| advance the agenda of the group in any meaningful way.
|
| To the contrary, "representation" is used by white people to
| obtain the support of minority groups without giving them
| anything. I see white people pressuring my daughter to look up
| to Kamala Harris (because Harris "looks like her"). This is
| just manipulation. Harris will not meaningfully advance the
| distinct interests of south asian people, nor is she a good
| model of south asian culture or values.
|
| As to your main point--for sure people on the internet have
| better manners today. Is that creditable to DEI initiatives?
| Can we have online spaces and workplaces where nobody is made
| to feel excluded because of their immutable characteristics
| without forcing people to write diversity statements or having
| Robin Di Angelo types come in to lecture white people about
| their inherent racism?
| rirze wrote:
| I was hoping to find a reply like this; glad someone could
| articulate it better than I could.
|
| Overall, I believe that culturally-same role models is a
| stand-in for lazy parenting. Children whose parents
| constantly push their kids to be better, push harder will
| look towards successful people of any cultural background.
| Compare that with children with apathetic parents, who I
| surmise will only have the imagination to self-associate with
| those who "look" like them.
| rayiner wrote:
| It also robs even involved minority parents and communities
| of power. If you persuade minority kids to look to
| "representation" for ethnic role models, then the white
| people who select those representatives gain tremendous
| power in defining ethnic identity. Call me crazy, but I
| want my kids to learn what it means to be Bangladeshi from
| me and my parents and my extended family, not from teachers
| or role models selected by white people for that purpose.
|
| It also reduces identity to something that's offensively
| shallow. White people think Kamala Harris is a role model
| for south Asian girls because she has the experience of
| walking around with dark skin in America. But white
| people's reaction is extremely low on the list of things
| that define south Asian identity.
| nilmask wrote:
| > To the contrary, "representation" is used by white people
| to obtain the support of minority groups without giving them
| anything. I see white people pressuring my daughter to look
| up to Kamala Harris (because Harris "looks like her"). This
| is just manipulation. Harris will not meaningfully advance
| the distinct interests of south asian people, nor is she a
| good model of south asian culture or values.
|
| It's also not hard to receive this behavior as completely
| fucking racist. Do whites presuppose that just because we
| have the same skin color, ethnic background, or similar
| physical features, that we will be aligned on political or
| philosophical points?
|
| How has it become acceptable to participate in such blatantly
| racist behavior, while still somehow being able to publicly
| label one's self as "liberal" or "anti-racist?"
|
| I think it's time we conduct an audit of all self-identifying
| liberals or DEI advocates to determine which ones are
| actually free from unconscious bias and implicit
| associations, and which have merely co-opted the movement to
| weaponize minorities as part of a political power struggle.
| qdog wrote:
| Yeah, I dunno if these people hung out on the Care Bears irc
| channel or what, but every 'open' forum and most of the closed
| ones had tons of racism/sexism/whateverism. Just look at
| twitter nowadays to see how awful some posters can be.
|
| I've worked with a very small handful of black people over my
| career, several indians, a fair number of asians and a few
| hispanics.
|
| The demographics in my experience were all pretty abyssmal,
| without some sort of policy in place, the actual bias that ends
| up hiring only other white males was never going to end. I
| would say it's probably still strong, as a recent place I
| worked was incredibly white and male.
|
| My understanding is that hiring becomes much more fair if you
| are able to remove all racial/sexual details from a hiring
| process (at least, if resumes are shown without those details
| you get expected results, but with those details a bias
| appears).
|
| That said, I think a lot of these people are upset by DEI
| precisely because it is resulting in more diversity. If you are
| biased against the people who DEI helps get hired, you are
| obviously going to think they are poor hires, because you
| always thought "those people" tend to be poor hires. Assuming
| OP is actually a black man, I think he needs to realize that
| many, if not most, people who make assumptions about him based
| on DEI or the like, are always looking for an excuse for their
| own biases.
| lliamander wrote:
| > That said, I think a lot of these people are upset by DEI
| precisely because it is resulting in more diversity.
|
| You are exemplifying a fallacy known as _asymmetric insight_
| , whereby you assume to know more about someone else's "real"
| intentions than they do. While at some level we do have to
| have a mental model of other people's motivations, the
| temptation is strong to pathologize those we disagree with
| rather than take their ideas seriously.
|
| So tell me, did you come to your conclusion based on sincere
| effort to actually understand the mindset of those opposed to
| DEI, or are you using it as an excuse to avoid thinking about
| their actual arguments?
| qdog wrote:
| I certainly haven't conducted a scientific study, this
| isn't my field.
|
| I am, however, a white male who checks most of the 'tech
| dude' boxes, and I don't usually have to guess what people
| are thinking about this. I just have to be around at the
| right time for people to make their opinions known. So my
| evidence is anecdotal, but no, I don't have to wonder if
| people have racial bias, they will tell you if you let
| them. I have also observed a manager who's religion made
| women subservient, and no woman he ever managed was
| promoted. Bias or just probability? One of those women is
| now a very successful director of engineering. (She left
| his team and was promoted elsewhere)
|
| While I can't speak to all DEI programs, the intent at most
| places I've been is to interview a wider range of people.
| That might show slight favor to interviewing, but the bar
| for hiring does not change. This is not just a problem in
| tech, the relatively recent NFL head coach issue of teams
| deciding to hire a coach and then interviewing a black
| coach after that "for compliance" with no intent of
| actually considering them is a huge problem.
|
| If you work at a place that truly only hires people to
| check a box and doesn't care about that person's success or
| the impact around them, sure, move on.
| throwawaydei wrote:
| [dead]
| domain8543 wrote:
| In other words, if you received hate it was probably
| something you did. I literally cannot fathom the idea that
| something was wrong was us.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| As someone who was born at the dawn of the internet age, was
| the early internet really that racist?
|
| I feel this is something that will be lost to the history books
| if it isn't at least recorded for posterity.
| slackfan wrote:
| [flagged]
| eldaisfish wrote:
| way to miss the point and your argument is a strawman.
|
| People on IRC didn't care about "Who you were" because the
| assumption was that you came from privilege. Privilege
| usually translated to white, urban, heterosexual male. Those
| groups said some horrible things about other communities
| because they felt the space was "safe".
|
| Now that this is changing and calling people "orientals" or
| "gay" is no longer acceptable, there is an attempt to rewrite
| history - as you are trying to do here.
| slackfan wrote:
| Privilege is not assumed, it is given. Who is this
| privelege given by?
| flippinburgers wrote:
| If by new era of enlightenment you mean a new era of
| unquestionable bigotry I suppose you are correct.
| slackfan wrote:
| You know what doesn't translate in text? Sarcasm.
| barneygale wrote:
| > unless you made your incidental identity the central topic
| of discussion in unrelated conversation
|
| http://bash.org/?top try ctrl-fing for "fag", "homo", "jew",
| etc. These insults were routinely used on the early internet
| _without_ anyone volunteering their gender/ethnicity/sexual
| preferences/whatever.
| dang wrote:
| I'm afraid you're breaking the site guidelines in more than
| one way. Your comment crosses into personal attack by
| implicitly accusing the GP of lying ("you weren't there").
| And you're posting ideological battle/flamebait comments not
| just in this thread but in other threads.
|
| These things are not what HN is for and destroy what it is
| for, so we end up having to ban accounts that do them.
|
| If you'd please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to
| the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > There are groups that are aimed at cultivating black people
| in tech. Prior to this, in the earlier internet age, you had to
| cut your teeth on IRC and forums.
|
| This reasoning sucks. We need DEI in corporations now because
| IRC was toxic?
| golergka wrote:
| > it does help to have someone to look up to
|
| I keep hearing this idea from americans, that it's important to
| have a role model that has exactly the same ethnicity, gender
| and sexual identity as you do. It never made any sense to me.
| Can you explain it please?
| Pegasus930 wrote:
| [flagged]
| jablongo wrote:
| To be clear, do you think race-based diversity hiring is good?
| I can agree that having good role models and educational
| opportunities is important but I'm not so sure race-aware
| hiring is a good thing, for the reasons stated by OP and
| others.
|
| At what point do you think DEI should stop? Is there any metric
| or threshold at which these programs/events should end? One of
| the biggest issues for me is that these measures are either
| argued as good because "diversity is intrinsically good" or
| because "we are righting historical wrongs", meaning
| reparations. While one could argue for or against either of
| these justifications, it would seem that the former would
| terminate once some ideal demographic composition is achieved,
| while the latter would end once some calculated total sum of
| restitution is reached. To me, these details are very
| important, since race-based hiring is an intrinsically bad
| thing that should be avoided. After all, it is part of the
| reason people of color got so screwed over in the 20th century
| in the first place.
| nullfield wrote:
| They'll never end, because 1. The people making money off of
| running them don't want them to, and 2. "historically
| oppressed groups" never (and can never) become "not
| historically oppressed"; it's my belief that this is
| intentional via the choice of words used by the DEI cadre.
| [deleted]
| f6v wrote:
| > Do you know VIRULENTLY anti-black
|
| Many communities were and are generally anti-human.
| lliamander wrote:
| It's certainly not obvious to me, as someone who never ventured
| on IRC, that IRC culture would have a serious impact on
| minority representation. Most people (minority or not) were
| never on IRC to begin with, so I doubt that would explain (for
| instance) the under-representation of minorities in Computer
| Science programs.
|
| I mean, you say that IRC was virulently anti-gay, and yet gay
| and trans people are over-represented in tech.
|
| Even if we accept that IRC culture drove minorities away from
| tech, that doesn't justify common corporate DEI policies such
| as affirmative action, unconscious bias training, etc. Those
| are just bad, counter-productive polices.
|
| > EDIT: In the below thread are many people who personally
| identify as omnipresent IRC Gods, so my experience must have
| happened in an alternate universe. My bad.
|
| You are generalizing from you own experience, expect others to
| do the same. And, to be fair, they probably aren't saying that
| your experience didn't happen, but that it either wasn't
| representative, or that you are misinterpreting some of it.
| trenchgun wrote:
| > Prior to this, in the earlier internet age, you had to cut
| your teeth on IRC and forums. That was where technical people
| were in the computer tech space.
|
| > Do you know VIRULENTLY anti-black (or woman, or gay) these
| communities were? I can't begin to describe it. That is totally
| off-putting to someone who has the ability succeed but does not
| want to deal with the hate.
|
| Wow, thank you. Gives me a new perspective.
| catiopatio wrote:
| He's completely, totally, and absolutely incorrect.
|
| I spent decades on IRC starting in the early 90s, and this is
| a politically-driven contemporary re-imagination of what
| existed at the time.
|
| We were open to all because we ourselves didn't fit in
| elsewhere.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Some communities did have a lot of virulently racist and
| male-chauvinist trolling. The infamous 4chan forum culture
| didn't just spring up out of thin air, after all. It's a
| bit harder to tell whether that was anywhere close to
| representative, of course.
| spoiler wrote:
| I think 4chan can _hardly_ be put in the same category as
| freenode channels. It 's just an incredible leap in
| reasoning in my experience with both (albeit not much
| experience with 4chan, others than the occasional snippet
| I've seen online)
| moomoo11 wrote:
| Yeah but 4chan and sites like it are shit. Why even go
| there? For one of those low tier sites there were
| hundreds of forums and communities which were normal.
|
| Not a valid data point. You're picking some fringe
| element and assuming the whole internet is like that.
| [deleted]
| dylan604 wrote:
| [flagged]
| drstewart wrote:
| What evidence did the person he replied to provide to
| back up his claims? Or does he get a pass from providing
| facts because of... reasons that are related to DEI
| initiatives on your part?
|
| I believe they call this "the soft bigotry of low
| expectations"
| spoiler wrote:
| My experience is different, too. I've never experienced
| these racist/sexists IRC communities in the past either.
| Sure, there'd be the occasional asshole like everywhere
| else online, but they'd get warned (and banned
| eventually).
|
| Why is your comment so passive aggressive, though? While
| the counter claim hasn't presented any proof, the same
| holds true for the original claim.
|
| You seem to be only thinking critically of the comment
| that goes against your confirmation bias. It's not a good
| habit to have.
| darkwater wrote:
| > My experience is different, too. I've never experienced
| these racist/sexists IRC communities in the past either.
| Sure, there'd be the occasional asshole like everywhere
| else online, but they'd get warned (and banned
| eventually).
|
| Would you be part of the target audience, back then? Or
| you were part of the main group and just remember that
| "nobody was harassing nobody"?
| spoiler wrote:
| Disclaimer: White gay man here.
|
| So, I experienced homophobia first hand at least.
|
| I've never felt like the communities (any of the tech
| related ones) were anything but wholesome, though.
|
| Bullshit was immediately called out, and in more severe
| cases handled by ops (as was I in a few channels).
|
| Again, we are talking about COMMUNITIES. Not INDIVIDUALS.
|
| So, I guess I was (somewhat) in the privileged white male
| group, but that doesn't mean I'm illiterate or can't
| reason and feel empathy.
| dylan604 wrote:
| just dismissing someone else's claims out of hand because
| they don't fit your personal experience--while not on the
| same level of negative as making actual racists posts--
| it's not helpful to say the least.
|
| when someone makes posts of their personal experience,
| the follow up posts that claim "my experience is
| different" proves what? are you honestly suggesting
| you're having a better experience? that's great for you.
| are you trying to make the the original poster jealous
| and feel superior?
|
| are you suggesting, "keep your head up because it's not
| that way everywhere so don't let 'em ruin it for you"?
|
| are you trying to argue and say they are wrong because
| their experience differs from yours so it must not be
| true?
|
| but to tell someone that they are totally incorrect about
| their very on personal experience is just baffling
| spoiler wrote:
| I can't tell if your questions are genuine or not, since
| they seem passive aggressive. But I'll humour you:
|
| They made a blanket statement about how all of IRC is a
| racists/sexists shithole. They obviously have some
| unresolved resentment, and I am not denying it seems from
| a bad experience; certainly wouldn't from good ones.
|
| My comment wasn't meant to make them feel bad (maybe
| that's something you indulge in, given your comment
| etiquette).
|
| It was meant to offer a different perspective--of someone
| who was _a part_ of some of those large communities. And
| I was involved in a lot of technical ones on Freenode
| around 2000s. Those communities put a lot of effort into
| inclusivity (and was an operator in some) and generally
| making everyone feel welcomed.
|
| So it feels a bit like a spit in the face to see someone
| going around talking about technical IRC channels being
| Xist.
|
| I'm not sure when they added the EDIT to their original
| post, but the hypocrisy added another layer of annoyance,
| trying to invalidate any comment speaking about their
| experience and writing off authors as "omnipotent IRC
| Gods" when nobody here but them is talking blanket
| statement bullshit.
|
| Edit: I'm not saying there's weren't
| racist/homophonic/whatever communities on IRC. I know a
| lot of shitty fandom channels I joined and promptly left
| to find better ones. So yes they were out there.
|
| Edit 2: Also, I think I took their comment too
| personally, given I was there and I know how much effort
| was put into making it feel welcoming for everyone.
|
| Also, I find it ludicrous you're trying to tell me off
| for commenting online--whilst you yourself are commenting
| online--and claiming my experiences don't matter, but
| another person's do, all in an attempt paint me as doing
| the same lol. But anyway, I digress.
| pjc50 wrote:
| This is obviously going to depend on the space, but I
| suspect many of the white participants simply won't
| remember it because the bigotry was both casual and just
| euphemistic enough.
| duckmysick wrote:
| I don't think there are IRC logs from the 90s, apart from
| bash.org, but we could check Usenet archives to see how
| inclusive (or not) it was back then.
| darkwater wrote:
| > We were open to all because we ourselves didn't fit in
| elsewhere.
|
| Yes, totally, most of us were indeed social misfits. But
| many of us also instead of being empathic and understand
| what was the real issue there, simply perpetrate the same
| abuse to someone else who was in a weaker position.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| I was never on IRC much but I spent an awful lot of time on
| usenet and he's a lot more correct than you are.
| hedgehog wrote:
| That was my experience as well.
| DEDLINE wrote:
| Yeah I forgot all about this. Also a lot of anti-Semitism.
| You had to have some thick skin on the old internet.
| jrm4 wrote:
| (Black man here as well)
|
| This is a great way to put it. I mean, I'm a bit older and over
| time I've been used to actually being that token, because for a
| lot of places I've been it was me and no one else. So, I didn't
| much mind the role as something of a pioneer.
|
| So I'd say, anyone who doesn't like it, e.g. DEI, definitely
| understand the history, please -- and moreover, the difficulty
| of externally changing culture. It's ultra-clumsy, but at least
| for a time it was both inevitable and necessary.
|
| I very much don't personally enjoy is at as well -- but I don't
| think that means it's without value. I suppose I see even the
| bad parts as a "bug, not a feature," because we're talking
| about it.
| aliqot wrote:
| Growing up on IRC, I have very much the same experience as you
| but quite opposite as I experienced hardly any racism, and
| nobody knew my identity either.
|
| Nobody wanted to involve their personal lives or details until
| recently when identity and identifying became the thing.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| I don't remember anyone trying to doxx anyone's race on
| freenode. Perhaps they're talking about USENET/IRC at large
| as opposed to the tech community which I believe were mostly
| on freenode (now libera).
|
| Otherwise I can only assume that chats within all-chat
| appeared to be racist in nature but again, that's not
| something I've seen (especially unchallenged) in any of the
| freenode channels I frequented.
| kfajdsl wrote:
| I'm much much younger than John23832, but I definitely
| recognized a lot of the same in some of the gaming
| communities I was a part of in the mid to late 2010s. There
| wasn't quite as much racism (at least in the places I hung
| out), but there was plenty of sexism and homophobia. It
| wouldn't necessarily be explicit, but there were lots of
| offhand comments and jokes. That's how racism (and sexism,
| homophobia, ...) tends to present itself; it's a lot more
| subtle than people straight up going "I hate ${group}".
|
| However, I will say that I first got properly exposed to
| tech/computing by doing FIRST robotics in high school (2017),
| and those competitions were very diverse. Everyone I met
| through FIRST (students and mentors) was very accepting of
| everyone, regardless of gender, race, sexuality, etc. My
| college experience (classes, competition team, internships,
| etc) has thankfully been more of the same.
| letrowekwel wrote:
| I feel that with gaming communities the main problem is
| simply having too many teenagers without supervision. It's
| pretty much like school really, immature people picking on
| others because of their own insecurity / problems.
| Eventually most people even in very toxic communities grow
| up and stop hating people for no logical reason, at least
| the smart ones.
| John23832 wrote:
| I did FIRST (about 10 years before you, ha). FIRST is a
| very inclusive space by design. I think it's great.
| kfajdsl wrote:
| Ha, that's awesome; I loved meeting the mentors who also
| did FIRST way back. It's a great program, I credit it for
| putting me where I am now!
| naasking wrote:
| > It wouldn't necessarily be explicit, but there were lots
| of offhand comments and jokes. That's how racism (and
| sexism, homophobia, ...) tends to present itself; it's a
| lot more subtle than people straight up going "I hate
| ${group}".
|
| Don't conflate those jokes and offhand comments with hate.
| You're erasing all sorts of meaningful differences between
| basically harmless husbands joking about their wives or
| differences between men and women, and Andrew Tate.
|
| It's also a poor tactic to effect change. If you
| immediately group basically harmless in-group type
| behaviours like these with actual devastating harm, you
| make yourself and your objections look silly causing people
| to dismiss you, and it's far harder to change behaviour
| after calling someone a hateful bigot, than it is to ask
| they tone it down because a joke made someone a little
| uncomfortable. I think you can easily imagine the
| difference in defensiveness each response might elicit.
| [deleted]
| tremon wrote:
| Similarly, don't assume that all racism is expressed as
| hate. You're erasing all sorts of meaningful difficulties
| experienced by minorities if you assume that only overtly
| hateful comments can be disparaging.
| naasking wrote:
| > Similarly, don't assume that all racism is expressed as
| hate.
|
| Who really claims that though? Saying "black people are
| always late" is racist because it's a racial prejudice,
| but that's not an expression of hatred towards black
| people. I think everyone gets that.
|
| I also agree non-hateful comments can be insulting. So
| we're in agreement: erasing nuance is dumb. My point is
| that this nuance dictates that we shouldn't group these
| distinct behaviours all together and respond to them the
| same way.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| Angsty teens trying to push the boundaries of what is
| socially acceptable are unfortunately heavily
| overrepresented in Internet culture, from what I've found.
|
| A bit of pushback and people are usually super apologetic.
| Usually they're just aping someone else who said something
| counter-culture because they thought it sounded badass, and
| don't really believe it.
| doix wrote:
| I was only active on IRC in later years (early 2000's
| onwards) and there was definitely a lot of casual homophobia.
| Using 'gay' as a synonym for bad was extremely common, I
| picked it up as well. Calling someone a fag was done all the
| time as well, not even always as an insult.
|
| I don't think the majority of people using the words were
| actually homophobic (I wasn't), just copying other people to
| "fit in" without even thinking of the possibility it was
| harming someone. I think it was early 2004-05 that someone
| private messaged me explaining that it sucks when people use
| the word that way and I stopped.
|
| I don't recall much racism against black people, but I can
| totally see the N word being used casually in the same way in
| some other servers/channels.
| John23832 wrote:
| It's not about telling people your ethnicity, gender, or
| sexual orientation, it's about WHAT IS SAID about your
| ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation.
|
| The beauty of the internet is anonymity (to a certain
| extent), but that doesn't mean that you can't see or hear
| things that exclude you.
| busterarm wrote:
| 2/3 of GNAA weren't even white people.
| [deleted]
| caeril wrote:
| [dead]
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Exactly. The old saying was "The beauty of the Internet is
| nobody knows if you're a dog."
|
| ... except they didn't mean dog, and we never said why it
| might matter what you are or what other people were
| assuming you were absent further information.
| slavik81 wrote:
| > The beauty of the Internet is nobody knows if you're a
| dog
|
| That comic meant a lot to me. When I was growing up, I
| found that most adults would treat me with condescension.
| On the internet, I could engage in conversation as an
| equal. Anonymity didn't change the prejudices that people
| held, but it did change my experience.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I agree, and I had a similar formative experience.
| There's a great quote about being alive during the era of
| the moon landing that also resonates with me on this
| topic: "It was as if all of us, all over the world, had
| been given permission to dream big dreams."
|
| I think it was a strict step forward over the previous
| status quo but (not unlike the changes to American
| culture after military necessity broke racial segregation
| barriers in the military during World War II) it's not
| the final step.
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| >> except they didn't mean dog
|
| The quote is from a 1993 New Yorker cartoon which
| literally has two dogs talking.
|
| See the original image:
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f8/Internet_d
| og....
|
| 'Dog' could be a placeholder, but the cartoon showed
| dogs.
| John23832 wrote:
| Dog was used a a euphemism for undesirable. In the more
| specific case of the image, black. Look at the color of
| the dogs.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_kno
| ws_...
| sinity wrote:
| Of course they meant dog. Which is a placeholder for
| _anything else_.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > they meant dog
|
| > which is a placeholder for
|
| ... exactly. It's a placeholder; not literal.
|
| It's a placeholder because if the New Yorker had run a
| comic that said "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a
| black man," that wouldn't have been funny at all.
| godelski wrote:
| Definitely no hints to that in the cartoon at all.
| None... none at all... >.> <.< >.>
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f8/Internet_d
| og....
| catiopatio wrote:
| No, we literally meant dog. It was a joke.
|
| Why might it matter? Because the rest of the world was a
| lot more racist and sexist, but IRC wasn't.
| some_furry wrote:
| The joke is even funnier if you're a furry, and the
| entire point of your online persona is _people knowing
| you 're a dog_. (Even if your fursona actually is, say, a
| cat. The joke is enhanced.)
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > but IRC wasn't
|
| No, sorry, I was there. That's the key thing people need
| to remember about the Old Internet.
|
| Some of IRC was _extremely_ racist and sexist. Almost all
| of the rest was "regular" racist and sexist. It was
| pretty closely related to 4chan culture (under-moderated
| by outside forces that had little power to force any
| particular standards upon the moderators). The magic of
| the medium was that since everything was text, nobody
| knew _you_ were the butt of the joke and you could
| pretend you weren 't.
|
| But go mask-off and admit you were a woman or a minority,
| and oh boy. Good luck with that. Good thing it's easy to
| change your handle, right?
|
| There's a reason anonymity as a virtue grew in that
| space: it protected people from those who hadn't left
| their IRL baggage behind by letting people pretend to be
| the "default" (which was almost always white men).
|
| We made a mistake believing the online space wasn't the
| real world. It was. It was just the real world where you
| could pretend to be something else. That was good at the
| time; it let more people participate by donning masks.
| But we should aim for better.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| IRC isn't a place, it's a platform for speech for lots of
| diverse groups, some of which were/are racist. Saying IRC
| was/is racist is like saying the internet is racist.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Yes. It's a generalization.
|
| ... but it's also a true generalization, in the sense
| that if you throw a dart at a random IRC channel across
| all networks, you'll proabably hit one where the level of
| tolerated racism and sexism is at least "American
| standard."
|
| > Saying IRC was/is racist is like saying the internet is
| racist
|
| I completely agree.
| mwcampbell wrote:
| Saying we should aim for better sounds nice, but I fear
| that bias and prejudice based on things that shouldn't
| matter is an incurable part of human nature, and
| anonymity, and using text for everything, would be our
| best defense. I say "would be" because I doubt that I can
| convince a large enough percentage of people, including
| my own cofounder, to use anonymized text chat for
| important things like interviews and work conversations.
| Especially the "text chat" part since, at least for now,
| talking is still much faster and smoother for most of us
| than accurate text input. But I can dream.
| spoiler wrote:
| No, no. You need other people to tell you what you meant.
| It's how things work now. Don't you dare think otherwise!
|
| And now we're doing this whole "guilty of X by technology
| choice".
|
| /s
|
| Where and when does this this neurosis stop?
| catiopatio wrote:
| We focused on technical discussions on technical channels.
|
| I'm sorry if you had a bad time on IRC, but as someone who
| cut their teeth on IRC in the early 90s, and got their
| career started through contacts made on IRC, what you
| describe couldn't be further from the kind of technical
| communities I participated in.
| John23832 wrote:
| Great, that's your experience. But I was sharing mine,
| and those of the other minorities I know very well.
| trogdor wrote:
| How do you know the experience of other _categories_ of
| people very well?
| John23832 wrote:
| I don't. I only know my experience and the experience of
| other minorities, that I personally know well, who have
| convey their experiences to me.
| spoiler wrote:
| > EDIT: In the below thread are many people who
| personally identify as omnipresent IRC Gods, so my
| experience must have happened in an alternate universe.
| My bad.
|
| There can only be one omnipresent IRC God, and you're
| talking to them. You can wipe your ass with your
| experience for all they care.
|
| My lord, the lack of self awareness...
| HideousKojima wrote:
| My experience was a lot of petty interpersonal drama
| instead of technical discussions, but very little about
| race.
| [deleted]
| coffeemug wrote:
| For context, I grew up in an ex-communist country.
|
| Elevating people, giving them opportunities to fulfill their
| potential, and giving people someone credible to look up to is
| a wonderful thing. We should do more of it, hopefully a lot
| more.
|
| The problem is that these things start out for a very good
| reason, but then take on a life of their own. When that happens
| it's very difficult to stop them, and in the limit case they
| result in horrendous tragedies. It isn't an abstract
| philosophical thing. There is an underlying social process, as
| real as gravity, and it's crucial to study and understand. I
| saw the consequences of this process first hand in my country.
|
| Roughly, it goes like this. When you create a mechanism to
| oppress someone to fix oppression, however small and
| ineffectual, this mechanism gets captured by bad actors. Then
| it grows and grows and grows in their hands. It's very
| difficult to stop because of a combination of moral-sounding
| purpose that many people fall for, and the benefits that accrue
| to a wide variety of interest groups. At the limit of this
| there is nothing left but oppression, for _anyone_.
|
| I'm not overly concerned about this in America because we're
| extraordinarily good at preventing centralization of power, but
| I must say watching bad actors accrue power and watching
| politicians pander to them has been disconcerting to say the
| least. I hope we can find a compromise that allows us to create
| opportunities while simultaneously kicking bad actors to the
| curb. I promise you you do not want to live in a society where
| the annoyances continue down their natural course.
| MockObject wrote:
| > Do you know VIRULENTLY anti-black (or woman, or gay) these
| communities were? I can't begin to describe it.
|
| That has not been my experience at all, whatsoever, and my
| involvement in tech communities, both online and in the flesh,
| dates back to the 1980s.
|
| > There's also the fact that most (read: all) of the computing
| pioneers are white. I respect all of those people, but it does
| help to have someone to look up to.
|
| I don't need people with whom I share superficial
| characteristics to look up to. I can look up to brilliant white
| men, men from all over the globe, or even women, believe it or
| not.
| tacitusarc wrote:
| I see a different risk with DEI, and I'd sure love your
| perspective if you're willing to give it. I think there's a
| certain class of people (mostly young and white though the fact
| they are white is explainable as a statistical artifact) who
| feel empowered by DEI to push for changes that are meaningless
| and burdensome, but give them a feeling of power and
| virtuousness. This includes changing away from "master" as a
| branch name, to creating an extensive list of taboo words such
| as "whitelist", "blacklist", and "subordinate", to chiding
| colleagues for saying "brown bag lunch"*.
|
| DEI not only legitimizes, but actually encourages the above
| behavior. This seems problematic to me for two reasons: first,
| it creates a positive feedback loop for (at best) actions that
| make one feel self righteous without adding anything of real
| value, and second, it undermines the importance of critical
| thinking and analysis in engineering.
|
| So, all that being said, the justification is these changes
| help make black people in tech feel more included, a goal I
| support. In your opinion, do these changes have the intended
| effect? Are they meaningful and useful?
|
| * For those who don't know, there used to be a racist practice
| by some fraternities, etc called a "brown bag test" where a
| brown bag was used to judge skin color for entry. This made
| brown bags racist, which in turn made brown bag lunches racist.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > * For those who don't know, there used to be a racist
| practice by some fraternities, etc called a "brown bag test"
| where a brown bag was used to judge skin color for entry.
| This made brown bags racist, which in turn made brown bag
| lunches racist.
|
| I think that's a inaccurate and misleading description. I
| think the correct term is "colorism" not "racism," and it
| sounds like those distinctions were more significant within
| the black community than outside of it. I don't think a
| stereotypical anti-black racist would accept a black person
| into a social club if his skin was as light as a paper bag.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_Paper_Bag_Test:
|
| > "The Brown Paper Bag Test" is a term in African-American
| oral history used to describe a colorist discriminatory
| practice within the African-American community in the 20th
| century, in which an individual's skin tone is compared to
| the color of a brown paper bag....
|
| > The Brown Paper Bag Test was heavily documented and
| normalized with historically black fraternities and
| sororities (especially among sororities) and historically
| black social clubs founded before 1960, whose members
| selected others who resembled themselves, generally those
| reflecting partial European ancestry.[8][9] Some privileged
| multi-racial people of color who came from families freed
| before the American Civil War attempted to distinguish
| themselves from the mass of freedmen after the war, who
| appeared to be mostly of African descent and from less
| privileged families.
| not_a_pet_rock wrote:
| colorism is just racism.
| rayiner wrote:
| Colorism isn't racism because racism isn't about color.
| Color is merely an imperfect proxy for distinguishing
| different groups of people. (Many white people,
| especially Greeks or Italians, are darker than many East
| Asians, but that doesn't change the racial categories.)
|
| In some communities, colorism is a byproduct of racial
| categorization based on color. But in many places it's
| just an aesthetic preference. Colorism in Asia and Africa
| long predates colonialism or contact with white people.
| An important thing to note is that in these societies,
| colorism doesn't imply that white people are seen as the
| most beautiful. A person can be too light, just as they
| can be too tall or too skinny.
| DrThunder wrote:
| There is power in victimhood now. If you can prove you're a
| victim or prove you're submitting to a certain group you've
| "victimized" then you are put at the top of the order. You
| become part of essentially a religious cult and given certain
| "powers" that you can bash the "sinners" over the head with.
|
| I think you're exactly right here, the largest proponents of
| this stuff tend to be white and left wing (mostly women). In
| a way I find them extremely racist. To me, they're acting
| just like OP says. They don't think certain groups are
| intelligent enough to bring themselves out of squalor and
| everyone MUST believe like they do; that skin color is an
| impediment. So, they need the white savior to come rescue
| them.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| >There is power in victimhood now
|
| Anyone who's been to Sunday school can tell you this isn't
| a new concept, and is _at least_ two millennia old (almost
| certainly longer, since Judaism has an even longer shared
| tradition). Christians have continued riding the coattails
| of their martyrs and "persecution" for centuries after
| they became the dominant force. If anything, the modern
| "woke victimhood" is merely the cultural legacy of
| evangelical Christianity that was (and arguably still is)
| deeply engrained in US culture.
| rayiner wrote:
| https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1490844296328593
| 411...
|
| This is probably the best description I've seen of the
| parallel:
|
| > wokeness is racialized neo-Marxism that uses collapsed
| mainline Protestantism as its leverage point,
| manipulating the guilt of the remnant elite and capturing
| the institutions that they have abandoned.
| DrThunder wrote:
| I'm confused... are you endorsing acting this way or
| against it?
|
| Kinda seems like you're justifying the current action of
| "woke" people by discussing past injustices? Isn't the
| whole idea of the "woke" DEI initiative to fix injustices
| in our society?
| kodah wrote:
| I think they're just saying this occurrence isn't unique
| and it doesn't look like they approve of it. Many of us
| identify with our own struggles in deep ways. If you
| create an opportunity for people to organize around those
| struggles then people will, because as was said, there is
| power there. That power is in representation. The problem
| is generally in the silo'ing of representation. This is,
| imo, what things like intersectionality begin to address.
|
| We have an entire country now that was founded based on
| legitimate religious persecution that devolved in the
| ~200 years since it's founding to go on to oppress
| others. We can and should do better.
| DrThunder wrote:
| Ok, and my point is that doing the exact same thing as
| those people did in the past isn't doing better. You
| don't fix oppression by moving that oppression to a new
| group.
|
| Simply pointing out that victimhood has always existed
| serves no purpose at all in response to my original
| comment.
|
| "This is, imo, what things like intersectionality begin
| to address."
|
| How? All intersectionality does is create a competition
| for the most oppressed. You will never be enough of a
| victim. Nothing good comes of a society that focuses
| specifically on how oppressed they are and vies for the
| most oppressed group or person.
|
| "We have an entire country now that was founded based on
| legitimate religious persecution"
|
| Name a country where this hasn't happened. There are many
| where this is still happening and to a further extent
| than anything in the US.
|
| Ironically, you're right in weird roundabout way that I
| do not think you fully comprehend. EVERYONE has been a
| victim of some sort so it's irrelevant and we shouldn't
| spend one iota more of our short lives trying to discern
| who the highest victims of our society are. What a waste
| and it does nothing to improve the supposed oppressed.
| kodah wrote:
| > Ok, and my point is that doing the exact same thing as
| those people did in the past isn't doing better
|
| This occurs to this day. I do agree that repeating bad
| patterns doesn't do us any favors but if you'd like to
| move _that_ needle, you need to sign on the largest
| groups first.
|
| > All intersectionality does is create a competition for
| the most oppressed
|
| This is not true. I can't give you a hip pocket
| introduction to intersectionality in a thread, but I can
| at least clarify things for you. There is no "hierarchy
| of oppression" in intersectionality. Not at least in any
| reading I've done, but as in all philosophies - beware
| who you read. The best short description I've found is
| this, "Intersectionality is the acknowledgement that
| everyone has their own unique experiences of
| discrimination and oppression and we must consider
| everything and anything that can marginalise people -
| gender, race, class, sexual orientation, physical
| ability". The key takeaway here is that oppression is
| _just_ oppression, the topic makes no inclination as to
| what 's worse. Someone who got bullied for having a
| southern accent in a northern state could've had a
| measurably worse experience than someone who was
| marginalized for their physical ability. Point being,
| intersectionality doesn't make a distinction between
| them. Instead, intersectionality promotes meeting people
| where they are and attempting to be thoughtful about how
| you approach those cases.
|
| While I do agree that perpetual victimhood is _not good_
| , there is no accepted timeline to stop seeing yourself
| as a victim of something. Rather, the steps you can take
| _after_ you stop seeing yourself as a victim are far more
| profound in your happiness.
|
| > Name a country where this hasn't happened. There are
| many where this is still happening and to a further
| extent than anything in the US.
|
| I can't. I'm not sure there's a point here on your end.
| We had high minded goals, saying we should do better is a
| reminder of those high minded goals and our own roots as
| Americans. It's not to rub your nose in some dirty
| history. Anyone that expects a perfect society is already
| starting from the wrong place.
|
| Your last statement veers onto intersectionality tracks
| and then derails suddenly. The reason intersectionality
| matters isn't to promote the most suffered people on the
| planet to the top. It's so that you as a human can
| understand them and they can understand you without your
| significantly different life experiences making you think
| each other are aliens or villains.
| foolswisdom wrote:
| Clarification please - where do you find "power in
| victimhood" in Judaism 2000+ years ago?
| Tycho wrote:
| The argument is probably that Judaism was the first
| religion to introduce _concern for the victim_ into its
| moral teachings, and therefore inevitably there would be
| people hijacking that to differentiate themselves, boost
| their status through claims to victimhood.
| John23832 wrote:
| > I see a different risk with DEI, and I'd sure love your
| perspective if you're willing to give it. I think there's a
| certain class of people (mostly young and white though the
| fact they are white is explainable as a statistical artifact)
| who feel empowered by DEI to push for changes that are
| meaningless and burdensome, but give them a feeling of power
| and virtuousness.
|
| Yes there are plenty of people who want to sit at the top of
| the food chain by way of gathering a "diverse" crowd.
|
| > DEI not only legitimizes, but actually encourages the above
| behavior. This seems problematic to me for two reasons:
| first, it creates a positive feedback loop for (at best)
| actions that make one feel self righteous without adding
| anything of real value, and second, it undermines the
| importance of critical thinking and analysis in engineering.
|
| This is not a problem with DEI. Look at the landgrab that is
| enterprise management.
|
| > In your opinion, do these changes have the intended effect?
| Are they meaningful and useful?
|
| Your premise is off, so I can't answer this.
|
| > * For those who don't know, there used to be a racist
| practice by some fraternities, etc called a "brown bag test"
| where a brown bag was used to judge skin color for entry.
| This made brown bags racist, which in turn made brown bag
| lunches racist.
|
| This isn't true. Paper bags were never racist. I don't know
| where you picked this from. This is a misleading description
| to make anti-racism seem absurd.
| vmilner wrote:
| Well, it (brown bag lunch) made the Stanford harmful
| language list. I agree there is enough moronic content on
| that list to give the impression that the writers were
| playing false-flag games. But I'm prepared to believe they
| were sincere.
| strawpeople wrote:
| [dead]
| travisjungroth wrote:
| > Yes there are plenty of people who want to sit at the top
| of the food chain by way of gathering a "diverse" crowd.
|
| Woah this suddenly made the behavior of some people who
| gave me the creeps but were doing "all the right things"
| make sense. Thanks.
|
| On the brownbag thing, I've had someone tell me we
| shouldn't say "picnic" because of a racist etymology. When
| I showed her this etymology wasn't real, she said it didn't
| matter. We still shouldn't say it because it might harm
| someone. This doesn't make anti-racism absurd. I think
| there are real heroes there. But _that_ interaction sure
| felt absurd.
| cmh89 wrote:
| >This isn't true. Paper bags were never racist. I don't
| know where you picked this from. This is a misleading
| description to make anti-racism seem absurd.
|
| What do you mean by 'isn't true'? It's at least real to
| some extent, without regard to how widespread it was.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_Paper_Bag_Test https://
| www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/question/2014/febr...
|
| It's also the case that DEI groups want people to stop
| using 'brown bag lunch'.
| John23832 wrote:
| > What do you mean by 'isn't true'? It's at least real to
| some extent, without regard to how widespread it was.
|
| The paper bag test doesn't make paper bags racist. It's a
| shade test.
|
| > It's also the case that DEI groups want people to stop
| using 'brown bag lunch'.
|
| I can't say that this hasn't happened. But if it has,
| this is one of the useless things that I take umbrage
| with in my original post.
| rnk wrote:
| Yes! Brown bags aren't racist, fraternities doing things
| like that were racist, at least as I see it.
| replygirl wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34681801
| throwaway4848 wrote:
| > I think there's a certain class of people (mostly young and
| white though the fact they are white is explainable as a
| statistical artifact) who feel empowered by DEI to push for
| changes that are meaningless and burdensome, but give them a
| feeling of power and virtuousness.
|
| A more compelling reason is because demonstrating
| "leadership" in DEI is a prerequisite to getting a promotion
| or getting a management job. It's baked into many job
| listings now and is part of the executive interview process.
| If you don't check the DEI box on some tangible dimension,
| you don't progress to the next round, especially if you are
| white.
| replygirl wrote:
| the brown bag thing was colorism, which while technically a
| subset of racism is not useful to investigate in the context
| of popular anti-racism as it pertains to DEI in the west,
| which would be better labeled as anti-white-supremacism
| [deleted]
| gfodor wrote:
| The key thing is there needs to be a falsifiable condition
| whereby we agree these programs have achieved their primary
| goal, and that the risk of scope creep, corruption, or other
| externalities like the ones the OP mentions has exceeded the
| potential further benefits, so they should be wound down. I'm
| not going to state my opinion here, but if such a condition is
| _not_ identified in any way, we should assume these groups will
| do what it takes to perpetuate themselves far past their point
| of utility, like any bureaucracy that doesn 't have a way to
| prove directly how they're contributing to the bottom line.
| grumpy_coder wrote:
| Very much agree with this comment, creating and gaming KPIs
| is at the heart of most DEI departments now.
|
| We do need long term improvements at the start of the funnel,
| but no-one is adding a 7 year KPI for improving stats of 14
| year old girls quitting AP math.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The falsifiable condition is that the underlying social
| attitudes driving the racism/sexism/etc have dissolved.
|
| Problem is, this is a social process that takes centuries to
| complete. You are never going to hit a point in a single
| institution where you can say "We fixed our diversity
| problem, let's go home", because it can just come back as you
| hire more people and older hires leave.
|
| Furthermore, society is frustratingly prone to generating new
| discriminatory attitudes. America is pretty conscious of a
| handful of very specific racial minorities, and we have a
| vague idea of what sexism looks like, but we have little
| knowledge of things like caste discrimination[0],
| colorism[1], classism and so on.
|
| To fully explain why this is a problem, try re-reading your
| original comment, but pretend it's talking about the police
| instead of DEI initiatives. What's our falsifiable condition
| where we say "ok, all the crimes are solved, let's abolish
| the police?"
|
| [0] Discrimination based on the occupation of your ancestors,
| typically driven by religious beliefs. India is the poster
| child for this though Japan had a form of it too.
|
| [1] Skin-color discrimination within a specific race. We
| don't see this in the US or Canada all that often because the
| mix of European ancestry that we brought over and called
| "White" is universally one skin color. Latin America has this
| in droves.
| gfodor wrote:
| What you have pointed out is the exact opposite of a
| falsifiable condition. If we can't disprove the possibility
| of a regression back to the past, then this is not meeting
| the test, and we should expect the results I mentioned.
|
| You actually could and should abolish the police in certain
| kinds of terminal states where crime was eradicated - the
| eradication may be due to a genuine shift in the way people
| behave (due to some other underlying reason.) One
| falsifiable condition would be "surveys show a fundamental
| shift in sentiment by the public towards the motives that
| have historically led to crime." If you're going to
| condition the abolishment of the police on a scenario where
| we need to also prove that this won't regress, then in a
| scenario where the underlying motive of crime is
| systematically gone, the police will exist and seek out
| ways to regenerate it to ensure they have a purpose, among
| other toxic phenomena.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > the eradication may be due to a genuine shift in the
| way people behave (due to some other underlying reason.)
|
| For a generation or two, sure, but eventually it will
| come back unless the cultural training continues. I mean,
| there's a reason for historic cultural universals such as
| racism, dueling between men, and talking down to lessers.
|
| I think the best case scenario is that DEI eventually
| gets rolled up into regular HR.
| gfodor wrote:
| Tribalism is pretty innate but the tribes change. I'd
| argue if DEI programs had an analog during the
| reformation era we would be more likely to see Protestant
| vs Catholic discrimination persist as those programs
| inflamed it for their own self preservation.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Why do you assume any particular DEI goalpost will
| persist for years or decades or centuries? It's not as if
| generalized racism has persisted against the same
| categories since the late 1500s.
|
| And why do you assume the generalized tribalism will
| persist based on particular initiatives? The old
| initiatives used to be hire from the gentry. Attitudes
| amongst the many do change. It doesn't matter if some
| vocal minorities keep the same attitudes going.
|
| DEI initiatives and targets are measured periodically:
| https://hbr.org/2021/02/research-how-companies-committed-
| to-...
| gfodor wrote:
| The entire question of this thread is the mechanism by
| which DEI can unwind a given goalpost. (And if/when the
| last goalpost evaporates, so would DEI.) It sounds to me
| like your own perspective there is no way for them to do
| so, given that any given goalpost could be argued as
| possibly at risk of regression.
|
| Concretely, if your own perspective is taken as the
| standard, we ought to expect that without any motive or
| standard to dictate we unwind DEI goalposts around (for
| example) racial groups, we should expect those goalposts
| to persist, regardless of the general presence of the
| phenomena which motivated their creation in the first
| place.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Irrational bias will always exist, but it will always be
| a bunch of shifting goalposts.
|
| Once DEI systematizes enough it can be incorporated into
| whatever HR eventually turns in to, instead of being a
| separate division.
| gfodor wrote:
| Purely irrational bias isn't really the issue since most
| people of sound mind can be dissuaded from purely
| irrational acts. The issue is stereotyping of individuals
| based upon statistical or anecdotal patterns by people
| imagined to be a member of the same class _combined_ with
| the usual human natures of otherization and tribalism.
| This isn't purely irrational, since stereotypes can
| provide predictive power beyond pure randomness - if you
| don't believe me, consider the fact that there are
| countless "positive stereotypes" for certain groups we
| happily tend to accept and make decisions on given it
| complements the presumed members of that group, as
| opposed to increasing distrust or hatred of them.
|
| Ironically, programs seeking to reduce discrimination
| which characterize the former phenomenon as entirely
| irrational is what helps perpetuate the latter, because
| it undermines any sense that there is a good faith
| engagement going on.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| I didn't use "purely", "entirely", or other otherwise
| modify "irrational", because I didn't want to be too
| verbose, but yes, any stereotyping has some degree of
| irrational underpinnings. Figuring out and teaching
| people what is irrational (or at least irrelevant) bias
| and what isn't irrational bias are the difficult parts.
|
| > "Ironically, programs seeking to reduce discrimination
| which characterize the former phenomenon as entirely
| irrational is what helps perpetuate the latter, because
| it undermines any sense that there is a good faith
| engagement going on."
|
| From what I recall I don't believe these programs
| generally characterize implicit bias as entirely
| irrational. I see them characterize it as problematic. So
| I don't see how the "undermine good faith engagement"
| follows from this.
|
| On a total tangent I think the main problem with
| counteracting people's biases is that it can lead to
| people totally discounting their gut reactions. Which has
| lead to people getting murdered, raped, etcetera, by bad
| people.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| whoopdedo wrote:
| > There's also the fact that most (read: all) of the computing
| pioneers are white.
|
| Would you count Katherine Johnson as a tech role model?[1]
|
| But I agree with you. The old IRC culture gave the illusion of
| equity since by default your face isn't seen. But the rose-
| colored glasses overlook that once a person's age, race, or sex
| became known they'd be treated differently. And it often was
| not pleasant because as we've seen the pseudonymity tends to
| make people, who already generally suck at being kind to
| strangers, even more awful.[2](warning: language)
|
| That's the reason we should have DEI. If the implementations of
| it are flawed, that should be a motivation to make the programs
| better. Think of it as fixing bugs in the human codebase.
|
| [1] https://www.nasa.gov/content/katherine-johnson-biography
|
| [2] https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-
| blackboa...
| jimbob45 wrote:
| [flagged]
| gautamdivgi wrote:
| This is true. Here is the other thing. Promotions in corporate
| America are based on how well you know the hiring manager chain
| of command. Golf buddy? Oh he's a great guy for a promotion.
| Church person - yup very ethical, let's promote him. Know him
| personally - maybe went to the same college or support the same
| college football team, oh yes they're a candidate for
| promotion.
|
| Corporate America needs to get promotions out of the hands of
| the hiring manager chain of command. Create a board that's
| independent and can deal with promotions impartially.
|
| In absence of and independent entity handling promotions DEI is
| needed and necessary. Otherwise a lot of promotions are just
| plain nepotism.
| catiopatio wrote:
| Are you joking? We were _absolutely not_ "virulently" anti-
| _anyone_ on early IRC.
|
| We didn't even have real names or photos. Nobody had any idea
| who was behind the keyboard, and that was okay.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Do you think it's impossible to say something racist without
| specifically directing it at someone in the conversation?
| stirfish wrote:
| If there's a text box anywhere, the first thing people will
| type into it is the n-word
| camgunz wrote:
| I can say with experience that there was an assumption that
| these groups were pretty much all white men and boys. Maybe
| not everywhere all the time, but enough. I wouldn't
| categorize it as virulent, but I would say that a lot of
| insensitive things were written about minorities, women, and
| LGBTQ people. It's like when you go back to watch _Friends_
| and cringe at all the anti-gay jokes. Is it virulent? I guess
| not. Is it fun to watch if you 're gay? I doubt it.
| tyingq wrote:
| It's hard to characterize with absolutes. There were a lot of
| different networks and channels in IRC. It's true it was
| anonymous, but I'm also sure there were inappropriate jokes,
| perceptions, etc, shared in IRC.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| to be fair "there are no girls on the internet" is
| technically somewhat misogynistic and was a popular meme of
| the era.
| surement wrote:
| I've never heard this and there were plenty of girls on IRC
| fknorangesite wrote:
| Well if _you 've_ never heard that old joke, then clearly
| it can't ever have existed, right?
|
| Oh wait:
|
| > Welcome to the Internet, where the men are men, the
| women are men, and the kids are cops.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1546789
|
| I picked this instance of course because it was said on
| HN, but it was a dead horse even in 2010.
| surement wrote:
| by 2010 IRC was largely replaced by social media except
| for niche communities, sorry you were on there in the
| wrong decade
| fknorangesite wrote:
| Of course it was, but that's not what we're talking
| about. The link I chose was just the arbitrary one I
| picked from the google results.
|
| Personally I remember hearing that joke in the 90s. If
| you want a different example, here's a variant from 2001:
| http://www.bash.org/?2832
|
| Note that this one ends with "but some of the men are
| really women"; it's already old and well-known enough in
| '01 that people are modifying it for meta-humor.
| odiroot wrote:
| What I loved the most about IRC is no one cared about your
| age too! I was very passionate about tech since early primary
| school. But I couldn't really share this passion with anyone,
| being a little kid.
|
| Once I got dialup (in middle-school) and could join IRC
| channels, I realised, no one would know, how young I was. It
| felt great.
| grogenaut wrote:
| Yet the n-bomb, gay and b*tch and other words as a universal
| slur and negative adjective were everywhere on irc. Casual
| rape references were constant, it was about as bad as Xbox
| voice chat. I have trouble going back and reading much of
| bash.org's top 100 due to the things you're claiming didn't
| exist. http://bash.org/?99060 http://bash.org/?5775
| http://bash.org/?23601
|
| Just because you didn't mean it or it didn't bother you
| doesn't mean it wasn't hostile to others.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Wow, forgot about bash.org but that's a good reference to
| pull. Definitely a microcosm of IRC culture at the time.
| drstewart wrote:
| Wow, solid resource:
|
| http://bash.org/?121764
|
| ><p00p> why do you crackers steal everything from us?
|
| http://bash.org/?51331
|
| >(@virt) cracker barrel is the most hilarious name for a
| place where a bunch of white people go
|
| http://bash.org/?86009
|
| ><Gabe> It's sad when white people try to talk like black
| inner city people. It's doubly sad when those white people
| are European. :P
|
| Incredibly virulent anti-whiteness. Thank you for posting
| this to open our eyes to this.
| bigfoot675 wrote:
| You're just proving their point -- these types of
| communities follow "Internet chat" trends which includes
| toxicity to literally everyone. Minorities are affected
| most by this dynamic. By moving the discussions "above
| ground", we force the discussions to use professional
| etiquette, and move the conversation closer to where it
| can have actual impact
| John23832 wrote:
| None of that is good? That's the point.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| The fact that these are so low-ranking compared to the
| top quotes is instructive. Also, the third one is
| definitely an example of anti-Blackness, not anti-
| whiteness.
| dude187 wrote:
| > the third one is definitely an example of anti-
| Blackness, not anti-whiteness.
|
| Why do you capitalize the b but not the w?
| drstewart wrote:
| Low ranking based on what? Are you telling people what
| feelings they should have towards slurs directed towards
| them? The "top quotes" don't bother me at all, for
| example.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Low ranking based on the number of votes they got. That's
| the green (or red) number in parentheses between the plus
| and minus signs. The top 100 quotes range from 9,000 to
| 41,000. If I refresh random a few times, the most common
| number of votes seems to be in the mid-100s, which is
| exactly where these fall.
|
| So the fact that
|
| - you had to search to find a couple low ranking quotes
| that might be insulting to white people
|
| - there are numerous top ranking quotes that might be
| insulting to women, gay people, black people, etc
|
| - those top quotes don't bother you
|
| supports OP's point and undermines your own.
| MacsHeadroom wrote:
| Votes have no relation to how much any quote exemplifies
| IRC culture.
|
| Bash.org is not IRC or IRC culture, despite being built
| on IRC logs.
| busterarm wrote:
| anything on bash.org is pretty solidly mid->late era IRC,
| not "early IRC" as was discussed above.
|
| "Early IRC" ends with The Great Split (ircnet fork). Heck,
| most of Early IRC is extremely Euro-centric even.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| ngl the implication that something happened in the world
| of irc that turned it from this apolitical, progressive
| utopia to a jew-joke, rape-joke, -ism-everywhere cesspool
| is fascinating and please tell me more about it, not
| sarcastic
| John23832 wrote:
| Why would I be joking? I'm glad you didn't have a negative
| experience, but my point wasn't about you. You are not a "we"
| in the masses of the internet.
|
| You don't have to know anything about anyone to say
| derogatory things about a group they identify with. Just look
| at the bigotry shared on social media today.
| Dooflegna wrote:
| > EDIT: In the below thread are many people who personally
| identify as omnipresent IRC Gods, so my experience must have
| happened in an alternate universe. My bad.
|
| It's amazing how blind people can be to experiences that don't
| match their own. And when you _tell_ them what has happened to
| you, point at the preponderance of evidence out there about it,
| they still don't believe you.
| venatiodecorus wrote:
| there are definitely racists online but i think in these
| environments, where you are limited to text only, certain words
| became 'weaponized' such as specific slurs. in my experience
| this is less about racism and more about trolls trying to anger
| as many people as possible with minimal effort.
| dbrueck wrote:
| Not disputing your bad experiences, but do you know how
| virulent some of those communities were to just about everyone?
| :)
|
| Speaking of 2 things being true at once, what's amazing about
| BBSs/USENET/IRC/etc. especially in the early years was that
| they had:
|
| - online discussions where a lot of things just didn't matter.
| Race, gender, etc. just didn't matter. You got judged on the
| merit of your ideas, not what you looked like, not what you
| sounded like. It wasn't white people and black people talking
| together. It was just people. Genuine friendships developed
| between people that otherwise probably would have never
| connected because of societal barriers.
|
| - online discussions where people were insanely cruel. Prior to
| getting online, I thought I understood how mean people could
| be. Boy was I wrong. It was a real learning experience to be on
| the receiving end of vile hatred, bigotry, insults, just...
| meanness. There are interests I walked away from because the
| toxicity of the community was too much to deal with.
| dimmke wrote:
| Yeah not to defend how bad those spaces were but my memories
| of technical IRC channels on like Freenode was that they were
| mostly about helping people and discussing the technology the
| channel was about.
|
| You never had to disclose any aspect of your identity. Your
| gender or ethnicity. You were just a username. The only thing
| someone could find out about you was your general location
| based on IP address but even that could be masked if you
| want.
|
| I understand closer relationships formed on IRC I'm just
| saying, you could go there for help without experiencing
| prejudice. There was no expectation of revealing your real
| self.
| jldugger wrote:
| Man, IRC was so toxic in many regards. Two stories:
|
| On EFnet, there were aggressive racists in positions of
| authority. References to burning crosses, etc. Many of the
| earliest bash.org quotes originated there, including the
| idea that "the bash.org 'worst' quotes list is just "the
| best racist jokes list." The place was in generally
| incredibly abusive, and frequent channel and nick
| takeovers. The expectation of anonymity was a feature that
| enabled this behavior.
|
| On Freenode, things were better. Pseudonymity let you hide
| from others but less so admins. But still there was a
| period of time where everyone was getting PM's about an IRC
| network where black people were banned (also, the thing was
| offensively named). It got so bad they had to institute a
| system to prevent DMs from unregistered accounts. You may
| also recall that one of Ubuntu's earliest contributions was
| a Code of Conduct, and that this was relevant because the
| #debian-* help channels were borderline abusive.
|
| So yea, you didn't have to identify yourself, just
| humiliate and dissociate.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| > Online discussions where a lot of things just didn't
| matter. Race, gender, etc. just didn't matter. You got judged
| on the merit of your ideas, not what you looked like, not
| what you sounded like.
|
| We actually had real diversity and inclusion before these
| rent-seeking social media corporations and their fake DEI
| came in and ruined it. On IRC no one knew I was a 14 year
| old, or an 80 year old retiree, or male or female, or black
| or white, whatever.
| fsociety wrote:
| This ignores the rampant racist/sexist comments often made
| on IRC/BBS, which were a reflection of society. Anyone who
| spent a good amount of time in these communities know it
| was a problem - hence why some very small invite-only
| communities were formed.
|
| So yes, the idealism is there. No one knows who you
| identify as in a text channel unless you let them. But it
| does not remove the fact that these communities could often
| have bigoted pockets.
| FFRefresh wrote:
| As an anecdote, I was very active in those
| communities/networks back in the day, and I don't
| remember the rampant racism/sexism you suggest.
|
| The main vector that people demeaned others on was based
| on technical skills.
| venatiodecorus wrote:
| i'm curious how much of this was actual racism vs
| spouting off a specific n-word in order to anger as many
| people as possible via minimal effort
| [deleted]
| parasense wrote:
| > This ignores the rampant racist/sexist comments often
| made on IRC/BBS
|
| Nice straw man argument you got there...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
|
| But I'll take the bait...
|
| > Anyone who spent a good amount of time in these
| communities know it was a problem...
|
| Interesting.
|
| I've been on IRC for decades, and while any online forum
| has the feature where trolls are capable of making awful
| remarks for the lulz, it's been my observation those are
| outliers, and NOT an actual problem for focused
| communities.
|
| > So yes, the idealism is there. No one knows who you
| identify as in a text channel unless you let them.
|
| hrm... yeah, there is a dichotomy there, but not the
| false kind, more of the ying/yang kind. The same feature
| that fosters diversity is the same feature that allows
| for trolls.
|
| > But it does not remove the fact that these communities
| could often have bigoted pockets.
|
| There is no reason to practice fatalism here, or
| characterise rare events as common place. This is
| probably a variation of another fallacy called reductio-
| absurdism
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum
|
| Ultimately IRC has admins, moderators, and the ability to
| mute other people. That is why good prevails over evil on
| IRC, and why IRC has remained the place for smart people
| to connect online for so so very long... longer than any
| other mode of chat communication.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| I've been on IRC for a similar amount of time, sexual
| harassment was always done in private so you wouldn't
| have seen it on main rooms, and victims were often
| newbies who didn't know reporting channels or didn't feel
| empowered to report, being the noobs and all. (Think
| randomly PMing women to ask for feet/boob pictures, or
| asking to be PMd to help debug something and then use it
| as an opportunity to pressure for sext)
|
| I used to be part of multiple IRC channels that swear up
| and down that they're not a bigoted/political community
| they're just a focused technical chat about .NET or
| something, and then spout off calling things "faggotry"
| every day with no self-awareness whatsoever.
| FFRefresh wrote:
| If one wanted to substantiate some of your claims here to
| be convinced of the problem you suggest, what's the best
| way to do that?
|
| What are the names of the IRC channels you were part of
| that said they weren't bigoted but used homophobic slurs
| every day?
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| I'm just responding to one flimsy anecdote with my own
| flimsy anecdote. You can believe me or not. But I would
| suggest you ask yourself why you responded to me with
| this and not the guy I responded to, who also didn't
| provide evidence where they were.
| Mezzie wrote:
| I can't speak to not being white, but I can speak to being
| female and gay in those spaces. I'm a 3rd generation
| geek/techie/hacker and the hostility really ramped up when I
| hit puberty. 8 year old me was treated decently: I got a lot
| of shit for asking stupid questions and me + my intelligence
| was insulted regularly (since most people didn't know I was a
| child), but the rape threats and constant sexual comments
| starting when I was about 11/12 and had the audacity to let
| people know I was a girl were terrifying. There was also a
| clear difference in how I was treated when people knew I was
| female versus when they were assuming I was male. By the time
| I was 18 and considering what to do with my life, CS and
| programming weren't options to me because I didn't want to
| put up with that crap for the rest of my life.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| As a father of a daughter, I appreciate you speaking up
| about this. I'd say the problem with being raised to be
| respectful toward women I really haven't seen much bad
| behavior toward women. I just didn't realize what a problem
| it was. But a regular at the coffee shop my daughter was
| working at started stalking her. We and the store both got
| restraining orders against him. Then we were out at dinner
| one night, sitting outside, and she actually saw him. I was
| facing my daughter and he came around a corner walking
| toward her (my back to him) and I saw my daughter's face.
| It was crushing as a father to see my daughter so utterly
| devastated so quickly. That is a memory I will carry to my
| grave.
|
| Guys - be decent. Just, always. Always be decent.
| ljf wrote:
| This - be decent, and even more importantly - call out
| "indecentness" when you see it.
|
| Call it out to 'friends', to family, online, in person -
| even if all you feel you can say is 'that isn't right' -
| say it - you don't need to get into fights, you don't
| need to be a saviour, you just need to call it out. You
| can use that as excuse to leave, or you can use that as a
| reason to stay.
|
| But don't just ignore it.
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| As a straight white dude, yeah there were a lot of nerd
| spaces with white dudes that imagined they were surrounded
| by other white dudes and some of them felt no need to be
| inclusive. But I wouldn't judge any profession too deeply
| solely by the behavior of teenagers who express interest in
| that profession. They're going to act like teenagers no
| matter which profession. Find a big enough young hacker
| space and you'll be able to find the more mature subgroups
| within.
| The5thElephant wrote:
| I know for a fact a lot of the people participating in
| these communities were fully adults, and the age of the
| people being racist does little to mitigate the impact it
| has on the people on the receiving end of it.
|
| I find it really bizarre how many people here are
| insistent on diminishing or excusing the experience the
| original commenter had.
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| I find it bizarre you're diminishing mine. I got roasted
| by leetcode pros and othered by turbonerds too. That's
| humanity. I bet they haven't gotten as far as me since
| then, and that's an attitude that anyone who has faced
| pointless discrimination should keep in mind.
| DonaldPShimoda wrote:
| > I find it bizarre you're diminishing mine. I got
| roasted by leetcode pros and othered by turbonerds too.
|
| But you weren't targeted for this behavior due to your
| gender identity or skin color, and you more or less
| started off with "I don't think your issues as a Black
| person/as a woman have been that bad because _my_
| experience hasn 't been bad." Like you immediately
| centered yourself in a discussion about other people, and
| have done nothing to show any effort to even hear what
| they're saying.
|
| Additionally, one person's positive anecdotes do not
| outweigh another person's negative anecdotes. If I'm
| thinking about joining some arbitrary group of people and
| most of my friends say it's a good time, but even _one_
| person says "I showed up and all the men either sexually
| harassed me for being female or witnessed the harassment
| and did nothing about it", well, that tells me a lot more
| than the other person who says "They kind of joke around
| a bit but it's really a mostly positive place!"
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| I think it's nuanced. Women experience way more sexual
| harassment and being stalked than men online, even though
| men as slightly more likely to experience any online
| harassment in general. I can totally understand being
| specifically stalked or sexually harassed is on a totally
| different field than being called a retard for a
| suboptimal leetcode answer.
| Mezzie wrote:
| It's very different.
|
| Being roasted for being a moron was something where it
| was/is allowed to stand up for yourself. I know that when
| people thought I was male, I was allowed to give as good
| as I got as long as I knew how to take an L once in a
| while and had a thick skin. Arguing and insulting back is
| accepted and a lot of the arguments can be conclusively
| settled in some way. Even if you pedantically argue for
| something incorrect long after you should, you can
| usually make amends by accepting you acted like a dumbass
| and letting people clown on you for it.
|
| The shit I got for being female was different because it
| was a bunch of projection that I had no way of
| addressing. There are a lot of people who are just plain
| not okay with the opposite sex and could not handle being
| turned down. The most vile crap was spewed in private and
| then it turned into 'he said/she said' or 'I/we can't
| control what members say or do outside of the
| channel/forum/newsgroup'. Ambient sexist atmospheres
| could not be diffused by giving the guff back as places
| that are 90/10 male to female do not respond well to the
| women clowning on the men: You can't answer 'get back in
| the kitchen and make me a sandwich' with 'get back to the
| factory and make me money' because the men fall in line
| to support each other. You can't answer it by bringing it
| up seriously because then you're a buzz kill, etc. It's
| not two equals arguing; it's one side being told to shut
| the fuck up.
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| I had someone pay money, like $10 to attach a banner to
| my name on a forum, denying that I had a certification
| that I revealed I had to back up my claims of knowing a
| superior answer to some pointless argument. It was
| unsettling and aggravating for about a month before I
| found humor in it all. It's still one of my favorite
| communities and overall far more mature than when that
| happened ~10 years ago. Most people there are within a
| few years of my age, currently 30.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| That doesn't address my point that women are way more
| likely to explicitly receive sexual harassment and
| stalking even when men report receiving more online
| harassment generally. I'm not arguing that you weren't
| harassed online, only that harassment is way more nuanced
| than whether or not everyone was equally victimized.
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| I mean, I get lots of sexual hate/harassment online for
| being traumatized from being circumcised, and advocating
| against it when not absolutely medically necessary, from
| people who tell me it's not a valid thing to be
| traumatized by. Most people just don't want to think
| about it but some people really put in effort to trolling
| about it. There really isn't a worse form of sexual
| discrimination than preventing one of the sexes from
| feeling full sexual pleasure.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| That's still not addressing my point that this is more
| nuanced than "who got victimized more". You're just
| giving me multiple anecdotes of harassment you
| experienced personally, which is myopic if we want to
| talk about harassment on a population level (whether or
| not early-IRC was incredibly vitriolic towards minorities
| moreso than what is baseline normal for early-IRC). I'm
| literally agreeing with you that we have studies that
| show harassment generally occurs equally to everybody,
| _except_ that _some_ minorities receive _greater
| proportions of specific kinds of harassment_ , and maybe
| that adds some nuance to the conversation. It has nothing
| to do with you personally.
| chrisrhoden wrote:
| Nobody diminished your experience since you didn't relate
| your experience - you simply said that someone else was
| taking their own too personally.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| This was what I was thinking. There were _lots_ of jerks on
| those forums[^1], but I didn 't see many _racists_. Frankly,
| I don 't know how anyone would be able to ascertain others'
| races in the first place.
|
| [^1]: as far as I can tell, _no one_ was welcome to ask
| questions unless they could first prove that they were
| smarter than everyone else about computing, in which case you
| wouldn 't actually need to ask questions in that forum in the
| first place
| The5thElephant wrote:
| Sure, virulent about everything that differed from the
| "engineering norm". How often were comments made mocking,
| stereotyping, or denigrating whiteness and white people? I
| can tell you not nearly as many as were made punching down at
| everyone else, and not nearly as harsh or gross.
|
| The argument isn't that there was no good to be had from
| those communities, it's that you can't dismiss or ignore the
| bad that they put out as well.
| mc32 wrote:
| I would not disagree, but wouldn't that follow the
| demographics of the population to a big extent? If we
| examine other communities in other languages, what were
| their dispositions, who did they target or not target? Did
| blondes target blondes or non-blondes, etc.
|
| In other words did it or does it show disproportionality?
| If it's disproportional then that indicates it's outside
| the global norm. The above does not mean the global norm is
| an acceptable norm but helps calibrate and figure out how
| good or bad things were or are.
| The5thElephant wrote:
| How is that relevant? Yes communities tend to be
| prejudiced against things outside their assumed norm and
| the anonymity of the web makes it easy for them to
| express it without repercussion. That doesn't make the
| negative impact it had on people in those communities not
| real.
|
| Furthermore in regards to race specifically I would argue
| there probably were very few online tech/engineer
| communities anywhere in the world that widely targeted
| and denigrated white people until maybe just recently,
| and even then they are likely not popular or widely
| participated in.
|
| I'm struggling to understand what the point you and other
| commenters here are trying to make responding to the
| original comment.
| John23832 wrote:
| > Not disputing your bad experiences, but do you know how
| virulent some of those communities were to just about
| everyone? :)
|
| So the opportunity to make many different people feel
| excluded is better? I'm not sure what you're getting at?
| slackfan wrote:
| So you're arguing equality is bad, therefore some people
| need to be more equal than others?
| John23832 wrote:
| I'm not.
| dbrueck wrote:
| The point was an answer to this question:
|
| > Do you know VIRULENTLY anti-black (or woman, or gay)
| these communities were? I can't begin to describe it.
|
| The answer is: "in a somewhat limited way, yes, yes I do".
| I can't know _exactly_ what it was (and is) like, but the
| diversity of awfulness in some of those communities allowed
| me to experience meanness on a level I had never
| experienced before, which in turn has helped me feel more
| empathy towards those who deal with things like sexism and
| racism both online and offline.
|
| Before, I had only an intellectual understanding that those
| things were terrible, which led me to under-appreciate just
| how much they can hurt. Perhaps I still under-appreciate it
| (who knows?), but I'm definitely closer to understanding
| than I was before, and that's a good thing.
| ParetoOptimal wrote:
| > The answer is: "in a somewhat limited way, yes, yes I
| do".
|
| Prefacing "I know your experience" with "In a
| (very|somewhat) limited way" is vitally important.
| lettergram wrote:
| > Not disputing your bad experiences, but do you know how
| virulent some of those communities were to just about
| everyone? :)
|
| The red head jokes were endless.
| noobermin wrote:
| Tbf, I miss the former dearly but am happy the latter is
| gone, particularly from forums. I don't know why people
| online felt they could be so abusive and harsh to others for
| no reasons. The taunting and garbage on twitter is mild (yes
| with "cancel culture" and all that) than the sheer virtriol
| that was just common place on forums in even the mid to late
| 00s.
| mostly_lurks wrote:
| I think you might want to reflect for a minute on why you
| thought "but do you know how virulent some of those
| communities were to just about everyone?" was an appropriate
| response to a black person talking about their experience of
| racism. I recognize you believed yourself to be mitigating
| the effect of your statement by prefacing it with "Not
| disputing your bad experiences," but I think you'll find that
| the net effect of your comment is still one of dismissing a
| black person's lived experience, or at least pulling focus
| away from it in an unhelpful way.
| dbrueck wrote:
| Hmm... this sounds an awful lot like, "because you're
| responding to a comment made by a black person, the only
| acceptable response is one of total agreement". I think you
| might want to reflect for a minute on the importance of
| nuance in a discussion, and the net effect of trying to
| police comments on others' behalf.
|
| I completely believe the commenter's experience, but I also
| witnessed the opposite a lot (and was deeply encouraged by
| it), and it's not wrong for me to chime in and point it
| out. And guess what? Experiencing vitriol on the internet
| directly contributed to me being more sensitive to things
| like racism. Although I've been on the receiving end of
| racist remarks offline, it wasn't until the internet that I
| caught a glimpse at how hurtful people could truly be.
| Again, not wrong for me to pipe up about it.
| projectazorian wrote:
| > Hmm... this sounds an awful lot like, "because you're
| responding to a comment made by a black person, the only
| acceptable response is one of total agreement".
|
| Not true. There is another acceptable response - not
| posting, taking some time to read and reflect, and moving
| along with your day.
|
| You no doubt have any number of other things you could be
| doing, but you're in here. Might be worth thinking about
| why that is.
| dbrueck wrote:
| > You no doubt have any number of other things you could
| be doing, but you're in here. Might be worth thinking
| about why that is.
|
| Obviously this applies to you as well. Maybe you've taken
| what I wrote as some sort of disagreement or getting
| defensive or... something? And then from there concluding
| that I shouldn't be allowed to participate? I'm not sure,
| but this is a discussion site and I'm participating in
| the discussion, and please don't take this the wrong way,
| but it's really not your place to tell me that I
| shouldn't participate. My original comment was in
| agreement with the poster I was replying to, and I was
| adding nuance and finding common ground in a semi-shared
| experience. None of that is wrong for me to do. Have a
| great day!
| projectazorian wrote:
| > Obviously this applies to you as well. Maybe you've
| taken what I wrote as some sort of disagreement or
| getting defensive or... something? And then from there
| concluding that I shouldn't be allowed to participate?
|
| You're allowed to participate, but I trust you can
| understand that in many situations there is a difference
| between what discourse is permitted in a space, and what
| discourse others might see as appropriate or a value add
| to the discussion.
|
| > I'm not sure, but this is a discussion site and I'm
| participating in the discussion, and please don't take
| this the wrong way, but it's really not your place to
| tell me that I shouldn't participate.
|
| Hmm, it is your place to be able to post whatever you
| like as long as it's permitted by the rules, but it's not
| the place of others to suggest doing so might not be
| appropriate, even if that is also permitted. Kind of a
| narcissistic, authoritarian mindset, it seems to me. Note
| that I didn't post "mods???" or report you.
| dbrueck wrote:
| "Authoritarian mindset" indeed!
|
| Anyway, you seem to have misunderstood by initial and
| subsequent comments, so other than rereading them in good
| faith until you believe me when I say that I was neither
| disagreeing with the comment, nor trying to undermine his
| experience, nor defending bad stuff online, I don't think
| we can make any progress, so I'm moving on to other
| things. Have a great day!
| zamalek wrote:
| > the only acceptable response is one of total agreement
|
| That's not exactly it. The only _informed_ response about
| a black person 's experience on these platforms is a
| black person's. When people talk about "lived
| experience," the implication is that empathy is
| practically impossible. The best you can offer is
| sympathy.
|
| > I've been on the receiving end of racist remarks
| offline
|
| I am a white person who has been on the receiving end of
| racially-motivated police brutality. Even though it was
| racially-motivated I would not consider it a racist act.
| The fucker was merely angry at white people, that's
| different to _racism._ While there are places on the
| planet where white people experience racism (typically at
| the hands of other white people), I can almost guarantee
| that you have not - especially if you are American.
|
| Don't wash the black community's suffering with white
| experiences.
| dbrueck wrote:
| > The best you can offer is sympathy. > I can almost
| guarantee that you have not [experienced racism] -
| especially if you are American.
|
| My goodness! How can you honestly make such an assertion?
| I _am_ American, I 've visited every state and lived in a
| dozen of them. I am well-acquainted with many forms of
| racism and am fascinated that you could believe such a
| statement. All I can say is that you are unequivocally
| wrong.
|
| > Don't wash the black community's suffering with white
| experiences.
|
| This is absurd - finding common ground is the key to
| rooting out and overcoming things like racism. Always
| insisting that someone's experience is too different for
| others to understand only serves to perpetuate division.
|
| I will never know what it's like to be a black person and
| all of the stupid things black people have to up with.
| But experiencing unkindness and bigotry helps me
| understand a little. And while having just a couple of
| experiences where someone judged me and was cruel to me
| simply for being white is nowhere near the same thing as
| dealing with it for years, it's something I can
| extrapolate from, and it taught me more about racism than
| any number of books or articles ever could.
| zamalek wrote:
| > All I can say is that you are unequivocally wrong.
|
| You, as a white person, have been a victim of racism?
|
| Edit: > finding common ground is the key to rooting out
| and overcoming things like racism
|
| How is refuting the experiences of a black person finding
| common ground?
| dbrueck wrote:
| > You, as a white person, have been a victim of racism?
|
| Have I been told to leave somewhere because they don't
| want "whiteys" there? Yes. Have I been yelled at for
| being a "honky"? Yes. Have I been told things like, "all
| white people are ___"? Yes. Have I been in a group when
| someone said, "don't give any to the white kid" ? Yes.
| Have I been threatened with violence with the sole given
| reason being that I am white? Yes. Has a friend of mine
| been told not to be my friend because I'm white and we
| shouldn't mix? Yes.
|
| (for reference, these occurred while living in Alabama,
| Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia)
|
| Are these common experiences across the U.S.? I doubt it.
| Are they as bad as what black people have to deal with?
| No. Are they as widespread as racism towards black
| people? Almost certainly not.
|
| > How is refuting the experiences of a black person
| finding common ground?
|
| I haven't done that at all - maybe you read some other
| comment and thought it was mine? If so, no worries for
| the confusion, there's a lot of comments flying around.
| zamalek wrote:
| > Have I been told to leave somewhere [...]
|
| Why do some black people hate white people? Because their
| great grandparent perished on a cotton plantation,
| because their friend was hunted by some white folks in a
| truck, because their friend was choked to death by a
| white policeman, because your race is targeted by
| disenfranchisement.
|
| Why do some white people hate black people? _Because they
| hate black people._
|
| There is a substantial difference between those two, and
| the difference is central to the definition of racism vs.
| racially-charged. Someone being a vengeful asshole does
| not make them racist, someone being an asshole to a race
| in general does not (necessarily) make them racist.
| Racism is hating a race, it is _not_ being angry with a
| race that participated in horrific acts against you and
| your (in some cases near) ancestors.
|
| Is it fair that you are being held accountable for the
| acts of your ancestors, and other living white people?
| No, that isn't the claim. You find the retribution you
| face unfair/unkind/unjust, as you have the right to. Now
| imagine facing the same for merely existing. The claim is
| that you couldn't possibly understand the experiences of
| a black person. The claim is that you do kinda' have to
| accept the stories of black people at face value.
|
| The claim is that the vast majority of their life is
| defined by racist experiences, where you have a _handful_
| of racially-charged experiences to point towards.
| dbrueck wrote:
| You're conflating racism with the reasons for racism.
|
| It doesn't matter how good or bad your reasons are: once
| you are feeling or expressing prejudice simply because
| someone is a member of a particular ethnic group, that's
| racist.
| The5thElephant wrote:
| But it is unclear what you are disagreeing with. They
| never said that there was nothing positive in those
| communities. So what is the point of your comment? To
| make sure no one leaves this thread thinking that those
| communities were a net negative or something? I
| understand the desire to defend something you were a part
| of and got something positive out of, but the original
| commenter isn't criticizing people for enjoying or
| benefiting from those communities, they are pointing out
| that they had a clear negative impact on people who were
| targeted by those types of awful comments.
| dcow wrote:
| It's unclear because you've concocted it. _You're_
| asserting that there's disagreement when there never was.
| I don't strictly blame you for perpetuating ill rhetoric,
| but at least be aware that you're responding to a stance
| that the comment in question never took in a fever to
| defend a black OP that never asked for any help and
| frankly IMO doesn 't need it based on the high quality of
| their comment.
| dbrueck wrote:
| This is a discussion site, so not every comment needs to
| fit neatly in a 'agree' or 'disagree' bucket. That said,
| I'm in agreement with the comment I was replying to, and
| not actually defending anything at all - I meant for my
| comment to be taken at face value, nothing more.
| meowkit wrote:
| And to counter your claim here - someone's "lived
| experience" is not a sufficient ballast for blindly
| accepting an anecdote.
|
| People's memories suck. And more often than not subjective
| experiences don't map onto reality, especially when
| negative or stressful emotions are involved.
|
| One negative experience on an IRC/forum can cloud a
| person's entire recollection simply on the basis of the
| Negativity Bias.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias
| The5thElephant wrote:
| The point isn't to figure out whether these communities
| were a net positive or negative. I wasn't a target of any
| of the racism, sexism, homophobia, etc on these forums
| and chat rooms but I sure saw a lot of it everywhere I
| participated at a level that was kind of ridiculous in
| some cases. It clearly had impact on the people it was
| targeting, the degree to which it "clouds a persons
| recollection" is entirely irrelevant.
|
| Is your point that their recollection should be
| dismissed? That they were too sensitive? It's unclear
| what this response's intent is.
| dcow wrote:
| I think the point was that you can't debate or argue with
| anecdotes, in essence dismissing both comments.
| boppo1 wrote:
| I think you might want to reflect for a minute that you are
| playing the exact DEI game that the OP is complaining
| about. You are dismissing your parent post's argument
| without addressing content of the argument. Essentially,
| your post boils down to "Don't argue with Black people.
| "Lived Experience" trumps all rhetoric and discussion. In
| the future, please keep your thoughts and concerns to
| yourself."
|
| You are fostering a culture without room for discussion.
| You are also presuming to speak for the Black person two
| posts up. Solidarity is important, but shutting people down
| based on racial context isn't it.
| JLCarveth wrote:
| And you're here dismissing _their experience_ because they
| 're not black. See the issue?
| naasking wrote:
| > but I think you'll find that the net effect of your
| comment is still one of dismissing a black person's lived
| experience
|
| Pointing out that those venues were full of anti-everything
| hate is not dismissing a black person's experience, it's
| validating it, while pointing out that he's not alone.
| ParetoOptimal wrote:
| > Pointing out that those venues were full of anti-
| everything hate is not dismissing a black person's
| experience, it's validating it, while pointing out that
| he's not alone.
|
| But it implicitly implies the negative experiences were
| similar in scale unless otherwise noted.
|
| It downplays the very large weight that racism adds to
| the negativity of that experience even if the intent is a
| noble one of making that person not feel alone.
| dcow wrote:
| Or, maybe you're the one projecting negativity for
| assuming that the existence of another anecdote downplays
| the black one in play? I give it no such credence.
| ndjsnsinsis wrote:
| I suppose if that's the goal, we should have a defined goal. I
| grew up in India and I think we have the problem of a runaway
| effect of this. I totally agree that it helps, there are remote
| tribal communities or disadvantaged communities in India (say
| based on caste that historically, and even currently, face
| stuff like untouchability) but there's got to be a goal at
| which point you stop. When I had to pick a college for
| undergrad in India, there are so many quotas put aside based on
| caste, tribals, sports, defence, rural/urban, language medium
| of schooling etc that college quotas available for general
| merit is roughly 50% (haven't kept up recently, but should be
| there abouts). Some people game the system to try and get
| paperwork to show you belong to such a section so that college
| enrollment, public sector jobs etc get a lot easier.
| pocman wrote:
| )))Some people game the system to try and get paperwork to
| show you belong to such a section so that college enrollment,
| public sector jobs etc get a lot easier.
|
| Prominent lawmakers in the US also game the system.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2019/02/01/690806434/warren-
| apologizes-t...
|
| https://www.vox.com/2018/10/16/17983250/elizabeth-warren-
| bar...
|
| VOX: New evidence has emerged [SENATOR!] Elizabeth Warren
| claimed American Indian heritage in 1986 Warren identified as
| "American Indian" on a registration card for the State Bar of
| Texas, according to a Washington Post report.
|
| By Ella Nilsen Updated Feb 5, 2019, 8:29pm EST
|
| (TLDR for those not in the US: wealthy powerful while woman
| rose in ranks after abusing DEI quotas, now has huge
| influence over tech industry and always angry about an
| industry which has real diversity (tech:Asians) but
| conveniently not angry about lack of diversity at Harvard or
| Senate.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Is it any better when supposedly "tech" focused communities are
| virulently anti-white, anti-male or anti-Asian? These things
| have no place in genuine professional discourse.
| backzerman wrote:
| > virulently anti-white, anti-male, or anti-Asian
|
| I'm a white guy. I've sat through many a DEI session. I've
| never, ever felt this. How could I? 85% of the people in the
| room are white or Asian men.
|
| I'm not trying to sound disingenuous here, but I really want
| to know, how does "virulently anti-" empirically manifest
| itself in the communities you speak of? Hiring? Pay?
| Promotion decisions? Possibly freedom of speech? Even then it
| seems like I'm free to say whatever I want as long as I stay
| on topic.
| flippinburgers wrote:
| Yeah you are free to say whatever you like as long as you
| say what you are told to parrot.
| kodah wrote:
| > There's also the fact that most (read: all) of the computing
| pioneers are white
|
| Not refuting this take as it's accurate, but if you're looking
| for someone that's Black in early computing I'd recommend free
| software pioneer Brian Fox (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bri
| an_Fox_(computer_programm...) best known for inventing Bash.
|
| Kelsey Hightower is also notable as the man that pioneered the
| use of Kubernetes at many businesses through his book.
|
| Marian Croak is the pioneer of VOIP and now heads SRE among
| other things at Google.
|
| Mark Dean pioneered ISA which is still the leading standard
| today in industrial applications.
|
| (Non-exhaustive list, but these are the programmers that are
| Black that I know of off the top of my head)
|
| I'll caveat this with my own take: all these folks worked in
| what is in the industry referred to as Systems Engineering,
| which is very much still a "working man's" profession when
| compared to traditional software engineering and prior to
| things like SRE paid accordingly less. It's also how a lot of
| vets, POC, and people without degrees enter the industry.
| Siira wrote:
| As a PoC who has benefited from IRC, I don't see how they would
| even know you're not white unless you tell them yourself. Can
| you elaborate on your experience?
| roenxi wrote:
| A question, perhaps, of babies, bathwater and relative
| velocity.
|
| I'm not sure if anyone worth listening to is complaining about
| efforts to clean up racism in moderated communities. HN, for
| example, self polices that sort of thing quite effectively.
| "Racism bad" as a principle is one of the most solid points of
| consensus in the modern political sphere. We should keep
| moderating out racism.
|
| But your post is going to different issues than the original
| one, which was talking about initiatives _inside_ companies. I
| do not want to be in a position where I look at black
| colleagues and have formal evidence that they got hired
| /promoted/praised/ because of their skin colour, not their
| competence. That is setting up an environment where racists
| opinions will also be evidence-based and doing a disservice to
| literally everyone involved.
|
| A company initiative supporting building up hiring pipelines is
| just good business practice. "A cheesy townhall once a month to
| discuss diversity hires" (from op) is a dangerous precedent for
| stirring up actual racism. There does need to be debate to
| decide where the line between these things is drawn, and why.
|
| We were on a good thing with the aspiration of skin colour
| making no difference. It is a shame to see backsliding on that
| subject amongst many HR departments.
| excerionsforte wrote:
| IRC was pretty toxic for sure. If you didn't know the other
| person, you assumed they were white since it is the predominate
| skin color and American for that matter. Typically wouldn't
| question it unless they used different wording patterns or
| languages. IRC was attractive in some ways and offputting in
| others. I never really got into it outside of my #gamedev
| interests.
|
| DEI initiatives as a backlash against the forced exclusion of
| people from the broader economy makes sense to me. It's crazy
| the amount of the legal and government system that was employed
| in the past because of what people thought to be true about
| other people.
|
| I'm unclear of how much impact the intiatives have on hiring or
| retention. I feel this is one of the reasons why DEI
| initiatives highlight token people probably to show they are
| doing something (results) and the budget for it is justified.
| Would be nice to see the statistics from mid to large companies
| on how these initiatives have fared on multiple groups and
| worker productivity for that matter, but until then it feels
| like it has no to mixed impact at a company which seems to be
| the ideas of people not included in these initiatives.
|
| DEI just feels vague and threatening to some people. I've seen
| Reddit threads of people saying they don't support DEI
| initiatives because how can they "secure a future for their
| child" which to me is highly obtuse. Who knows what a child
| will do in the future.
|
| I'm all for hiring diverse candidates and helping those who
| have high curiosity and propensity to just do the work rather
| than the idea that one must be experienced in order to execute.
| It's the same way I am towards younger people, though you don't
| see the same backlash against initiatives in that arena unless
| older people are losing their jobs for the sake of it. In the
| end, I want people who will (not can) help with the work and
| will teach others.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| I am on some IT forums for almost 20 years; I don't know what
| is the gender or race of most people there, I have no idea what
| is their sexuality and there is no racism, sexism or any "ism"
| in these communities. The day someone will bring the argument
| "I am a green isomorph Martian, so for me DDR4 is way slower
| than DDR2 with the same CAS" then the acid answers will not be
| related to the color green, Martial descent or anything else
| but lack of merit of that statement.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| > EDIT: In the below thread are many people who personally
| identify as omnipresent IRC Gods, so my experience must have
| happened in an alternate universe. My bad.
|
| For what it's worth, this aligns with what I've seen on IRC as
| well (in the 00s.) I really think a lot of people just don't
| _see_ bigotry for what it is when it 's not explicit. (E.g.
| "lol girl = guy irl, there are no girls on the internet" being
| a common sentiment that might just be easily forgotten.)
| nilmask wrote:
| My experience growing up as a southeast Asian child in the
| early 00s is that I suddenly had access to practitioners and
| even experts in the field who now gave me an audience, as
| both my age and ethnicity were completely inaccessible to my
| counterparty on the other side of the chat window.
|
| No one asked, and no one cared. We discussed technical
| topics, and what mattered was the strength of your ideas and
| their ability to withstand rebuttal. Your identity did not
| factor into the discussion, as the medium being used (IRC)
| abstracted away all notion of geographic location, physical
| appearance, skin color, accent, tone of voice, gender, sex,
| etc... into the written word. That's all everyone saw - your
| words, and your words only.
|
| Now, in our photo and video driven digital landscape, your
| physical appearance - the way you look, present, the color of
| your skin, etc. - is front and center. In fact, without a
| visual representation, you may as well not exist - "pics or
| it didn't happen."
|
| Which makes the matter all the more aggravating - people are
| now using media that bring cues for common stereotypes (i.e.
| judging someone for the way they look [0]) to the forefront,
| while simultaneously declaring that, no, they are completely
| free from any and all such bias. Why not remove all doubt,
| the, and use blind Zoom interviews (which I did myself), text
| fora (such as this one), and text-only protocols (such as
| IRC)?
|
| It's fascinating to see just how differently I am treated and
| perceived on purely textual media vs. other media where my
| physical appearance is evident. If IRC was racist, then I
| would say the new media is orders of magnitude more so, as I
| have been subject to numerous misjudgments of my character
| and/or microaggressions based on my physical appearance -
| which simply would not have been accessible in older, text-
| based protocols.
|
| I can't escape the new "ethnic minority" or "visible
| minority" label that these DEI initiatives (and related
| ideologies) have created - they are now automatically and
| subconsciously applied to me the minute others take a look at
| me, and as a result all of the associated ideas are
| subsequently brought to mind - "disadvantaged," "lacking
| education," "lower socioeconomic status," "hired because of
| their race," etc.
|
| I'd rather go back to IRC. None of these judgments would be
| possible there, and I wouldn't have to have the "minority"
| label applied to me if I chose to simply not to disclose my
| appearance or ethnic background.
|
| [0] https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-
| impac...
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| This is why it's so sad/annoying that the word "priviledge"
| has devolved into a meaning-devoid cudgel, because it's such
| a _useful_ term in discussions like these. If you 're not
| personally affected by something, it's easy to miss something
| for what it is or even just not see it, even if it's
| happening all around you.
| Insanity wrote:
| +1. Not just on IRC but all around the internet and online
| gaming in those days. Back when you had dedicated servers and
| they would devolve into more of a chat room anyway.
| rdl wrote:
| I wish there were an HR "brand" for "We want the absolute best
| team possible, with diversity of thought and experience, and
| aligned on our mission and core values. We recognize lots of
| people are excluded because they're not part of our existing
| networks, or because they don't think they belong here, so we'll
| put extra effort into looking for them and showing them what's
| possible, but we've got the same standards for everyone we bring
| in, and will always pick the people who make our team the best.
| This might not always be the best individuals at their
| specialties in isolation, but the people who will work the best
| together to achieve our mission. This isn't a single-round game,
| so we do value long-term evolution of our company, the industry,
| our country, and humanity overall, but if we aren't successful in
| the short term, we won't be at the table to make positive changes
| over time, either. We have minimum moral, ethical, and legal
| obligations in how we treat people which we will always meet (and
| hopefully far exceed), but the minimums are not our targets."
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I don't think we as a society can have our cake and eat it: if
| there is an initiative, it will become public one way or another.
| So if you must have one, you must be honest about it and accept
| the consequences. Lying about it will just make everyone all the
| more suspicious and prejudiced.
|
| And that is without touching any of the other issues here
| (pipeline problems, defining diversity by external criteria, etc)
| hvs wrote:
| To be fair, as a pretty smart, white man in technology, my
| parents paid for half of my college to a prestigious engineering
| university and I've had friends and acquaintances (that I've
| built from my network) that have gotten me to where I am today.
| If it helps, you can think of DEI initiatives as making up for
| the lack of an existing network that many minorities have in the
| business world.
| ianhawes wrote:
| To be fair, you still had to graduate from said prestigious
| engineering university. And a degree doesn't net you a job. And
| a job doesn't net you a career.
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