Dear White People, You Suck at Diversity | Hacker News Reader

Dear White People, You Suck at Diversity

techcrunch.com

11 pointskevindeasis16 comments

The problem with promoting diversity as a goal is that you can define diversity however you want. The author mocks others for including women but not "women of color". Similarly, I've heard other argue that diversity of socio-economic class is more important than other definitions. Because are you really promoting diversity by including only those with that went to the same school and had the same upbringing as everyone else? Who gets to define what should be promoted?

Depending on the organization, diversity can be a key driver of success but when it's forced upon society as a moral imperative, it brings out those that choose to use social constructs and recent history as a means of consolidating their own power. Be wary of those who claim to speak for any one group of people, especially if you never got a ballot.

'“In fact, we just hired a young woman from Stanford who’s every bit as good as her peers,” Sequoia Capital investor Mike Moritz said in an interview with Bloomberg, titled Sequoia’s Moritz: Looking for Women to Be Partners. “And if there are more like her, we’ll hire them. What we’re not prepared to do, is to lower our standards.”'

Pro tip: don't brag about how great you are at diversity by starting from the assumption that women are inferior.

I honestly didn't read that into what he said, am I missing some context that alludes to this meaning? It seems like he's trying to call out those people who would demand he hire a less qualified woman simply because of her sex.

Isn't holding the belief that there exist qualified women putting them on equal standing? And then because there are qualified women wouldn't hiring without concern for sex the fairest hiring method? If he believed that women were inferior and wanted to promote diversity then wouldn't he would be making the exact opposite claim?

If he truly holds the beliefs he claims to in the quote then the problem of diversity could be solved at the educational level by encouraging more women to go into tech. Assuming merit is uniformly distributed throughout society, if 10% of your applicants are qualified but 90% of your applicants are men then you would expect your staff to be 90% men assuming no bias whatsoever.

Mostly I think it's simply a boneheaded comment. Because it implies that hiring women means lowering your standards, except for a few exceptional individuals.

I'd be relatively happy if diversity in tech had progressed sufficiently that second order effects like intersectionality were the most important issues remaining.

Pretty sure we're not there yet. I'd argue that focusing on the big first order problems still has the most upside in general if not for everyone.

Which races should we emulate to get better at diversity?

As those who control we (white men) have the responsibility to fix the issue.

> As those who control we (white men) have the responsibility to fix the issue.

White men don't control anything , rich men who happened to be white do (in US). Making everything about race IS racist. The article is certainly racist.

I did not know that white men controlled all firms. Are there even any statistics on tech companies owned by non-whites being more open to "non-gender conforming" people?

Not the only one sucking at it, considered the title...

Oh, the irony of an article asking people to become more sensitive to the social issues facing diverse peoples by using a racist generalization in the title.

Racism toward the people in power can't exist, is the usual argument. But ultimately I can't see how this helps the cause. They are brow beating the only people that are trying.

Only people in a position to try, and doing a lousy job so far.

The title is pure clickbait. The article is about the challenges faced by women and trans people of color when they attempt to enter the tech industry. It raises some good points.

> Only people in a position to try, and doing a lousy job so far.

This doesn't justify or excuse racist generalizations, and it doesn't qualify the idea that you "can't be racist" towards some people.

> The title is pure clickbait.

They generalize about "white people" multiple times in the article.

> It raises some good points.

It does it using racism and classism and with a lecturing tone. Any good it was supposed to do is completely nullified, not the least of which because it insults the people it purports to educate.

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