Hold on.
Before we make judgment based solely on mentioning race in a slide. I highly recommend reading Nicole Sanchez's full take on the issue here:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/2015/02/12/wome...
Before we make judgment based solely on mentioning race in a slide. I highly recommend reading Nicole Sanchez's full take on the issue here:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/2015/02/12/wome...
But trans people are kind of invisible, both (usually) statistically and (sometimes) passing so well that they are not known to be trans. With other minorities the situation is more clear-cut and obvious. I hope at least no-one will pretend that Asians are not overrepresented in Silicon Valley relative to population.
These comments are a conversation. I'll take it in good faith that people are being honest. But I doubt that Ms. Sanchez has this in mind:
"We refuse to accept the current paradigms that reflect rather than challenge the status quo..."
So you want to have an honest conversation about how you're refusing to accept the status quo?
What if those people are just less likely (note: this is about probability, for all I know the best programmer in the world could be a disabled queer 50 year old black person from a poor family) to be competitive among candidates? This basically amounts to hiring as charity.
There is no end to the list of possible "identities". You can ALWAYS slice humanity up into smaller and smaller groups to find some identity that is underrepresented. Everybody is clamoring to grab a niche identity to claim oppression points. This is why identity politics is garbage.
Unless for-profit corporations are actually jobs programs in disguise, there's only one sensible thing to do: value people for what they can do for the company. Period. Though maybe favoring a candidate because they have the right skin color IS actually good for companies? Who knows?