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Comment by untog | Hacker News Reader

     - "This is not work for white folks to lead"

This one I actually don't think is so bad, in context. The title of the slide is "Diversity and Inclusion in Tech". It is difficult for someone that is not part of a minority to spearhead efforts to outreach to one, because they don't experience the same issues. Literally, they don't have the right experience for the job.

It's a stretch as a comparison, but no-one gets sued for refusing to hire ugly models. It's because a model's job is to be good looking. That's just the way it is. In a similar way, a head of diversity should probably be... diverse. Although that could include gay white men, for example - maybe that text is shorthand that was qualified in the actual presentation, none of us know.

The white women one mystifies me, though. Women are usually a minority in the workplace, surely their views are valid.

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I'm a white person. My family came from Cuba with the clothes on their backs 50 years ago. Everything they ever had was taken by the Communists. Like millions of other Cubans, they came here with nothing and had to rebuild their lives. I grew up in a very unique environment, the Cuban-American community in Miami. I'd say that's a pretty "diverse" background. But I guarantee that in Github's book, I'm one of the "white folks" that shouldn't be leading this.

I'm sick of this politics of division. It pits people against each other and treats them as members of some helpless group instead of as individual human beings, with their own unique story and their own untapped potential.

But I guarantee that in Github's book, I'm one of the "white folks" that shouldn't be leading this.

I don't see how you can guarantee that. Don't get me wrong, I totally understand what you're saying. But this is a one-line bullet point in a slideshow, I'd like to see some more context before I grab my pitchfork.

> It is difficult for someone that is not part of a minority to spearhead efforts to outreach to one, because they don't experience the same issues. Literally, they don't have the right experience for the job.

We've invented tools to deal with this: language and literature. Almost everyone has experienced some form of discrimination, even if for many it is only occasional and minor, and that's enough to give a good writer an opening to get inside the reader's head and use that to build upon and paint a vivid picture of the more frequent or major discrimination the writer has dealt with.

I really don't think that reading about racism is the same as experiencing racism. For a start, it's quite easy to put a book down.

A middle age white man could be gay. Or have one leg. Or have psychosis. Or be a Muslim.

Yes, sorry, I just edited my comment to address that. I wonder whether the point was expanded upon in the actual presentation to address that or not - bullet points on slides are usually "launching off points".

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