Buzzfeed Twitter “like to hear from you if you are not white and not male.”

I agree; her bigotry was showing. BuzzFeed might escape a human rights complaint because the most problematic tweets weren't part of the actual job posting, though.

"@danspeerin White men are still permitted to pitch, I will read it, I will consider it. I’m just less interested because, ugh, men."

We judge this person because she's spewing her random thoughts on Twitter, but I wonder what happens when a large number of people with this knee jerk "all men are bad" attitude get into positions of power? And how many of them are there already? I can't see that it will help reduce sexist attitudes in the workplace.

[As an aside, as a minority, I find her Tweets extremely racist as well – and hope no one ever makes this sort of racist speech on my behalf or while pretending to be helping me.]

The argument that people actually make which is not your ridiculous straw man is that if two candidates seem roughly equally competent (which happens almost every single time hiring occurs), and one is from an underrepresented group, and your workforce lacks in diversity, you should select the one from the underrepresented group.

As it turns out very often "skills and qualifications" is often used as a code word much like "culture fit" for "the two candidates are functionally indistinguishable, but candidate A just 'seems' smarter, you know? Because, well, white men are smarter, you know?"

>It [Her texts about "pale devils"] alienates far more fragile white guys than the groups she's looking to employ. An unfortunate sacrifice, but necessary none the less.

Ridiculing people who are put off by words like "pale demons" as "fragile", reveals a critical lack of empathy.

For me, it transforms phrases like "unfortunate sacrifice" and the above comment into crocodile tears. A pretense at humanity and, functionally, no different from the white supremacists who defend police brutality against blacks as an "unfortunate but necessary tragedy."

Insidious, really.

You can be pro-discrimination in favor of minorities, but don't hide behind the "it only hurts their feelings" fallacy.

> It isnt in any way comparable, discrimination against white males mostly hurts their(our) feelings, discrimination against other demographics has them paid less

Suppose the highest paying job in my profession pays $65k/year. If you hire someone who is not a white male (me, for instance) for that job over a white male who is objectively better at it, how on earth is this not causing them to be paid less?

They just lost the top job (worth $65k) on account of their race, and will have to accept lower paying jobs in the future. They are absolutely being discriminated against and paid less.

Instead, the system we get is one in which everyone pretends to be inclusive, and I end up inadvertently giving money to organizations like Chik-Fil-A.

The Constitution concerns actions taken by the government (or, in some cases, by agents of the government), so it's not relevant here. The analogous rules for private corporations are in provincial Human Rights Codes.

That said, while I do not study Canadian law in any capacity, I would wager that this is also illegal in Canada under the Canadian Human Rights Act.

http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/h-6/fulltext.html

Legally speaking, there are a variety of ways to promote diversity that are, for better or worse, legal. Internal memorandums insisting that diversity is a key company value, for example, is in fact anti-discriminatory, though it might sometimes end with a result that sacrifices the best potential candidate for someone who can add a unique perspective.

That said, suggesting that white people need not apply is not remotely the same thing as promoting diversity, and co-statements that highlight the ills of white people put too fine a point on it.

FWIW, I'm of the opinion that I think a given person should be able to hire whomever they want. If that means that BuzzFeed Canada hires zero white people, then so be it. But that doesn't change that the laws as they are do not generally allow for this (with certain exceptions -- like hiring Chinese people exclusively to staff an authentic Chinese restaurant).

Intent certainly does color the issue.

Condone and nurture the very activities that less-radical movements of the same nature set out to destroy.

Seems like a fairly straightforward answer to that question.

I think that it is extremely important to hire people from diverse backgrounds, especially when hiring journalists. That's what I believe she was trying to do, and that's something that we should be supportive of.