I’m a Latino in Tech, and I Think the ‘Diversity’ Discussion Is Utterly Broken
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When I just avoid the topic, everything stays OK and everyone remains friendly.
I care about this topic because I don't want to be discriminated based on my race or gender.
It is a zero sum game. Companies will require the same head count regardless of its racial/gender composition.
At best, companies right now are lowering the bar on who they give interviews to when an under represented minority is involved (who ends up being upper middle class and privileged anyway, just like how AA works). Organizations are also providing resources and networking that I do not have access to.
On average, I suspect that some companies actually discriminate based on race/gender against white/asian/indian males when comparing interview performance with minorities.
At worst, the equal opportunity act is abolished and corporate affirmative action is allowed. This sound crazy but colleges are still able to discriminate based on race/gender so it's not that far fetched.
Talk about coded language.
zeitgeist: Focusing on diversity is just a temporary fad, I'm thinking ahead by sitting this one out
domesticated: Changing my opinion is akin to renouncing my freedom and autonomy
"ally": People like me don't really agree with those crazy diversity people, we just need reasonable cover
mindless pet: Those who don't agree with me have freed themselves from the perils of rational, enlightened thought. Like dogs! Or pigs, being fattened for the slaughter
I do agree with your premise (talking about diversity as a cis-straight-white-male can be a minefield), but there has to be some recognition that one's race (among other factors, even!) can color your experience on the job or in an interview. You may argue that social class or cultural upbringing have more of an impact, but those variables have an undeniable connection to race/ethnicity as well.
Even a quick skim shows several references to shutting up as well as how it's not an ally's place to discuss racism. I frequently see similar idea whenever a discussion of what being an ally is, comes up. I'd say that being an ally is being asked/told to be silent
Note: I was just saying on another forum that the liberals would often reject that whites in minority-dominated areas deserved any help for structural racism they face but then demand with straight face that same whites needed to fight racism minorities face every day. The feedback indicated people didn't buy that or care to respond. See last paragraphs of No 4 on this list.
In mostly black schools, whites aren't given a turn to speak on this. They shout over us in unison with some beating the shit out of the white people that disagreed with them. That was common for years in all of the ones my brothers and I went to. On public media, they just tell us we don't understand, can't understand, are the oppressors, etc and we need to stfu on permanent basis. Also, we need to promote their message, support their pro-minority programs, and step aside in their ensuing rise.
This isn't about turns. It's about them dominating people they disagree with much like others dominated them. Group vs group politics. They neither care what we have to say nor want us to be able to get our message across. Personally, I listen to and try to help them but not vice versa. They're clear we don't count.
Note: There's certainly exceptions to the above rule as always. I'm not talking about them.
Some people saw allies in a positive light while other saw them as being merely neutral -- "it's the least they can do after oppressing us for so long!"
The "allies are merely neutral" attitude was painful to deal with since it 1.) implied that straight people are bad by default and must prove otherwise and 2.) that straight people can never do enough to gain equal moral footing with LGBT people.
I can see how allies who dealt with that sort of attitude might have felt used.
He described that he constantly feels "guilty" about his privilege, like being born a white male meant he had to atone for the misdeeds of other white men in history. I found this concept... somewhat abhorrent, because it's not like he chose to be a white man. People shouldn't feel guilty for their gender, the color of their skin, or any other factor of their life entirely outside their control.
It seems like most men who end up in the social justice circles have a similar attitude, or at least, won't question the opinion of a woman or person of color. If you internalize the idea that being a white male makes your opinion invalid because of your privilege, you just assume you must always be wrong if you disagree.
The other type I've seen, of course, is men who claim to be feminists or social justice allies or what have you to exploit women, and there are a few high profile examples of that in recent history.
The position that is gaining in popularity on the left is no, you can't argue that social class or culture have any impact on a whole number of classic civilizational ills the world has been dealing with for thousands of years.
They argue that social disparity and many other things can be explained by race exclusively. Race is an intractable division and so as a member of an oppressive race you simply can not have a seat at the table of the 'oppressed'.
It gives the groups that espouse it an immense sense of unquestionable power. Its a regressive and fairly totalitarian ideology.
It's unsurprising white male suicide is up, when society is telling everyone white male opinions don't matter and that it's okay to discriminate against them.
(Oh, and the same people who discriminate against white males are usually the people ignoring the fact that most of the gun violence they're complaining about is mostly white male suicide. I agree with a lot of liberal views, but liberals can be funny sometimes too. Maybe instead of trying to ban guns we should just stop telling white males their voices aren't important because they're white males.)
A) They weren't friends, obviously
B) They are crazy on the margins.
This kind of stuff is why I stopped identifying with progressive causes. Sure - I might support a lot of it, but it's off the deep end. And the 'group think' and oppressive and stifling situations were just too much.
To think that you could possibly 'lose friends' over such an issue is the insanity that is 2016.
Hundreds of millions in federal funding is awarded for professors to talk about how we need to "abolish whiteness"; it's the dominant belief system in academics.
It was toungue-in-cheeck support for Hillary, but it's also just prejudiced, 2K up-votes, and a lot of people will buy into the casual bigotry of it. She can get away with it because she's a girl - and she knows she can - which makes it that much more cheeky, which is a Dunham thing - but still.
They lost my support about 10 years ago.
Now I pick and chose the issues.
He figured he might have said or done something wrong. I tried to calm him down explaining that they simply don't allow whites to have opinions on topics like this. They become a mob that can gets louder, angrier, and more dangerous as you resist. Mob-behavior is irrational and dangerous in all races. Best just to avoid talking to them until they calm down. They got along better a while after since they just wrote it off as white ignorance that they put in its place far as I can tell. That's how they describe those moments to me in the past.
I told him the real problem was that they ganged up on his ass to intimidate him into silence. We can't get any consensus or improvements if either side uses tactics like that. They all need to knock it off.
I saw same pattern on many online discussions at the time. Heabily polarized with info on each side from biased sources. Any opposing comment, small or large, got same effect of dismissal and/or attacks by large number of people. In this case, there were many of them and one of him. And he probably looked really nervous after initial exchange. Often creates a Pirhana-like effect where whole group jumps in.
>a philosopher from Peru resembles a philosopher from Scotland more than a janitor from Peru
>students think that their environment is diverse if one comes from Missouri and another from Pakistan—never mind that all of their parents are doctors or bankers
Spot on.
I consider any sort of initiative to disenfranchise or disempower people based on their racial/ethnic background as detrimental to society as a whole, because it (understandably) causes resentment and division.
Imposter syndrome is a bad enough problem for engineers without having to take the possibility of preferential treatment that was conferred on the basis of minority status into account.
This seems completely topsy-turvy to me. I would think white men would be more liable to impostor syndrome due to the general favoritism towards white men. If there were some preferential treatment in the policy that got you hired as a non-white-man that recognized you as the top of your demographic, and your demographic is still vastly underrepresented in your profession; then to feel like an impostor based on that is to internally accept that your demographic is somehow inherently inferior to the overrepresented group.
The entire purpose of affirmative action to me is to dislodge the incompetent advantaged people bobbling around at the bottom of their profession, and replace them with people who are more likely not to have had a chance to reach their full potential yet.
favouritism towards white men is pervasive but invisible; affirmative action is rarer but highly visible, so it gets focused on more.
Source please
What definitely has been more visible is complaints about affirmative action, because the advantaged majority were the ones complaining. As whites lose their majority in numbers (in the US), and women make professional gains, that has changed, though, which is an understandable trigger for white male rage and terror. The vast majority of the bosses are still white men, though; it's the advantage of the incumbent.
Maybe this is the case. But if there aren't enough funds to uplift everyone of the lower class, ultimately those you do help will mostly be of the dominant culture, thus indirectly perpetuating the same processes that subjugated minorities in the past. Funneling scarce resources to minority groups is acknowledging the unique factors that cased minority groups to be over-represented in the lower class.
Lack of diversity in STEM also has other causes, though, like self-selection away from subjects due to lack of role models, or struggling in college because your background has not prepared you for the academic culture. Some of these are likely more race/ethnicity/gender related, like the role model issue. When it comes to being prepared for the academic culture, though, that firmly seems to be in the socio-economic territory.
The trouble is that ethnicity also works as a semi-good proxy for socio-economic background, so it seems like people think that by fixing the "I don't see anyone like me here" problem, they can also do a good enough job of fixing problems due socio-economic background, even though that leaves out a significant chunk of people.
Exactly this. A focus on race/ethnicity is only looking at part of the picture. The question remains, though: is it better than looking at none of the picture?
How about all the "positive" discrimination? As a Caucasian male from the Middle East, I feel like many entities take pride in actively discriminating against me, and I don't have any victimhood cards to play in that game.
I'm curious what kinds of experiences you are referring to.
Maybe the academic culture is wrong? What if that culture is applying arbitrary standards that disproportionately filter out certain groups, even when those standards don't translate to the skills needed in the real world?
There are all kinds of cultures ("communities of practice", is the term) that we find ourselves in. Academics is one of them, in the sense that being a successful member requires you to be proficient in things like making coherent arguments, arguing from evidence, and asking clear questions. If your parents were university faculty, for example, you likely have much more exposure to a world where this is the norm than if you're first-generation college bound, which will make it much easier for you to navigate that world. That doesn't mean there's something "wrong" with academic culture -- it evolved because of what its practitioners do.
To the extent that "university student culture" crosses over into "the culture of the well-off", though, I'm inclined to agree with you.
If everyone is a blank slate and there is no genetic basis to intelligence, than yes, it does.
Their logic is correct, but it's based on a false premise. And if you call it into question, I sure hope you aren't dependent on having a job.
Is society "discriminating" against communities and individuals when some individuals and communities value education and spend more time studying than others?
The absolute disdain between my German and Italian family is immeasurable. It's kind of hilarious being an outsider to what they went through.
I honestly can't think of one white person I know whose family has been in the USA for more than 2-3 generations. I know a LOT of Mexicans who have been here in TX for hundreds of years which I think is incredibly interesting. I'm so used to my friends having barely any history beyond the 1920s.
I think it's important to give extra attention to those who are disadvantaged but we should handle it on a case-by-case basis - Because not everyone who is different and disadvantaged will fit under a specific race/gender/disability label - We shouldn't leave those 'unlabelled' people out of the equation (I think that most disadvantaged people cannot be labelled - They are invisible minorities).
For example, studies have shown that attractive people get paid more on average than unattractive ones... So maybe we should also give extra consideration to ugly people... Or introverts, or people who have English as a second language... Or who come from a different country... Or had a bad childhood, etc... There are so many different categories; you cannot look at individuals in terms of their superficial qualities only; you have to consider the individual as a whole.
For example, you cannot give special treatment to someone just because they're a woman (without also considering other factors) - What if that woman has a $10 million dollar trust fund and tons of social connections? Maybe she doesn't actually need any special treatment at all - It changes the whole story.
I think that gender, race and disability should be considered, but you shouldn't look at them in isolation from everything else; I think that doing so is in itself is a form of discrimination against all unlabelled disadvantaged individuals.
At the root of this discussion lies the problem that companies are not good at considering people as individuals.
I'm also hispanic, the lack of diversity in SV and really any other place where you want to point it out (except for maybe the coaching staff of some football program in rural TX, things like that) is due to socioeconomic difference.
I'd take it one step further though and say it's just a difference in culture.
Go to an Indian friend's house and move a book on the floor out of the way with your foot- you will get a nasty glare. Why? Education is incredibly important in their culture and for that reason kicking a book is almost blasphemous to them.
All I'm saying is that cultures that value education that way succeed because increasingly to be competitive in the job market you need to have hard skills - not ethnic studies degrees with minors in russian dance.
Our culture (hispanic culture) and black culture from what I observed during the time I shared neighborhoods with poor urban blacks that were similar in socioeconomic status to us, just doesn't value education the same way. And pointing that out nowadays is considered racist, sadly.
The only reason I made it out the hood is because of my dad - he would always tell me that the only difference (true or not) between him and the uberly rich guys he works for in LA is education. Fast forward 25 years and now at 31 I'm doing just fine. Most of the "racism" I perceive day to day is in my head and I suspect it has to do with this non stop conversation.
Indian here, my dad used to hit me if I moved a book with my foot. That is just not acceptable.
I certainly wouldn't be ready to fill out a survey about my political beliefs or my how my childhood was when interviewing.
Diversity often ends up being a political and ideological filter just as much as a racial filter. The organisation looking to hire a 'Diverse' person already has a set of ideological filters in place to rationalize why they prioritize 'Diversity' and what it means. There not just looking for any divers person but the 'right' kind of diverse person that agrees with there filters.
So there is process that leads to ideological and political monoculture as it is now. One of the points that to author is making is that focusing more on other forms of diversity rather the race can increase the intellectual and cultural diversity of your organisation far more the just hiring a group of different skin tones who all have the same believes and politics.
The problem is that this is not true. If it was, it would be much simpler.
Race and ethnicity have a nonzero correlation with other factors like culture and socioeconomic status, which means they are, on average, likely to tell you something about the person. When applied to a given individual they're obviously very flawed predictors, but if they didn't sort of work as a proxy for other characteristics, I don't think it would be talked about as much as it is.
One of the criticism is that the racial diversity PC crowd really have little interest in diversity of ideas, free thinking, or disruption. And most of them come from a very narrow band of upper middle class cultural experience. Its a feeble monoculture with a strict social hierarchy. For all intent and purpose its the opposite of what a innovative diverse group is.
If you goal is simply to hire a group of people who meet some subjective 'racial balance' who all think a certain way then your probably building a very weak team.
One last though: if you can't get the shallowest level of diversity, can you really get the deep level of diversity?
Sure, but why do you think that discriminating against innocent third parties is going to help? That just creates increased bitterness and division.
I'm not following you on that, would you explain more.
But for what it's worth, my latin-american brother-in-law introduced me to ceviche (he makes it himself), and that shit is the bomb-diggity
Her argument was that now that being white is a "bad" thing, white people want to ignore race.
It was very enlightening, but not for the reasons she intended.
Skin reflectivity, ancestry/parentage, anything related to genitalia (be it shape, usage, TypeMismatchExceptions from the brain, etc), net-worth, or history of any of those strike as poor proxies for the diversity that does mater.
Can you solve the technical problem to hand? Great!
Am I missing something that it needs to be any more complicated than that?
Then the question is, how do you set it up to find people that solve problems differently?
The interview is just the start of the phase. How do you keep people who are talented but approach the problem differently? What keeps them from feeling like an outsider?
...that actually matters is diversity of thought. How does this person approach problem solving differently?
I think that this is what the industry is after, kind of. It would at least make economical sense, I think. While the problem is interesting and important, it also looks to be hard to solve. But there seems to exists a heuristic, instead of trying to create an actual diversity of thought directly, create a diversity of thinkers in hope that diversity of thought will arise from it.
There is also a political aspect, as the field is felt as attractive and high paying then there exists political groups that try to take advantage of the situation, also this forum is oriented to the CS field, so we also hear more about this field here.
This comment does not try to address the real issue but a meta-issue - that is, why it is perceived that there is so much talk about the issue.
The example he uses, Project Include, specifically cites, "gender, race, class, age, religion, disability, education, sexual orientation, and others" and calls it a multi-dimensional problem [1].
Example: cis white men from poor or troubled families are most definitely included in this definition of under-represented minorities. It maybe difficult to explicitly measure, but they are definitely included.
There maybe specific organizations that work with a single dimension but I would like to see data on this supposed proliferation of solely race/gender based diversity organizations. Lots of good organizations work with other dimensions of minority representation. Stride[2], focussed on socio-economic conditions, in the bay area comes to mind.
The fact that poor white men are technically included in certain definitions of "disadvantaged" by obscure organizations no one has ever heard of, is of little import in the real world: where programs to, say, get more poor coal miners' sons from Appalachia into tech are thin on the ground, and anyone talking about those people's problems gets torrents of abuse and remarks about "white tears."
https://backchannel.com/canary-in-the-code-mine-903884eca853...
"...a woman might ‘realize’ that she had been ‘raped’ the next day or even many days later. Under these circumstances, it is unclear who should be held responsible. If the alcohol made both of them do it, then why should the woman’s consent be obviated any more than the man’s? Why is all blame placed on the man? "
I'm curious what people think about this.
There's plenty of evidence that women and people from under-represented groups are discriminated against because of their identity. Here are a few on gender alone: [0][1][2][3][4]
Perhaps there are cases of people being discriminated against for having "diverse" opinions, but it seems like a distinctly smaller problem, as witholding a controversial opinion is an option and witholding your existence is not.
[0] Female students seen as less competent than identical male students with identical application materials, offered lower starting salaries (Moss-Racusin et al, 2012)
[1] People in gender-incongruent roles penalised more heavily for mistakes (Brescoll, Dawson, & Uhlmann, 2010).
[2] Voluble women perceived as less competent and less suitable leaders, inverse true for men (Brescoll, 2011).
[3] Women who succeed in male-dominated fields percieved as not likeable (Heilman et al, 2004).
[4] Students question the competence of female teachers who evaluate them negatively, less so than male teachers (Sinclair & Kunda 2000).
Every single one of your examples has to do with gender, not ethnic diversity like the original article was talking about. Could you submit some evidence about under-represented groups?
I have Asian friends named Jerome, Tyrone and Miguel. By that kind of thinking they should they be given affirmative action.
But thanks for playing!
It's interesting that you interpreted it that way.
The author states that "diversity discussion is utterly broken", and I agree he focuses on race, but at no point did he constrain his criticism that to a particular sub-set of diversity.
In addition:
i) The article even opens with a lengthy movie reference (complete with a huge lead image) about the arrival of a woman at a previously all-male news team.
ii) From the article: "We’re turning race or gender into a crutch being used as an excuse for real or perceived failures."
iii) From the article: "Their goal is to help startups take proper steps to hire more women and minorities."
I don't think there's much wiggle room on the intent of the author, stated or implied.
I can only assume that either you didn't read the article completely or that you're attempting to move the goalposts; either consciously or due to confirmation bias.
> Could you submit some evidence about under-represented groups?
We could get into evidence for ethnic/racial bias if you really want to; but first I'd rather address the issue of why you feel like you need to move the discussion away from gender.
Until we get past that problem, citing further evidence would likely just polarise the discussion and lead nowhere.
My point was that the response's studies focus exclusively on gender, not on race at all, making it not as applicable to the article had he spoken to race at all in his reponse. Instead, he says "people discriminate against both gender and race" and only backs up the "discriminate against gender" argument.
First you (incorrectly) complain that the article is only about racial diversity. Now you're complaining because I haven't provided evidence to back up every part of my original comment.
I'll say again; I'm happy to get into racial diversity, but until we can clarify exactly why you want to dismiss the evidence I've shared on gender diversity I don't think it would be a productive use of my time.
Engage in a conversation. Share an opinion. If you just want to sit back and snipe, saying "you didn't back up that bit, show me studies" you can do it with someone else.
Yet, when it comes to diversity in tech, you can show all the data you want, and we still assume that affluent white men are the ones who are really under attack, that white men are predisposed to succeed in this field moreso than other groups, or any number of other theories that are really just anecdotally-based gut reactions. 2016 isn't that different from the 50s in that way.
The alternative is meritocracy. Things like blind auditions or at least leveraging existing diversity in assessments. There should be extra attention paid to whether the person has skills that complement the team's or took unusual but effective approaches to certain problems. I see that kind of stuff all the time in my line of work although management sees a lot less. It's because I'm looking harder. I don't care what the race or other traits of the person was as those who impress me vary considerably. I enjoy seeing the differences as I learn from them so long as the differences are mental.
IE: In the work place, a hiring manager might think "This person comes from that place which doesn't 'usually' produce top talent... On the other hand, I have this other individual from a place that generally produces top talent." Don't forget that a hiring manager's job is pretty much to entirely mitigate risk - thereby perpetuating, intentionally or otherwise, lack of diversity.
That's no excuse, but I think lack of diversity should be a viewed as a symptom, not a disease. In the above example, I describe a symptom of a risk-management mindset - and if companies could find a way to give more trust to hiring managers, perhaps it would give them the freedom to hire more diverse candidates.
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TL;DR Ask yourself: Do you think Lack of Diversity is a symptom of greater social/economic issues or is it a disease in that it is consciously/intentionally perpetrated?
I won't argue they aren't important axes. They may even be the two single most important. But either way it's disappointing that they're the only two axes we're actively measuring and scoring.
"The key word among advocates of multiculturalism became 'diversity'. Sweeping claims for the benefits of demographic and cultural diversity... have prevailed without a speck of evidence being asked for or given." https://youtu.be/H6ImP-gJvas?t=941
I've recently been exposed to the above sort of thoughts that criticize the whole notion of diversity. I have to admit I'm still taken aback and caught off guard by it. Apparently this Sowell guy is all over on YouTube sneering at the idea of diversity in one way or another. He's a very unusual and startling figure to listen to, challenging a ton of beliefs and things I've been exposed to growing up.
For example, if your team's demographics match the demographics of the Stanford CS department, odds are your failing at "cultural diversity" even if you hired a black MIT grad. On the other hand if your team's demographics match the country as a whole, you're probably doing pretty well at cultural diversity.
In contrast, I do things that are less implicitly exclusionary. I do not try to target anyone for inclusion. I just do things that do not implicitly exclude them in the way I frame things.
http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/07/less-exclusi...
Always had the same feeling about the "diversity" but never understood the why.
However only the pro diversity articles ever get upvoted.
In 1963, the Ku Klux Klan bombed a black church in Birmingham and killed four little girls, because the church supported the rights of blacks to vote. Blacks were still banned from attending University of Alabama in that year, the governor himself stood in the school's door to block the first student trying to attend, blocked by federal marshals. In 1964 three civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi, with the help of local police. In 1961, groups riding on integrated buses in the south were attacked in several places, with the help of police, beaten to a pulp and the buses burned.
Even in the north - in 1965 Martin Luther King went on a march in Chicago against de facto segregated housing, which was met by what seemed to be a forming mob, he was hit by a brick and the white and black marchers were met with projectiles and feared a riot might ensue.
If you look at the Fox News viewer demographics, much of their audience were in their 20s and 30s when this was all happening. They grew up with it that way.
This isn't ancient history to some of us, and is American history. You go back farther and it is jim crow, lynching, and not all too far back, about 30 years before my grandfather was born, slavery.
Considering this, seeing blacks relegated to Oakland (which is itself being gentrified) and lacking in the makeup of startups in San Francisco is not surprising. Things have in some ways gotten better, but black men are still killed for little or no reason. Look at the case of Amadou Diallo, who was shot 41 times for opening his door - the police brass have been editing his entry on Wikipedia with exposed IPs, which has led to a little kerfuffle. So they're being paid by working taxpayers to rewrite history any how...
And by starting a list of companies that hire Latinos, you're implying all other companies don't hire Latinos. I cannot think of a single company who openly discriminates against Latinos, so it's a false premise. It's not like Jim Crow days, where you'd maintain lists of restaurants who would serve black customers.
And the statement "If you are excited working with Latinos" is horrible. I'm excited working with anybody who is competent, easy to get along with, and can teach me things. Why would you be specifically excited about working with Latinos?
The argument goes that if you fall into one of those groups, you are generally helped by being what a lot of people think someone in that role should look like, at a minimum unconsciously and in some cases consciously.
It's not a full articulation of the dynamic behind people's backgrounds and what happens in a hiring process, and so it might not be the best idea to orient initiatives/activism entirely around that, but it's a pretty reasonable point of view.
That applies to every single occupation on earth. For instance, it is very unlikely that I will be hired as an English teacher, even though I speak perfect english and grew up in the states.
It's just funny that people want to practice selective diversity. "Hey we want clean high paying tech jobs! But we also don't want to encourage women to become sewage cleaners because those jobs aren't cool. What about the diversity in basketball, both college and pro? Shouldn't there be boot camps targeting asian males to increase diversity on campus?"
"discrimination is treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing is perceived to belong to rather than on individual merit."
If you are just posting jobs that explicitly are welcoming of latino candidates then it's not discriminatory, but if you encourage only latinos to apply to said jobs then it is. (at least in my mind).
The world would be a better place if people worked on improving their own communities as much as they do policing to make sure nobody else is improving theirs.