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Comment by xor1 | Hacker News Reader

From what I've seen, there are less African-American and non-white hispanic men in tech than there are white and Asian women, yet I never see this discussed. Is this not an important issue as well? Will skewed racial ratios only be handled after gender parity has been achieved? Or do they not matter at all?

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The same people who call attention to gender diversity also speak out for racial diversity. This particular piece focuses on gender because of today's being International Women's Day.

http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/why-cant-silicon-...

http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/20/9179853/tech-diversity-sco...

https://medium.com/tech-diversity-files/thought-on-diversity...

>The same people who call attention to gender diversity also speak out for racial diversity

Why don't I ever see it being discussed on HN?

Uh, does it not seem logical that if there are fewer black/Hispanic minorities in tech, that there will be fewer blog posts from that perspective?

But just because you don't ever see it discussed on HN doesn't mean that it isn't. Try out the HN search engine:

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=racism&sort=byPopularity&prefi...

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=african%20american&sort=byPopu...

Here's a discussion last year on the YC blog post that was titled, "YC Open Office Hours for Black and Hispanic Founders"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10228326

Because we have enough difficulties discussing basic issues of gender equity, without trying to deal with intersectional and allied issues. Walk before you run!

I see it come up pretty regularly. It usually is then followed by racist pablum of one sort or another--so the resistance to racial issues isn't exactly different from the resistance to gender ones.

Because we get flagged down a lot. This thread managed to survive because we started a big twitter stink to try and get it unflagged, and because we had the international women's day hastags to get attention, it managed to make the front page. But even that was a struggle.

Many of us, myself included, fight on behalf of a lot of underrepresented groups on HN as best we can.

I'm sorry if you haven't seen it, but I assure you some people here are trying.

As others have said here: if you don't see it, that should tell you something. The lesson isn't that minorities don't talk about their own issues.

Sure, it's important.

In the meantime, I note that you could have chosen, in response to a post on International Women's Day, to show appreciation to black _women_ and latina _women_ in tech, and recognize the issues that they face on all of these fronts. You chose not to do so. Hence it seems to me like your purpose here might be to draw attention away from those women, because you don't think they need your support or solidarity. Was that your intent?

I've seen a number of programs/discussions about black people in tech on HN.

http://www.blackgirlscode.com/ https://www.devcolor.org/

I remember reading this particular blog entry via HN: https://blog.devcolor.org/on-being-a-black-man-42ecb7946fe0

The disparity you're talking about could be because there are more women in tech (just underrepresented in C-level roles or whatever it might be) likely to speak up, whereas black people are underrepresented in tech full stop?

> yet I never see this discussed

Weasel words. The discussion happens, it is out there, you can find it. Who is to blame if you ignore it?

This is just concern trolling. Obviously all these issues are important to address; simply pointing to another issue does not contribute to solving either of them.

>concern trolling

Thanks, I was looking for a way to call people disingenuous without actually using the term, since it's apparently become a no-no word on HN.

Because those are typically flagged and down voted even faster on here because there are less people to unflag and upvote

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

Ah. Christ. Mechanics? I mean the women are like 50% of the population so big target likesay? Some of those women are non-white and a rising tide lifts all boats you know?

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