>> racism in tech is a thing, and that it shouldn't be.
>To play devils advocate, racism is a thing everywhere. In some cases, there are good biological reasons why blacks and whites are treated differently, e.g. basketball (mostly blacks) versus swimming (mostly whites)
If the above doesn't sound insane to you, I don't know what to tell you.
> If the above doesn't sound insane to you, I don't know what to tell you :)
We, on HN, are keenly aware of Turing's contributions - the fact that he was gay has literally no bearing on our appreciation of his contributions;
Wifi as you know it (frequency hopping) was invented by a female
Many people with many contributions to the advancement of modern civilization were... human!!!!
Now, if we really want to be inclusionary - who are the undersung animals? The jelly fish, lab rats, telomeres of the immortal, Pavlov's dogs?
This whole argument is quite stupid (stupid that it is even an argument)
Fighting over merits is bullshit; hey Sur Gregor Clegane, squeeze through that doggy door. Hey Gary Coleman, bring me that 500 pound axel!
Physicality surely has its pigeon holes, mental capabilities do as well: clearly gender does not.
Brianne of Tarth could dig a bigger ditch than theon or Tyrion...
The sad thing is that Google has built itself on an interview process of supposed meritocracy - and witha single memo exposed themselves as not being such... wage fixing etc...
Human judgement is the real culprit. Bias. Where is it learned, innate or developed? How do personal, professional,psychological, physiological or familial bias occur and present?
Well, they clearly just present all around you! They are everywhere - so how to judge another?
The problem with the issue at hand is that we are using professional/physiological situations to judge psychological/other factors...
Bias silos exist. I'll defer my time to the gentleman with better articulation ability than I.
Wow. You realize that you, or whoever you read or heard this from, has absolutely no evidence to back this up, right? Not to mention we're talking about passing up millions because someone played Future in the locker room, if there's a white dude that'd do that, I dunno what to say. But best of all is when you listen to white players in the league and how they've picked up black colloquialisms in the speech (listen to Dirk Nowitzski talk), or are rather comfortable doing shit like that time fucking Doug Collins and Jalen Rose were quoting "What happened to that boy?" by Baby and Clipse.
(it's a play on current PC tropes on the lack of women in tech and how insane they sound when applied to race/nba)
Replace with religion and blacks and whites with Jews and muslims, sure the paragraph can still be written as such, but still doesn't change the original meaning.
If it wasn't obvious, one of my points was that being good at swimming is just that - it has nothing to do with software engineering. The whole "inherently different" argument is a red-herring if it has no provable bearing on the ability to do the (software engineering) work.
edit: my main point though, was that differences in statistical sport affinities are not, and do not explain "racism" - just as difference in statistical career-affinity is not, and doesn't explain "sexism".
>Where those biological differences aren't effective (e.g. typing on a keyboard), then yes, men and women should be treated the same.
You argued against a strawman.
That being said as long as a job/role's requirements are appropriate and fair, there should be no reason a senegalese (black) woman, philippino (asian) man, or danish (caucasian) woman can't be a software engineer, soldier, nurse, or nanny.
That makes about as much sense as saying "let me remap what you're saying to hair color"
> If the above doesn't sound insane to you, I don't know what to tell you.
It does sound insane, because it is insane.
But it's your text. Not mine.
The problem is that you're making the following insinuation:
there are no more differences between men and women than between black people and white people
That statement is simply not true. In terms of physical prowess, men are stronger, faster, etc. There is just no question:
* the record for mens "clean and jerk" is as much as the womans record... plus the woman who's doing the record
* national / olympic womens teams (soccer, baseball, etc.) compete with mens high school teams... and lose.
* the records for swimming, sprinting, marathon, etc. show huge difference by sex
What is insane is denying biological reality, while insinuating I'm no better than a racist.
More importantly, your original point dodges the issue of sexism altogether. Obviously there are biological differences between men and women, but sexism is not an issue over who is able to bear children and who has more estrogen in their body. Sexism is about an unfair social power dynamic. Nobody is denying that there is a biological reality to it; the conversation is over how to work with that knowledge to give both men and women an even playing field.
Take one example that men will sometimes fall in love with women they work with, or vice versa. Without any rules or precedence you can end up with seriously messed up power dynamics, like a man in a more senior position pressuring women into unwanted sexual situations in which rejection puts them at fear for their jobs. Sexual harassment laws exist to try to protect against this, and inter-office relationships are generally forbidden as a preventative measure.
Sexism is a really difficult and nuanced issue, and to say "yeah but this will always be an issue because men and women are biologically different" trivializes it and takes away from the discussion.
Except I wasn't being sexist. The re-phrasing of my comment as racism was offensive and demeaning, and entirely not analogous.
> Sexism is about an unfair social power dynamic
Such as men dying earlier than women? Such as 80% of homeless being men? Such as 93% of "on the job" deaths being male? Such as never-married childless women earning more than equivalent men... going back to the 1960's?
I could go on.
My point is that everyone touts the party line of "OMFG women are oppressed". Very few people look into the facts. And when all the facts are presented, it's a whole lot more nuanced than "think of the Women!"
> to say "yeah but this will always be an issue because men and women are biologically different" trivializes it and takes away from the discussion.
You're reading a whole lot more into my comment than I said. That shows rather more projection that reality-based discussion.