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Comment by Hnrobert42 | Hacker News Reader

I understand your position I agree with it in theory. In practice, that’s not how things work. If it was, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

In practice, simply “allowing” for diversity doesn’t work. The only way to reach diversity goals is to actively include people. So long as those people are qualified, I am okay if the cost is missing out on a slightly more qualified candidate. Not least of which because horing isn’t an exact science in which qualifications are completely measurable and all possible candidates are always considered.

Again, reality is messy. So a few white dudes (such as myself) might not get a job because of a quota. Big deal. If I am such hot shit that I definitely should have gotten the job, then I won’t have a problem getting a job elsewhere.

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>So a few white dudes (such as myself) might not get a job because of a quota. Big deal.

It is. You're either racist or you're not. You can sugercoat it with comfy terms such as "diversity" or "inclusion" but as soon as you positively discriminate for one race, you negatively discriminate against another and that is racism, even if it "only" affects white males.

Or stated differently, would you be for quotas if it meant a POC doesn't get the job, because there are already too many? If not, why?

> You're either racist or you're not.

If only it were this simple...

In reality, life doesn't seem to be constrained to our underdeveloped conceptual boxes, no matter how much we get attached to them.

I think I understand what you're getting at, but I didn't intend to draw a hard line of what racism is, but merely wanted to point out the slippery slope you're of using racist policies to fix discriminatory issues.

Is it actually racist to make reparations for former wrongs that have had a direct, severely negative impact on the aggregate experiences of a group living today? Those reparations have to come from somewhere, so in most cases anyone could complain that it's "taking away" from whatever.

I don't think it is so easy to answer that question off the cuff, especially without further details.

Also, I think it is very important to remember: these situations are usually _not_ zero sum. Helping one group does not mean another group has been harmed in equal magnitude.

>Is it actually racist to make reparations for former wrongs

They are not reparations. A reparation is a material compensation for a past harm. You don't take away from a group, you take away from individuals. I can't help but think of soviet farmers that were dispossessed in the name of communism.

>Helping one group does not mean another group has been harmed in equal magnitude

Again, you don't harm groups, you harm individuals. It's something different if you take taxes, where white people happen to pay more because they earn more, and use them to improve education in areas mainly inhabited by people of color. That would actually be not zero sum. But a position at a company is a limited resource. And if one person get's the position the other person can't get it. This is very much a zero sum situation.

I do welcome actions that help marginalized groups. But the way these issues are currently handled is short-sighted, ill-conceived and unethical.

> A reparation is a material compensation for a past harm.

That's not correct. First definition on google: "the making of amends for a wrong one has done, by paying money to or otherwise helping those who have been wronged." Reparations are not limited to material compensation.

> You don't take away from a group, you take away from individuals.

A group is a collection of individuals. Some things happen on the individual level. Other aspects or dynamics are only present on the group level and must be analyzed there.

> But a position at a company is a limited resource. And if one person get's the position the other person can't get it. This is very much a zero sum situation.

This is correct on the specific dimension you are looking at. But you are ignoring second order effects. That job may have a significant positive effect for the marginalized individual, and then in turn have a positive ripple effect on the marginalized community that he or she comes from. This could certainly result in a positive sum situation for society as a whole.

EDIT: To be clear, I'm totally with you that this could be taken too far, and we must proceed with caution. I also agree we should try to focus on cases where the positive sum benefits are most clear. But it is a difficult problem, and I think many instances of positive sum benefits are not fully appreciated.

Hear hear! If you're not against racism, and you support racist policies, you're a racist!

There is no need for sarcasm. I'm not a native English speaker, but I'm sure I didn't call anyone "a racist". I intended to use racist as an adjective. Such a misunderstanding could've easily been avoided had you asked me for clarification or picked a more charitable interpretation of my comment.

..... Why would you think I was being sarcastic? I agree with you ...

Non sequitur. You're having this conversation because the current political climate in the USA leads to conflicting opinions on this subject.

How come you're so confident that "that’s not how things work"? Do you have any idea about epistemic standards in social sciences? And if qualifications are not completely measurable, then how much more qualified is "slightly more qualified" and thus disposable? Lastly, on what grounds can people that promote diversity claim to have enough expertise to regulate this process of affordable exclusion?

Slightly more qualified is anything so slight as to make not hiring the person simple based on race make me feel unconfortable. Is that subjective? Yes. Do I care? No.

My expertise is no greater than my expertise in selecting people to hire. I make no claim that this effort should be enforced by regulation. I enforce it through my hiring and recruitment efforts.

> In practice, simply “allowing” for diversity doesn’t work. The only way to reach diversity goals is to actively include people.

What makes you say this? Doesn't this kind of assume that there aren't other reasons why such gender, racial, or cultural imbalances exist?

> So a few white dudes (such as myself) might not get a job because of a quota. Big deal.

There are large areas of the country still recovering from the recession. It's not like everyone is living in an economically prosperous area of the country. In those areas, not getting hired is a _huge_ deal.

There absolutely are other reasons. First, people are biased against those groups. Second, folks in those groups may not have the same degree of education and experiece, stemming in large part from lack of opportunity. That farcical “discrimination of low expectations” argument has no place in civilized discussion.

In any area, not getting hired is a huge deal to the person not hired. It is just as huge for everyone else as it is for white men.

I think this comment encapsulates pretty clearly the "ally" role advocated by "diversity" "experts".

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