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Comment by EpicEng | Hacker News Reader

>Their leadership is mainly white and mainly men. I don't believe they really care about abuse in a meaningful way.

I don't like the implication here (i.e. white men don't care about harassment/abuse and they are also stupid.) I would wager that most anyone of any color or gender or religion in any high position of authority at any company cares first and foremost about the financial viability of the company they have been charged with running.

Many (most) "white men" do in fact care about this stuff and aren't bigots/sexists/racists. You're naive and part of the problem if you think this is a "white male" issue and not a much more complex problem. In fact, you're exhibiting the bias you attribute to these managers.

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I think it's fair to say that people who are not white males (such as myself) are more likely to be targeted by a wide variety of harassment, and that without their views it may be much easier to miss the issue. As a white male I don't get targeted by misogyny or racism (at least not anywhere near the scale that others have). Having people who have experienced that around to help guide the decisions for how to deal with it- and how many resources to devote to it, since most business decisions come down to money.

Also, we can all have biases without it meaning people are being racist. My parents like rock music, so I'm biased towards listening to that over country. I went to certain schools and that colored my world view. I once heard bias described as a heuristic the brain uses to make quick decisions- something that was extremely useful for primitive humans but which needs to be actively balanced in our complex society. A huge part of that for decision makers is exposing themselves to other viewpoints as a way to collect information they themselves wouldn't have gotten. There's a reason why companies have used things like focus groups and surveys to understand their customers- having more people who understand those customers in leadership at companies is an even better way to do it.

Yea me neither. Generalizations like this aren't helpful, or least bit fair.

The abuse is disproportionately targeted at people who aren't white men, and is is disproportionately performed by white men.

This is nothing particularly new. It's the history of America, which was founded by and for white men, and whose story can be told as white men slowly and reluctantly giving up their power.

If "many (most) 'white men' do in fact care", history doesn't really demonstrate that. Not, at least, in terms of doing anything about it. This is not particularly shocking; people care more about problems they experience, and less about problems that happen to benefit them.

We need only look at how the majority of white men supported a blatant racist and sexist for president. And who continue to support him despite (or because) that has only become more clear.

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