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Comment by poster123 | Hacker News Reader

"In the U.S., Facebook is 3.5 percent black, compared to just 2 percent in 2014, and 4.9 percent Latinx compared to 4 percent in 2014. White people, unsurprisingly, still makes up the single largest population of employees (46.4 percent today versus 57 percent in 2014). The upside to this is that white people no longer make up the majority at Facebook."

No mention is made of the fraction of Asians, because their over-representation would undermine the narrative of whites discriminating against minorities. This intellectual dishonesty irks me.

There are industries such as education where the vast majority of workers are female. If men and women are in the workforce at about even levels, there must be some industries where men predominate.

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>"In the U.S., Facebook is 3.5 percent black, compared to just 2 percent in 2014, and 4.9 percent Latinx compared to 4 percent in 2014. White people, unsurprisingly, still makes up the single largest population of employees (46.4 percent today versus 57 percent in 2014). The upside to this is that white people no longer make up the majority at Facebook."

So they're actually MORE diverse than the country racially.

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

"The White, non-Hispanic or Latino population make up 61.3% of the nation's total, with the total White population (including White Hispanics and Latinos) being 76.9%"

I don't see much noise about bringing men into female dominated industries either.

There are groups working on bringing men into nursing and teaching. You can find out more about these with a few google searches.

> the narrative of whites discriminating against minorities

You made up that narrative. The narrative presented in the article is

> Williams noted that, "diversity is critical to our success as a company"

Achieving "diversity" is not the same as mirroring the demographics of a company's home country and "over-representation" is not directly related to lack of diversity.

If "diverse" != mirroring the demographics of one's home country, then what does diverse even mean? What could possibly be a better metric than that? Mirroring the demographics of the world at large? If so, why would that be better?

> There are industries such as education where the vast majority of workers are female.

Yes, and they've tended to be the lower-paid professions. Nurses instead of doctors, teachers instead of principals, etc.

This argument is a little like citing "black people have water fountains, too" to defend the segregated South. It misses the point.

Female dominated professions, on average, have more time off, more flexible hours, significant social components, less physically dangerous, etc. Maybe these things matter, on average, more to women than men. Why should we expect women to have the exact same distribution of preferences as men? Why are we accepting the frame that the only thing that matters is salary?

If women choose their profession based on factors other than salary, it is a little strange to analogize them to black people under segregation. Just because someone has different values doesn't mean that they have false consciousness or are acting under duress.

I completely agree and I'm not sure why over-representation isn't a larger issue.

Honest question: Is your concern about over-representation limited to Asian people, or do you have similar concerns about white male over-representation in tech and elsewhere?

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