GitHub Director of engineering openly encourages racism

We really need to move past having gender/color/religion/sexual preference matter in how people are accepted and treated in society, and the workplace. These things should not, and truly do not matter.

What she is suggesting does not move us forward. It just encourages an escalation of the tension already present which doesn't end well for anyone.

I hope 2021 we figure out how to stop the hate and move forward to focus on problems that should unite us and not divide us.

What does this solve, exactly?

But it's cute that she thinks she has a leg to stand on, what with her employer being so heavily "diverse." Github looks really progressive, for sure-- they have a remote, multinational workforce.

It's a shame that workforce isn't paid evenly. One's value should not diminish based on what geopolitical borders they happen to reside within.

"We're providing opportunities to ___." No, you're outsourcing to southeast Asians and homeless Europeans and paying them less than others to do the same job. I hear the same nonsense pitched to interns to get them to work for free. It's exploitation. If an employee provides consistent remote labor to a company, their pay should not be adjusted to their coordinates or "inexperience."

It's almost like they think some people are worth less than others and should be exploited based on arbitrary features.

If you're going to proselytize about making the world a more equitable place through reverse racism, try not to stand on a soapbox literally built from exploitation of a foreign workforce.

As usual, White men continue to be the one group that you can name, insult, actively organize against, and so forth. Rhetorical devices like "racism" that can be used to describe all other racial-based discrimination somehow magically don't apply when White people are the target; in fact, White people only exist as a group when we are targeted. In all other contexts, we are now just a 'social construct', as our emergent group identity is publicly deconstructed to prevent us from having any identity at all.

White people have contributed more to the academic commons and to free/open source software than anyone else in the world; we have had an instrumental position in bringing the light of computing to the masses. Doesn't matter, though! Historical injustices not caused by any of the individuals writing software today will be used to judge us, even if we're not American, even if our ancestors never owned slaves, even if our ancestors were slaves themselves; none of that matters when pure tactical context denial is used to establish us as the group to defeat.

All of your problems will go away, Erica Joy, when White people can no longer start businesses or develop things. The world will be wonderful when, like crabs in a bucket, everyone has been pulled down to the lowest level possible. Can't wait.

Of course, there's no reason to look at the facts: that Ms. Joy herself is an incredibly privileged individual (director of engineering for one of the most prestigious operations going). Her career progression was no doubt aided by the fact that every organization with an HR department is committed to finding as many BIPOC and women as possible to diversify, while dealing with the fact that it's a very small pool of candidates.

Get this: I've never even had the opportunity to interview someone like this, despite doing a lot of hiring; turns out that it's just not that common to find them, especially outside of America. Were I a small business, unable to pay the big salaries that big orgs do, I probably wouldn't have a chance at this small and coveted pool of talent; I'd probably be stuck hiring White (and Asian / Middle Eastern) men, because that's who applies for tech jobs around here. It is not my fault nor my obligation to do anything to increase the number of people who are qualified for a job, especially considering that the vast majority of good hires I have made have been people who are in no small part self-taught using the vast amounts of free information out there....

Anyway:

2021 white people challenge:

if a product, service, or company is built by people who publicly espouse anti-white positions, you don’t use your platform (social, newsletters, blogs, etc) to champion it, promote it, or help it gain traction (yes, even if it’s a portfolio company, VCs).