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Comment by InTheArena | Hacker News Reader

From the article:

'The recent turmoil at Chief began on International Women’s Day, in early March, when a member of the network, Denise Conroy, declared on LinkedIn that she was leaving Chief and accused the group of sidestepping political issues and ghosting women of color who applied for membership. (Ms. Conroy, 51, later acknowledged that she had been reprimanded internally for trying to sell tickets on Chief’s platform to an external workshop she was running, which ran counter to the company’s policies.) ....

Rachel Hassall, a supply chain executive, is one of the Chief members who chose to leave the organization this month. She had recently participated in a discussion that Ms. Conroy hosted about the book “White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better"

Seriously. Who signs up for this? Imagine paying to be called a racist all day long, just so you can feel morally superior to others.

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> Seriously. Who signs up for this?

Women, specifically the middle-to-upper class ones that take the wackiest university courses, outpace men in grades and graduation rates, are hired preferentially at large companies, completely own the HR departments, and therefore are the ones who determine American Corporate Culture.

Same as being a Catholic "sign up to feel guilty for the rest of your life". I should know, I was born one !

I'm in RCIA classes to convert to Catholicism. I'm skipping this Easter's big confirmation event to give it some more time. I'm chiming in to reply to this comment. Catholicism is a practical way to deal with the guilt you (should?) already feel.

I definitely would recommend trying therapy before religion.

Religion has had that role of support and counsel for millennia. Therapy is a newcomer on the scene, with generally little evidence for its efficacy above and beyond what talking to a religious leader would provide; so much so that there is a growing movement for "evidence-based therapy", whose existence might imply that the other kind is evidence-free.

I think you're misrepresenting the efficacy of psychotherapy, and I don't think you'll have a lot of success pitching religion as an evidence-based alternative.

How is thousand of years not evidence?

Therapy is important but don't discount the power of prayer and community.

The scientific evidence strongly supports the conclusion that religious people are happier and healthier than non-religious people: https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/389510/relig...

This makes sense, but none of it supports an argument that religious observance is a reasonable alternative to acute mental health care. Religious people are healthier than non-religious people, but when their appendices burst, they still need a doctor, not a deacon.

I didn’t say it was an alternative to acute mental health care. But like physical health, mental health has a large component that’s just about supporting people in their daily lives. My parents are aging secular humanists. They’re now dealing with friends and siblings dying off. They’re handling it normally, and they don’t need acute medical intervention. But they’d probably be happier if they had set foot in a mosque every once in awhile and had a faith community to lean on through these completely normal live events that happen to everyone.

Not mutually exclusive. Also, would you include most, if not all present day ideologies as "religion"? Including the one in this very post.

I would not.

It was a rhetorical statement.

How bizarre.

> Who signs up for this?

It's pretty clear from your comment that you've made up your mind and don't want an actual response, but for anyone who is interested, I can give a real example.

I worked at an agency where the "leadership" was exclusively white, and the lowest paid roles were staffed by people who were mostly black. Licensed professionals were getting passed over for promotions in a way that left no explanation other than race.

Staff complained, and management (to their credit) wanted to address the concerns. So where do they go? To talks like this, etc.

You might think that racism doesn't exist and that there is no value in discussing how to fix it. For those of us living in the real world, these are useful resources.

> Staff complained, and management (to their credit) wanted to address the concerns. So where do they go? To talks like this, etc.

Honestly this sounds apocryphal.

What is the type of racist that accidentally doesn't promote any black people? Furthermore, what is the subset of those racists that simply stop once they get lectured about their obviously racist practices? If they're promoting the wrong people (ie the ones that don't do the job the best) they get fired.

Lots of stories like this. Read some federal employment discrimination cases—the judicial opinions give lots of detailed facts. Lots of not very bright racists in supervisory roles.

That said, the anti-racism training classes actually make that sort of racism worse: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/17/opinion/dei-trainings-eff...

Define “doing the job the best”.

There could be barriers like credentials that some groups may have at a lower rate. A hiring manager sees one candidate with a college degree and another without, and chooses the one with, because that is what is “best”.

> What is the type of racist that accidentally doesn't promote any black people?

Have you not heard the term "implicit bias"?

> Furthermore, what is the subset of those racists that simply stop once they get lectured about their obviously racist practices?

The ones operating in a high-turnover field trying to retain their threadbare staff. Part of it was also that there had been some new additions to the management team, and part of it was the national conversation around racism that just made people more aware of it and provided the conceptual framework to understand what was happening.

> If they're promoting the wrong people (ie the ones that don't do the job the best) they get fired.

I can't come up with a polite way to tell you how naive this is.

Wait, you write:

>Staff complained, and management (to their credit) wanted to address the concerns. So where do they go? To talks like this, etc.

And then you write:

>These are useful resources.

Are you of the opinion that corporate training events matter? I was under the rather distinct impression that corporate training events are for shielding corporations from discrimination lawsuits.

> Are you of the opinion that corporate training events matter?

Always. There is money to be made organizing, and delivering that training. Then, the higher ups can confidently report they’ve solved a great deal of cultural and social ills at their company. They get to report it up, and also feel good about themselves. It’s overall a win-win situation.

> Are you of the opinion that corporate training events matter?

Yes, they definitely matter. Corporate trainings provide social validation for ideas (good and bad). In my field, managers are herd animals, afraid to disrupt the status quo. Trainings can be a way to break out of group think ruts.

Religiosity at its finest!

Nothing better than a presumptuous "you are guilty because of your skin color" assessment of a group of people.

I said that I observed people doing certain actions, and yes they are "guilty" of that. I never said anything about their skin color making them guilty. Pointing out discrimination is not discrimination.

Its weird to have a half a worldview on employment status relations and the other half strictly race related. What specifically were the roles that were passed on?

It's not half and half. I live in a world where employment and racism both exist.

What difference does the role make? If I said "lawyer" would that be different than if I said "accountant"?

It would be different if you said admin assistant or HR.

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