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Comment by j7ake | Hacker News Reader

Why does the skin color or gender matter if in the end they pick candidates that all went to the same top schools or have previously worked at the same top companies?

Diversity in training, education and work history vastly outweighs diversity in superficial physical features.

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A very obvious answer is that, for example, film was toned to white tones, which meant that film was not as good at capturing people with black skin on film or in lighting. Another example is of course facial sensors seeing white people but not seeing black people (which informs one of the funniest episodes of the defunct show Better Off Ted).

You say these are superficial features and yet the reality is that skin color drastically impacts one’s experience of life in this world.

Therefore if one is designing products, why would you exclude the perspective of people who would ultimately use your product?

The issues with capturing images of dark skinned people is due to lower light reflected by dark skin tones. It's the same reason why an f-22 is harder for a radar to pick up than an f-16. To have "dark skin" is, quite literally, to have skin that's more radiation absorbent in the visible spectrum. The "racist" screen unlock works just as bad on dark skinned south Asians. Despite south Asians not exactly being underrepresented in tech. Front facing cameras have a tiny lens and image sensor, that's why a lot of phones started adding a front facing led to illuminate faces that were getting insufficient lighting. Eventually, more advanced techniques like IR cameras and depth sensing light grid arrays made the issue of skin tone irrelevant.

This was a problem due to the fundamentals physics of sensing dark faces. It wasn't limited to Black people, a group that's considerably overrepresented in tech experienced the same issue. And this problem was solved without a big demographic change in the tech companies involved (what is the representation of Black engineers at Huawei and Samsung?). I always get a chuckle when people use this example as justification for DEI policies.

Top schools like ivy league in America exclusively discriminate against Asians and there was a lawsuit but its not being enforced.

This is a different issue that precedes DEI.

Harvard Law Asian admissions are up 30% 2023 to 2024. Maybe a sign the situation is improving.

i dont know where you work but my company actively diversified sourcing to other kinda of schools

Because governments and venture capitalists subsidize it. Their literal argument is that if you hire based on merit alone and your demographics dont meet the percentage that the government wants; you are racist and therefore not deserving of taxpayer dollars.

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