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Comment by ryanburk | Hacker News Reader

http://readwrite.com/2014/10/09/nadella-women-dont-ask-for-r... has a better write up, in my opinion. this was at the annual grace hopper celebration of women in computing and was not out of context / said ironically.

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>> Twenty-nine percent of the general Microsoft workforce is female, and in the U.S., almost 61% is white.

Can someone give me an american perspective on why Americans find 61% white to be an unacceptable thing considering 60-70% of american population identifies as white and America still predominantly is a white country.

It's the same as any other agenda-driven statistics. It's based on the interpretation the author/speaker is looking for, not any sort of greater context or meaning.

Critical thinking is hard for everyone. And escaping own's own biases is difficult even when you are aware of those you hold.

I think they usually mean "much lower black and hispanic representation than demographics would suggest". The population of the USA is 13% black and 17% hispanic [0] - Microsoft employees are 4% black and 5% hispanic. [1] The coincidentally similar percentage of white people in the two groups is because MS has a far higher representation of Asians than the general population.

[0] - http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html [1] - http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/diversity/inside-microsoft/de...

Then why don't they say that? It seems more damaging to use an obviously absurd euphemism.

Lazy thinking.

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