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Comment by hudibras | Hacker News Reader

It's a bit disturbing that he thinks "American people" equals white people and that women just need to lean in more. It's all a meritocracy, you know, nothing we can do about it.

But, hey, maybe Those People can still nab a slot in a MOOC so it's all good...

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> It's a bit disturbing that he thinks "American people" equals white people

It's a lot more disturbing that the interviewer thinks Twitter isn't diverse because it's more than 50% white. How many industries out there are less than 50% white? Why is that an expectation when more than 50% of the population is white? Why is tech being singled out?

Why is tech being singled out?

Because tech is wealthy, visible, and weak. This makes tech an easy source of symbolic and financial victories for those who wish to wage a culture war.

The real question is why tech rolls over rather than fight back. (There are a few noble exceptions, e.g. Uber, Tesla and AirBnB, but they usually only fight back within their narrow battlezones rather than in general.)

How is tech "weak"?

They are easily disrupted by any culture warrior with an angle, have demonstrated no real ability to defend themselves, and are part of a media narrative that results in their story not being heard.

A simple illustration. Compare two culture war attacks, one on someone in tech, and one on someone in an industry that isn't weak:

http://valleywag.gawker.com/business-insider-ctos-is-your-ne...

http://gawker.com/5979679/id-do-her-a-brief-history-of-micha...

Funny news, kind of a sideshow: http://www.businessinsider.com/sac-capital-andrew-tong-hormo...

Kind of apples and oranges there, right? The tech guy's comments were way worse than Bloomberg's, and we're not so much talking about "tech vs non tech" here as we are talking about "bloomberg vs not bloomberg".

I'd expect any CXO to get fired after making that many ridiculously offensive comments.

EDIT: Not to say you're completely wrong, just not a very good example. I'd call that dude getting fired for those comments completely justified, not a case of techies getting pushed around.

I dunno, I generally consider making offensive comments to real live humans to be worse than being a Republican and mocking Mel Gibson. You do know the context of that one very offensive quote, right?

http://www.ranker.com/list/top-10-most-offensive-mel-gibson-...

I guess if I were trying to make your point, I'd point to Brendan Eich / Condi Rice rather than no-name CTO with an actually very offensive twitter history (multiple fire-worthy tweets for a high-profile job IMO) vs name-brand celebs. I figure a CMO or CFO would get fired for that twitter history just as fast.

I took that more as "Don't get stuck in lobbying and writing blog posts and generally complaining about the state of things...take some real-life initiative and fight for what you believe you deserve".

As a "white person" I am getting a little tired of running interference for the equally economically successful Asians and South Asians.

In the US at least, asian people are more successful than white people are. Higher incomes, higher levels of college education, higher GPAs, higher SAT scores, lower unemployment rates, and lower rates of poverty.

The recent trend to pretend that asian people are white people as far as diversity is concerned is extremely disturbing. It points to an incredible racism at the heart of the arguments.

As an "asian person" I have never faced any discrimination in the US. Thank you world!

BUT, my wife and her female engineer friends face discrimination every single day at their jobs. The issues they face are just sad. So from my viewpoint, gender discrimination could not be more real and a very serious issue.

Didn't you hear? Google was upset about not employing enough minorities even though 1/3 of its workforce is Asian, so according to Google Asians are white now. Diversity!

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/28/google-releases-emp...

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