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Comment by gambiting | Hacker News Reader

I am being completely serious with this question - how is caring about "race diversity" not racist? It always strikes me as such - if you care about race diversity that means you perceive race as having a meaning, while in reality it doesn't have any. Am I the only person with such an opinion?

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Perceiving race as having a meaning is not more racist than perceiving sex to have a meaning is sexist. For better and for worse, race, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation and many other parameters play important parts in people's lives. Completely ignoring these would likely be detrimental, even if it was possible. We are not all the same, and it's a good thing.

See wikipedia for arguments for and against "color blindness" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness_(race)_in_the_...

People have biases. Making sure your hiring[1] decisions are not subject to those biases are one way to avoid racist behaviours. It also helps an organisation to avoid institutional racism.

Being polite: this is entry level stuff. A quick web search would have turned up some useful resources to answer your question.

[1] and other

Let's try this from another angle:

1) Do you believe racism exists?

2) Do you believe we should do anything about it?

3) What would you do about it? (Hint: "Nothing", is the wrong answer)

I don't think counting how many of each they have in each bucket is the right answer, regardless.

counting buckets is a potentially useful metric, not a solution. If your counts are very far away from the expected distribution (based on your area's demographics, the demographics of people with relevant degrees, etc.) then it suggests further research.

If we lived in a society with no discrimination then you might have a point. But we live in a society where certain groups are underrepresented and discriminated against, so it is the responsibility of companies like Amazon and the rest of us to try and rectify this situation.

I totally agree. Basing hiring decisions on the color of someones skin or the form of their genitalia is one of the most blatant forms of discrimination. The fact that it is widely accepted by our society makes me sick to my stomach.

I am a female and I just hate it when a company recruiter says he can get me a job in a position I know I am not at all qualified for. Additionally I got scholarship money when going to school when those much more dedicated than me did not simply because they had something hanging between their legs.

This is a loaded subject, but I'd like to say that (in my perspective) given a mostly uniform team (e.g. all males), it's a big plus to the atmosphere to hire someone from a different background (e.g. a woman). This may not be fair to the candidates who do not get hired, but it can be a very rational choice for the team to increase diversity and thus possibly improve culture/team spirit, and reduce "echo chamber" effects.

This does make sense. If done in moderation there is nothing wrong with hiring minority groups. The problem arises when those minority groups are so unqualified that they actually burden the team with their presence.

In my case I have been put in the awkward position of working with 4 male coworkers on a project I knew nothing about, I was getting paid the same as them while contributing nothing to the project. I felt humiliated and asked to be paid as an intern but my manager just smiled and said I was there for support and that my coworkers enjoyed my presence on the team as it was "A breath of fresh air to have a female in the work place". I quit the next week.

I agree with your premise, but without having more information, I don't exactly understand your story. From my experience, it's not unusual for a new employee to take weeks and even months before getting NEAR to the level of productivity of their more experienced peers.

I also agree that having a sort of differential pay system for new hires could make sense, that is very uncommon. The usual, when hiring, is to allow for an unavoidable period of learning and adjustment, during which a new employee "loses" money for the company, to be hopefully made up for in the long term.

This isn't specific to minorities, but impostor syndrome is a very real thing in the software industry, and minorities tend to suffer more from it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome#Demographics

No, don't worry, Stephen Colbert agrees with you. By not seeing race, he is by definition the least racist.

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