The Other Side of Diversity

I am tired of the "sticking out" feeling, real or imaginary. So, I started a Meetup group for black engineers. Sometimes, it's really nice to just relax and feel comfortable. No worries about someone attributing my behavior to being black, or judging all black people by something that I've said or done.

Right now, I am hoping to rally folks to come to Philadelphia in 2 weeks for a black hackathon. It's a great way to network and teach. Check out http://www.mbkhack.com/ for more info. If you're in NYC and interested, we will have a pre-meeting before we go. The link is in my profile.

I honestly wonder if people in this day and age care about the color of your skin. Isn't that from like the 60's?

I hopped from computer engineering, to electrical engineering, to get a bachelors in Art. I worked cross discipline between Art and CS, to publish academically. I got my masters in CS. I was accepted as a PhD student in CS, but at that point, I was so isolated that I essentially collapsed from stress, overvaluing my work, and undervaluing my health.

I work as a software developer now, in the interim of 'not really knowing what to do with my life', being that I've seen so many facets of where I can go, what I can do, and once again, haven't got the faintest clue aside from a small amount of intuition to guide me in what to do. That, and an obsession with everything related to technology, and enough technical/logical/mathematical books to build a house with.

I don't know so much if it's that my surroundings changed that tempered my feelings, introspections, and feelings of isolation, or the experiences I've been through. I'd say it's easy, but it isn't. I'd say it's hard, but it isn't. I just sort of imagine everyone in life goes through something similar once in a while, even if on the surface, it looks totally different.

EX: Current team has 2 black females one from the US the other from Africa, 2 Indian females from India, 1 Indian male from India, 2 white males born in the US, 2 Asian males one born in the US another born outside. Team lead is american born Asian. We are managed by a black female, who's boss is a white female, who's boss is a black male.

However, in my experience rather than have more people fit in you end up with everyone feeling like they don't fit in for a long period of time.

PS: Ok, there is the default 'can speak English clearly' group. But culture goes beyond language.

Every time there's a team member from some under-represented group, there is a tendency to think of it as living in some kind of "diverse workplace" stock photo instead of just getting stuff done.

Even though you don't feel you fit in in the US, do you ever feel relief at just not getting attention for being different?

I'll admit there is a small part of me that gets slightly irritated every time we go through a hiring cycle and everyone who shows up for the interviews is Mandarin speaking Chinese-- because it cant be that only Chinese people are applying for these jobs; the odds don't favor it.

That said, I love my job, I get along with everyone at work, and actually feel like its a great opportunity to learn about another culture up close without having to travel across the world like the parent poster.

I guess the point is anyone (white, black, asian, etc.) can be culturally isolated in any country or company. Some people have an easier time assimilating, and other still don't ever feel the need to assimilate.

It makes me wonder if there is something unique about "white" culture that causes "others" to feel more isolated than when the reverse scenario is true. I've never worked for a man, and have never worked for a white guy, yet I'm a white guy myself. Beyond the slight irritation i mentioned above about hiring, its never bother me a bit.

So if you're asking what you should do, the answer is: the exact opposite of whatever you're doing now.

Maybe! But your level of comfort around people who are like you doesn't dictate your ability to be inclusive. It just shows how important diversity is to help us understand why we may be uncomfortable in these scenarios and how to address it.

I've been giving it some thought about why, at least personally, I like to connect with my team, play games together, send jokes, look at new tech toys. I realized that, for myself at least, my work group is my only social circle and I have no other personal bonds or social groups.

I've only been in one group like that. All of my other more diverse groups, all of which I've loved, I have enjoyed a great work relationship, but nothing in common other than the work. The more diverse a group, the more the focus is on just work, no water cooler talk, no goofing off.

If I was faced with a work group I have nothing in common with, the work would be my focus, and I would itch the social scratch outside of work, without my co-workers. Changing yourself to fit into a group is something I figured people just grew out of after leaving high school.

The asshole, I agree with you, but that was just the one. The rest of the story I felt was her own projection, in a microcosm we've all dealt with that in the past. As others have said, an HR department is there to diffuse a situation for the company, not help you. She wanted to please everyone else, I've known plenty of people like that, I'm sure everyone has, they do everything they can, and still feel guilty about it.

Being passed up for a promotion is more likely about scratching the back of someone they know than trying to slight her. I know others who have experienced similar things, because the bosses wanted kickbacks from friends of the contractors, or could get a $1000 referral fee. The reasons people are jerks can also be not because of you, your race, your gender, but because they are acting selfishly. I've personally experienced similar situations being passed up and I imagine it was because they knew the people at the company they contracted in. The in house developers yell "we can do it!" but the money changing hands is too good to pass up.

By the time she mentions NY or the Bay Area she doesn't have a sense of self at all, only the mask. No one else seems to be the oppressor, if I was the odd white male out in a team of a different race and gender I wouldn't try to wear their suits, it wouldn't work in the same way I've seen people try to fit into groups that they just weren't them, but they were discovering who they were.

There is a lot of hardship, depression, self deprecation, and terrible treatment she endured. I'm glad she shared her story, there are other who feel the same about who they are, not just because of race or gender. I'm glad she is taking action in defining who she is as a person, and how she wants to influence people who meet her.

However saying the industry needs to change isn't accurate, it is akin to asking for cliques to not exist, for like minded people to not congregate. She changed herself to fit in, she is now defining who she is, the solution is not to ask others to change to make everyone feel included and accepted. She felt changed, so now she wants to change the industry, which includes the rest of the non-asshole workers.

I've been in very diverse groups, very homogeneous groups, I spent a year in a group as the only male. The real trick is to do as she is doing now, focus on making a you that you like, then cultivate that pride and energy, until being yourself isn't work, but just like putting on shoes.

Let's apply the Principle of Charity here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity). The words you quoted don't say that, and it's easy to find plausible ways of reading them that don't mean that. Indeed, when you say that something "sounds like" X, it's you who are adding X, not the author. Choosing that interpretation in order to dismiss it seems unnecessary, and likely to polarize the responses. (I mention the latter because of how unpolarized and thoughtful the thread has been—edit: or had been.)

Make an effort to include every member of your team in your activities. It's Burkeian "omission of good" rather than "commission of evil". Let's assume that you're perfectly non-exclusionary. Fine. What are you doing to be inclusionary?

You know what stuck out to me? This line:

> I remember asking if we could do other outings that didn’t include beer and getting voted down.

I know that feel, and I'm neither black nor female.

Create an atmosphere where people can talk about things that make them uncomfortable. Granted, much of the language and distorted dogma around race and gender issues has made this difficult. It's anti-intellectual claptrap to label things like objectification and stereotyping as things that are like "sin." Those are epiphenomena of human social information processing. They are things to be aware of, not things to shame people with.

The good news in that, is that the same things one does to foster honest and direct communication around technical issues are the same things one does to foster honest and direct communication around social issues. The bad news in this, is that to accomplish that, you are going to have to get past a lot of the BS and recrimination that acts as a barrier. (For the record, I think the way "political correctness" is currently implemented doesn't help on the whole.)

This sounds like she's most comfortable working only with black people - in which case, the pleas for all-inclusive diversity sound a bit hollow...

I don't think it's that she only wants to hang out with black people. It's that she wishes she felt as comfortable around tech coworkers as she does in predominantly black settings. Is it possible that she's doing things that exacerbate her feelings? Sure. Again, that's something to be cured with honest and direct communication.

If we all rationally applied what we now know about group psychology, we should anticipate many of the events and situations she described happening. Also, if the entire group of coworkers were anticipating and applying such knowledge, I would posit things would go differently. Unfortunately, the fear and social coercion around the current version of "political correctness" work against this and instead produce an atmosphere of fear and tiptoeing around hair-triggers for fear of being tarred with labels synonymous with villainy. Could you imagine such an atmosphere around implementing continuous integration, or effective testing, or coding practices?

Instead, encountering different cultures/sub-cultures should be considered an instance of encountering "known unknowns." One should go into the situation with a stance of discovery. That is what "cultural sensitivity" should really mean, not this tiptoeing/gotcha game BS that we play.

EDIT: A series of questions for 3rd party readers: Is your workplace about "open and honest motivated problem solving" in the social dimension? Or is it more like "tiptoeing around gotchas?" Or is it a combination of the two concerning different social issues? What does it mean?

Just be normal. Is that really so difficult to be?

All people ever want is to work around normal people. I'm not sure why that is a impossible expectation to have. People's skin color, ethnicity, religion, language, nationality, religion or whatever is the person's private business. Just being fair to their performance on the job can solve all the issues.

>>This sounds like she's most comfortable working only with black people

If you treat people badly over and over, over years. And then you consider your birth right to screw their careers and life. And all the person at the other end wants to protect themselves from this, I don't see what's so wrong with it.

What should she do otherwise? If all your efforts to succeed with just efforts fail, Its perfectly fine to act in your best interest.

I'd say it's more interesting that when you are in the majority and similar to those with power, you don't deal with certain bullshit and it's easier to relax and get shit done.

That sounds a bit like all the other white engineers that aren't really focused on cultural sensitivities because they are (can be) focused on other things.

On one hand the author feels she loses her cultural identity by trying to mingle with a while group. On the other she advocates diversity. And yes, she also feels comfortable when working in a predominantly black team.

I think the solution that she forgets to mention is having people of all groups equally represented (most or less) in any field. With that happening, I can see how nobody would feel like an outsider, and get to preserve their cultural prefernces and tastes, along with mingling with other cultures and races.

It doesn't have to be a black team, a white team and a brown team. All that is needed is people of all races in the workplace with diverse teams. That will balance things out.

As for "What can you do as a white person other than not being a racist and voicing your prejudices openly" .. I don't think there's much you can do. I guess those of you in recruiting positions can encourage people from all backgrounds to come up. Not saying give special treatment to minorities, but generally try to keep bias away from recruitment procedures. Same applies to promotions, relocations and the like.

It reminded me of a story on Reddit recently about a couple who adopted an Asian baby and then raised him diligently and positively introducing him to Chinese culture, language classes, special efforts with food and communities, etc so he didn't lose that part of his background. At around 18 years of age after almost two decades of efforts along these lines, the father discovers the kid is actually Korean and can't bring himself to tell his oblivious son or wife!

These may be true, but it misses the point: personal dignity is a worthwhile goal in and of itself.

I get that spinning it as a "this is scientifically better and has capitalistic/rationalistic superior outcomes" may be necessary to appeal to the self-described rationalists in our industry for whom "because people feel like shit in this environment" doesn't even register. But it does feel wrong.

(Also, how would you characterize 'expected you' as being different from a 'professional you' that we all live with the pressure of in the work world?)

This. I never fit in anywhere, not because of color, gender or anything substantial really. I am just crazy stubborn and have a weird set of interests and world views. It never was a problem for me because I didn't even consider adapting. It was always an active and conscious choice to choose my own persona freely.

I think the world would be a better place if everyone had a self-confidence boost. In our big organized world everybody feels so small and tends to treat himself poorly, which leads to them treating others poorly who then again feel smaller.

I can't help but wonder if, assuming this is what makes everybody most comfortable (being surrounded by people like them, rather than being surrounded by diversity), the quest for diversity might simply result in cultural balkanization within companies as cultural/racial/gender/social groups coalesce (thanks to that preference)

That very thing already happens at my employer, with regards to age. The company has a diverse selection of age, and the result is fairly strong social siloing by age.

It appears to me that some people are just not good at making friends (myself included), and it doesn't surprise me that the IT industry has an abundance of people with that difficulty.

I don't think that the problem is so much of a lack of diversity, as it is a lack of awareness of group dynamics. It's far too simpleminded to just wish that diversity will solve our social problems. It could help, but it could just as well create a situation that makes things worse.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/lt/the_robbers_cave_experiment/

The same unconscious behaviors that make power so seductive and corrupting are the same unconscious processes that causes us to "outgroup" people who are different. Resisting such group psychology is at about the same level of difficulty as overcoming our cravings for sugar.

I could liken our current culture's level of (in)competence with group psychology with the culture's general level of cluelessness when first confronted with distilled alcohols or when dealing with trespassing laws after the advent of airplanes. After 1000's of years where levels of individual power and affluence were constrained by geography and group membership, we have been thrown with exponentially increasing velocity into an era where personal mobility and communications power are creating opportunities for people of different groups to interact. We've gone from mostly stratified to our current highly dynamic state of society in just a few hundred years. Yet we're still largely using "mental furnishings" from our jingoistic and stratified past -- to the point where a lot of dialogue concerning issues of ethnicity, culture, gender, and minority status consists of hostility, distrust, and more typical "mindless jingoism" produced by those same group psychologies.

What's more, I'm not entirely sure that the culture as a whole is capable of dealing with the kind of meta-level thinking it would take to become competently aware of our own group psychology.

Twenty or thirty years later, I started to realize: Maybe it was just because I was a nerd. I was small, short, socially awkward, geeky - the usual. It didn't take people rejecting me for me to feel like an outcast.

But the article said there were also racist and sexist jokes. That's an additional source of feeling isolated that the white males (me included) don't have to put up with - and which nobody should have to put up with, ever.

  > I don't see how any company can claim to be building any
  > component of our future when its environment can scarcely
  > represent some semblance of actual society. 

As long as you are actively seeking diversity you won't have diversity. The true diversity comes when it no longer matters.

Brutal and disgusting.

Clearly.

Problem is, in my experience...

1.) No one wants to get involved.

2.) It's easier to be accommodating of assholes when they're directing their behavior at someone who isn't "one of you" on some level or another.

3.) It's easier to be accommodating of an asshole who also happens to be a "great engineer", "would do anything for a friend" or has their childish nonsense rationalized as "lacking people skills".

I'd wager someone, likely many people in that situation knew exactly what was going on yet did nothing for one or more of the above reasons.

As a group we just need to recognize that those people among us, our friends and coworkers who are shitty to the loner on the team or rude to the cleaning lady, but wonderful to their peers - they're assholes and deserve to be held to account for it.

I do not feel oppressed or not belonging though.

If you're a white male who is honest with himself, you'll understand that being a white male carries with it a set of privileges.

Just consider: a white child is significantly more likely to go to a school with experienced teachers than a black child, more likely to take honors classes in high school, more likely to get into a good university, and when they graduate, are more likely to get job offers based on nothing more than their white male name[1].

Let's not fool ourselves: humans are not the coldly rational actors we like to think. Ignore the fact that I've already got a leg up on networking because my (white male) peers work the jobs I want to work. When it's time for me to go in for an interview for a software engineering position the odds are overwhelmingly high that every person who interviews me, from the team interview up to senior management, will look a lot like me. That goes a long way in me getting the job - our monkey brains are pretty well wired to look at someone that looks like ourself and think "yeah, he's a competent, trustworthy individual!"

So yeah, I don't think anyone's actually hired in the cold cost/benefit analysis you talk about. There's lots of chances for significant bias to creep in. In reality, if people were hired solely based on the criteria you talk about, and race/gender/... were not considered, I bet we'd see more diverse workforces than we have now.

If someone can figure out how to set up a blinded interview that would be interesting.

[1] http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873.pdf

I wonder how good people really are at measuring the latter. In some jobs such as sales, you can get a pretty good approximation - although it's still hard to measure which sales persons build lasting accounts vs. which ones overpromise and then dump the cost of unmet expectations onto technical support or account maintenance people. (Edit: obviously you can measure it in a lot of repetitive type jobs like facotry works etc., but that doesn't seem appropriate for this context.)

It's even trickier in environments like technology. Twitter's a huge company, but how do you measure the productivity of their employees? The stock price is down on what it IPOed for, user acquisition growth has slowed and the firm has never made a profit, so should we conclude that the average Twitter employee has negative productivity? Obviously not, that would be a highly misleading generalization - but it's no more foolish than some of the generalizations I've seen offered to justify executive compensation or equity allocation at some companies.

Economically we'd like to maximize the return on capital invested in hiring someone, but if we don't have a way to measure that objectively then 'performance' can end up as just a bullshit story to rationalize essentially arbitrary management hiring decisions of the staff who fall within 1 or 2 standard deviations of the norm (excluding the infrequent brilliant or burnout employees).

If performance is actually better with a diverse team then preferring diversity in the hiring process is based on cost/benefit.

> whether they earned it or not

Businesses don't care if you "earned it" they care about cost/performance. My parents are both quite intelligent and up until high school I learned more from them than I did from school. If I had less awesome parents I would have a significantly harder time finding a job. It's not fair, but it does not demoralize me.

I think this is a fair question. If diversity is weighted non-zero for hiring, it means some other factor's weight in the hiring decision was reduced. Maybe that's a completely fine trade-off, but it does exist.

That is a major part of the problem. The solution isn't to start prioritizing "diversity" when hiring folks, the solution is to avoid hiring just within your narrow comfort zone of people who are like you. And that includes people with different life experiences, educational backgrounds, etc. as well as people with different cultural backgrounds and ethnicities. Mostly that's just a matter of becoming a better, less biased, more objective interviewer.

Another factor is acceptance and prejudice. Keep your own prejudices in check and police other folks. When you see or hear of instances of people being insensitive or of excluding someone based on their cultural or other differences, act on it, and help fix it. If you want women to be part of your team, then maybe don't consider having a meeting at a strip club. You'd think that sort of thing is a no brainer, but especially in the SV world full of man children who have discovered there are no rules other than the ones they impose on themselves, it can be a bit of a problem.

The Black experience in America is different. Being brought to America under the auspice of slavery has created a perverse assimilation issue for American Black folks.

Indians have come to the US for work, education, better lives, etc. That sets a wholly different tone.

I mean we all fail, again and again, but that doesn't mean most of us don't want to be "basically good", or are incapable of being "basically good" at each moment.

Your post, as it is worded, can be misconstrued to sound like otherism. "You'll always be different, minority!" And you prefaced it with "I sense a problem in that..." so it can be read as blaming her for what race and gender she was born as.

Or I'm totally off-base. But since the person(s) who downvoted didn't comment, I guess we'll never know.

"After The Home Depot, I took a position at a lottery/parimutuel company. I returned to being the only black woman, but the team there wasn’t very close knit so everybody did their own thing, did their job, and went home."

Most of the places she has worked/lived as a minority have been cliquish and/or racist. It makes sense that to avoid that she's been happy in places where she is not a minority.

However, the problem that needs to be fixed is not the existence of minorities, the problem is the culture around how we treat those minorities. The kind of culture that leads to her being transferred to protect her overtly racist co-worker. The kind of culture that does this: "I remember asking if we could do other outings that didn’t include beer and getting voted down." The kind of culture where she is "mistaken for an administrative assistant more than once. I have been asked if I was physical security (despite security wearing very distinctive uniforms)."

I suspect you were down voted because you assumed that "The other side of diversity" was saying that more diversity was needed. The article is clearly about how more than just diversity is needed.

"I don’t need to change to fit within my industry. My industry needs to change to make everyone feel included and accepted."

We've all been in situations that are uncomfortable, that's not news. But imagine a time when you suddenly realized you were the only white person in the room, or the only man in the room. That feeling of, "wait... am I not supposed to be here?"

I agree that we ought not to even notice, and I especially agree that we (all humans) shouldn't care. But in real life people do notice, and it's hard not to after someone points it out to you :/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness_%28race%29_in_...

Also you just argued she has not been a person thus far and that her problems were her fault. Congrats on that.

Diversity doesn't mean 'we let anybody wear a polo shirt and come along to our beer socials'.

  > Overall: if everybody could stop being so sensetive. Grow
  > up. People are different. Some people aren't nice. Learn
  > to deal with it.

I'm from a south american country so I get the "do you feel safe?" and the "what was like to grow up in poverty?" - not to mention the 'la raza' type of comments.

These stereotypes are annoying but it's whatever, you shrug it off and find something to make fun of the people saying those things - 'Do you go through withdraws if you don't eat your frosted flakes every morning?'

Do I feel like I belong in a group of people from my country? Well, maybe? If I know them and I'm friends with them. If I do, it sure as hell isn't because they're from my country but because they're good people. My primary group of friends is all WASP (white anglo-saxon protestant), and I don't feel like an outcast.

> Overall: if everybody could stop being so sensetive. Grow up. People are different. Some people aren't nice. Learn to deal with it.

YEP. That's it. The world will be a better place once people stop hating other people based on their physical characteristics and start hating them unconditionally.

Of course there's no point in blaming the victim. Most teams don't have an inherently inclusive culture. Maintaining your differences when you join an otherwise homogeneous group is hard and most of us (probably women even more so than men, because culture and testosterone) were raised in a way that makes us think trying to give up our identity in order to fit in is the right thing to do because it reduces the potential for conflicts.

Ideally teams should be inclusive. That is difficult, because it goes against much of human nature (othering and tribalism used to be a good evolutionary strategy). Sometimes getting it right can be impossible. But it's worth trying.

There's two sides to this issue and both are difficult to fix. But we need to understand that they both contribute to the problem. This problem is deeply ingrained in our culture and in our natural psyche. It won't go away just because we tell people to stop doing it.

So we should just let not-nice people get away with their bad behaviour, going on endlessly, unchecked?

> stop being so sensetive [sic]

So people are just supposed to ignore what they feel? So people should compromise who they are so they aren't labelled "too sensitive"?

I think this is a key point. The author of the article tries to fit in while at the same time not enjoying or even actively disliking the activities, which makes the whole exercise a bit dubious.

That was unexpected but funny ahah.

How do you know when police stops you because of racism and not regular police work?

One thing that has solidified for me reading through the post and the comments here, is that we have been focusing on symptoms instead of underlying dynamics. My idea is that the feeling that, "It's not safe to be yourself" is not a symptom of racism, but rather that racism is an overt symptom of toxic group dynamics that create the sense, "It's not safe to be yourself."

Human beings have finely tuned machinery for negotiating social situations and the "it's not safe" sense seems to be one of these mechanisms. Often, there are subtle (and not so subtle) things happening within a group dynamic that signal that it's implicitly ok to haze/denigrate/vilify members of outgroups. The original post illustrates some of these. Overt toxic racism is one signal of this. "Ironic jokes" can be another. People volunteering stories of the stupidity of members of opposing political groups can be another. The real pathology is the underlying acceptability and utility of aggrandizing yourself through the stereotypical denigration of others.

I don't think a focus on matching overt patterns of behavior and verbal utterances really get to the heart of this matter. It's really the group dynamic that send the message, "It's alright to throw certain kinds of people under the bus." I think this is very significant. For one thing, it brings to mind the idea that creating this sort of atmosphere is counter productive to preventing it.

But, putting up with racist and sexist jokes is ridiculous. I think that she would have been happier if she made it clear that she was fun and easy to get along with and willing to do activities like gaming with people and to be social. But, she should draw the line at dealing with some types of behavior.

No disagreement. However, I think this also gets to heart of the matter. "Political Correctness" that just stops at the mechanical sanctioning after pattern matching certain kinds of speech is no more than an intervention in an extreme case. It's like throwing sandbags on top of a broken levy or putting more oil in your engine when the light comes on. There is another underlying dynamic at work. Putting up with racist and sexist jokes is ridiculous. However, so is only treating such symptoms. Both building community through finding ways to bond and becoming more aware as a culture of group dynamics and the psychology of "otherness" is what we need going forward. (In the context of the op's described HR intervention, the action was a band-aid that not only ignored a deeper underlying issue, but even put the false remedy on the wrong party.)

I'm not sure that you're appreciating the amount of energy that takes, year after year, and the level of hypervigilance and anxiety that entails, for an indefinite duration. That's largely what the blog is talking about, to me.

All of that energy expended just because of what you are. This is before you tackle the problem that everyone has to go through - asserting who you are.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/09/world/oprah-winfrey-racism-swi...

But there are some clear things you shouldn't do, just from the text:

  - Group outings that exclude specific individuals, because of personal preference, religion, race, etc. If that means someone doesn't drink, make sure drinking isn't the only way to socialize.
  - Avoid people because their otherness makes you uncomfortable. This frankly just sucks, and there's not really anything the other person can do about it.
  -  Conversely, treat people as fragile. You may not understand someone, and that's OK. It doesn't mean they'll be offended because you give them challenging tasks, it doesn't mean they should be held back from "dangerous" situations.

The next step: seek out more knowledge. Do a bunch of reading about privilege, and racism, and sexism, and unconscious bias, and micro-aggressions, and lots of other things. There are many resources on the web for this that you can seek out, but if you want a place to start, http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Feminism_101 is one I've found useful. (If starting with a resource that's seemingly just about feminism feels too narrow, don't worry; you'll soon learn about "intersectionality" -- there's stuff about it on that very page I've linked -- and the ideas get much broader.) Follow the links, read some more, follow the links, read some more.

You'll quickly see that, like all topics of interest, this one has some jargon that will sound strange at first. You'll get used to it soon enough and realize that it's useful; that these strange-sounding terms have specific meanings that encapsulate concepts helpfully.

Engage your mind critically with what you read, including articles like this, and the subsequent comment threads. Empathize; put yourself in the shoes of the author as best you can. Think about which responses are reasonable, and which are unreasonable.

Do this for long enough and you'll start to see patterns. You'll start to realize that certain behaviours which seem benign at first are actually problematic. You'll start to get a feeling for what might be causing the "unbelonging". I won't give you examples because (a) you can find plenty if you do some reading, and (b) it's often more effective to work them out yourself than by having them given to you.

Talking with members of minorities can also be extremely helpful, but it's probably better to do some reading first. You'll likely get more out of any such discussion once you have a decent foundation of understanding.

All this is doable, but it'll take some time and effort and thought. Good luck.

Non-white, non-men start out from a severely disadvantaged position in our society in general and in the industry in particular. I presume this simply serves as a magnifier when it comes to the problem others (namely white men) would experience in the same situations. Plus the gender/race card is obvious for both sides (i.e. she is more likely to blame negative experiences with other people on it, but they may also be more likely to explain her behaviour with it). Consider her reservations about acting in a way that might affirm stereotypes, for example.

The entire situation is so messy and taboo-laden from the get-go that it's difficult to assess what's really going on here and what the chain of events was for each individual situation, but it's empirically obvious that there is a very real problem and race/gender is a major factor.

EDIT: Also remember that "race" can be a misleading term. It's often about culture and cultural biases about other cultures -- ethnicity just tends to be a handy shibboleth. As an anecdotal example: in Germany (and likely other parts of the EU too) you are often at a serious career disadvantage if you have a Polish or Eastern European accent, even if you are very good at what you do, especially if you also happen to be female (though the exact stereotypes you face might again depend on your age). It doesn't even have to be a national thing, you might also face negative stereotypes if you have a regional accent (think Eastern in Germany or Southern in the US).

I think that was sort of the point and she addressed it.

> Who cares if you're the only person of a certain race on a team? Why is this significant?

I spend a lot of time with my coworkers. It is important that we can relate to each other and perhaps even more importantly that we feel like we can relate to each other.

Being paranoid about being an outsider isn't some crazy way of thinking. People perceived to be outsiders are frequently ostracized and we all know it.

> I could care less the race of my teammates or if my feelings are coddled.

I'm willing to bet a non-zero number of your teammates care about your race.

Obviously I can't read the author's mind but my interpretation was not that she was bothered by not having other black women around her so much as she was by the consequences of that lack of diversity. She felt left out and passed over at times. She felt like she had to constantly defend her opinions, her self.

I don't think diversity in the work place is something that is an absolute must but I think in cases where that lack creates a hostile work place for some employees there is absolutely an issue. If you're co-workers are making racist comments/assumptions about you and your manager's solution is to ship you off to another office, there is absolutely a problem.

Solve for x.

I am so glad I'm not dealing with you on my team. If you would be so kind as to place a link to your CV, it will do us both a favour.

> You're not incubated properly given the environment from which you have came from.

This diagnosis is striking in its offensiveness, unfoundedness, entitlement, ignorance, and blatant racism and sexism. You sir, are a steaming pile of vile racist shit. How dare you invalidate someone's being, in the first place. In the second place, how dare you do so with the veiled "from which you have came from." You mean, because she's black. At least have the courage to come out and say it, you coward.

> There for lacking many many years of experience.

In addition to lacking the barest iota of sophistication, you also lack a spellchecker. I prefer my racist reading material to at least be properly spelled and grammatically correct. Perhaps you lack experience at reading and writing.

> It has nothing to do with your race, sex or age. Its simple, this environment does not provide the diversity in science and arts for this unique artisan career choice.

This word salad is difficult to parse. By "this environment," are you referring to the "tech industry" or to the author's childhood and young adult environment? I'm actually not sure which is the more repulsive, nor how either meaning can be reconciled with this having "nothing to do with ..race, sex[,] or age." For future reference, you ignorant piece of shit, diversity has everything to do with race, sex, and age, among a wide array of other categories.

> If you're not that type of person, with hunger, passion and some cleverness...then your out of luck, you're not an engineer, nor a scientist and you'll have to except only being a code jockey.

A similar statement could be made, more correctly, about the kind of engagement with the life of the mind that lets people see the mechanisms of discrimination and inequality in society. If one puts no effort into it, if one relies instead on whatever makes one most comfortable and most smug in their own status quo, one ends up like you, the moral equivalent of a code monkey, unable to articulate anything but the dreariest of racial cliches about meritocracy.

> Coming to HN and complaining about how wonderful you are and how racists the industry is will not do you any good in the real world, If you lack the skill set. Its necessary to understand most of the successful here have been working on these types of problems since we were 5, with nothing other then the motive of "how does this thing work" and "can I make it do this instead".

You are probably too stupid to see that you have provided an uncharitable interpretation of the article. I would love to hear--I take that back; I would be loathe to hear--you defend your interpretation that the author described herself as one-sidedly wonderful in an article where she details that she went to therapy. You also presumed to tell her that she "lack[ed] the skill set." Oh. My. Fucking. God. Fuck. Off. You. Racist. Asshole. You have literally no idea about the author's skill level, engagement, desire to make things work, and so on. Additionally, your analysis depends upon outright calling her a liar with regard to her assessment of her work environment. Have you fucked off, yet? Because you really, really need to. (After replacing your vile comment with an apology for your racist screed.)

> My advice, take a scientific approach since it is the field you're in and prove yourself first. Have the idea, figure it out, prove it works, then show them it works.

You want a colon after "My advice," not a comma. Jesus. Your advice. Holy shit. You are just precious. Bless your little heart.

You and your kind are the problem. You have no place in modern society. Your retrograde attitudes and toxic privileged naivete are precisely the things to which the author pointed to in her amazing and honest piece, and from which you could so fruitfully learn if you weren't, as I suspect, a wholly irredeemable racist asshole.

I cannot speak for HN as a whole, but you are not welcome, as far as I am concerned. Please delete your 15-minute-old account and go back to lurking, you vile bigot.

It's even worse than that: although I think it's easier to tell whether someone is passionate about technology if they are obsessed with technology outside their job, that doesn't mean that is a necessary or even sufficient trait.

This may sound disappointing, but even being a geek is not a requirement for being excellent at what you do, not even in tech.