Hacker News Reader

Comment by Kronopath | Hacker News Reader

It's really nice to hear such a personal, candid take on the need for diversity. It's a refreshing change from the politically-charged generalities you often see written by your typical white male twentysomething in the tech industry when they write about diversity. Sharing these kinds of concrete, lifelong experiences really drives home the point of why it's necessary: it's not diversity for its own sake, it's for the sake of not alienating people like our author here, people who undoubtedly have a lot to contribute.

View on HN

Indeed. I dislike the narrative that diversity is somehow desirable because it results in [better products|more productivity|better team cohesion], among many other cited reasons.

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.

Seems a lot like the difference between "Free Software" and "Open Source": does the target audience care about this on principle for its own sake, or do you have to spin it as producing a better product?

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

As a black engineer, seeing this maxim put into words really felt like lifting a weight off my shoulders. It's like, why should we have to "sell" ourselves to the majority in order to maintain a job? It's 2014, not 1914, we should be included regardless.

Everyone "sells" themselves to the "majority" in order to make things work. There's too much of a "precious tulip" assumption here - I'm sure you're a great person and all your friends love you, but you just can't be 100% quirks and doodads at work.

Source: white, will-die-from-lithium-poisoning bipolar, has to keep it together to make it work at... work.

> "but you just can't be 100% quirks and doodads at work."

Being black is "quirks and doodads" now?

Here, let me help you out: > As a bipolar engineer, seeing this maxim put into words really felt like lifting a weight off my shoulders. It's like, why should we have to "sell" ourselves to the majority in order to maintain a job? It's 2014, not 1914, we should be included regardless.

I'm not sure what you're arguing here exactly. If you're white you're in the racial majority. If you think having darker skin means someone is "100% quirks and doodads" then obviously I wouldn't want to have to "sell" myself to someone like you because the effort would be futile.

If you don't know a bipolar person I can see your confusion. Knowing a few I can say they quite often do not "fit it" with the norm, even if they are racially similar. Conformity happens on may levels. Racial conformity is an obvious one due to it being visual. Social conformity is a bit less visible but just as "important" in most cases.

wasn't the point of my last comment.

Do white male twenty somethings generally write about diversity? Every one I've seen who's expressed an opinion asides from 'my opinions don't matter' gets routinely slaughtered regardless of their views.

I can't imagine why people might feel that the opinions of white men might be well respresented already.

What about that individual's opinion? Or do you mean to say that because of their gender and race, they already conform to your stereotype?

Non-white people already often feel like they are spoken over.

The world does not suffer for a lack of opinions on anything from white people -- it's fair to say such opinions are even overrepresented in the world of available writing.

If people already well-represented care about diversity, they should help some of the not-well-represented speak up.

The opinions of one group do not represent the individuals therein.

So all white men hold the same opinion? Or is there a finite number of opinions capable of being held by white men, and all of them are represented adequately in print?

Weird statement, either way.

It's not weird. If we were deciding between green shoes or pink shoes and all we heard were opinions from people who own green shoes, it would be weird. Does that mean all green shoed people think the same? No. But clearly we'd like to hear from everyone to make an informed decision.

Your analogy is a bit flawed as the color of my shoes is something I can chose and change at any point in time.

If I was born with green feet and you were born with pink ones, perhaps my opinions should hold the same weight as the guy born with pink feet. Just because you were born with pink feet doesn't make you any more or less special than me.

> Just because you were born with pink feet doesn't make you any more or less special than me.

No one said that. Feeling insecure?

Not in the least, but thanks for trying to make it personal.

I'm just pointing out that you saying that because someone is from the majority then their opinion counts less is flawed.

I think it feels genuine, uneditorialized, and a statement of facts, rather than an article trying to further an agenda.

The article has a pretty clear agenda:

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

Moreover, articles that "don't try to further an agenda" are often furthering and normalizing the status-quo.

That is some McCarthyist nonsense, right there. Not everyone that disagrees with you is against you.

That's not what they said.

Are people who disagree with you often against you?

If you're in a supportive environment where freedom of thought and debate are allowed, then no, people aren't usually against you just because of the ideas you hold.

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

Human cultures in general just aren't that good at making different people feel at home. Given our history, why in the world would we expect any of them to be good at that at all? The natural inclination is to make the different individual, the outgroup person, conform to group norms. The way human cultures have dealt with our typically primate social instincts is to accede to them. The way we are with regard to our instincts and typical behaviors around groups is woven into our culture and the way we think. Also consider: We've probably been evolving our group instincts for far longer than we've had language. What would that imply about how deeply ingrained and how conscious such behaviors are?

Now, given that the above is true, what rationale can you come up with that would lead us to believe that our cultural knowledge equips us to deal well with diversity? Actually, I don't even think the "mental furnishings" in academic writings around these subjects that I've been exposed to are very useful to everyday people in everyday situations. (I could cite your suspicion around agendas to be evidence in this regard.) If there is any community that has the potential to engage in the "meta-level" self examination required to develop mental tools for dealing with this, I propose that certain subsets of the tech community are good candidates. (Though there is a lot of groupthink there as well.)

That's because cultures change on timescales of centuries. If it works at all like gene transmission works, it isn't worth adapting the culture : one of the cultures will die out in less than the time it would take to adapt.

This is called "island species" : where there are barriers that prevent gene/meme transmission (like an ocean before the internet), you can have different cultures/races. If you take away the barrier (in Darwin's book it was a rock surfacing that allowed birds to fly from one island to another), one of the cultures will die due to cross-pollination. It is theorized that for memes, racism is one such boundary.

In history you do see this happen. Racism occurs because only a single group lives in an area. For some reason (war, natural disaster, ...) a large group of foreignors moves in, peacefully (rarely) or not. Then there is a period of time where there is obvious racism, and it disappears. Once it's gone one of the cultures vanishes entirely, and racism slowly starts to rebuild.

So don't worry : your kids will have much less problems than you do, and your grandchildren will not even know what different cultures are anymore. Ironically, these days, racism is the one of the last things remaining that can keep cultures going in the 21st century. If we destroy that, a single monoculture (one of the existing cultures, by numbers, I'd say probably Chinese culture, by far the most homogeneous at such a size) will expand and destroy everything else.

Your comment seems to carry assumptions about the granularity at which transmission works, which aren't appropriate for memes. Bacteria can gain the immunities from other bacterial species through plasmids. In the same way, people can appropriate ideas from other cultures/sub-cultures.

This is called "island species" : where there are barriers that prevent gene/meme transmission

What the historical record would suggest, is that effective barriers to memetic transmission are the exception rather than the rule. It's even more the exception in the era of the Internet.

Racism occurs because only a single group lives in an area.

Racism comes from outgroup psychology operating on signals involving race/ethnicity. I'd say that racism doesn't exist where there is no awareness of racial difference. (In those situations, classism and other forms of internecine prejudice can arise.)

It is theorized that for memes, racism is one such boundary.

Please give examples of memes for which racism acted as an effective boundary. Racism seems to have zero boundary effect in Japan and Korea, though their traditional cultures once institutionalized racism.

EDIT: Also, recent research has revealed that biological evolution can be detected in large mammals on the timescale of only several centuries.

You forgot language barriers. I think that is far more significant.

She fought extremely hard over a long period to make herself fit within the industry, and found that had a profoundly detrimental effect on her health. That, not inclusiveness and diversity, is the status quo.

I doubt this will be a popular take on it, but she seems to have let coworkers she didn't particularly care for become her whole social life. Of course that would make someone quite unhappy. I was like that perhaps 10 years ago and I had to become much better at creating boundaries between work and the rest of my life; this made me much happier.

If she wanted a suggestion, I'd tell her to look for companies with older people in them. They often have kids, and treat a job as a job -- you come, work, and leave -- rather than the entirety of their existence. I don't have kids, but I find myself much happier when the median coworker does.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com