6 ms·

In point of fact, an African-American guy and a white guy from the same neighborhood and school will have had different experiences growing up. For example, the

by ksenzee 11y ago

In point of fact, an African-American guy and a white guy from the same neighborhood and school will have had different experiences growing up. For example, the white guy probably never had the cops called on him for wandering down a dark street wearing a hoodie. He probably also got more job interviews, if his name sounds white and his friend's doesn't. These experiences will have shaped the two men differently. That doesn't mean they'll give different answers to a question on how to traverse a linked list. But they'll give different answers on how to build a content moderation feature, how to prevent abuse, how to protect freedom of expression on the platform.

mazerackham 11y ago
Huge upvote here. As much as we would like to forget about race in America, the fact is: Race Matters. The way people look at you, talk to you (or ignore you), talk about you, extend invites, etc..that ALL changes with your race.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  Yes - I'm treated very differently from most of my coworkers on account of race. I could give lots of mildly interesting examples - it certainly means my dating life is very different. But how does it affect me on the job? I write quantitative software, and spend lots of time thinking about bayesian hierarchical models and multiple comparisons. You are suggesting I have some unique power. I'd really like to know how I can use this power.
  - ksenzee 11y ago
    If you're in the (to me, enviable) position of never building a user-facing feature in a piece of software -- if you purely get to think algorithms all day, and you never draw on any knowledge or experience you've gained outside a classroom or a book -- then who knows. Maybe it doesn't matter what life experiences you've had. I personally have never had a job like that. My interests, personality, experience, and wisdom gained outside of work have always made a difference to what I do.
    - yummyfajitas 11y ago
      I think about user facing features all the time. For example, should we display midpoint estimates, or just stick to credible intervals? Can we give an empirical conversion rate %, or will customers misunderstand and make a bad decision based on it? But ok, lets say I'm a typical software engineer, building a CRUD app used by banks to set up a new customer with an HSA. What's my unique non-Indian perspective on that? I can understand how there might be a useful purpose for token diversity on the UX teams for some consumer products. That's an exceedingly small part of the tech world.
    - theuttick 11y ago
      A very, very good answer. However, in this case the diversity the man at twitter should be looking for has everything to do with a person by person case and nothing to do with race.
  - deskamess 11y ago
    I do not understand the latter half of your 2nd paragraph as I do not see the parent was suggesting you have unique powers. It seemed to me he was just acknowledging that race plays a part in professional America. As far as how it affects you on the job.... well, in the subject under discussion, they candidates are not even considered for the job because of their race. We have not got to the point where they are even 'on the job'. Per the article, when a diverse candidate was bought in, they performed well. Perhaps I misread and misunderstood your response and my reply just builds on the confusion.
    - yummyfajitas 11y ago
      I'm replying to: "That doesn't mean they'll give different answers to a question on how to traverse a linked list. But they'll give different answers on how to build a content moderation feature, how to prevent abuse, how to protect freedom of expression on the platform." The article and the comments here don't even begin to support the claim "candidates are not even considered for the job because of their race".
muuh-gnu 11y ago
> These experiences will have shaped the two men differently. You are implying that those negative experiences are a product of racism and not of simple statistics. Maybe, only maybe, people _dont have_ as many problems with white guys wandering down a dark street wearing a hoodie as they have with black guys wandering down a dark street wearing a hoodie, so they dont call the cops on the former and call the cops on the latter. Youre implicitely ruling out the mere _possibility_ that there maybe, only maybe, _might_ be a problem with blacks, that isnt a problem with whites, asians, indians or hispanics.
- mazerackham 11y ago
  So Eric Gardner probably deserved to get choked out because he sold cigarettes illegally on a street? And Michael Brown was probably a thug, so deserved to die?
  - muuh-gnu 11y ago
    > And Michael Brown was probably a thug, so deserved to die? He didnt "deserve" to die, but the fact that he violently robbed a store minutes before he died, maybe, _only maybe_, contributed to his violent death, dont you agree?
  - tzs 11y ago
    It's Eric Garner, not Eric Gardner. There was not any really good reason to try to arrest Garner at the point they tried to restrain him. Chokeholds are banned by that police department, so when they did try to arrest him they went about it in the wrong fashion. The Garner case raises lots of questions, including whether or not he would have been treated the same way had he been white. Brown, on the other hand, was walking down the middle of the street with goods he just stole moments ago. Police had good reason to stop him. A white kid doing the same would have been stopped. Brown attacked the officer and tried to take his gun. A white kid doing the same would have been shot. And a white kid who fled after being shot, then turned around and continued approaching rather than obeying an order to get down would get shot more, just like Brown was. The forensic evidence combined with the eyewitness accounts provides a pretty clear picture that Brown got what pretty much anyone would get in those circumstances, regardless of their race. Lumping Garner in with Brown is very disrespectful to Garner and his family.
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
>In point of fact, an African-American guy and a white guy from the same neighborhood and school will have had different experiences growing up. The differences between their experiences is smaller than the differences between that black individual (sidenote: I was recently told by a black guy that African American is worse than black when used as an identifier) and someone of the same race who grew up in a significantly different socioeconomic class. If we want to increase diversity, the best would be to do so by class first, gender second, and race third.
- bduerst 11y ago
  I agree, but socioeconomic class is already highly correlated with race (and sometimes gender), leading to race being used as a possible signal for class. I think their point was that passive racial biases lead to class differences that can't be summed up in a hypothetical comparison.
  - sokoloff 11y ago
    How would socioeconomic class be highly correlated with gender? Is there some strange biologic selection mechanism at play?
    - bduerst 11y ago
      Sometimes correlated with gender, such as the gender income gap. I don't know what you mean by biological selection.
      - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
        >Sometimes correlated with gender, such as the gender income gap. You mean the one that has been shown to not exist?
        bduerst 11y ago
        > "There are observable differences in the attributes of men and women that account for most of the wage gap. Statistical analysis that includes those variables has produced results that collectively account for between 65.1 and 76.4 percent of a raw gender wage gap of 20.4 percent, and thereby leave an adjusted gender wage gap that is between 4.8 and 7.1 percent." - U.S. Department of Labor
jarfil 11y ago
> But they'll give different answers on how to build a content moderation feature, how to prevent abuse, how to protect freedom of expression on the platform. I don't think it's the tech department's job to define those.
theuttick 11y ago
Yes, white and black people will likely have different experiences growing up. Most white people that I know - including myself - were routinely attacked at school because of their race. Every white person that I know has had to look at a job interview and wonder if he didn't get called back because the job was only for certain people. However, none of this would help the white person build a content moderation feature or prevent abuse or protect freedom of expression better than the black person. May I ask specifically how a person's belief that their name was the cause of failing to get a job leads them to create a better content moderation feature?

by ksenzee 11y ago

mazerackham 11y ago

Huge upvote here. As much as we would like to forget about race in America, the fact is: Race Matters. The way people look at you, talk to you (or ignore you), talk about you, extend invites, etc..that ALL changes with your race.

yummyfajitas 11y ago
Yes - I'm treated very differently from most of my coworkers on account of race. I could give lots of mildly interesting examples - it certainly means my dating life is very different. But how does it affect me on the job? I write quantitative software, and spend lots of time thinking about bayesian hierarchical models and multiple comparisons. You are suggesting I have some unique power. I'd really like to know how I can use this power.
- ksenzee 11y ago
  If you're in the (to me, enviable) position of never building a user-facing feature in a piece of software -- if you purely get to think algorithms all day, and you never draw on any knowledge or experience you've gained outside a classroom or a book -- then who knows. Maybe it doesn't matter what life experiences you've had. I personally have never had a job like that. My interests, personality, experience, and wisdom gained outside of work have always made a difference to what I do.
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    I think about user facing features all the time. For example, should we display midpoint estimates, or just stick to credible intervals? Can we give an empirical conversion rate %, or will customers misunderstand and make a bad decision based on it? But ok, lets say I'm a typical software engineer, building a CRUD app used by banks to set up a new customer with an HSA. What's my unique non-Indian perspective on that? I can understand how there might be a useful purpose for token diversity on the UX teams for some consumer products. That's an exceedingly small part of the tech world.
  - theuttick 11y ago
    A very, very good answer. However, in this case the diversity the man at twitter should be looking for has everything to do with a person by person case and nothing to do with race.
- deskamess 11y ago
  I do not understand the latter half of your 2nd paragraph as I do not see the parent was suggesting you have unique powers. It seemed to me he was just acknowledging that race plays a part in professional America. As far as how it affects you on the job.... well, in the subject under discussion, they candidates are not even considered for the job because of their race. We have not got to the point where they are even 'on the job'. Per the article, when a diverse candidate was bought in, they performed well. Perhaps I misread and misunderstood your response and my reply just builds on the confusion.
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    I'm replying to: "That doesn't mean they'll give different answers to a question on how to traverse a linked list. But they'll give different answers on how to build a content moderation feature, how to prevent abuse, how to protect freedom of expression on the platform." The article and the comments here don't even begin to support the claim "candidates are not even considered for the job because of their race".

muuh-gnu 11y ago

> These experiences will have shaped the two men differently. You are implying that those negative experiences are a product of racism and not of simple statistics. Maybe, only maybe, people _dont have_ as many problems with white guys wandering down a dark street wearing a hoodie as they have with black guys wandering down a dark street wearing a hoodie, so they dont call the cops on the former and call the cops on the latter. Youre implicitely ruling out the mere _possibility_ that there maybe, only maybe, _might_ be a problem with blacks, that isnt a problem with whites, asians, indians or hispanics.

mazerackham 11y ago
So Eric Gardner probably deserved to get choked out because he sold cigarettes illegally on a street? And Michael Brown was probably a thug, so deserved to die?
- muuh-gnu 11y ago
  > And Michael Brown was probably a thug, so deserved to die? He didnt "deserve" to die, but the fact that he violently robbed a store minutes before he died, maybe, _only maybe_, contributed to his violent death, dont you agree?
- tzs 11y ago
  It's Eric Garner, not Eric Gardner. There was not any really good reason to try to arrest Garner at the point they tried to restrain him. Chokeholds are banned by that police department, so when they did try to arrest him they went about it in the wrong fashion. The Garner case raises lots of questions, including whether or not he would have been treated the same way had he been white. Brown, on the other hand, was walking down the middle of the street with goods he just stole moments ago. Police had good reason to stop him. A white kid doing the same would have been stopped. Brown attacked the officer and tried to take his gun. A white kid doing the same would have been shot. And a white kid who fled after being shot, then turned around and continued approaching rather than obeying an order to get down would get shot more, just like Brown was. The forensic evidence combined with the eyewitness accounts provides a pretty clear picture that Brown got what pretty much anyone would get in those circumstances, regardless of their race. Lumping Garner in with Brown is very disrespectful to Garner and his family.

Lawtonfogle 11y ago

>In point of fact, an African-American guy and a white guy from the same neighborhood and school will have had different experiences growing up. The differences between their experiences is smaller than the differences between that black individual (sidenote: I was recently told by a black guy that African American is worse than black when used as an identifier) and someone of the same race who grew up in a significantly different socioeconomic class. If we want to increase diversity, the best would be to do so by class first, gender second, and race third.

bduerst 11y ago
I agree, but socioeconomic class is already highly correlated with race (and sometimes gender), leading to race being used as a possible signal for class. I think their point was that passive racial biases lead to class differences that can't be summed up in a hypothetical comparison.
- sokoloff 11y ago
  How would socioeconomic class be highly correlated with gender? Is there some strange biologic selection mechanism at play?
  - bduerst 11y ago
    Sometimes correlated with gender, such as the gender income gap. I don't know what you mean by biological selection.
    - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
      >Sometimes correlated with gender, such as the gender income gap. You mean the one that has been shown to not exist?
      - bduerst 11y ago
        > "There are observable differences in the attributes of men and women that account for most of the wage gap. Statistical analysis that includes those variables has produced results that collectively account for between 65.1 and 76.4 percent of a raw gender wage gap of 20.4 percent, and thereby leave an adjusted gender wage gap that is between 4.8 and 7.1 percent." - U.S. Department of Labor

jarfil 11y ago

> But they'll give different answers on how to build a content moderation feature, how to prevent abuse, how to protect freedom of expression on the platform. I don't think it's the tech department's job to define those.

theuttick 11y ago

Yes, white and black people will likely have different experiences growing up. Most white people that I know - including myself - were routinely attacked at school because of their race. Every white person that I know has had to look at a job interview and wonder if he didn't get called back because the job was only for certain people. However, none of this would help the white person build a content moderation feature or prevent abuse or protect freedom of expression better than the black person. May I ask specifically how a person's belief that their name was the cause of failing to get a job leads them to create a better content moderation feature?