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I’m a Latino in Tech, and I Think the ‘Diversity’ Discussion Is Utterly Broken

226 points by generic_user 10y ago

zeitgeb3r 10y ago
I'm a straight white male. What is diversity?
- oldmanjay 10y ago
  It's a problem that needs to be solved. Or it's a savior for our tech industry. And nominally other industries. It's the core of the reason we can't have equality and also the rallying cry for people who want equality. It's a dividing line used to decide who is in v. out from many, many different perspectives. It's a religion, and a rallying cry for people who want religion to have less, or no influence on public discourse. It's a very fluid concept depending on what the speaker believes and what the speaker wants the listener to believe. Most of all, it's a hot topic.
- kushti 10y ago
  That's when you should constantly be frustrated about being white and having a dick.
whitegenocide 10y ago
diversity = white genocide
vsergiu 10y ago
I don't like reading articles like this one. I hate discrimination and I am amazed that in 2016 we still have it. I am creating a website that lists companies that are hiring Latinos. Post your tech job here https://goo.gl/forms/CVIMrhigDXicaSUM2 https://goo.gl/forms/CVIMrhigDXicaSUM2 if you are excited working with Latinos.
- whitegenocide 10y ago
  Shouldn't companies be hiring anyone who is qualified, latino or not?
  - fataliss 10y ago
    In a perfect unbiased world, sure. Reality is quite a bit different sadly.
  - Retra 10y ago
    That's easy to believe when you don't say what "qualified" means. For someone to be 'qualified' for a position, it only need be a good decision for that company to hire that person, which may well be a factor of how the company is perceived by the public.
  - incompatible 10y ago
    I guess there will usually be plenty of qualified applicants for any particular position. Typical hiring processes may give scope for picking the one that will fit in best culturally, which would be the opposite to diversity.
- placeybordeaux 10y ago
  Creating a website that only caters to a given ethnicity is extremely discriminatory.
  - vsergiu 10y ago
    It's not. It just helps Latinos find jobs easier. There are a ton of sites for female in tech and no one complains.
    - jimmywanger 10y ago
      Everyone complains. If you're a white or asian male you get absolutely no help with getting hired in tech, getting trained for tech jobs, etc etc. And by starting a list of companies that hire Latinos, you're implying all other companies don't hire Latinos. I cannot think of a single company who openly discriminates against Latinos, so it's a false premise. It's not like Jim Crow days, where you'd maintain lists of restaurants who would serve black customers. And the statement "If you are excited working with Latinos" is horrible. I'm excited working with anybody who is competent, easy to get along with, and can teach me things. Why would you be specifically excited about working with Latinos?
      - wwweston 10y ago
        > Everyone complains. If you're a white or asian male you get absolutely no help with getting hired in tech, getting trained for tech jobs, etc etc. The argument goes that if you fall into one of those groups, you are generally helped by being what a lot of people think someone in that role should look like, at a minimum unconsciously and in some cases consciously. It's not a full articulation of the dynamic behind people's backgrounds and what happens in a hiring process, and so it might not be the best idea to orient initiatives/activism entirely around that, but it's a pretty reasonable point of view.
        ebfe 10y ago
        >you are generally helped... They're not necessarily wrong, either. I'm responsible for hiring decisions, and whenever possible I prefer to go with white and Asian men because 1. I know their accomplishments are the result of their own ability rather than hand-holding, and 2. if things go sour, they're not going to sue me. Obviously few women or PoC do those things, but with a white/Asian guy you remove the risk entirely.
- revoltingx 10y ago
  Do you not like it because it goes against the escape-goat excuse of racism? Tech, like a sport, is about how TALENTED you are above all. I'm a Hispanic engineer and this blame culture is precisely why there's not more like us. We need to teach our kids and people to stop watching spanish only TV, to study their asses off, to stop going to college for useless majors, etc. This country is amazing, specially in the opportunities in the tech sector. I advice anyone who wants to succeed to stop worrying about racism and worry about how you're going to be the best at what you do.
placeybordeaux 10y ago
Diversity in many places seems to be largely focused on the shallowest parts of diversity, could that be because this is one of the easiest things to measure & tell about a person? I certainly wouldn't be ready to fill out a survey about my political beliefs or my how my childhood was when interviewing.
- generic_user 10y ago
  Skin color does not tell you anything about who a person is. Your just reconfirming your own biases when you assign characteristics to race. Diversity often ends up being a political and ideological filter just as much as a racial filter. The organisation looking to hire a 'Diverse' person already has a set of ideological filters in place to rationalize why they prioritize 'Diversity' and what it means. There not just looking for any divers person but the 'right' kind of diverse person that agrees with there filters. So there is process that leads to ideological and political monoculture as it is now. One of the points that to author is making is that focusing more on other forms of diversity rather the race can increase the intellectual and cultural diversity of your organisation far more the just hiring a group of different skin tones who all have the same believes and politics.
  - lutorm 10y ago
    Skin color does not tell you anything about who a person is. The problem is that this is not true. If it was, it would be much simpler. Race and ethnicity have a nonzero correlation with other factors like culture and socioeconomic status, which means they are, on average, likely to tell you something about the person. When applied to a given individual they're obviously very flawed predictors, but if they didn't sort of work as a proxy for other characteristics, I don't think it would be talked about as much as it is.
    - generic_user 10y ago
      Companies who want to succeed with new ideas need a diversity of ideas. Free thinkers with broad experience to draw from. And people who are not afraid to disrupt institutional norms. One of the criticism is that the racial diversity PC crowd really have little interest in diversity of ideas, free thinking, or disruption. And most of them come from a very narrow band of upper middle class cultural experience. Its a feeble monoculture with a strict social hierarchy. For all intent and purpose its the opposite of what a innovative diverse group is. If you goal is simply to hire a group of people who meet some subjective 'racial balance' who all think a certain way then your probably building a very weak team.
sdegutis 10y ago
This is what I'm confused about. The "diversity in tech" campaign is obviously being executed all wrong, and I see article after article written by the people it's supposedly trying to help, who confirm what common sense already should know. But yet it still marches on with full strength, as if there's no problem. What gives?
- Jimmie_Rustle 10y ago
  It's an industry of it's own... Diversity consultants double down on falsehoods to continue to get paid
  - gxs 10y ago
    Exactly, there is a cottage industry that's cropped up around the subject - it's got a life of its own at this point.
FT_intern 10y ago
It's weird that this article is being downvoted. The comments sections are usually split 60-40 in the anti-diversity/pro-diversity debates. However only the pro diversity articles ever get upvoted.
richmarr 10y ago
Article argues that diversity of ideas is what's important, rather than diversity of ethnicity/gender, describes trying to solve racial/gender diversity for its own sake as "utterly broken". There's plenty of evidence that women and people from under-represented groups are discriminated against because of their identity. Here are a few on gender alone: [0][1][2][3][4] Perhaps there are cases of people being discriminated against for having "diverse" opinions, but it seems like a distinctly smaller problem, as witholding a controversial opinion is an option and witholding your existence is not. [0] Female students seen as less competent than identical male students with identical application materials, offered lower starting salaries (Moss-Racusin et al, 2012) [1] People in gender-incongruent roles penalised more heavily for mistakes (Brescoll, Dawson, & Uhlmann, 2010). [2] Voluble women perceived as less competent and less suitable leaders, inverse true for men (Brescoll, 2011). [3] Women who succeed in male-dominated fields percieved as not likeable (Heilman et al, 2004). [4] Students question the competence of female teachers who evaluate them negatively, less so than male teachers (Sinclair & Kunda 2000).
- jimmywanger 10y ago
  > There's plenty of evidence that women and people from under-represented groups are discriminated against because of their identity. Here are a few on gender alone: [0][1][2][3][4] Every single one of your examples has to do with gender, not ethnic diversity like the original article was talking about. Could you submit some evidence about under-represented groups?
  - jacalata 10y ago
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/black-sounding-names-study_us_561697a5e4b0dbb8000d687f http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/black-sounding-names-stu...
    - jimmywanger 10y ago
      Those are names, not actually people from under represented groups. I have Asian friends named Jerome, Tyrone and Miguel. By that kind of thinking they should they be given affirmative action.
have_faith 10y ago
Having grew up in an environment that was very troubled (to put it lightly) and also be a CIS white straight male; I find diversity discussions quite difficult. Lots of assumptions about myself due to the colour of my skin and my gender and lots of guilty by association "history is full of white males in X industry" to justify positive discrimination etc. I don't have a particular point to this post through in part being chastised in the past for having an opinion on the subject but I roughly follow the authors train of thought. When people talk of diversity their range seems to be quite shallow and skin deep.
- nsxwolf 10y ago
  I learned to stop having such conversations long ago. You either agree completely with the zeitgeist and get domesticated as an "ally", which is like being a little mindless pet. Or you disagree with a point or two and get savaged, and marginalized. When I just avoid the topic, everything stays OK and everyone remains friendly.
  - douche 10y ago
    The only winning move is not to play.
    - raymondh 10y ago
      Strange game, Dr. Falken.
    - home_boi 10y ago
      you still lose if you're an asian/indian/white male. I care about this topic because I don't want to be discriminated based on my race or gender. It is a zero sum game. Companies will require the same head count regardless of its racial/gender composition. At best, companies right now are lowering the bar on who they give interviews to when an under represented minority is involved (who ends up being upper middle class and privileged anyway, just like how AA works). Organizations are also providing resources and networking that I do not have access to. On average, I suspect that some companies actually discriminate based on race/gender against white/asian/indian males when comparing interview performance with minorities. At worst, the equal opportunity act is abolished and corporate affirmative action is allowed. This sound crazy but colleges are still able to discriminate based on race/gender so it's not that far fetched.
lutorm 10y ago
Diversity and discrimination are kind of two different topics, no? Discrimination clearly leads to lack of diversity, but lack of diversity does not imply discrimination. I hope everyone thinks discrimination is bad, that doesn't seem like a controversial subject. Lack of diversity in STEM also has other causes, though, like self-selection away from subjects due to lack of role models, or struggling in college because your background has not prepared you for the academic culture. Some of these are likely more race/ethnicity/gender related, like the role model issue. When it comes to being prepared for the academic culture, though, that firmly seems to be in the socio-economic territory. The trouble is that ethnicity also works as a semi-good proxy for socio-economic background, so it seems like people think that by fixing the "I don't see anyone like me here" problem, they can also do a good enough job of fixing problems due socio-economic background, even though that leaves out a significant chunk of people.
- fnovd 10y ago
  >The trouble is that ethnicity also works as a semi-good proxy for socio-economic background, so it seems like people think that by fixing the "I don't see anyone like me here" problem, they can also do a good enough job of fixing problems due socio-economic background, even though that leaves out a significant chunk of people. Exactly this. A focus on race/ethnicity is only looking at part of the picture. The question remains, though: is it better than looking at none of the picture?
- pesfandiar 10y ago
  > I hope everyone thinks discrimination is bad, that doesn't seem like a controversial subject. How about all the "positive" discrimination? As a Caucasian male from the Middle East, I feel like many entities take pride in actively discriminating against me, and I don't have any victimhood cards to play in that game.
  - lutorm 10y ago
    I'm a Caucasian male, too, and I've never experienced anything I'd call "discrimination". Even now when I live in a place where whites are in the minority (Hawaii, ~27%). I'm curious what kinds of experiences you are referring to.
drewrv 10y ago
I agree with the author, there is definitely a "type" of diversity that we don't talk about or even have a name for. I'm gonna call it "cultural diversity". I think people focus on racial diversity and gender balance because they are good proxies for cultural diversity, which is otherwise quite hard to quantify. For example, if your team's demographics match the demographics of the Stanford CS department, odds are your failing at "cultural diversity" even if you hired a black MIT grad. On the other hand if your team's demographics match the country as a whole, you're probably doing pretty well at cultural diversity.
mgarfias 10y ago
Sometimes I'm happy about being a Mexican American. Number one: I grew up eating Mexican food. Two: when the social justice set starts making noise my way I can point out that my dad grew up chopping cotton and the only reason I didn't is because he happened to get drafted and went to college on the GI bill. Then I'm part of the party, they leave me alone and I can go back to being a right wing redneck Mexican geek-farmer.
- swozey 10y ago
  I mean, this goes for a lot of white Americans as well. The majority of us in GenX/Y (I'm early 30s, whatever I am) are second to third generation and our families came over in the 1910-1950s with zero prospects. I'm third generation, father and grandfather both US military (raised on a Tobacco farm), father drafted for Vietnam, not sure if my grandfather was drafted but he was a pilot at one point. Both sides of my family are from the Italian and German slums of NY (respectively). In fact, they lived in the Love Canal which was absolutely abysmal and thyroid cancer is rampant through the women in my family because of the toxic waste dumped there. The absolute disdain between my German and Italian family is immeasurable. It's kind of hilarious being an outsider to what they went through. I honestly can't think of one white person I know whose family has been in the USA for more than 2-3 generations. I know a LOT of Mexicans who have been here in TX for hundreds of years which I think is incredibly interesting. I'm so used to my friends having barely any history beyond the 1920s.
jondubois 10y ago
I also don't like how the discussion is framed because it tries to put a label on everyone (typically based on either gender, race or disability)... But that is a very narrow-minded way of thinking about diversity. I think it's important to give extra attention to those who are disadvantaged but we should handle it on a case-by-case basis - Because not everyone who is different and disadvantaged will fit under a specific race/gender/disability label - We shouldn't leave those 'unlabelled' people out of the equation (I think that most disadvantaged people cannot be labelled - They are invisible minorities). For example, studies have shown that attractive people get paid more on average than unattractive ones... So maybe we should also give extra consideration to ugly people... Or introverts, or people who have English as a second language... Or who come from a different country... Or had a bad childhood, etc... There are so many different categories; you cannot look at individuals in terms of their superficial qualities only; you have to consider the individual as a whole. For example, you cannot give special treatment to someone just because they're a woman (without also considering other factors) - What if that woman has a $10 million dollar trust fund and tons of social connections? Maybe she doesn't actually need any special treatment at all - It changes the whole story. I think that gender, race and disability should be considered, but you shouldn't look at them in isolation from everything else; I think that doing so is in itself is a form of discrimination against all unlabelled disadvantaged individuals. At the root of this discussion lies the problem that companies are not good at considering people as individuals.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
Mz 10y ago
When most people are trying to promote inclusiveness, they do just that: Try to include or reach out to certain specifically excluded groups. This has all kinds of inherent problems and does not work well. In contrast, I do things that are less implicitly exclusionary. I do not try to target anyone for inclusion. I just do things that do not implicitly exclude them in the way I frame things. http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/07/less-exclusive.html http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/07/less-exclusi...
pmarreck 10y ago
I never see ethnicity after the first 5 seconds. If you can talk shop, you're cool, period (in my subjective brain). This is why I have issues with diversity discussions; it's like forcing me to acknowledge the elephant in the room that doesn't actually exist in mine. The best programmer I know is female (and I have told her as much), the second-best is half-black, the third-best is a white Jewish Stanford grad, and somewhere way down the list is curious old me. Who is still giving a shit about this stuff? (Disclaimer: I'm likely as white as can be, the Aryan ideal, dirty-blonde blue-eyed German firstborn American). But for what it's worth, my latin-american brother-in-law introduced me to ceviche (he makes it himself), and that shit is the bomb-diggity
- muad 10y ago
  There was a segment on NPR this morning where a woman who wrote "The History of White People" explained that white people are uncomfortable talking about race because it has never been a problem for them. Her argument was that now that being white is a "bad" thing, white people want to ignore race. It was very enlightening, but not for the reasons she intended.
  - pmarreck 10y ago
    That's... a good point, unfortunately. :/
xenihn 10y ago
Hispanic engineer here (Salvadoran native/semitic/spanish mix, for what that matters), and I agree with the article's author in regards to socioeconomic class being a much bigger factor than race when it comes to the topic of diversity. >a philosopher from Peru resembles a philosopher from Scotland more than a janitor from Peru >students think that their environment is diverse if one comes from Missouri and another from Pakistan—never mind that all of their parents are doctors or bankers Spot on. I consider any sort of initiative to disenfranchise or disempower people based on their racial/ethnic background as detrimental to society as a whole, because it (understandably) causes resentment and division. Imposter syndrome is a bad enough problem for engineers without having to take the possibility of preferential treatment that was conferred on the basis of minority status into account.
- pessimizer 10y ago
  > Imposter syndrome is a bad enough problem for engineers without having to take the possibility of preferential treatment that was conferred on the basis of minority status into account. This seems completely topsy-turvy to me. I would think white men would be more liable to impostor syndrome due to the general favoritism towards white men. If there were some preferential treatment in the policy that got you hired as a non-white-man that recognized you as the top of your demographic, and your demographic is still vastly underrepresented in your profession; then to feel like an impostor based on that is to internally accept that your demographic is somehow inherently inferior to the overrepresented group. The entire purpose of affirmative action to me is to dislodge the incompetent advantaged people bobbling around at the bottom of their profession, and replace them with people who are more likely not to have had a chance to reach their full potential yet.
  - zem 10y ago
    > I would think white men would be more liable to impostor syndrome due to the general favoritism towards white men. favouritism towards white men is pervasive but invisible; affirmative action is rarer but highly visible, so it gets focused on more.
    - 10y ago
gxs 10y ago
Heh, spot on. I'm also hispanic, the lack of diversity in SV and really any other place where you want to point it out (except for maybe the coaching staff of some football program in rural TX, things like that) is due to socioeconomic difference. I'd take it one step further though and say it's just a difference in culture. Go to an Indian friend's house and move a book on the floor out of the way with your foot- you will get a nasty glare. Why? Education is incredibly important in their culture and for that reason kicking a book is almost blasphemous to them. All I'm saying is that cultures that value education that way succeed because increasingly to be competitive in the job market you need to have hard skills - not ethnic studies degrees with minors in russian dance. Our culture (hispanic culture) and black culture from what I observed during the time I shared neighborhoods with poor urban blacks that were similar in socioeconomic status to us, just doesn't value education the same way. And pointing that out nowadays is considered racist, sadly. The only reason I made it out the hood is because of my dad - he would always tell me that the only difference (true or not) between him and the uberly rich guys he works for in LA is education. Fast forward 25 years and now at 31 I'm doing just fine. Most of the "racism" I perceive day to day is in my head and I suspect it has to do with this non stop conversation.
- sumedh 10y ago
  > you will get a nasty glare. Indian here, my dad used to hit me if I moved a book with my foot. That is just not acceptable.
korethr 10y ago
It seems to me that the only diversity in tech that actually matters is diversity of thought: How does this person approach problem solving differently? What heretofore unknown problems do they spot before it's too late? Etc. Skin reflectivity, ancestry/parentage, anything related to genitalia (be it shape, usage, TypeMismatchExceptions from the brain, etc), net-worth, or history of any of those strike as poor proxies for the diversity that does mater. Can you solve the technical problem to hand? Great! Am I missing something that it needs to be any more complicated than that?
- bobbytherobot 10y ago
  It is very very easy to create bias interview questions for programming. I've seen too often people ask a college homework assignment they worked on. Is using your path to the job a good proxy for finding diversity of thinkers? Then the question is, how do you set it up to find people that solve problems differently? The interview is just the start of the phase. How do you keep people who are talented but approach the problem differently? What keeps them from feeling like an outsider?
- eveningcoffee 10y ago
  Edit: Well, I have to probably extend this to make it more understandable. ...that actually matters is diversity of thought. How does this person approach problem solving differently? I think that this is what the industry is after, kind of. It would at least make economical sense, I think. While the problem is interesting and important, it also looks to be hard to solve. But there seems to exists a heuristic, instead of trying to create an actual diversity of thought directly, create a diversity of thinkers in hope that diversity of thought will arise from it. There is also a political aspect, as the field is felt as attractive and high paying then there exists political groups that try to take advantage of the situation, also this forum is oriented to the CS field, so we also hear more about this field here. This comment does not try to address the real issue but a meta-issue - that is, why it is perceived that there is so much talk about the issue.
calvinbhai 10y ago
I so agree with this article!! Always had the same feeling about the "diversity" but never understood the why.
ftrflyr 10y ago
"A society that aims for equality before liberty will end up with neither equality nor liberty." We are seeing the effects of society aiming for equality over liberty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKxCWheH5Vk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKxCWheH5Vk
forrestthewoods 10y ago
Diversity is code for "race" and "sex". It's not a very diverse set of axes to measure. I won't argue they aren't important axes. They may even be the two single most important. But either way it's disappointing that they're the only two axes we're actively measuring and scoring.
nickpsecurity 10y ago
I've written these same things. The real value of diversity is different approaches to problem solving in various domains like leadership, product development, performance assessment, technical aptitude, crisis/dispute management, and more. It was obvious that getting races by themselves wouldn't solve the problem when most startups and big companies alike were already filtering candidates to be more like them ("culture fit"). That's killing diversity at the start. The alternative is meritocracy. Things like blind auditions or at least leveraging existing diversity in assessments. There should be extra attention paid to whether the person has skills that complement the team's or took unusual but effective approaches to certain problems. I see that kind of stuff all the time in my line of work although management sees a lot less. It's because I'm looking harder. I don't care what the race or other traits of the person was as those who impress me vary considerably. I enjoy seeing the differences as I learn from them so long as the differences are mental.
pj_mukh 10y ago
I am a tad bit confused at the premise of the article. It is primarily complaining that race (or gender) is just one dimension of diversity. To the extent of my anecdotal experiences, most diversity advocates whole-heartedly agree. The example he uses, Project Include, specifically cites, "gender, race, class, age, religion, disability, education, sexual orientation, and others" and calls it a multi-dimensional problem [1]. Example: cis white men from poor or troubled families are most definitely included in this definition of under-represented minorities. It maybe difficult to explicitly measure, but they are definitely included. There maybe specific organizations that work with a single dimension but I would like to see data on this supposed proliferation of solely race/gender based diversity organizations. Lots of good organizations work with other dimensions of minority representation. Stride[2], focussed on socio-economic conditions, in the bay area comes to mind. [1] http://projectinclude.org/about/ http://projectinclude.org/about/ [2] http://www.stridecenter.org/ http://www.stridecenter.org/
- mzw_mzw 10y ago
  > Example: cis white men from poor or troubled families are most definitely included in this definition of under-represented minorities. It maybe difficult to explicitly measure, but they are definitely included. The fact that poor white men are technically included in certain definitions of "disadvantaged" by obscure organizations no one has ever heard of, is of little import in the real world: where programs to, say, get more poor coal miners' sons from Appalachia into tech are thin on the ground, and anyone talking about those people's problems gets torrents of abuse and remarks about "white tears."
  - pj_mukh 10y ago
    Again, not sure what you are talking about. This particular situation (Appalachia in tech) was loudly celebrated in all circles[1]. This seems to be an enemy that's been made up (or defined by a thin fringe). https://backchannel.com/canary-in-the-code-mine-903884eca853#.oym3f187q https://backchannel.com/canary-in-the-code-mine-903884eca853...
    - 10y ago
fuqted 10y ago
From The Diversity Myth: "...a woman might ‘realize’ that she had been ‘raped’ the next day or even many days later. Under these circumstances, it is unclear who should be held responsible. If the alcohol made both of them do it, then why should the woman’s consent be obviated any more than the man’s? Why is all blame placed on the man? " I'm curious what people think about this.
bryanmgreen 10y ago
In an off the cuff thought, I'd say issues related to to diversity in this age generally come from stereotypes or generalizations rather than ignorant or malicious thinking. IE: In the work place, a hiring manager might think "This person comes from that place which doesn't 'usually' produce top talent... On the other hand, I have this other individual from a place that generally produces top talent." Don't forget that a hiring manager's job is pretty much to entirely mitigate risk - thereby perpetuating, intentionally or otherwise, lack of diversity. That's no excuse, but I think lack of diversity should be a viewed as a symptom, not a disease. In the above example, I describe a symptom of a risk-management mindset - and if companies could find a way to give more trust to hiring managers, perhaps it would give them the freedom to hire more diverse candidates. --- TL;DR Ask yourself: Do you think Lack of Diversity is a symptom of greater social/economic issues or is it a disease in that it is consciously/intentionally perpetrated?
pastProlog 10y ago
Many of the people on HN are in their twenties, some of us are slightly older. In 1963, the Ku Klux Klan bombed a black church in Birmingham and killed four little girls, because the church supported the rights of blacks to vote. Blacks were still banned from attending University of Alabama in that year, the governor himself stood in the school's door to block the first student trying to attend, blocked by federal marshals. In 1964 three civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi, with the help of local police. In 1961, groups riding on integrated buses in the south were attacked in several places, with the help of police, beaten to a pulp and the buses burned. Even in the north - in 1965 Martin Luther King went on a march in Chicago against de facto segregated housing, which was met by what seemed to be a forming mob, he was hit by a brick and the white and black marchers were met with projectiles and feared a riot might ensue. If you look at the Fox News viewer demographics, much of their audience were in their 20s and 30s when this was all happening. They grew up with it that way. This isn't ancient history to some of us, and is American history. You go back farther and it is jim crow, lynching, and not all too far back, about 30 years before my grandfather was born, slavery. Considering this, seeing blacks relegated to Oakland (which is itself being gentrified) and lacking in the makeup of startups in San Francisco is not surprising. Things have in some ways gotten better, but black men are still killed for little or no reason. Look at the case of Amadou Diallo, who was shot 41 times for opening his door - the police brass have been editing his entry on Wikipedia with exposed IPs, which has led to a little kerfuffle. So they're being paid by working taxpayers to rewrite history any how...
jeffrom 10y ago
Funny how when programmer's see a bug in some code, it doesn't matter so much _why_ the code is like that, what matters more is the result of that code being incorrect. The impact of the code is what matters, not the intent. Yet, when it comes to diversity in tech, you can show all the data you want, and we still assume that affluent white men are the ones who are really under attack, that white men are predisposed to succeed in this field moreso than other groups, or any number of other theories that are really just anecdotally-based gut reactions. 2016 isn't that different from the 50s in that way.
Gigablah 10y ago
As someone from SE Asia, I find it mind-boggling that just about all of the comments here lump "Asians" and "whites" into the same category.
- oldmanjay 10y ago
  Welcome to the weird politics of the diversity discussion
jxramos 10y ago
I wonder how folks respond to the following attitude "The key word among advocates of multiculturalism became 'diversity'. Sweeping claims for the benefits of demographic and cultural diversity... have prevailed without a speck of evidence being asked for or given." https://youtu.be/H6ImP-gJvas?t=941 https://youtu.be/H6ImP-gJvas?t=941 I've recently been exposed to the above sort of thoughts that criticize the whole notion of diversity. I have to admit I'm still taken aback and caught off guard by it. Apparently this Sowell guy is all over on YouTube sneering at the idea of diversity in one way or another. He's a very unusual and startling figure to listen to, challenging a ton of beliefs and things I've been exposed to growing up.

226 points by generic_user 10y ago

zeitgeb3r 10y ago

I'm a straight white male. What is diversity?

oldmanjay 10y ago
It's a problem that needs to be solved. Or it's a savior for our tech industry. And nominally other industries. It's the core of the reason we can't have equality and also the rallying cry for people who want equality. It's a dividing line used to decide who is in v. out from many, many different perspectives. It's a religion, and a rallying cry for people who want religion to have less, or no influence on public discourse. It's a very fluid concept depending on what the speaker believes and what the speaker wants the listener to believe. Most of all, it's a hot topic.
kushti 10y ago
That's when you should constantly be frustrated about being white and having a dick.

whitegenocide 10y ago

diversity = white genocide

vsergiu 10y ago

I don't like reading articles like this one. I hate discrimination and I am amazed that in 2016 we still have it. I am creating a website that lists companies that are hiring Latinos. Post your tech job here https://goo.gl/forms/CVIMrhigDXicaSUM2 https://goo.gl/forms/CVIMrhigDXicaSUM2 if you are excited working with Latinos.

whitegenocide 10y ago
Shouldn't companies be hiring anyone who is qualified, latino or not?
- fataliss 10y ago
  In a perfect unbiased world, sure. Reality is quite a bit different sadly.
- Retra 10y ago
  That's easy to believe when you don't say what "qualified" means. For someone to be 'qualified' for a position, it only need be a good decision for that company to hire that person, which may well be a factor of how the company is perceived by the public.
- incompatible 10y ago
  I guess there will usually be plenty of qualified applicants for any particular position. Typical hiring processes may give scope for picking the one that will fit in best culturally, which would be the opposite to diversity.
placeybordeaux 10y ago
Creating a website that only caters to a given ethnicity is extremely discriminatory.
- vsergiu 10y ago
  It's not. It just helps Latinos find jobs easier. There are a ton of sites for female in tech and no one complains.
  - jimmywanger 10y ago
    Everyone complains. If you're a white or asian male you get absolutely no help with getting hired in tech, getting trained for tech jobs, etc etc. And by starting a list of companies that hire Latinos, you're implying all other companies don't hire Latinos. I cannot think of a single company who openly discriminates against Latinos, so it's a false premise. It's not like Jim Crow days, where you'd maintain lists of restaurants who would serve black customers. And the statement "If you are excited working with Latinos" is horrible. I'm excited working with anybody who is competent, easy to get along with, and can teach me things. Why would you be specifically excited about working with Latinos?
    - wwweston 10y ago
      > Everyone complains. If you're a white or asian male you get absolutely no help with getting hired in tech, getting trained for tech jobs, etc etc. The argument goes that if you fall into one of those groups, you are generally helped by being what a lot of people think someone in that role should look like, at a minimum unconsciously and in some cases consciously. It's not a full articulation of the dynamic behind people's backgrounds and what happens in a hiring process, and so it might not be the best idea to orient initiatives/activism entirely around that, but it's a pretty reasonable point of view.
      - ebfe 10y ago
        >you are generally helped... They're not necessarily wrong, either. I'm responsible for hiring decisions, and whenever possible I prefer to go with white and Asian men because 1. I know their accomplishments are the result of their own ability rather than hand-holding, and 2. if things go sour, they're not going to sue me. Obviously few women or PoC do those things, but with a white/Asian guy you remove the risk entirely.
revoltingx 10y ago
Do you not like it because it goes against the escape-goat excuse of racism? Tech, like a sport, is about how TALENTED you are above all. I'm a Hispanic engineer and this blame culture is precisely why there's not more like us. We need to teach our kids and people to stop watching spanish only TV, to study their asses off, to stop going to college for useless majors, etc. This country is amazing, specially in the opportunities in the tech sector. I advice anyone who wants to succeed to stop worrying about racism and worry about how you're going to be the best at what you do.

placeybordeaux 10y ago

Diversity in many places seems to be largely focused on the shallowest parts of diversity, could that be because this is one of the easiest things to measure & tell about a person? I certainly wouldn't be ready to fill out a survey about my political beliefs or my how my childhood was when interviewing.

generic_user 10y ago
Skin color does not tell you anything about who a person is. Your just reconfirming your own biases when you assign characteristics to race. Diversity often ends up being a political and ideological filter just as much as a racial filter. The organisation looking to hire a 'Diverse' person already has a set of ideological filters in place to rationalize why they prioritize 'Diversity' and what it means. There not just looking for any divers person but the 'right' kind of diverse person that agrees with there filters. So there is process that leads to ideological and political monoculture as it is now. One of the points that to author is making is that focusing more on other forms of diversity rather the race can increase the intellectual and cultural diversity of your organisation far more the just hiring a group of different skin tones who all have the same believes and politics.
- lutorm 10y ago
  Skin color does not tell you anything about who a person is. The problem is that this is not true. If it was, it would be much simpler. Race and ethnicity have a nonzero correlation with other factors like culture and socioeconomic status, which means they are, on average, likely to tell you something about the person. When applied to a given individual they're obviously very flawed predictors, but if they didn't sort of work as a proxy for other characteristics, I don't think it would be talked about as much as it is.
  - generic_user 10y ago
    Companies who want to succeed with new ideas need a diversity of ideas. Free thinkers with broad experience to draw from. And people who are not afraid to disrupt institutional norms. One of the criticism is that the racial diversity PC crowd really have little interest in diversity of ideas, free thinking, or disruption. And most of them come from a very narrow band of upper middle class cultural experience. Its a feeble monoculture with a strict social hierarchy. For all intent and purpose its the opposite of what a innovative diverse group is. If you goal is simply to hire a group of people who meet some subjective 'racial balance' who all think a certain way then your probably building a very weak team.

sdegutis 10y ago

This is what I'm confused about. The "diversity in tech" campaign is obviously being executed all wrong, and I see article after article written by the people it's supposedly trying to help, who confirm what common sense already should know. But yet it still marches on with full strength, as if there's no problem. What gives?

Jimmie_Rustle 10y ago
It's an industry of it's own... Diversity consultants double down on falsehoods to continue to get paid
- gxs 10y ago
  Exactly, there is a cottage industry that's cropped up around the subject - it's got a life of its own at this point.

FT_intern 10y ago

It's weird that this article is being downvoted. The comments sections are usually split 60-40 in the anti-diversity/pro-diversity debates. However only the pro diversity articles ever get upvoted.

richmarr 10y ago

Article argues that diversity of ideas is what's important, rather than diversity of ethnicity/gender, describes trying to solve racial/gender diversity for its own sake as "utterly broken". There's plenty of evidence that women and people from under-represented groups are discriminated against because of their identity. Here are a few on gender alone: [0][1][2][3][4] Perhaps there are cases of people being discriminated against for having "diverse" opinions, but it seems like a distinctly smaller problem, as witholding a controversial opinion is an option and witholding your existence is not. [0] Female students seen as less competent than identical male students with identical application materials, offered lower starting salaries (Moss-Racusin et al, 2012) [1] People in gender-incongruent roles penalised more heavily for mistakes (Brescoll, Dawson, & Uhlmann, 2010). [2] Voluble women perceived as less competent and less suitable leaders, inverse true for men (Brescoll, 2011). [3] Women who succeed in male-dominated fields percieved as not likeable (Heilman et al, 2004). [4] Students question the competence of female teachers who evaluate them negatively, less so than male teachers (Sinclair & Kunda 2000).

jimmywanger 10y ago
> There's plenty of evidence that women and people from under-represented groups are discriminated against because of their identity. Here are a few on gender alone: [0][1][2][3][4] Every single one of your examples has to do with gender, not ethnic diversity like the original article was talking about. Could you submit some evidence about under-represented groups?
- jacalata 10y ago
  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/black-sounding-names-study_us_561697a5e4b0dbb8000d687f http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/black-sounding-names-stu...
  - jimmywanger 10y ago
    Those are names, not actually people from under represented groups. I have Asian friends named Jerome, Tyrone and Miguel. By that kind of thinking they should they be given affirmative action.

have_faith 10y ago

Having grew up in an environment that was very troubled (to put it lightly) and also be a CIS white straight male; I find diversity discussions quite difficult. Lots of assumptions about myself due to the colour of my skin and my gender and lots of guilty by association "history is full of white males in X industry" to justify positive discrimination etc. I don't have a particular point to this post through in part being chastised in the past for having an opinion on the subject but I roughly follow the authors train of thought. When people talk of diversity their range seems to be quite shallow and skin deep.

nsxwolf 10y ago
I learned to stop having such conversations long ago. You either agree completely with the zeitgeist and get domesticated as an "ally", which is like being a little mindless pet. Or you disagree with a point or two and get savaged, and marginalized. When I just avoid the topic, everything stays OK and everyone remains friendly.
- douche 10y ago
  The only winning move is not to play.
  - raymondh 10y ago
    Strange game, Dr. Falken.
  - home_boi 10y ago
    you still lose if you're an asian/indian/white male. I care about this topic because I don't want to be discriminated based on my race or gender. It is a zero sum game. Companies will require the same head count regardless of its racial/gender composition. At best, companies right now are lowering the bar on who they give interviews to when an under represented minority is involved (who ends up being upper middle class and privileged anyway, just like how AA works). Organizations are also providing resources and networking that I do not have access to. On average, I suspect that some companies actually discriminate based on race/gender against white/asian/indian males when comparing interview performance with minorities. At worst, the equal opportunity act is abolished and corporate affirmative action is allowed. This sound crazy but colleges are still able to discriminate based on race/gender so it's not that far fetched.

lutorm 10y ago

Diversity and discrimination are kind of two different topics, no? Discrimination clearly leads to lack of diversity, but lack of diversity does not imply discrimination. I hope everyone thinks discrimination is bad, that doesn't seem like a controversial subject. Lack of diversity in STEM also has other causes, though, like self-selection away from subjects due to lack of role models, or struggling in college because your background has not prepared you for the academic culture. Some of these are likely more race/ethnicity/gender related, like the role model issue. When it comes to being prepared for the academic culture, though, that firmly seems to be in the socio-economic territory. The trouble is that ethnicity also works as a semi-good proxy for socio-economic background, so it seems like people think that by fixing the "I don't see anyone like me here" problem, they can also do a good enough job of fixing problems due socio-economic background, even though that leaves out a significant chunk of people.

fnovd 10y ago
>The trouble is that ethnicity also works as a semi-good proxy for socio-economic background, so it seems like people think that by fixing the "I don't see anyone like me here" problem, they can also do a good enough job of fixing problems due socio-economic background, even though that leaves out a significant chunk of people. Exactly this. A focus on race/ethnicity is only looking at part of the picture. The question remains, though: is it better than looking at none of the picture?
pesfandiar 10y ago
> I hope everyone thinks discrimination is bad, that doesn't seem like a controversial subject. How about all the "positive" discrimination? As a Caucasian male from the Middle East, I feel like many entities take pride in actively discriminating against me, and I don't have any victimhood cards to play in that game.
- lutorm 10y ago
  I'm a Caucasian male, too, and I've never experienced anything I'd call "discrimination". Even now when I live in a place where whites are in the minority (Hawaii, ~27%). I'm curious what kinds of experiences you are referring to.

drewrv 10y ago

I agree with the author, there is definitely a "type" of diversity that we don't talk about or even have a name for. I'm gonna call it "cultural diversity". I think people focus on racial diversity and gender balance because they are good proxies for cultural diversity, which is otherwise quite hard to quantify. For example, if your team's demographics match the demographics of the Stanford CS department, odds are your failing at "cultural diversity" even if you hired a black MIT grad. On the other hand if your team's demographics match the country as a whole, you're probably doing pretty well at cultural diversity.

mgarfias 10y ago

Sometimes I'm happy about being a Mexican American. Number one: I grew up eating Mexican food. Two: when the social justice set starts making noise my way I can point out that my dad grew up chopping cotton and the only reason I didn't is because he happened to get drafted and went to college on the GI bill. Then I'm part of the party, they leave me alone and I can go back to being a right wing redneck Mexican geek-farmer.

swozey 10y ago
I mean, this goes for a lot of white Americans as well. The majority of us in GenX/Y (I'm early 30s, whatever I am) are second to third generation and our families came over in the 1910-1950s with zero prospects. I'm third generation, father and grandfather both US military (raised on a Tobacco farm), father drafted for Vietnam, not sure if my grandfather was drafted but he was a pilot at one point. Both sides of my family are from the Italian and German slums of NY (respectively). In fact, they lived in the Love Canal which was absolutely abysmal and thyroid cancer is rampant through the women in my family because of the toxic waste dumped there. The absolute disdain between my German and Italian family is immeasurable. It's kind of hilarious being an outsider to what they went through. I honestly can't think of one white person I know whose family has been in the USA for more than 2-3 generations. I know a LOT of Mexicans who have been here in TX for hundreds of years which I think is incredibly interesting. I'm so used to my friends having barely any history beyond the 1920s.

jondubois 10y ago

I also don't like how the discussion is framed because it tries to put a label on everyone (typically based on either gender, race or disability)... But that is a very narrow-minded way of thinking about diversity. I think it's important to give extra attention to those who are disadvantaged but we should handle it on a case-by-case basis - Because not everyone who is different and disadvantaged will fit under a specific race/gender/disability label - We shouldn't leave those 'unlabelled' people out of the equation (I think that most disadvantaged people cannot be labelled - They are invisible minorities). For example, studies have shown that attractive people get paid more on average than unattractive ones... So maybe we should also give extra consideration to ugly people... Or introverts, or people who have English as a second language... Or who come from a different country... Or had a bad childhood, etc... There are so many different categories; you cannot look at individuals in terms of their superficial qualities only; you have to consider the individual as a whole. For example, you cannot give special treatment to someone just because they're a woman (without also considering other factors) - What if that woman has a $10 million dollar trust fund and tons of social connections? Maybe she doesn't actually need any special treatment at all - It changes the whole story. I think that gender, race and disability should be considered, but you shouldn't look at them in isolation from everything else; I think that doing so is in itself is a form of discrimination against all unlabelled disadvantaged individuals. At the root of this discussion lies the problem that companies are not good at considering people as individuals.

deleted 10y ago
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Mz 10y ago

When most people are trying to promote inclusiveness, they do just that: Try to include or reach out to certain specifically excluded groups. This has all kinds of inherent problems and does not work well. In contrast, I do things that are less implicitly exclusionary. I do not try to target anyone for inclusion. I just do things that do not implicitly exclude them in the way I frame things. http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/07/less-exclusive.html http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/07/less-exclusi...

pmarreck 10y ago

I never see ethnicity after the first 5 seconds. If you can talk shop, you're cool, period (in my subjective brain). This is why I have issues with diversity discussions; it's like forcing me to acknowledge the elephant in the room that doesn't actually exist in mine. The best programmer I know is female (and I have told her as much), the second-best is half-black, the third-best is a white Jewish Stanford grad, and somewhere way down the list is curious old me. Who is still giving a shit about this stuff? (Disclaimer: I'm likely as white as can be, the Aryan ideal, dirty-blonde blue-eyed German firstborn American). But for what it's worth, my latin-american brother-in-law introduced me to ceviche (he makes it himself), and that shit is the bomb-diggity

muad 10y ago
There was a segment on NPR this morning where a woman who wrote "The History of White People" explained that white people are uncomfortable talking about race because it has never been a problem for them. Her argument was that now that being white is a "bad" thing, white people want to ignore race. It was very enlightening, but not for the reasons she intended.
- pmarreck 10y ago
  That's... a good point, unfortunately. :/

xenihn 10y ago

Hispanic engineer here (Salvadoran native/semitic/spanish mix, for what that matters), and I agree with the article's author in regards to socioeconomic class being a much bigger factor than race when it comes to the topic of diversity. >a philosopher from Peru resembles a philosopher from Scotland more than a janitor from Peru >students think that their environment is diverse if one comes from Missouri and another from Pakistan—never mind that all of their parents are doctors or bankers Spot on. I consider any sort of initiative to disenfranchise or disempower people based on their racial/ethnic background as detrimental to society as a whole, because it (understandably) causes resentment and division. Imposter syndrome is a bad enough problem for engineers without having to take the possibility of preferential treatment that was conferred on the basis of minority status into account.

pessimizer 10y ago
> Imposter syndrome is a bad enough problem for engineers without having to take the possibility of preferential treatment that was conferred on the basis of minority status into account. This seems completely topsy-turvy to me. I would think white men would be more liable to impostor syndrome due to the general favoritism towards white men. If there were some preferential treatment in the policy that got you hired as a non-white-man that recognized you as the top of your demographic, and your demographic is still vastly underrepresented in your profession; then to feel like an impostor based on that is to internally accept that your demographic is somehow inherently inferior to the overrepresented group. The entire purpose of affirmative action to me is to dislodge the incompetent advantaged people bobbling around at the bottom of their profession, and replace them with people who are more likely not to have had a chance to reach their full potential yet.
- zem 10y ago
  > I would think white men would be more liable to impostor syndrome due to the general favoritism towards white men. favouritism towards white men is pervasive but invisible; affirmative action is rarer but highly visible, so it gets focused on more.
  - 10y ago

gxs 10y ago

Heh, spot on. I'm also hispanic, the lack of diversity in SV and really any other place where you want to point it out (except for maybe the coaching staff of some football program in rural TX, things like that) is due to socioeconomic difference. I'd take it one step further though and say it's just a difference in culture. Go to an Indian friend's house and move a book on the floor out of the way with your foot- you will get a nasty glare. Why? Education is incredibly important in their culture and for that reason kicking a book is almost blasphemous to them. All I'm saying is that cultures that value education that way succeed because increasingly to be competitive in the job market you need to have hard skills - not ethnic studies degrees with minors in russian dance. Our culture (hispanic culture) and black culture from what I observed during the time I shared neighborhoods with poor urban blacks that were similar in socioeconomic status to us, just doesn't value education the same way. And pointing that out nowadays is considered racist, sadly. The only reason I made it out the hood is because of my dad - he would always tell me that the only difference (true or not) between him and the uberly rich guys he works for in LA is education. Fast forward 25 years and now at 31 I'm doing just fine. Most of the "racism" I perceive day to day is in my head and I suspect it has to do with this non stop conversation.

sumedh 10y ago
> you will get a nasty glare. Indian here, my dad used to hit me if I moved a book with my foot. That is just not acceptable.

korethr 10y ago

It seems to me that the only diversity in tech that actually matters is diversity of thought: How does this person approach problem solving differently? What heretofore unknown problems do they spot before it's too late? Etc. Skin reflectivity, ancestry/parentage, anything related to genitalia (be it shape, usage, TypeMismatchExceptions from the brain, etc), net-worth, or history of any of those strike as poor proxies for the diversity that does mater. Can you solve the technical problem to hand? Great! Am I missing something that it needs to be any more complicated than that?

bobbytherobot 10y ago
It is very very easy to create bias interview questions for programming. I've seen too often people ask a college homework assignment they worked on. Is using your path to the job a good proxy for finding diversity of thinkers? Then the question is, how do you set it up to find people that solve problems differently? The interview is just the start of the phase. How do you keep people who are talented but approach the problem differently? What keeps them from feeling like an outsider?
eveningcoffee 10y ago
Edit: Well, I have to probably extend this to make it more understandable. ...that actually matters is diversity of thought. How does this person approach problem solving differently? I think that this is what the industry is after, kind of. It would at least make economical sense, I think. While the problem is interesting and important, it also looks to be hard to solve. But there seems to exists a heuristic, instead of trying to create an actual diversity of thought directly, create a diversity of thinkers in hope that diversity of thought will arise from it. There is also a political aspect, as the field is felt as attractive and high paying then there exists political groups that try to take advantage of the situation, also this forum is oriented to the CS field, so we also hear more about this field here. This comment does not try to address the real issue but a meta-issue - that is, why it is perceived that there is so much talk about the issue.

calvinbhai 10y ago

I so agree with this article!! Always had the same feeling about the "diversity" but never understood the why.

ftrflyr 10y ago

"A society that aims for equality before liberty will end up with neither equality nor liberty." We are seeing the effects of society aiming for equality over liberty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKxCWheH5Vk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKxCWheH5Vk

forrestthewoods 10y ago

Diversity is code for "race" and "sex". It's not a very diverse set of axes to measure. I won't argue they aren't important axes. They may even be the two single most important. But either way it's disappointing that they're the only two axes we're actively measuring and scoring.

nickpsecurity 10y ago

I've written these same things. The real value of diversity is different approaches to problem solving in various domains like leadership, product development, performance assessment, technical aptitude, crisis/dispute management, and more. It was obvious that getting races by themselves wouldn't solve the problem when most startups and big companies alike were already filtering candidates to be more like them ("culture fit"). That's killing diversity at the start. The alternative is meritocracy. Things like blind auditions or at least leveraging existing diversity in assessments. There should be extra attention paid to whether the person has skills that complement the team's or took unusual but effective approaches to certain problems. I see that kind of stuff all the time in my line of work although management sees a lot less. It's because I'm looking harder. I don't care what the race or other traits of the person was as those who impress me vary considerably. I enjoy seeing the differences as I learn from them so long as the differences are mental.

pj_mukh 10y ago

I am a tad bit confused at the premise of the article. It is primarily complaining that race (or gender) is just one dimension of diversity. To the extent of my anecdotal experiences, most diversity advocates whole-heartedly agree. The example he uses, Project Include, specifically cites, "gender, race, class, age, religion, disability, education, sexual orientation, and others" and calls it a multi-dimensional problem [1]. Example: cis white men from poor or troubled families are most definitely included in this definition of under-represented minorities. It maybe difficult to explicitly measure, but they are definitely included. There maybe specific organizations that work with a single dimension but I would like to see data on this supposed proliferation of solely race/gender based diversity organizations. Lots of good organizations work with other dimensions of minority representation. Stride[2], focussed on socio-economic conditions, in the bay area comes to mind. [1] http://projectinclude.org/about/ http://projectinclude.org/about/ [2] http://www.stridecenter.org/ http://www.stridecenter.org/

mzw_mzw 10y ago
> Example: cis white men from poor or troubled families are most definitely included in this definition of under-represented minorities. It maybe difficult to explicitly measure, but they are definitely included. The fact that poor white men are technically included in certain definitions of "disadvantaged" by obscure organizations no one has ever heard of, is of little import in the real world: where programs to, say, get more poor coal miners' sons from Appalachia into tech are thin on the ground, and anyone talking about those people's problems gets torrents of abuse and remarks about "white tears."
- pj_mukh 10y ago
  Again, not sure what you are talking about. This particular situation (Appalachia in tech) was loudly celebrated in all circles[1]. This seems to be an enemy that's been made up (or defined by a thin fringe). https://backchannel.com/canary-in-the-code-mine-903884eca853#.oym3f187q https://backchannel.com/canary-in-the-code-mine-903884eca853...
  - 10y ago

fuqted 10y ago

From The Diversity Myth: "...a woman might ‘realize’ that she had been ‘raped’ the next day or even many days later. Under these circumstances, it is unclear who should be held responsible. If the alcohol made both of them do it, then why should the woman’s consent be obviated any more than the man’s? Why is all blame placed on the man? " I'm curious what people think about this.

bryanmgreen 10y ago

In an off the cuff thought, I'd say issues related to to diversity in this age generally come from stereotypes or generalizations rather than ignorant or malicious thinking. IE: In the work place, a hiring manager might think "This person comes from that place which doesn't 'usually' produce top talent... On the other hand, I have this other individual from a place that generally produces top talent." Don't forget that a hiring manager's job is pretty much to entirely mitigate risk - thereby perpetuating, intentionally or otherwise, lack of diversity. That's no excuse, but I think lack of diversity should be a viewed as a symptom, not a disease. In the above example, I describe a symptom of a risk-management mindset - and if companies could find a way to give more trust to hiring managers, perhaps it would give them the freedom to hire more diverse candidates. --- TL;DR Ask yourself: Do you think Lack of Diversity is a symptom of greater social/economic issues or is it a disease in that it is consciously/intentionally perpetrated?

pastProlog 10y ago

Many of the people on HN are in their twenties, some of us are slightly older. In 1963, the Ku Klux Klan bombed a black church in Birmingham and killed four little girls, because the church supported the rights of blacks to vote. Blacks were still banned from attending University of Alabama in that year, the governor himself stood in the school's door to block the first student trying to attend, blocked by federal marshals. In 1964 three civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi, with the help of local police. In 1961, groups riding on integrated buses in the south were attacked in several places, with the help of police, beaten to a pulp and the buses burned. Even in the north - in 1965 Martin Luther King went on a march in Chicago against de facto segregated housing, which was met by what seemed to be a forming mob, he was hit by a brick and the white and black marchers were met with projectiles and feared a riot might ensue. If you look at the Fox News viewer demographics, much of their audience were in their 20s and 30s when this was all happening. They grew up with it that way. This isn't ancient history to some of us, and is American history. You go back farther and it is jim crow, lynching, and not all too far back, about 30 years before my grandfather was born, slavery. Considering this, seeing blacks relegated to Oakland (which is itself being gentrified) and lacking in the makeup of startups in San Francisco is not surprising. Things have in some ways gotten better, but black men are still killed for little or no reason. Look at the case of Amadou Diallo, who was shot 41 times for opening his door - the police brass have been editing his entry on Wikipedia with exposed IPs, which has led to a little kerfuffle. So they're being paid by working taxpayers to rewrite history any how...

jeffrom 10y ago

Funny how when programmer's see a bug in some code, it doesn't matter so much _why_ the code is like that, what matters more is the result of that code being incorrect. The impact of the code is what matters, not the intent. Yet, when it comes to diversity in tech, you can show all the data you want, and we still assume that affluent white men are the ones who are really under attack, that white men are predisposed to succeed in this field moreso than other groups, or any number of other theories that are really just anecdotally-based gut reactions. 2016 isn't that different from the 50s in that way.

Gigablah 10y ago

As someone from SE Asia, I find it mind-boggling that just about all of the comments here lump "Asians" and "whites" into the same category.

oldmanjay 10y ago
Welcome to the weird politics of the diversity discussion

jxramos 10y ago

I wonder how folks respond to the following attitude "The key word among advocates of multiculturalism became 'diversity'. Sweeping claims for the benefits of demographic and cultural diversity... have prevailed without a speck of evidence being asked for or given." https://youtu.be/H6ImP-gJvas?t=941 https://youtu.be/H6ImP-gJvas?t=941 I've recently been exposed to the above sort of thoughts that criticize the whole notion of diversity. I have to admit I'm still taken aback and caught off guard by it. Apparently this Sowell guy is all over on YouTube sneering at the idea of diversity in one way or another. He's a very unusual and startling figure to listen to, challenging a ton of beliefs and things I've been exposed to growing up.