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> Diversity programs are not about lowering the bar As an Asian male who once upon a time had to apply to colleges, I'd like to see some evidence for that asse
by sp527 9y ago
> Diversity programs are not about lowering the bar
As an Asian male who once upon a time had to apply to colleges, I'd like to see some evidence for that assertion.
To be clear, I (and hopefully many other people commenting here) have no problem with outreach, anti-harrassment, and other such workplace training initiatives. It's unfortunate that we can't all achieve a baseline level of civility that abstracts away a person's biological character.
But I personally find it inflammatory to equate the concept of diversity with differences in sex and race in the first place. This tends disturbingly towards institutionalized stereotyping (e.g. "all Asians are nerdy and softspoken, so we're going to lump them into the same cohort and exert an implicit negative bias against them"). It's also particularly vacuous in that our notion of 'diversity' is thereby premised chiefly on superficial appearances - 'you look different, therefore you must be the kind of different we need'.
One would think the more equitable philosophy would be to strive towards a world in which we stop making exactly those kinds of distinctions and instead judge people on the content of their character and the value they can create.
I find it highly reductionist to conflate people challenging biased hiring practices with people challenging diversity more generally. There are likely some in the tech world who are genuinely bigoted and misogynist. I would hope, however, that a larger share are simply perplexed that hiring practices in engineering would be predicated on anything other than an assessment of raw merit.
My final point is this: as long as we continue to perpetuate diversity practices that emphasize sex and race in any way, some classes of people are going to be harmed. Sometimes that's more obvious to the Asian male who grew up in a tough part of NYC under difficult circumstances than it is to the affluent Black female who grew up in a world willing to bias opportunities unfairly in her favor (when some other less fortunate Black female really needed the leg up).
- postnihilism 9y agoI appreciate where you are coming from. And I agree we should, "strive towards a world in which we stop making exactly those kinds of distinctions and instead judge people on the content of their character and the value they can create." And I honestly believe that diversity and outreach programs are part of that process. The economic and social structure of the United States is the result of historical processes that were driven by racism and sexism; disparities in wealth and power between these groups continue to exist today due to that legacy. To take one example, "If average black family wealth continues to grow at the same pace it has over the past three decades, it would take black families 228 years to amass the same amount of wealth white families have today." [0] While it is a great sentiment that everyone should be treated purely as individuals and it is something to strive for, it completely ignores the economic reality of our country and is an ahistorical approach to public policy or the construction of a hiring pipeline. We can argue about to what role public companies can or should play to reduce these historical inequities. I think that outreach and education at all levels to increase the number of candidates from underrepresented groups in the tech hiring pipeline is a great step and that reducing these inequities, beyond being ethical, will create a stronger workforce. Others might disagree and have good reasons to disagree. That is a conversation worth having, but it needs to happen in the historical context in which we find ourselves. Writing a manifesto that claims that the disparity in tech is the result of biological differences that lead women to be inferior at performing in tech and leadership capacities is not the way to start this conversation. In fact this is the exact kind of sentiment that you call out by saying, "I personally find it inflammatory to equate the concept of diversity with differences in sex and race in the first place." [0] http://www.ips-dc.org/report-ever-growing-gap/ http://www.ips-dc.org/report-ever-growing-gap/
- sp527 9y agoThere are a lot of holes in the arguments you're laying out, but I'll comment on just a few: * Google is a profit-motivated entity. They have to act in the interest of their shareholders. Correcting for historical imbalances - to the extent that it negatively perverts hiring standards - doesn't factor into the calculus of a responsible corporation. * Jews were systematically exterminated in a historical event that was even more recent than slavery. Countless more were left destitute. Why are they any less deserving of positive bias? * There are millions of White people across the Midwest who are dirt poor because manufacturing is no longer a meaningful economic sector in this country. What about them? And more generally, believing that there's a contemporary responsibility to correct for historical imbalances leads you down a fantastically absurd rabbit hole. We should instead be addressing the present socioeconomic condition (which will indirectly benefit many of the historically disenfranchised). And that is the job of government. Not corporations.
- someguydave 9y agoYour comment is well-written, I appreciate it. Several states in the Midwest (Indiana, for example) are actually undergoing a manufacturing boom. Google may have just shot itself in the foot here by making it clear that Midwestern political views are not welcome. I would wager that a sizable chunk of Google's technical workforce hail from the Midwest.
- whateveracct 9y ago> Midwestern political views Is this sarcasm or are you serious? Please don't normalize this memo as if it's rational American political thought. Fwiw I grew up in and went to school in Indiana and it makes this google memo no less awful -.-
- someguydave 9y agoMidwestern folks respect competence without regard to race or sex. Google has clearly indicated that they think otherwise.
- themacguffinman 9y ago> as long as we continue to perpetuate diversity practices that emphasize sex and race in any way, some classes of people are going to be harmed The whole reason diversity practices exist is because "some classes of people" are already being harmed. Without "diversity practices", we already have practices that emphasize and discriminate sex and race, except they happen to be the status quo. Attacking diversity for harming "some classes of people" misses the point, because any change to the status quo is necessarily going to harm certain classes and benefit other classes.
- sjeohp 9y agoClass =/= race|gender. Could be argued that race|gender equality distracts from class divisions that are far more ingrained.
- themacguffinman 9y agoI think class divisions are intertwined with race and gender divisions. You can't ignore the effect of being hired at, say, Google will have on your class.
- wolfgangK 9y agoExactly ! But 'intertwined' means correlation, not causation. Being a woman is correlated with not doing software dev. in a tech company. It does not mean that tech discriminate against women, because correlation ≠ causation.
- themacguffinman 9y agoSure, I'll accept the basic logic that the lack of women in tech does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that tech discriminates against women. But you're also ignoring evidence that suggests tech actually does discriminate against women. Just to scratch the surface, we've just seen some high profile cases like the scandal at Uber and Google's court case on its wage gap.
- heisenbit 9y agoYou got a good point. These days social class is more a determining factor for chances to move up than it has ever been. The risk with race, gender or other policies based on past evils is fighting the last war.