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Do you really think there are young people in the US who could be NBA players but are held back by lack of resources, lack of training, and lack of friends/fami

by majos 9y ago

Do you really think there are young people in the US who could be NBA players but are held back by lack of resources, lack of training, and lack of friends/family members who play basketball? I think that's a key difference between the "diversity problem" in the NBA and the diversity problem (no scare quotes) in tech.

m_mueller 9y ago
Diversity quotas are making this situation actively worse by giving a bad image to those who pass. In German there‘s even a compound slur word for one such cases, „Quotenfrau“ (quota woman). These kind of outcomes were once unforeseen but are very easily to foresee now after lots of experience with that kind of thing. I firmly believe that as a society we should try to make people of all shapes be interested in the most productive and needed professions, but the pushing and pulling should end there. If you want equal, just go ahead and install actual communism, I actually might be on board with thst more, at least with modern technology it should be doable such that people can all live well enough.
- tibbetts 9y ago
  People like to say this is a major problem, and I don’t know of any quantification of the effect one way or the other, but I am skeptical. Annecdotally I do know my mother was told (by coworkers and her boss) she was a quota hire in 1975 and it was still the start to a successful 42 year career in sales. She was only with that first company about 4 years. I imagine many other people overcome the stigma associated with getting an “undeserved” opportunity or being told they were hired thanks to a lower standard due to their race or gender. I personally try not to hold it against my fellow white male entrepreneurs from prestigious schools and affluent backgrounds that I know we had an easier time raising capital and hiring people because of our race, gender, and social connections.
netheril96 9y ago
Yes. Jeremy Lin has spoken on multiple occasions of the discrimination he has encountered entering and during NBA, and god knows how many more Asian Americans are kept from a NBA career by these discrimination. (Hint, there are very few Asians in NBA).
zanny 9y ago
You don't solve the upstream problems by doing the exact same wrong that made the problem to begin with. If the institutions that preceded yours bred inequality and bias then yes, you get a biased candidate pool, whether you are the NBA or Google. But the solution is never to get an input of biased applicants and select not the best candidate but the one that meets a racial quota to try to make yourself feel better about racism in the world. In both cases I imagine there are capable young non-black men who don't pursue basketball because its a "black sport" and there are technically minded young black women who don't pursue software because its a "nerdy white man industry". Regardless of if the NBA is actually biased, or if tech companies are actually sexist, what matters is the average normative cultural perception of that industry or discipline. If you are told your whole life by opinionated outsiders that only white men can program of course you are going to have a hard time finding the willpower to fight that presumption as a young uninformed anything.

by majos 9y ago

m_mueller 9y ago

Diversity quotas are making this situation actively worse by giving a bad image to those who pass. In German there‘s even a compound slur word for one such cases, „Quotenfrau“ (quota woman). These kind of outcomes were once unforeseen but are very easily to foresee now after lots of experience with that kind of thing. I firmly believe that as a society we should try to make people of all shapes be interested in the most productive and needed professions, but the pushing and pulling should end there. If you want equal, just go ahead and install actual communism, I actually might be on board with thst more, at least with modern technology it should be doable such that people can all live well enough.

tibbetts 9y ago
People like to say this is a major problem, and I don’t know of any quantification of the effect one way or the other, but I am skeptical. Annecdotally I do know my mother was told (by coworkers and her boss) she was a quota hire in 1975 and it was still the start to a successful 42 year career in sales. She was only with that first company about 4 years. I imagine many other people overcome the stigma associated with getting an “undeserved” opportunity or being told they were hired thanks to a lower standard due to their race or gender. I personally try not to hold it against my fellow white male entrepreneurs from prestigious schools and affluent backgrounds that I know we had an easier time raising capital and hiring people because of our race, gender, and social connections.

netheril96 9y ago

Yes. Jeremy Lin has spoken on multiple occasions of the discrimination he has encountered entering and during NBA, and god knows how many more Asian Americans are kept from a NBA career by these discrimination. (Hint, there are very few Asians in NBA).

zanny 9y ago

You don't solve the upstream problems by doing the exact same wrong that made the problem to begin with. If the institutions that preceded yours bred inequality and bias then yes, you get a biased candidate pool, whether you are the NBA or Google. But the solution is never to get an input of biased applicants and select not the best candidate but the one that meets a racial quota to try to make yourself feel better about racism in the world. In both cases I imagine there are capable young non-black men who don't pursue basketball because its a "black sport" and there are technically minded young black women who don't pursue software because its a "nerdy white man industry". Regardless of if the NBA is actually biased, or if tech companies are actually sexist, what matters is the average normative cultural perception of that industry or discipline. If you are told your whole life by opinionated outsiders that only white men can program of course you are going to have a hard time finding the willpower to fight that presumption as a young uninformed anything.