14 ms·

I, too, dream of a world where I can work with smart people without regard to their race, sexuality, gender, whatever, but it is naive to think that we are alre

I, too, dream of a world where I can work with smart people without regard to their race, sexuality, gender, whatever, but it is naive to think that we are already living in that world. Like it or not, the entire system is stacked against minorities in ways that aren't even obvious or noticeable from a position of privilege. I work as an engineer in an office of 120 people in the East Bay. There are three black people working in the office. One of them is the receptionist. If we assume that there are no racial differences in technical ability, then the demographics of my office should roughly mirror the demographics of the surrounding community. Oakland is 28% black (according to the 2010 census), meaning in a fair, unbiased system we should have roughly 30-35 black people working in the office. I am sure that no hiring manager has set out to exclude black people from their postings, but there are centuries of history and deeply ingrained biases that have led to a severe under-representation of African-Americans in this industry, same with every other minority. Until we are truly operating on a level playing field, I am 100% in favour of scholarships based on giving under-represented minorities more opportunities. It is not discrimination to exclude white men from these scholarships. It is recognizing the centuries of privilege we have had and saying that we want give other people the opportunities we have be given simply by existing.

jochung 8y ago
"Centuries of privilege" is the kind of idiocy only a sheltered American suburbanite could come up with. A century ago millions of young white men were too busy dying in trenches and being gassed to death with mustard gas in a war none of them could vote on. Children worked on the field, in factories, and in coal mines, like their fathers were expected to. And yes, women stayed home and took care of the kids because without electricity, plumbing, appliances, refrigeration and cheap groceries, that was actually a laborious full time job, and people were poor. Not to mention that getting through child birth and infant mortality was a blessing for both mother and child. None of them were given opportunities simply by existing. On the other hand, providing scholarships to specific ethnicities, or creating special women-only pathways to entry, that is exactly that. What people like Damore have tried to point out is that expecting demographics and sentiment within a field to match the general population, or else the "playing field" is not level, is an unwarranted assumption. It also puts the blame for actually society wide issues on a small group of people who had nothing to do with it. If you want more black people in tech, start by addressing the way the US school system is stratified entirely by social class. Maybe you'll see a difference, and maybe that IQ gap will shrink. Maybe it won't, and what new "leveling" policies will you want to introduce then? Don't push out or disadvantage others out of misplaced revenge, and don't cite your American tunnel vision as justification.
- dang 8y ago
  > the kind of idiocy only a sheltered American suburbanite Regardless of your view on a divisive issue, you can't break the HN guidelines like this when commenting here. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't do it again.
minitel 8y ago
There is no evidence that anything is stacked against anyone. Only a varying level of representation by people from different identity groups. It is much more likely that different identifiable groups have, on average, different proclivities. If you attempt to force or overly entice people into a field, who would usually not have sought it out you're doing a disservice to everyone. The worst part is. You do this disservice as a way of padding your own ego and sense of moral superiority. The "oppressed" groups are just mascots for your self indulgence.
sanxiyn 8y ago
> If we assume that there are no racial differences in technical ability, then the demographics of my office should roughly mirror the demographics of the surrounding community. This is a big assumption. It may be true, but you are asserting it without evidence. Demographics of NBA do not mirror demographics of USA.
- sgift 8y ago
  It's the reasonable default assumption as long as you have no evidence for the opposite (i.e. that white people have racial attributes making them better at tech / non-white people have racial attributes making them worse). Can you provide evidence for the opposite?
  - kgabis 8y ago
    You're the one making the assumption so you should back it up with some evidence (burden of proof).
ftarlao 8y ago
I got your point, but I think that the problem is not "helping" (with scholarships) based on membership with minorities, but helping when there are bad economic or social conditions. This may be correlated with other attributes yes but I think that we must write rules for persons by only considering the factors that effectively prevent them from studying and not the skin color.
- jgtrosh 8y ago
  If you agree that there are hidden mechanisms that shape the inequality, then claiming that “only considering the factors that effectively prevent studying” is fair would require a great deal of certainty in knowing these factors. I don't know how effective “positive-discrimination” is in practice but to me it seems that its principle is to do what you say but with discriminatory features as a proxy heuristic for these “effective features” (this makes sense if you believe they are sufficiently immesurable IRL).
zeth___ 8y ago
You are also assuming that the 4% of the worlds population in the US is representative of the world. Or imperial privilege as those of us who suffer from empire like to call it. That you push your social issues on us as well as your armies adds insult to injury. I dream of a day when there are no US troops on non-US soil. A day that I can advocate wealth redistribution without fear of a CIA funded coup. A day where the internet represents all of humanity.
malvosenior 8y ago
Also not obvious or noticeable from a position of privilege: many, many white men have no opportunities or privilege and thus are discriminated against for simply being the same race and gender as a very thin slice of upperclass society.
- morvita 8y ago
  While it is true that many white men come from a background where, for any number of reasons, they are not afforded the same opportunities as, say, a white boy from Cupertino, they are still given opportunities and privilege because they were lucky enough to be born a white man. I know this first-hand because I grew up in a rural farming community in Vermont that was more than 95% white and poverty-stricken. Of course, not everyone in my community went to university, but when I did, no one questioned whether I belonged there because I was still a white man. Now that I have a doctorate and work at a big tech company, no one questions whether I belong here either. The same can not be said for a Hispanic or African American man (or even a white woman) who is in my position.
  - modbait 8y ago
    Unfortunately, an inevitable result of AA-type hiring is that everyone--including the candidates themselves--will wonder whether people hired this way are really up to snuff. You can censor, but you can't stop people from reasoning internally.
  - malvosenior 8y ago
    Were you part of the poverty stricken population? My experience has been poor white people are not accepted by our professional community.
    - morvita 8y ago
      No, my mother was a teacher and my father a manager at the local hospital. So while we weren't rich, we were definitely not poverty stricken either. I cannot speak much to the experience of poor white people in the tech community, but, at least anecdotally, I know of two other people I went to high school with who also went into tech. One is still in the industry as far as I know and the other left it a few years ago. (For reference, I am in my early 30s)
felipellrocha 8y ago
This. The point of these policies is that we might be missing some fucking amazing talent and not know just because of historical reasons.
- cucumberferity 8y ago
  Is something that happened in 1864 or 1964 going to prevent you from identifying a good engineer in front of you?
  - Larrikin 8y ago
    Laws were passed then, that doesn't mean culture changed over night. Someone born around 1964 is right around the age of parents in their prime development years. Did your parents have no effect on your ability to become educated that put you on track to become a developer?
  - felipellrocha 8y ago
    Do events that happened in 1864 or 1964 have no impact on anything today opportunity-wise?
  - monocasa 8y ago
    I mean, when an otherwise identical resume with the first name changed from Brad to Tyrone cuts the interview callbacks by 3x, it's hard to argue that these problems have been solved. http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873 http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873 I've also had a boss in tech that refused to hire women engineers. And another boss that lied to the state department to get someone here on asylum (who coincidentally was the hardest worker I've met) sent back, because "Mexicans should go back to where they came from". Spoiler, the guy wasn't even Mexican, just brown.
  - morvita 8y ago
    It does when those events and the decades that followed have prevented minorities from having the opportunities to become a good engineer. This isn't about you and I not recognizing talent in front of us, it's about giving that talent a chance to stand in front of, and ideally next to, us.

jochung 8y ago

"Centuries of privilege" is the kind of idiocy only a sheltered American suburbanite could come up with. A century ago millions of young white men were too busy dying in trenches and being gassed to death with mustard gas in a war none of them could vote on. Children worked on the field, in factories, and in coal mines, like their fathers were expected to. And yes, women stayed home and took care of the kids because without electricity, plumbing, appliances, refrigeration and cheap groceries, that was actually a laborious full time job, and people were poor. Not to mention that getting through child birth and infant mortality was a blessing for both mother and child. None of them were given opportunities simply by existing. On the other hand, providing scholarships to specific ethnicities, or creating special women-only pathways to entry, that is exactly that. What people like Damore have tried to point out is that expecting demographics and sentiment within a field to match the general population, or else the "playing field" is not level, is an unwarranted assumption. It also puts the blame for actually society wide issues on a small group of people who had nothing to do with it. If you want more black people in tech, start by addressing the way the US school system is stratified entirely by social class. Maybe you'll see a difference, and maybe that IQ gap will shrink. Maybe it won't, and what new "leveling" policies will you want to introduce then? Don't push out or disadvantage others out of misplaced revenge, and don't cite your American tunnel vision as justification.

dang 8y ago
> the kind of idiocy only a sheltered American suburbanite Regardless of your view on a divisive issue, you can't break the HN guidelines like this when commenting here. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't do it again.

minitel 8y ago

There is no evidence that anything is stacked against anyone. Only a varying level of representation by people from different identity groups. It is much more likely that different identifiable groups have, on average, different proclivities. If you attempt to force or overly entice people into a field, who would usually not have sought it out you're doing a disservice to everyone. The worst part is. You do this disservice as a way of padding your own ego and sense of moral superiority. The "oppressed" groups are just mascots for your self indulgence.

sanxiyn 8y ago

> If we assume that there are no racial differences in technical ability, then the demographics of my office should roughly mirror the demographics of the surrounding community. This is a big assumption. It may be true, but you are asserting it without evidence. Demographics of NBA do not mirror demographics of USA.

sgift 8y ago
It's the reasonable default assumption as long as you have no evidence for the opposite (i.e. that white people have racial attributes making them better at tech / non-white people have racial attributes making them worse). Can you provide evidence for the opposite?
- kgabis 8y ago
  You're the one making the assumption so you should back it up with some evidence (burden of proof).

ftarlao 8y ago

I got your point, but I think that the problem is not "helping" (with scholarships) based on membership with minorities, but helping when there are bad economic or social conditions. This may be correlated with other attributes yes but I think that we must write rules for persons by only considering the factors that effectively prevent them from studying and not the skin color.

jgtrosh 8y ago
If you agree that there are hidden mechanisms that shape the inequality, then claiming that “only considering the factors that effectively prevent studying” is fair would require a great deal of certainty in knowing these factors. I don't know how effective “positive-discrimination” is in practice but to me it seems that its principle is to do what you say but with discriminatory features as a proxy heuristic for these “effective features” (this makes sense if you believe they are sufficiently immesurable IRL).

zeth___ 8y ago

You are also assuming that the 4% of the worlds population in the US is representative of the world. Or imperial privilege as those of us who suffer from empire like to call it. That you push your social issues on us as well as your armies adds insult to injury. I dream of a day when there are no US troops on non-US soil. A day that I can advocate wealth redistribution without fear of a CIA funded coup. A day where the internet represents all of humanity.

malvosenior 8y ago

Also not obvious or noticeable from a position of privilege: many, many white men have no opportunities or privilege and thus are discriminated against for simply being the same race and gender as a very thin slice of upperclass society.

morvita 8y ago
While it is true that many white men come from a background where, for any number of reasons, they are not afforded the same opportunities as, say, a white boy from Cupertino, they are still given opportunities and privilege because they were lucky enough to be born a white man. I know this first-hand because I grew up in a rural farming community in Vermont that was more than 95% white and poverty-stricken. Of course, not everyone in my community went to university, but when I did, no one questioned whether I belonged there because I was still a white man. Now that I have a doctorate and work at a big tech company, no one questions whether I belong here either. The same can not be said for a Hispanic or African American man (or even a white woman) who is in my position.
- modbait 8y ago
  Unfortunately, an inevitable result of AA-type hiring is that everyone--including the candidates themselves--will wonder whether people hired this way are really up to snuff. You can censor, but you can't stop people from reasoning internally.
- malvosenior 8y ago
  Were you part of the poverty stricken population? My experience has been poor white people are not accepted by our professional community.
  - morvita 8y ago
    No, my mother was a teacher and my father a manager at the local hospital. So while we weren't rich, we were definitely not poverty stricken either. I cannot speak much to the experience of poor white people in the tech community, but, at least anecdotally, I know of two other people I went to high school with who also went into tech. One is still in the industry as far as I know and the other left it a few years ago. (For reference, I am in my early 30s)

felipellrocha 8y ago

This. The point of these policies is that we might be missing some fucking amazing talent and not know just because of historical reasons.

cucumberferity 8y ago
Is something that happened in 1864 or 1964 going to prevent you from identifying a good engineer in front of you?
- Larrikin 8y ago
  Laws were passed then, that doesn't mean culture changed over night. Someone born around 1964 is right around the age of parents in their prime development years. Did your parents have no effect on your ability to become educated that put you on track to become a developer?
- felipellrocha 8y ago
  Do events that happened in 1864 or 1964 have no impact on anything today opportunity-wise?
- monocasa 8y ago
  I mean, when an otherwise identical resume with the first name changed from Brad to Tyrone cuts the interview callbacks by 3x, it's hard to argue that these problems have been solved. http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873 http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873 I've also had a boss in tech that refused to hire women engineers. And another boss that lied to the state department to get someone here on asylum (who coincidentally was the hardest worker I've met) sent back, because "Mexicans should go back to where they came from". Spoiler, the guy wasn't even Mexican, just brown.
- morvita 8y ago
  It does when those events and the decades that followed have prevented minorities from having the opportunities to become a good engineer. This isn't about you and I not recognizing talent in front of us, it's about giving that talent a chance to stand in front of, and ideally next to, us.