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> Identity politics flavored social justice warfare peeves me because it misses this grand overarching point: there is untapped potential here. ? That’s one o

> Identity politics flavored social justice warfare peeves me because it misses this grand overarching point: there is untapped potential here. ? That’s one of the points that gets repeated over and over as far as benefits of including people with diverse and/or unorthodox backgrounds. But you should also consider hiring for diversity simply because different sorts of people with different backgrounds and experiences likely have different world-views and approaches to thinking about and solving problems. A diverse culture will simply have more ideas on the table to work with than a monoculture.

yowlingcat 8y ago
It gets repeated at face value, but it's at a surface level. That's parroting. It's not often utilized as a process and as a tool to achieve other goals. That's when it becomes application. You're entirely correct that a diverse culture will simply have more ideas on the table than a monoculture -- and that's exactly why it's an advantage.
CM30 8y ago
The problem is that most companies boasting about diversity don't actually do that. They hire individuals from similar backgrounds based on surface level features. No, having more women from MIT or Harvard isn't really making the company more 'diverse' in any real way, since many of them have the same backgrounds and experiences as your male employees. It's tokenism. If X% of employees are female/from some minority but they're all educated in Ivy League/Oxbridge schools, all from fairly wealthy backgrounds, share political leanings and grew up in similar situations, does it really matter or make any real 'difference'? Economic differences are basically ignored in a lot of modern 'identity politics'
- chillacy 8y ago
  An apple HR director said as much and was canned for suggesting that diversity is more than skin deep.
- HillaryBriss 8y ago
  > does it really matter or make any real 'difference'? the answer from the various underrepresented identity groups themselves is abundantly clear. it's yes. they insist that, yes, absolutely it definitely does make a critically important difference to have an actual person from the actual underrepresented identity group in those jobs. they say that only such a person could have fully experienced the kind of opportunity denial, the kind of repression, the kind of discrimination that such corporate measures are supposed to address. they say that such a person and only such a person can truly and faithfully represent the perspectives and needs of that identity group within the corporate setting. they say that only such a person in that job can truly open the door so that other young people, other potential future employees, from that group have the confidence to pursue such a job in the future. (could an openly gay man ever lead a Fortune 500 US corporation? in theory, yes, but it was still an important step for Tim Cook to step out into the open https://www.cultofmac.com/585278/tim-cook-interview-gay-privacy/ https://www.cultofmac.com/585278/tim-cook-interview-gay-priv...)
SpicyLemonZest 8y ago
It's my experience that "hiring for diversity" advocates are very much in favor of a monoculture. For example, devout Christians are severely underrepresented in most professional fields, and I've never seen a diversity program targeted towards obtaining their wildly different worldviews.

yowlingcat 8y ago

It gets repeated at face value, but it's at a surface level. That's parroting. It's not often utilized as a process and as a tool to achieve other goals. That's when it becomes application. You're entirely correct that a diverse culture will simply have more ideas on the table than a monoculture -- and that's exactly why it's an advantage.

CM30 8y ago

The problem is that most companies boasting about diversity don't actually do that. They hire individuals from similar backgrounds based on surface level features. No, having more women from MIT or Harvard isn't really making the company more 'diverse' in any real way, since many of them have the same backgrounds and experiences as your male employees. It's tokenism. If X% of employees are female/from some minority but they're all educated in Ivy League/Oxbridge schools, all from fairly wealthy backgrounds, share political leanings and grew up in similar situations, does it really matter or make any real 'difference'? Economic differences are basically ignored in a lot of modern 'identity politics'

chillacy 8y ago
An apple HR director said as much and was canned for suggesting that diversity is more than skin deep.
HillaryBriss 8y ago
> does it really matter or make any real 'difference'? the answer from the various underrepresented identity groups themselves is abundantly clear. it's yes. they insist that, yes, absolutely it definitely does make a critically important difference to have an actual person from the actual underrepresented identity group in those jobs. they say that only such a person could have fully experienced the kind of opportunity denial, the kind of repression, the kind of discrimination that such corporate measures are supposed to address. they say that such a person and only such a person can truly and faithfully represent the perspectives and needs of that identity group within the corporate setting. they say that only such a person in that job can truly open the door so that other young people, other potential future employees, from that group have the confidence to pursue such a job in the future. (could an openly gay man ever lead a Fortune 500 US corporation? in theory, yes, but it was still an important step for Tim Cook to step out into the open https://www.cultofmac.com/585278/tim-cook-interview-gay-privacy/ https://www.cultofmac.com/585278/tim-cook-interview-gay-priv...)

SpicyLemonZest 8y ago

It's my experience that "hiring for diversity" advocates are very much in favor of a monoculture. For example, devout Christians are severely underrepresented in most professional fields, and I've never seen a diversity program targeted towards obtaining their wildly different worldviews.