7 ms·

This parallels my experience. I have repeatedly feigned support for denying employment to white and Asian men to increase our proportional representation of dem

This parallels my experience. I have repeatedly feigned support for denying employment to white and Asian men to increase our proportional representation of demographics categorized as diverse. The company has set an outcome based goal to have 33% women in tech roles. When the industry is only 20-25% female, such a target is effectively impossible without discrimination. But no one who wants to succeed dares bring that up.

cmdshiftf4 7y ago
>But no one who wants to succeed dares bring that up. Nor should they. The pursuit of equality has been replaced with a demand for equity and the talking heads espousing this demand have become sufficiently skilled at publicly shaming companies and individuals that leaders have decided that acquiescing and silently taking on the bill involved in prioritizing in-office demographic makeup over all else rather than ending up on Vox & co. and being publicly tainted forever. On an individual level, it is career suicide to go against the corporate narrative supporting the above, particularly when you consider that the most ardent supporters of the narrative are empowered to also have some of the most significant impact on your career (HR).
alchemism 7y ago
One org’s discrimination is another org’s curation, semantically-speaking. The subjectivity usually depends on which side of the dividing line the perceiver finds themselves.
- weberc2 7y ago
  It’s discrimination either way. The subjectivity is just about whether or not it is deserved. Some people think certain races or sexes deserve it, which is deplorable but technically subjective.
  - alchemism 7y ago
    Right. When the new executive is tasked with “cleaning up the misogyny problem at Uber” (as an example) it can only be be accomplished by discriminating against misogynists, by removing them and especially through not-hiring new ones.
    - weberc2 7y ago
      I genuinely can’t tell if “misogyny” means “sexual harassment” or “men having mildly nonconforming political views” a la Damore. If the former, no one would object to said “cleanup”, so that’s pretty clearly not what we’re discussing.
      - alchemism 7y ago
        It is indeed the former. No one [of high value to society] would object to the discrimination, but it is still a discrimination occurring if the outright harassers are rejected for the benefit of the whole organization.
  - dahart 7y ago
    This isn’t about races or sexes deserving it, this is about fixing an existing imbalance that happened via cultural discrimination. The idea is to get closer to balance and then as soon as we’re closer, stop discriminating in either direction. When you call people trying to fix this deplorable, let’s just be clear, you’re judging negatively the people hoping to end cultural discrimination. If your proposed solution is to not do anything, we already know what will happen, because it already did: more cultural discrimination.
    - weberc2 7y ago
      It’s not deplorable to try to end discrimination, it’s deplorable to discriminate on the bases of race and sex, even if you believe that you can fight racism and sexism by way of more racism and sexism. And it’s as ridiculous to think that this approach would reduce the amount of racism/sexism as it is to think that the only other option is to do nothing. The obvious alternative is to discourage racism and promote (real) equality. But even if you do nothing, it’s strictly better than promoting some twisted notion of “positive racism” if only because our society had already been trending away from racism from the start of the civil rights movement right up to the point when “positive racism” became fashionable some 8 years ago or so.
      - dahart 7y ago
        I can understand why some people think fighting discrimination with discrimination sounds bad, especially when you say it that way. But I very much disagree, and framing it that way is exactly that: it's a frame intended to make positive actions look bad. On the one had you have permanent negative cultural discrimination that is keeping some people down who don't deserve it, and on the other you have an attempt to counter that with positive, visible, out-in-the-open affirmative action that is boosting the group that's being discriminated against. (And only until they're no longer being discriminated.) The symmetry you're trying to imply doesn't really exist. Victims of cultural discrimination in history have been killed, enslaved, raped, harassed, etc. There is no analogue to that for the receivers of affirmative action. It's frequently quite difficult to show who's being materially harmed by affirmative actions as a group. It's common to say that giving a job to a women or black person because of affirmative action is discrimination, but it's not always zero-sum, it doesn't always mean someone else lost the job. And you just can't forget that if someone did lose the job, they still, as a group, already had unfairly high numbers of that job. Another problem with your judgement is that the whole idea with affirmative action is to favor whoever is the underdog and only until they no longer are, where cultural racism doesn't change sides. > when “positive racism” became fashionable some 8 years ago or so. This comment sounds like it doesn't know any history. Affirmative actions have been used globally for a very long time in repose to times & places when discrimination occurs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action > The obvious alternative is to discourage racism and promote (real) equality. Ah, so you do you do that? People have been trying that for a very long time. How well is it working? When has it worked better than affirmative actions? To make a more subtle and deeper point about the irony of what you're saying, how do you actually "discourage" racism without in some way, shape or form giving preference to the downtrodden group? Isn't "discouraging" racism discriminatory against someone? If all discrimination is deplorable, is "discouraging" racism then deplorable because it's discriminatory against racists? > But even if you do nothing, it's strictly better Disagree. And note that proponents of actually fixing the problem would call doing nothing deplorable, because it in effect protects existing known discrimination by refusing to fix it.
cloverich 7y ago
Why would it requiring discrimination be a problem?
- will4274 7y ago
  Well, employment discrimination by gender is illegal in my country.
- manfredo 7y ago
  Because employers in the US are legally prohibited from discriminating on the basis of sex and race. At least in theory, enforcement seems to be lax in Silicon Valley. Also, it creates a situation where people are aware that non-diverse employees are held to a more selective standard. This can increase impostor syndrome among diverse employees who may feel that they would not have been employed if they weren't of a specific gender or ethnicity.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  You're asking why race and gender discrimination might be a problem?
  - cloverich 7y ago
    I am asking why using discrimination (favoring women) to reverse a discrimination trend is a problem. Not why discrimination in general is a problem, which it obviously is.
    - BurningFrog 7y ago
      Thanks. I have two thoughts. 1. The position that it's OK to fight discrimination with more discrimination is very different from the idea that discrimination is inherently bad. 2. The theory that some gender differences in occupation choice are caused by discrimination is both controversial and unproven. If the difference is mainly caused by the genders having different statistical distributions of interests, you're actually using discrimination to fight peoples career choices.
dahart 7y ago
> When the industry is only 20-25% female, such a target is effectively impossible without discrimination. This type of discrimination has a name, it’s called “affirmative action”. This argument that fixing an imbalance is discrimination and therefore somehow worse seems to be really common but I think it’s a little misguided to say we shouldn’t use it, and here’s why. The imbalance we have is an imbalance that was caused by cultural discrimination against women, and it’s a type of discrimination that is often unseen and is hard and time consuming to fix. (Not to mention, nobody actually knows how.) The idea for affirmative action is to provide a counter-acting force to the already existing discrimination. Furthermore, the idea is to use this force gently and, most importantly, temporarily, until some balance is restored. We already know what happens if we take no action at all: we get discrimination against women. The industry used to be a much higher percentage of women 40 years ago. Why has it declined? It’s obviously cultural because it used to be higher in the recent past, and just before that it was near zero and women weren’t allowed to vote. The numbers have been swinging all over the map in just 100 years, so it clearly has not settled from the perspective of history. So what would you do to fix an imbalance? What is your suggestion? Doing nothing already has a known, negative outcome. There are other ideas besides affirmative action. How well have they worked in the past?
- cc81 7y ago
  Why do you think it is discrimination and not just women not choosing that career? Look at other previously male dominated positions like doctors and law where you now in Sweden have more women graduating those fields than men. Something changed there. I doubt software development has been more hostile and conservative than for example law. The thing is that women are studying at university at a larger degree than men in Sweden but they are not selecting STEM fields, especially not computer science. Maybe it will change with role models, culture and different initiatives but I suspect that most young women right now think it is a boring as fuck career (at least those I talk to). It would be like someone asking me if I would like to study to teach kindergarten. Maybe I as a male have been conditioned not to see that as an option and maybe many more would choose that career if we were raised differently but for me it just sounds like something I would really really not like. I respect the work but for me taking care of tons of kids all day sounds incredibly boring and rough. The idea that there is discrimination (which there is and some men suffer from) is not near my mind. Most women I talk to express similar thoughts about software development.

cmdshiftf4 7y ago

>But no one who wants to succeed dares bring that up. Nor should they. The pursuit of equality has been replaced with a demand for equity and the talking heads espousing this demand have become sufficiently skilled at publicly shaming companies and individuals that leaders have decided that acquiescing and silently taking on the bill involved in prioritizing in-office demographic makeup over all else rather than ending up on Vox & co. and being publicly tainted forever. On an individual level, it is career suicide to go against the corporate narrative supporting the above, particularly when you consider that the most ardent supporters of the narrative are empowered to also have some of the most significant impact on your career (HR).

alchemism 7y ago

One org’s discrimination is another org’s curation, semantically-speaking. The subjectivity usually depends on which side of the dividing line the perceiver finds themselves.

weberc2 7y ago
It’s discrimination either way. The subjectivity is just about whether or not it is deserved. Some people think certain races or sexes deserve it, which is deplorable but technically subjective.
- alchemism 7y ago
  Right. When the new executive is tasked with “cleaning up the misogyny problem at Uber” (as an example) it can only be be accomplished by discriminating against misogynists, by removing them and especially through not-hiring new ones.
  - weberc2 7y ago
    I genuinely can’t tell if “misogyny” means “sexual harassment” or “men having mildly nonconforming political views” a la Damore. If the former, no one would object to said “cleanup”, so that’s pretty clearly not what we’re discussing.
    - alchemism 7y ago
      It is indeed the former. No one [of high value to society] would object to the discrimination, but it is still a discrimination occurring if the outright harassers are rejected for the benefit of the whole organization.
- dahart 7y ago
  This isn’t about races or sexes deserving it, this is about fixing an existing imbalance that happened via cultural discrimination. The idea is to get closer to balance and then as soon as we’re closer, stop discriminating in either direction. When you call people trying to fix this deplorable, let’s just be clear, you’re judging negatively the people hoping to end cultural discrimination. If your proposed solution is to not do anything, we already know what will happen, because it already did: more cultural discrimination.
  - weberc2 7y ago
    It’s not deplorable to try to end discrimination, it’s deplorable to discriminate on the bases of race and sex, even if you believe that you can fight racism and sexism by way of more racism and sexism. And it’s as ridiculous to think that this approach would reduce the amount of racism/sexism as it is to think that the only other option is to do nothing. The obvious alternative is to discourage racism and promote (real) equality. But even if you do nothing, it’s strictly better than promoting some twisted notion of “positive racism” if only because our society had already been trending away from racism from the start of the civil rights movement right up to the point when “positive racism” became fashionable some 8 years ago or so.
    - dahart 7y ago
      I can understand why some people think fighting discrimination with discrimination sounds bad, especially when you say it that way. But I very much disagree, and framing it that way is exactly that: it's a frame intended to make positive actions look bad. On the one had you have permanent negative cultural discrimination that is keeping some people down who don't deserve it, and on the other you have an attempt to counter that with positive, visible, out-in-the-open affirmative action that is boosting the group that's being discriminated against. (And only until they're no longer being discriminated.) The symmetry you're trying to imply doesn't really exist. Victims of cultural discrimination in history have been killed, enslaved, raped, harassed, etc. There is no analogue to that for the receivers of affirmative action. It's frequently quite difficult to show who's being materially harmed by affirmative actions as a group. It's common to say that giving a job to a women or black person because of affirmative action is discrimination, but it's not always zero-sum, it doesn't always mean someone else lost the job. And you just can't forget that if someone did lose the job, they still, as a group, already had unfairly high numbers of that job. Another problem with your judgement is that the whole idea with affirmative action is to favor whoever is the underdog and only until they no longer are, where cultural racism doesn't change sides. > when “positive racism” became fashionable some 8 years ago or so. This comment sounds like it doesn't know any history. Affirmative actions have been used globally for a very long time in repose to times & places when discrimination occurs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action > The obvious alternative is to discourage racism and promote (real) equality. Ah, so you do you do that? People have been trying that for a very long time. How well is it working? When has it worked better than affirmative actions? To make a more subtle and deeper point about the irony of what you're saying, how do you actually "discourage" racism without in some way, shape or form giving preference to the downtrodden group? Isn't "discouraging" racism discriminatory against someone? If all discrimination is deplorable, is "discouraging" racism then deplorable because it's discriminatory against racists? > But even if you do nothing, it's strictly better Disagree. And note that proponents of actually fixing the problem would call doing nothing deplorable, because it in effect protects existing known discrimination by refusing to fix it.

cloverich 7y ago

Why would it requiring discrimination be a problem?

will4274 7y ago
Well, employment discrimination by gender is illegal in my country.
manfredo 7y ago
Because employers in the US are legally prohibited from discriminating on the basis of sex and race. At least in theory, enforcement seems to be lax in Silicon Valley. Also, it creates a situation where people are aware that non-diverse employees are held to a more selective standard. This can increase impostor syndrome among diverse employees who may feel that they would not have been employed if they weren't of a specific gender or ethnicity.
BurningFrog 7y ago
You're asking why race and gender discrimination might be a problem?
- cloverich 7y ago
  I am asking why using discrimination (favoring women) to reverse a discrimination trend is a problem. Not why discrimination in general is a problem, which it obviously is.
  - BurningFrog 7y ago
    Thanks. I have two thoughts. 1. The position that it's OK to fight discrimination with more discrimination is very different from the idea that discrimination is inherently bad. 2. The theory that some gender differences in occupation choice are caused by discrimination is both controversial and unproven. If the difference is mainly caused by the genders having different statistical distributions of interests, you're actually using discrimination to fight peoples career choices.

dahart 7y ago

> When the industry is only 20-25% female, such a target is effectively impossible without discrimination. This type of discrimination has a name, it’s called “affirmative action”. This argument that fixing an imbalance is discrimination and therefore somehow worse seems to be really common but I think it’s a little misguided to say we shouldn’t use it, and here’s why. The imbalance we have is an imbalance that was caused by cultural discrimination against women, and it’s a type of discrimination that is often unseen and is hard and time consuming to fix. (Not to mention, nobody actually knows how.) The idea for affirmative action is to provide a counter-acting force to the already existing discrimination. Furthermore, the idea is to use this force gently and, most importantly, temporarily, until some balance is restored. We already know what happens if we take no action at all: we get discrimination against women. The industry used to be a much higher percentage of women 40 years ago. Why has it declined? It’s obviously cultural because it used to be higher in the recent past, and just before that it was near zero and women weren’t allowed to vote. The numbers have been swinging all over the map in just 100 years, so it clearly has not settled from the perspective of history. So what would you do to fix an imbalance? What is your suggestion? Doing nothing already has a known, negative outcome. There are other ideas besides affirmative action. How well have they worked in the past?

cc81 7y ago
Why do you think it is discrimination and not just women not choosing that career? Look at other previously male dominated positions like doctors and law where you now in Sweden have more women graduating those fields than men. Something changed there. I doubt software development has been more hostile and conservative than for example law. The thing is that women are studying at university at a larger degree than men in Sweden but they are not selecting STEM fields, especially not computer science. Maybe it will change with role models, culture and different initiatives but I suspect that most young women right now think it is a boring as fuck career (at least those I talk to). It would be like someone asking me if I would like to study to teach kindergarten. Maybe I as a male have been conditioned not to see that as an option and maybe many more would choose that career if we were raised differently but for me it just sounds like something I would really really not like. I respect the work but for me taking care of tons of kids all day sounds incredibly boring and rough. The idea that there is discrimination (which there is and some men suffer from) is not near my mind. Most women I talk to express similar thoughts about software development.