15 ms·

Pattern Matching, Racial Diversity and the Hypocrisy of Big Tech Media

136 points by OoTheNigerian 6y ago

mc32 6y ago
It’s all signaling and not really doing anything. (That dog don’t hunt, to turn a phrase). They’re also afraid of the the same hypocritical media will denounce them for not being woke, while the media get a pass while it itself ignores the long arc this requires. You don’t just snap fingers and things happen. It’s easy to say so and so is bad because they are not voicing in unison the clamor for fairness etc. but in reality all most are doing is buying time and buying forgiveness. Real change does not happen overnight. It takes years of hard work. You have to start young and follow through for a couple of decades. Employers barely want to train people they have vetted and hired, so I don’t expect them to put money where their mouths are in terms of building and sustaining the systems necessary to bring disadvantaged populations into the same opportunities afforded others. It’s like the Chinese bots castigating the US for civil liberties issues while they have re-education camps with millions. It’s a sideshow.
- chillacy 6y ago
  That's what a lot of us have been saying in industry for awhile now but tech media has been pretty relentless in implications without clarification of the underlying difficulty (the pipeline we have to work with). It's good to highlight the hypocrisy.
  - Avicebron 6y ago
    I think the pipeline argument is a little biased, it implies that only certain kinds of people can learn "the skills". This thinking back propagates down the line from what the ideal resume looks like, to where someone went to school, down to something like gender or class. I think this is patently untrue and encouraging training and taking chances on different types of applicants would do a lot to improve this. As someone with a bit of an odd background and a bit scattered of a resume. I've experienced this stonewalling first hand.
    - mc32 6y ago
      If the pipeline were not an issue and you could train people, then we’d have no need to import workers. They’d take kids (whatever race or background) off the street and get them up and running. But they already have a hard time accepting people from boot camps (of course some are diploma mills, but some people are good, but get ignored regardless).
      - Avicebron 6y ago
        >If the pipeline were not an issue and you could train people, then we’d have no need to import workers. I'm confused as to whether you are implying it's impossible to train people? Also isn't the concept of ignoring applicants with some form of training (reasonable boot camp) essentially blocking the pipeline?
        mc32 6y ago
        I think people are trainable but companies are loath to do do that. They hardly want to train people they’ve vetted and hired. And yes, ignoring people from boot camps and other alternate learning systems is a problem.
    - filoleg 6y ago
      > I think the pipeline argument is a little biased, it implies that only certain kinds of people can learn "the skills". I don't think so. I truly believe that a lot more people from disadvantaged populations can learn "the skills" than the numbers we currently have, to the point where it would equal out to be the same as people from other demographics. They have the inherent ability to get good good at it just like anyone else. The issue comes with those career paths and opportunities not being as often encouraged and "advertised" to them when growing up. And that's the part that needs to change. We need more supplementary coding opportunities for children in disadvantaged communities. They need to be exposed to those opportunities. Those opportunities need to be presented as viable paths for them, and not something like "you need to learn tons of math and you will be sitting all day at a computer like a drone". If you don't already have great math skills (which most people don't) and don't have role models that encourage this (e.g., an uncle who is a software engineer), then no wonder that this pitch won't convince you to seriously consider a career in software engineering, no matter how actually capable you are. Of course, a lot of people would scoff at this approach, as it takes time to come to fruition and deliver the results. And it isn't a flashy "bandaid" solution you can put on this issue and proclaim a loud victory, without actually making a systemic change. But big systemic changes like this take lots of time and effort, and we should be focusing on that, rather than giving it up in favor of more "bandaid"-tier solutions.
djohnston 6y ago
i cant say much more than "wow, thats pretty damning", particularly because many of the already small number of black people included seem like celebrity tokens (snoop, will smith, nba players) rather than bonafide contributors. im surprised i hadn't heard about this before, though unfortunately not surprised that it is the reality. thanks for sharing!
1cvmask 6y ago
You overlook a number of high profile African Americans (Tony Prophet and Robert F. Smith for example) in tech and Silicon Valley and highlight a number of Africans (Nigerians in particular). Is your criticism also addressing the lack of Africans in Silicon Valley as well?
- OoTheNigerian 6y ago
  Not at all. Without media coverage, it is hard for even myself to know of black founders in US tech. Did you know the founder of the very popular Calendly was black? He lives in Atlanta and is Nigerian but I only got to know of him recently. I just wanted to list a few names of people "I KNOW" that are doing spectacular things. I hope more people make more lists of Black founders. We cannot have enough of them.
  - klipt 6y ago
    Statistically, the American immigrant population from Africa (around 2 million people) seems to have a very different background from most American born African Americans (around 40 million people). Overall, African immigrants (like many other immigrant groups) tend to have very high education/economic mobility, due to the selection effect - if you don't have those characteristics, it's hard to immigrate to the US. But if you lump both groups together as "black", the likely result is that tech companies trying to make up for lack of representation in American born African Americans, will end up filling most of the gap with African immigrants, because immigrants are more likely to have the background tech companies are looking for. Which is great for immigrants, but does it end up helping African Americans?
centimeter 6y ago
Anyone who claims that hiring racism/sexism/ageism/etc. dominates in some industry should be ignored unless they’ve already conditioned on obviously-relevant factors with sex/race/age/etc. correlates, like the desirable strength/intelligence/etc. distribution of workers in that industry. You might naively claim that professional basketball has a racist preference for black men, until you remember that black men are vastly more likely to fall into the height and athleticism distribution optimal for playing basketball. There are also industries where you rationally expect e.g. whites and asians to be disproportionately represented.
- TeaDrunk 6y ago
  This rhetoric in commenting on venture capital and tech implies that whites and asians are more likely to fall into some biological distributions optimal for being in tech or being a venture capitalist. could you explain what they are? Genuine question.
  - exolymph 6y ago
    It's a matter of whether or not you believe IQ test results. (Personally, I don't have a position, not being familiar with the literature brandished by either side of the debate. I am, however, aware of the debate's existence — hence this clarifying comment.)
    - SamReidHughes 6y ago
      You don't need IQ test results. The SAT measures actual performance at solving math problems. https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/sat-percentile-ranks-gender-race-ethnicity.pdf https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/sat-percentile...
      - asdff 6y ago
        SAT measures your ability to complete the SAT, not your ability to solve math problems. If you are nervous in a testing environment or need to take your time with math problems or write them out beyond the scraps of paper they give you, you will have a bad time on the SAT. Even when I took the GRE for grad school, I ran out of time on the math section. It wasn't difficult, it was just trigonometry and very basic algebra, but I ran out of time anyway. I still got into grad school, so it turned out none of this testing stress mattered at all.
OoTheNigerian 6y ago
Hi, author here. I live in Lagos, Nigeria but visit Silicon Valley frequently and follow the situation closely. Being near but far, has given me unique perspectives on these type of issues. I sent my report to 22 US media companies (the ones covered, NYTimes, WaPo, CNN, Guardian, Wired etc) and was essentially blackballed. Thankfully we can self-publish. I am here in the comments and happy to answer any questions you may have.
- mc32 6y ago
  What successful paths have you encountered in Nigeria that propels local disadvantaged populations into areas of the economy that would typically be out of reach to them and which may be applicable in the US?
  - OoTheNigerian 6y ago
    When it comes to economic growth, Nigeria is so far behind policy wise. Sadly, there is nothing I can offer you around policies that can or should be replicated. On the individual level, I have seen people transform the lives of their families by learning to code. This is one https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-i-went-from-programming-with-a-feature-phone-to-working-for-an-mit-startup-40ca3be4fa0f/ https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-i-went-from-programmin...
- throwaway9870 6y ago
  > blackballed Honest question - Is that a racist term? Doesn't appear to be based on Google search, but I see people removing words with black in them such as "blacklist" so I am curious.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - philwelch 6y ago
    No. It refers to a supposed part of the process of joining the Freemasons. The members of the lodge vote anonymously whether to accept a prospective member by depositing a white or black ball into a closed box, with the black ball representing a “no” vote. So “blackballed” refers to some exclusive group excluding outsiders. I’m not a Mason so I don’t know if this factual, but that’s the idea. Of course, someone could be blackballed because they are black—if a particular Masonic lodge had racist members—but it’s not inherent to the concept.
wholien 6y ago
I'd prefer the article to be more upfront about "racial diversity" being "what % are Black", and not "what % are Black, Latino, Asian, etc". Billing Black %, though important, as racial diversity erases all other non-Caucasian groups.
- purple-again 6y ago
  Does it erase them or does it just take a moment to focus the conversation on the black part? I’m pretty sure “racial diversity” here doesn’t mean “not white” but instead means racial division in proportion to the population in context.
  - daenz 6y ago
    The "Silicon Valley Tech Media Diversity Report Card" listed in the article has a column for "Black %" as its only diversity metric.
- munchbunny 6y ago
  While I would prefer to see my demographic represented in the analysis, I'm entirely fine with the lens being focused on black people. If anything good comes of it, underrepresented minorities in general will benefit. Billing Black %, though important, as racial diversity erases all other non-Caucasian groups. I think this is a lesser form of "all lives matter", because the "applies to other groups" subtext is pretty obvious. I'm not saying that you're saying "all lives matter", just that I disagree for comparable reasons: it's only an erasure of non-Caucasian groups if you interpret the author uncharitably.
runawaybottle 6y ago
I really really don’t want what I’m about to say taken to mean anything other than the condemnation of corporate face saving. Companies certainly don’t care about addressing the underlying issues, and they can’t have their institution represented on those charts like that. Going forward, if you can help fix those data visualizations, you are going to be an auto hire. This is how they see the world. I think we’re just getting started with this stuff, and more breakdowns of the data are coming for all facets of society.
baron816 6y ago
It’s really not fair to criticize Big Tech for not having demographics that mirror the US population as a whole. There’s so many large, societal factors standing in the way of black people and people of color from being able to even consider pursuing a career in tech that putting all the blame on discrimination or prejudice means your not talking about the real issues. If Big Tech/Big Tech Media want to help those communities, they should lobby the government to stop mass incarcerating and start educating their future engineers.
- mekoka 6y ago
  The article is not pointing the blame toward discrimination, it addresses the hypocrisy of those with the means to affect change, who are glad to denounce while remaining passive. Apathy while in a position to influence is a form of tacit approval of the status quo. Basically, the article denounces a common form of virtue signaling by these people/organizations when it's convenient (like right now); They publicly plaster donations as flares to deflect attention, but then go back to their color blind ways once the storm has passed. If you're part of a community that has no valid reasons to be delineated along racial lines, at some point you have to wonder why people of a certain minority are underrepresented in your (tech, business, friends) circles. Do they ever ask? Do they care at all? Your stated explanation, incarcerations and lack of education, tends to be the quick goto. But it doesn't explain everything. It's rather increasingly becoming an excuse since, as the article is pointing out, there are instances of talent striving to emerge from those under-favored minorities despite the odds, yet the underrepresentation persists. If anything, the custodians of communities that supposedly transcend backward concepts like "race", should make efforts to encourage more forward-thinking notions such as diversity, as everybody ends up winning from the enriched perspective.
daenz 6y ago
Out of curiosity, has there ever been another point in time where a dominating culture has made efforts to represent non-dominant races/cultures proportionally in the upper levels of society? Were there lessons learned from that? This phenomenon seems relatively new so I'd like to learn more about how it works in practice.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  It doesn’t seem rational, the only way to make sense of it is if the dominating class accessorizes the pursuit of the goal (regardless of its merits) as a form of aggrandizement in their own meta social stratosphere. Questionable motives, but hey if it moves the agenda, take whatever help you can get. It’s already an up-hill battle.
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  It's a result of non zero-sum economics, so you won't see it from any time before the 18th century.
- tropdrop 6y ago
  I am not sure about "dominant races," but there has been something akin to this move in another aspect of society: gender. Here's an article that outlines the effects of finally having enough men in congress convinced to ratify the 19th amendment (enabling universal suffrage) [1]. In this case, the "dominating" culture is the more correct term than "dominant," since the proportion of males to females in society is usually close to 50/50 - but I think it does give us some idea about the kind of policy ramifications that might happen with more representative representation: > Some of the legislation championed by women lawmakers, such as the enactment in the early 1990s of the Violence Against Women Act and the Family and Medical Leave Act, are remembered as signature achievements more than a generation later. But other victories were shockingly prosaic, correcting gender inequities that few would now believe lasted as long as they did, from giving women access to credit to ensuring that medical research included women as subjects. A good example of the kind of prosaic mentioned: most people do not know that the NIH was not required to include female subjects for drug trials until 1993, though it is shockingly obvious that a drug could affect female bodies (e.g. reproductive system) differently [2]. [1] - https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/07/how-women-remade-american-government-after-suffrage/591940/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/07/how-wom... [2] - https://grants.nih.gov/policy/inclusion/women-and-minorities/guidelines.htm https://grants.nih.gov/policy/inclusion/women-and-minorities...
CryptoPunk 6y ago
Diversity among the Black Civil Rights Establishment now means 'what percentage of the workforce is black'.

136 points by OoTheNigerian 6y ago

mc32 6y ago

It’s all signaling and not really doing anything. (That dog don’t hunt, to turn a phrase). They’re also afraid of the the same hypocritical media will denounce them for not being woke, while the media get a pass while it itself ignores the long arc this requires. You don’t just snap fingers and things happen. It’s easy to say so and so is bad because they are not voicing in unison the clamor for fairness etc. but in reality all most are doing is buying time and buying forgiveness. Real change does not happen overnight. It takes years of hard work. You have to start young and follow through for a couple of decades. Employers barely want to train people they have vetted and hired, so I don’t expect them to put money where their mouths are in terms of building and sustaining the systems necessary to bring disadvantaged populations into the same opportunities afforded others. It’s like the Chinese bots castigating the US for civil liberties issues while they have re-education camps with millions. It’s a sideshow.

chillacy 6y ago
That's what a lot of us have been saying in industry for awhile now but tech media has been pretty relentless in implications without clarification of the underlying difficulty (the pipeline we have to work with). It's good to highlight the hypocrisy.
- Avicebron 6y ago
  I think the pipeline argument is a little biased, it implies that only certain kinds of people can learn "the skills". This thinking back propagates down the line from what the ideal resume looks like, to where someone went to school, down to something like gender or class. I think this is patently untrue and encouraging training and taking chances on different types of applicants would do a lot to improve this. As someone with a bit of an odd background and a bit scattered of a resume. I've experienced this stonewalling first hand.
  - mc32 6y ago
    If the pipeline were not an issue and you could train people, then we’d have no need to import workers. They’d take kids (whatever race or background) off the street and get them up and running. But they already have a hard time accepting people from boot camps (of course some are diploma mills, but some people are good, but get ignored regardless).
    - Avicebron 6y ago
      >If the pipeline were not an issue and you could train people, then we’d have no need to import workers. I'm confused as to whether you are implying it's impossible to train people? Also isn't the concept of ignoring applicants with some form of training (reasonable boot camp) essentially blocking the pipeline?
      - mc32 6y ago
        I think people are trainable but companies are loath to do do that. They hardly want to train people they’ve vetted and hired. And yes, ignoring people from boot camps and other alternate learning systems is a problem.
  - filoleg 6y ago
    > I think the pipeline argument is a little biased, it implies that only certain kinds of people can learn "the skills". I don't think so. I truly believe that a lot more people from disadvantaged populations can learn "the skills" than the numbers we currently have, to the point where it would equal out to be the same as people from other demographics. They have the inherent ability to get good good at it just like anyone else. The issue comes with those career paths and opportunities not being as often encouraged and "advertised" to them when growing up. And that's the part that needs to change. We need more supplementary coding opportunities for children in disadvantaged communities. They need to be exposed to those opportunities. Those opportunities need to be presented as viable paths for them, and not something like "you need to learn tons of math and you will be sitting all day at a computer like a drone". If you don't already have great math skills (which most people don't) and don't have role models that encourage this (e.g., an uncle who is a software engineer), then no wonder that this pitch won't convince you to seriously consider a career in software engineering, no matter how actually capable you are. Of course, a lot of people would scoff at this approach, as it takes time to come to fruition and deliver the results. And it isn't a flashy "bandaid" solution you can put on this issue and proclaim a loud victory, without actually making a systemic change. But big systemic changes like this take lots of time and effort, and we should be focusing on that, rather than giving it up in favor of more "bandaid"-tier solutions.

djohnston 6y ago

i cant say much more than "wow, thats pretty damning", particularly because many of the already small number of black people included seem like celebrity tokens (snoop, will smith, nba players) rather than bonafide contributors. im surprised i hadn't heard about this before, though unfortunately not surprised that it is the reality. thanks for sharing!

1cvmask 6y ago

You overlook a number of high profile African Americans (Tony Prophet and Robert F. Smith for example) in tech and Silicon Valley and highlight a number of Africans (Nigerians in particular). Is your criticism also addressing the lack of Africans in Silicon Valley as well?

OoTheNigerian 6y ago
Not at all. Without media coverage, it is hard for even myself to know of black founders in US tech. Did you know the founder of the very popular Calendly was black? He lives in Atlanta and is Nigerian but I only got to know of him recently. I just wanted to list a few names of people "I KNOW" that are doing spectacular things. I hope more people make more lists of Black founders. We cannot have enough of them.
- klipt 6y ago
  Statistically, the American immigrant population from Africa (around 2 million people) seems to have a very different background from most American born African Americans (around 40 million people). Overall, African immigrants (like many other immigrant groups) tend to have very high education/economic mobility, due to the selection effect - if you don't have those characteristics, it's hard to immigrate to the US. But if you lump both groups together as "black", the likely result is that tech companies trying to make up for lack of representation in American born African Americans, will end up filling most of the gap with African immigrants, because immigrants are more likely to have the background tech companies are looking for. Which is great for immigrants, but does it end up helping African Americans?

centimeter 6y ago

Anyone who claims that hiring racism/sexism/ageism/etc. dominates in some industry should be ignored unless they’ve already conditioned on obviously-relevant factors with sex/race/age/etc. correlates, like the desirable strength/intelligence/etc. distribution of workers in that industry. You might naively claim that professional basketball has a racist preference for black men, until you remember that black men are vastly more likely to fall into the height and athleticism distribution optimal for playing basketball. There are also industries where you rationally expect e.g. whites and asians to be disproportionately represented.

TeaDrunk 6y ago
This rhetoric in commenting on venture capital and tech implies that whites and asians are more likely to fall into some biological distributions optimal for being in tech or being a venture capitalist. could you explain what they are? Genuine question.
- exolymph 6y ago
  It's a matter of whether or not you believe IQ test results. (Personally, I don't have a position, not being familiar with the literature brandished by either side of the debate. I am, however, aware of the debate's existence — hence this clarifying comment.)
  - SamReidHughes 6y ago
    You don't need IQ test results. The SAT measures actual performance at solving math problems. https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/sat-percentile-ranks-gender-race-ethnicity.pdf https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/sat-percentile...
    - asdff 6y ago
      SAT measures your ability to complete the SAT, not your ability to solve math problems. If you are nervous in a testing environment or need to take your time with math problems or write them out beyond the scraps of paper they give you, you will have a bad time on the SAT. Even when I took the GRE for grad school, I ran out of time on the math section. It wasn't difficult, it was just trigonometry and very basic algebra, but I ran out of time anyway. I still got into grad school, so it turned out none of this testing stress mattered at all.

OoTheNigerian 6y ago

Hi, author here. I live in Lagos, Nigeria but visit Silicon Valley frequently and follow the situation closely. Being near but far, has given me unique perspectives on these type of issues. I sent my report to 22 US media companies (the ones covered, NYTimes, WaPo, CNN, Guardian, Wired etc) and was essentially blackballed. Thankfully we can self-publish. I am here in the comments and happy to answer any questions you may have.

mc32 6y ago
What successful paths have you encountered in Nigeria that propels local disadvantaged populations into areas of the economy that would typically be out of reach to them and which may be applicable in the US?
- OoTheNigerian 6y ago
  When it comes to economic growth, Nigeria is so far behind policy wise. Sadly, there is nothing I can offer you around policies that can or should be replicated. On the individual level, I have seen people transform the lives of their families by learning to code. This is one https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-i-went-from-programming-with-a-feature-phone-to-working-for-an-mit-startup-40ca3be4fa0f/ https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-i-went-from-programmin...
throwaway9870 6y ago
> blackballed Honest question - Is that a racist term? Doesn't appear to be based on Google search, but I see people removing words with black in them such as "blacklist" so I am curious.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- philwelch 6y ago
  No. It refers to a supposed part of the process of joining the Freemasons. The members of the lodge vote anonymously whether to accept a prospective member by depositing a white or black ball into a closed box, with the black ball representing a “no” vote. So “blackballed” refers to some exclusive group excluding outsiders. I’m not a Mason so I don’t know if this factual, but that’s the idea. Of course, someone could be blackballed because they are black—if a particular Masonic lodge had racist members—but it’s not inherent to the concept.

wholien 6y ago

I'd prefer the article to be more upfront about "racial diversity" being "what % are Black", and not "what % are Black, Latino, Asian, etc". Billing Black %, though important, as racial diversity erases all other non-Caucasian groups.

purple-again 6y ago
Does it erase them or does it just take a moment to focus the conversation on the black part? I’m pretty sure “racial diversity” here doesn’t mean “not white” but instead means racial division in proportion to the population in context.
- daenz 6y ago
  The "Silicon Valley Tech Media Diversity Report Card" listed in the article has a column for "Black %" as its only diversity metric.
munchbunny 6y ago
While I would prefer to see my demographic represented in the analysis, I'm entirely fine with the lens being focused on black people. If anything good comes of it, underrepresented minorities in general will benefit. Billing Black %, though important, as racial diversity erases all other non-Caucasian groups. I think this is a lesser form of "all lives matter", because the "applies to other groups" subtext is pretty obvious. I'm not saying that you're saying "all lives matter", just that I disagree for comparable reasons: it's only an erasure of non-Caucasian groups if you interpret the author uncharitably.

runawaybottle 6y ago

I really really don’t want what I’m about to say taken to mean anything other than the condemnation of corporate face saving. Companies certainly don’t care about addressing the underlying issues, and they can’t have their institution represented on those charts like that. Going forward, if you can help fix those data visualizations, you are going to be an auto hire. This is how they see the world. I think we’re just getting started with this stuff, and more breakdowns of the data are coming for all facets of society.

baron816 6y ago

It’s really not fair to criticize Big Tech for not having demographics that mirror the US population as a whole. There’s so many large, societal factors standing in the way of black people and people of color from being able to even consider pursuing a career in tech that putting all the blame on discrimination or prejudice means your not talking about the real issues. If Big Tech/Big Tech Media want to help those communities, they should lobby the government to stop mass incarcerating and start educating their future engineers.

mekoka 6y ago
The article is not pointing the blame toward discrimination, it addresses the hypocrisy of those with the means to affect change, who are glad to denounce while remaining passive. Apathy while in a position to influence is a form of tacit approval of the status quo. Basically, the article denounces a common form of virtue signaling by these people/organizations when it's convenient (like right now); They publicly plaster donations as flares to deflect attention, but then go back to their color blind ways once the storm has passed. If you're part of a community that has no valid reasons to be delineated along racial lines, at some point you have to wonder why people of a certain minority are underrepresented in your (tech, business, friends) circles. Do they ever ask? Do they care at all? Your stated explanation, incarcerations and lack of education, tends to be the quick goto. But it doesn't explain everything. It's rather increasingly becoming an excuse since, as the article is pointing out, there are instances of talent striving to emerge from those under-favored minorities despite the odds, yet the underrepresentation persists. If anything, the custodians of communities that supposedly transcend backward concepts like "race", should make efforts to encourage more forward-thinking notions such as diversity, as everybody ends up winning from the enriched perspective.

daenz 6y ago

Out of curiosity, has there ever been another point in time where a dominating culture has made efforts to represent non-dominant races/cultures proportionally in the upper levels of society? Were there lessons learned from that? This phenomenon seems relatively new so I'd like to learn more about how it works in practice.

runawaybottle 6y ago
It doesn’t seem rational, the only way to make sense of it is if the dominating class accessorizes the pursuit of the goal (regardless of its merits) as a form of aggrandizement in their own meta social stratosphere. Questionable motives, but hey if it moves the agenda, take whatever help you can get. It’s already an up-hill battle.
marcosdumay 6y ago
It's a result of non zero-sum economics, so you won't see it from any time before the 18th century.
tropdrop 6y ago
I am not sure about "dominant races," but there has been something akin to this move in another aspect of society: gender. Here's an article that outlines the effects of finally having enough men in congress convinced to ratify the 19th amendment (enabling universal suffrage) [1]. In this case, the "dominating" culture is the more correct term than "dominant," since the proportion of males to females in society is usually close to 50/50 - but I think it does give us some idea about the kind of policy ramifications that might happen with more representative representation: > Some of the legislation championed by women lawmakers, such as the enactment in the early 1990s of the Violence Against Women Act and the Family and Medical Leave Act, are remembered as signature achievements more than a generation later. But other victories were shockingly prosaic, correcting gender inequities that few would now believe lasted as long as they did, from giving women access to credit to ensuring that medical research included women as subjects. A good example of the kind of prosaic mentioned: most people do not know that the NIH was not required to include female subjects for drug trials until 1993, though it is shockingly obvious that a drug could affect female bodies (e.g. reproductive system) differently [2]. [1] - https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/07/how-women-remade-american-government-after-suffrage/591940/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/07/how-wom... [2] - https://grants.nih.gov/policy/inclusion/women-and-minorities/guidelines.htm https://grants.nih.gov/policy/inclusion/women-and-minorities...

CryptoPunk 6y ago

Diversity among the Black Civil Rights Establishment now means 'what percentage of the workforce is black'.