8 ms·

Maybe I'm getting more conservative and irritable in my old age, but I've really gotten saturated and tired of diversity, diversity, diversity -- "we should ref

Maybe I'm getting more conservative and irritable in my old age, but I've really gotten saturated and tired of diversity, diversity, diversity -- "we should reflect who our customers are", etc. As if that's the durable standard and goal of our society. I just don't buy it. Here's what I'm for. I'm for removing barriers to anyone being able to be interested, educated, and encouraged to do the things they want to do. And we should work to make it easier for people to be identified as having skills and talent in whatever field they choose. Then let the chips fall where they may. This push for equality of outcome + diversity is political bullshit of the moment. Every field and industry and job will reflect the demographics of who is interested in doing that job, the pipeline of people who seek to become educated and qualified for it, and the proportions of who succeeds at showing their skills. You will not escape that truth -- and trying to do so will cause more frustration and political backlash than working within that truth. Fashionable as it may be to latch on to a message right now, I don't think the majority of people buy the idea that diversity in itself means that any selective field ought to equal the proportions of the groups you choose to divide general society into. People can simply see that it's not true as an outcome. And that movement will lose.

zozbot234 6y ago
To many people who are deeply committed to this divisive "pro-diversity" movement, comments like yours are "hate on women and minorities; racism, sexism" etc. This is exactly the kind of comment they'll screenshot and say "Orange site bad!" on Twitter. It's quite sad.
grx 6y ago
Hot topic, but your comment has some good points I'll try to add my experience to. > I'm for removing barriers to anyone being able to be interested, educated, and encouraged to do the things they want to do. And we should work to make it easier for people to be identified as having skills and talent in whatever field they choose. From my POV, as a white male, this relates to a misconception of what many "diversity" programs actually aim for: pushing underprivileged and disadvantaged people into positions from where they have better chances to even come in contact with their true interests and talents. The same goes for role modelling, which is not to be underestimated in the context of "do the things they want to do". If you are black or female, but 90% of an "industry" (whatever that is, just take a group of people representing the part of society which does $thing) is white and male, could you see yourself in this industry? I know this is an extremely controversial question, especially in discussions between white males. But from what I learned from underrepresented people during the years is that role models and identification plays a HUGE part in "making a free choice". > Every field and industry and job will reflect the demographics of who is interested in doing that job, the pipeline of people who seek to become educated and qualified for it, and the proportions of who succeeds at showing their skills. I would not follow this as straight as you have. The demographics in tech (and other fields, of course) could also show that once a majority is settled (here: white male), they tend to attract and recruit people who are like-minded and similar to themselves. Example US: "Among chief executives of S.&P. 1500 firms, for each woman, there are four men named John, Robert, William or James", https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/upshot/fewer-women-run-big-companies-than-men-named-john.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/upshot/fewer-women-run-bi... Example DE: "The surnames Thomas and Andreas make up a share of 7%, more than the total shares of women", https://www.manager-magazin.de/politik/artikel/weniger-frauen-in-mdax-vorstaenden-als-maenner-namens-thomas-a-1022017.html https://www.manager-magazin.de/politik/artikel/weniger-fraue... ---- I know what you mean, and for a long time I was in the same boat, looking for barriers like money and availability of time that might block minorities from entering higher education and the higher workforce. But the problems are of structural nature and they can only be solved by acknowledging that the main barriers are not forms, interest and intelligence, but identification, perspective and connections.
- flak48 6y ago
  How did other industries that were once historically male dominated overcome this 'identification problem' atleast in terms of gender if not race? (Professions like biologists, psychologists, forensic scientist, vet for example all of which are around 75%+ female today, except for biologist which is bit more even) And why haven't we seen the same pattern in tech?
  - grx 6y ago
    Good question, and since I am not a sociologist, I can only guess. One thing in advance, and as a reaction to the received downvotes: my usage of the word "identification" has nothing to do with "identity politics" that are raging in the US and elsewhere. In German, saying "to identify with someone" is more meant as "seeing myself becoming the person that I can identify with" or "I could see myself in this persons position". Like a 1:1 connection. > How did other industries that were once historically male dominated overcome [...] in terms of gender if not race? Based on what I wrote above, I have shortened the quote. And my guess would be the advancement of female integration into higher education, participation and choice of profession. Keep in mind that women were not allowed to vote until some time in the 20th century. With a lot of steps, women and daughters gained more empowerment. All in all, men and women have more aligned chances in today's workforce (details debatable), but the changes need to be done first. And they were not gently handed over by people (men) who were in advanced positions before. > And why haven't we seen the same pattern in tech? The tech industry is pretty young compared to the other fields of study you mentioned. I guess social changes will also ingest the tech industry, because they follow a progressive cycle that repeats every x years. Of course there might be more to it, if you take into account how many aspects of human life are affected by technology today (and how fast these changes arrived..). What would your opinion be on that matter, answering your own questions?
    - flak48 6y ago
      > What would your opinion be on that matter, answering your own questions? I'm honestly perplexed. Maybe I should study what those fields did, if they made any conscious efforts to address diversity mismatch (compared to demographics of the general population) . Or if some other barriers came down that allowed male dominance to reduce in these fields(in some cases to be replaced by female dominance).
TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
I'm not particularly feminist, but it seems obvious to me that "interested in doing a job" is a combination of nature and nurture. And it's almost unimaginably hard to create genuine equality of opportunity and freedom of choice when there are parental and social expectations and pressures being applied in all directions - often unconsciously. (And not necessarily exclusively for the benefit of men, either.) There's also the more basic problem of class economics and culture. How do you define "talent." How are you going to find out if kids have talent? When are you going to test for it? What do you do if you find it? So it's fine to say you're for "removing barriers", but to do that you need to understand just how huge those barriers are. I don't think feminism necessarily helps with that, and I think Identity Politics is a poor distraction from genuine equality of opportunity. But it's also a really, really hard problem, and it won't be solved without a lot of other changes - which would likely make absolutely everyone on all sides extremely uncomfortable.
- kepler1 6y ago
  That's fine, and I agree with many of your points. But if the problems really are as deep rooted in parenting and social expectations, then really people's attempts to change the outcome at the last step of a long process are the most simplistic and easily reached for, but ultimately misguided.
- manigandham 6y ago
  That's all reasonably understood by most people. You can talk to a random person on the street and they will recognize that where and when you're born along with the family support and connections you had can make a massive difference in what you become. Unfortunately the diversity movement doesn't really tackle any of this because it would require real effort over decades while asking hard questions about culture and family life. It's much easier to just point into skin-color/race/gender ratios and push for regressive segregation and discrimination instead, but all that does it make everything worse.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Unfortunately the diversity movement doesn't really tackle any of this because it would require real effort over decades Even assuming the effect you describe was true, its self evidently not for the reason you describe, as the “diversity movement”, as you call it, has exerted real effort over decades. > It's much easier to just point into skin-color/race/gender ratios and push for regressive segregation The only thing the “diversity movement” pushes for is the opposite of segregation.
tsimionescu 6y ago
Thinking about this with an engineering mindset, how can you know that you are offering equal opportunities of you don't measure the outcomes? What can you measure that shows men are as likely to be given a tech job as women, if not the outcomes of men and women working there? For do you know you've made it as easy for a black student to be a great software developer as it is for a white student, if you don't look at great software developers and measure how many are black or white?
- kepler1 6y ago
  How do you know if the measurements you're taking at the end of the process are valid to interpret, if you don't know the inputs? I'm not willing to trust the one (or act on it in a way that distorts what could be an otherwise fair/unbiased process) without knowing the other. My problem with this approach is that people are too willing to stop halfway and claim that the outcome looks biased, without seeing what the inputs were. And cause (or seek to cause) massive change to people's lives based on that.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    I absolutely agree, you need to try to measure boy side of the equation, not only the outcomes.
- jpxw 6y ago
  There is no way of knowing. Certainly looking at outcomes is a bad way of measuring this, because it presupposes equal interests and desire.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    Sure, measuring only outcomes is not reliable. But measuring only inputs is also unreliable.
- tarsinge 6y ago
  The problem is that the outcome is an aggregation of a lifelong process, not just the recruiting process. Trying to control the outcome is impossible, because for example there may be cultural reasons (parenting, marketing and advertising, etc...) that may result in only a fraction of a gender being interested in a field. But still we can still aim to offer equal opportunities in a bottom up manner to any candidate.
jpxw 6y ago
Be careful expressing opinions like this, it could get you fired these days.
neilv 6y ago
If more dotcoms has diversity of ideas, I suspect one of the outcomes is that they'd have employees saying that what the dotcom is doing -- secretly spying on people, and perhaps also directly manipulating them against their interests -- is, if not currently technically illegal, unconscionable. I think it's interesting to consider that current dotcom interviewing processes arguably select for homogeneous conformism, and willingness to train for, and submit to, hazing rituals. Get some diversity of ideas in there, and, pretty soon, someone might say, "Hey, wait a minute, guys, do we even hear what we're talking about doing to people? How are we not the baddies?"
- thinkingemote 6y ago
  "diversity of ideas" doesn't really mean that for most companies as a company and any group for that matter desires cohesion, peace and efficiency. What all company's want is to be successful. Real diversity of ideas means more conflict and less harmoniously working arrangements. But there are benefits: The theory is that diversity of whatever kind brings creativity which is a benefit to the company especially if used in creative positions or upper management. Unions and collaborative worker action also suffer from the workers being, well, less unified, which an organisation may like. Diversity is divisive to groups unless there is a larger shared communalist identity.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  Wouldn't more diversity mean there would likely be more and different objections to take their pick from? Given the military industrial complex I think you would be diappointed to find that they are moral paragons compared to the type of people who feel no qualms designing weapon systems which use depleted uranium bullets when they already have overkill margins over adversaries without spraying posion willy nilly. More diverse could mean people with fewer qualms about what you consider wrong. Plus there is a long history of ruling elite hiring "exotic" foreign bodyguards as they would be more likely to care just about the money as opposed to the politics so long as you don't violate their known taboos.
underwater 6y ago
> I'm for removing barriers to anyone being able to be interested, educated, and encouraged to do the things they want to do. How do you see that happening? What if the barriers stopping them is the hangover from 100s of years of systematic bias (like generational wealth not existing for many black people)? What if it's overcoming the subconcious biases that people have about how people in a field should look, talk, and act?
- dencodev 6y ago
  This exactly. Barriers will be removed once society makes real steps towards correcting hundreds (or thousands) of years of systemic racism that has impoverished families of color. Those barriers are not going anywhere anytime soon unfortunately.
- kepler1 6y ago
  Tell me, how is admitting a student to university because of his/her race, or mandating having a female board member, going to decrease the mortgage rate offered to a black family in Cleveland? The problem with your approach (where it inevitably goes) is that it can justify doing anything and seeks to make people distort their lives, no matter how unrelated or poorly-correlated it is. There's no limit. Go out there and help fix the mortgage rates. Go and address the concrete, specific problems. Don't go and create symbols for people to follow -- they rarely work the way you think they do.
  - underwater 6y ago
    It feels like you're saying just make things fair, and the we won't need symbolic acts of equality. Which I agree with. But I have no idea what concrete actions you're imagining might get us there. We are a long way from eliminating overt bigotry, let alone subconcious. And even if we did, children born today still have to deal with the after effects like generational wealth and equal access to good education.
    - kepler1 6y ago
      If you can't think of any concrete actions to remedy existing daily barriers, and can only get behind symbols that might vaguely get us there, then we're all going to be in for a bad time.
tzs 6y ago
In some fields, it can actually matter to "reflect who our customers are". I saw a study that looked at medical clinics that took walk in patients, typically people who did not have a regular doctor elsewhere. It was random which doctor at the clinic would see a given patient. What they found was that patients were significantly more likely to follow the doctor's advice if the doctor was the same race as the patient.
- kepler1 6y ago
  >What they found was that patients were significantly more likely to follow the doctor's advice if the doctor was the same race as the patient. I heard that story/podcast too, and it may surprise you to know that I am totally on board with its findings. I am totally not surprised by that situation, and I know there are legitimate reasons. But here's where I'll probably get roasted alive for believing: I think whoever needs to be treated by a doctor of the same appearance and race, is not going to be as successful as others who can put aside their emotions and be treated/learn from/emulate people who don't just look like them. Why do you read books, visit HN, discuss and learn from people who don't look like you (or you cannot even see)? The amount of potential benefit in this world is far greater than your own race. It's part of the growing up process to be able to extract information, sort out what's right or wrong, choose leaders, administer society regardless of what the person you're dealing with looks like. Suspicion, mistrust, need for "role modeling", etc. You've got to learn to leave that behind to make progress. Elect someone to represent you because they look like you, have lived the exact same life? Ok. But I think it will also hold you back that you can only ever be represented by such someone. In my view, the attitude you're pointing out will never help someone get out of their bias in the long run. It may temporarily help, but generally only reinforces it.
- imtringued 6y ago
  I'm not really seeing the problem. It's not like it's the doctor's job to brainwash patients. If patients do not trust their doctor then they can just visit a different one.
tuesdayrain 6y ago
"Diversity" has unfortunately become an Orwellian word for me. I find it unsettling that people are essentially being treated like collectibles and corporations strive to own every different color/gender. You could have a group of people with the same color and gender yet vastly different personalities, ideas, culture, etc. But HR will take one look at them and assume they are inherently similar. As if only adding in some other colors and genders could bring the desired level of uniqueness. The high level of focus on skin color and gender strikes me as extremely racist and sexist, despite attempting to be the opposite.

zozbot234 6y ago

To many people who are deeply committed to this divisive "pro-diversity" movement, comments like yours are "hate on women and minorities; racism, sexism" etc. This is exactly the kind of comment they'll screenshot and say "Orange site bad!" on Twitter. It's quite sad.

grx 6y ago

Hot topic, but your comment has some good points I'll try to add my experience to. > I'm for removing barriers to anyone being able to be interested, educated, and encouraged to do the things they want to do. And we should work to make it easier for people to be identified as having skills and talent in whatever field they choose. From my POV, as a white male, this relates to a misconception of what many "diversity" programs actually aim for: pushing underprivileged and disadvantaged people into positions from where they have better chances to even come in contact with their true interests and talents. The same goes for role modelling, which is not to be underestimated in the context of "do the things they want to do". If you are black or female, but 90% of an "industry" (whatever that is, just take a group of people representing the part of society which does $thing) is white and male, could you see yourself in this industry? I know this is an extremely controversial question, especially in discussions between white males. But from what I learned from underrepresented people during the years is that role models and identification plays a HUGE part in "making a free choice". > Every field and industry and job will reflect the demographics of who is interested in doing that job, the pipeline of people who seek to become educated and qualified for it, and the proportions of who succeeds at showing their skills. I would not follow this as straight as you have. The demographics in tech (and other fields, of course) could also show that once a majority is settled (here: white male), they tend to attract and recruit people who are like-minded and similar to themselves. Example US: "Among chief executives of S.&P. 1500 firms, for each woman, there are four men named John, Robert, William or James", https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/upshot/fewer-women-run-big-companies-than-men-named-john.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/upshot/fewer-women-run-bi... Example DE: "The surnames Thomas and Andreas make up a share of 7%, more than the total shares of women", https://www.manager-magazin.de/politik/artikel/weniger-frauen-in-mdax-vorstaenden-als-maenner-namens-thomas-a-1022017.html https://www.manager-magazin.de/politik/artikel/weniger-fraue... ---- I know what you mean, and for a long time I was in the same boat, looking for barriers like money and availability of time that might block minorities from entering higher education and the higher workforce. But the problems are of structural nature and they can only be solved by acknowledging that the main barriers are not forms, interest and intelligence, but identification, perspective and connections.

flak48 6y ago
How did other industries that were once historically male dominated overcome this 'identification problem' atleast in terms of gender if not race? (Professions like biologists, psychologists, forensic scientist, vet for example all of which are around 75%+ female today, except for biologist which is bit more even) And why haven't we seen the same pattern in tech?
- grx 6y ago
  Good question, and since I am not a sociologist, I can only guess. One thing in advance, and as a reaction to the received downvotes: my usage of the word "identification" has nothing to do with "identity politics" that are raging in the US and elsewhere. In German, saying "to identify with someone" is more meant as "seeing myself becoming the person that I can identify with" or "I could see myself in this persons position". Like a 1:1 connection. > How did other industries that were once historically male dominated overcome [...] in terms of gender if not race? Based on what I wrote above, I have shortened the quote. And my guess would be the advancement of female integration into higher education, participation and choice of profession. Keep in mind that women were not allowed to vote until some time in the 20th century. With a lot of steps, women and daughters gained more empowerment. All in all, men and women have more aligned chances in today's workforce (details debatable), but the changes need to be done first. And they were not gently handed over by people (men) who were in advanced positions before. > And why haven't we seen the same pattern in tech? The tech industry is pretty young compared to the other fields of study you mentioned. I guess social changes will also ingest the tech industry, because they follow a progressive cycle that repeats every x years. Of course there might be more to it, if you take into account how many aspects of human life are affected by technology today (and how fast these changes arrived..). What would your opinion be on that matter, answering your own questions?
  - flak48 6y ago
    > What would your opinion be on that matter, answering your own questions? I'm honestly perplexed. Maybe I should study what those fields did, if they made any conscious efforts to address diversity mismatch (compared to demographics of the general population) . Or if some other barriers came down that allowed male dominance to reduce in these fields(in some cases to be replaced by female dominance).

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago

I'm not particularly feminist, but it seems obvious to me that "interested in doing a job" is a combination of nature and nurture. And it's almost unimaginably hard to create genuine equality of opportunity and freedom of choice when there are parental and social expectations and pressures being applied in all directions - often unconsciously. (And not necessarily exclusively for the benefit of men, either.) There's also the more basic problem of class economics and culture. How do you define "talent." How are you going to find out if kids have talent? When are you going to test for it? What do you do if you find it? So it's fine to say you're for "removing barriers", but to do that you need to understand just how huge those barriers are. I don't think feminism necessarily helps with that, and I think Identity Politics is a poor distraction from genuine equality of opportunity. But it's also a really, really hard problem, and it won't be solved without a lot of other changes - which would likely make absolutely everyone on all sides extremely uncomfortable.

kepler1 6y ago
That's fine, and I agree with many of your points. But if the problems really are as deep rooted in parenting and social expectations, then really people's attempts to change the outcome at the last step of a long process are the most simplistic and easily reached for, but ultimately misguided.
manigandham 6y ago
That's all reasonably understood by most people. You can talk to a random person on the street and they will recognize that where and when you're born along with the family support and connections you had can make a massive difference in what you become. Unfortunately the diversity movement doesn't really tackle any of this because it would require real effort over decades while asking hard questions about culture and family life. It's much easier to just point into skin-color/race/gender ratios and push for regressive segregation and discrimination instead, but all that does it make everything worse.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Unfortunately the diversity movement doesn't really tackle any of this because it would require real effort over decades Even assuming the effect you describe was true, its self evidently not for the reason you describe, as the “diversity movement”, as you call it, has exerted real effort over decades. > It's much easier to just point into skin-color/race/gender ratios and push for regressive segregation The only thing the “diversity movement” pushes for is the opposite of segregation.

tsimionescu 6y ago

Thinking about this with an engineering mindset, how can you know that you are offering equal opportunities of you don't measure the outcomes? What can you measure that shows men are as likely to be given a tech job as women, if not the outcomes of men and women working there? For do you know you've made it as easy for a black student to be a great software developer as it is for a white student, if you don't look at great software developers and measure how many are black or white?

kepler1 6y ago
How do you know if the measurements you're taking at the end of the process are valid to interpret, if you don't know the inputs? I'm not willing to trust the one (or act on it in a way that distorts what could be an otherwise fair/unbiased process) without knowing the other. My problem with this approach is that people are too willing to stop halfway and claim that the outcome looks biased, without seeing what the inputs were. And cause (or seek to cause) massive change to people's lives based on that.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  I absolutely agree, you need to try to measure boy side of the equation, not only the outcomes.
jpxw 6y ago
There is no way of knowing. Certainly looking at outcomes is a bad way of measuring this, because it presupposes equal interests and desire.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  Sure, measuring only outcomes is not reliable. But measuring only inputs is also unreliable.
tarsinge 6y ago
The problem is that the outcome is an aggregation of a lifelong process, not just the recruiting process. Trying to control the outcome is impossible, because for example there may be cultural reasons (parenting, marketing and advertising, etc...) that may result in only a fraction of a gender being interested in a field. But still we can still aim to offer equal opportunities in a bottom up manner to any candidate.

jpxw 6y ago

Be careful expressing opinions like this, it could get you fired these days.

neilv 6y ago

If more dotcoms has diversity of ideas, I suspect one of the outcomes is that they'd have employees saying that what the dotcom is doing -- secretly spying on people, and perhaps also directly manipulating them against their interests -- is, if not currently technically illegal, unconscionable. I think it's interesting to consider that current dotcom interviewing processes arguably select for homogeneous conformism, and willingness to train for, and submit to, hazing rituals. Get some diversity of ideas in there, and, pretty soon, someone might say, "Hey, wait a minute, guys, do we even hear what we're talking about doing to people? How are we not the baddies?"

thinkingemote 6y ago
"diversity of ideas" doesn't really mean that for most companies as a company and any group for that matter desires cohesion, peace and efficiency. What all company's want is to be successful. Real diversity of ideas means more conflict and less harmoniously working arrangements. But there are benefits: The theory is that diversity of whatever kind brings creativity which is a benefit to the company especially if used in creative positions or upper management. Unions and collaborative worker action also suffer from the workers being, well, less unified, which an organisation may like. Diversity is divisive to groups unless there is a larger shared communalist identity.
Nasrudith 6y ago
Wouldn't more diversity mean there would likely be more and different objections to take their pick from? Given the military industrial complex I think you would be diappointed to find that they are moral paragons compared to the type of people who feel no qualms designing weapon systems which use depleted uranium bullets when they already have overkill margins over adversaries without spraying posion willy nilly. More diverse could mean people with fewer qualms about what you consider wrong. Plus there is a long history of ruling elite hiring "exotic" foreign bodyguards as they would be more likely to care just about the money as opposed to the politics so long as you don't violate their known taboos.

underwater 6y ago

> I'm for removing barriers to anyone being able to be interested, educated, and encouraged to do the things they want to do. How do you see that happening? What if the barriers stopping them is the hangover from 100s of years of systematic bias (like generational wealth not existing for many black people)? What if it's overcoming the subconcious biases that people have about how people in a field should look, talk, and act?

dencodev 6y ago
This exactly. Barriers will be removed once society makes real steps towards correcting hundreds (or thousands) of years of systemic racism that has impoverished families of color. Those barriers are not going anywhere anytime soon unfortunately.
kepler1 6y ago
Tell me, how is admitting a student to university because of his/her race, or mandating having a female board member, going to decrease the mortgage rate offered to a black family in Cleveland? The problem with your approach (where it inevitably goes) is that it can justify doing anything and seeks to make people distort their lives, no matter how unrelated or poorly-correlated it is. There's no limit. Go out there and help fix the mortgage rates. Go and address the concrete, specific problems. Don't go and create symbols for people to follow -- they rarely work the way you think they do.
- underwater 6y ago
  It feels like you're saying just make things fair, and the we won't need symbolic acts of equality. Which I agree with. But I have no idea what concrete actions you're imagining might get us there. We are a long way from eliminating overt bigotry, let alone subconcious. And even if we did, children born today still have to deal with the after effects like generational wealth and equal access to good education.
  - kepler1 6y ago
    If you can't think of any concrete actions to remedy existing daily barriers, and can only get behind symbols that might vaguely get us there, then we're all going to be in for a bad time.

tzs 6y ago

In some fields, it can actually matter to "reflect who our customers are". I saw a study that looked at medical clinics that took walk in patients, typically people who did not have a regular doctor elsewhere. It was random which doctor at the clinic would see a given patient. What they found was that patients were significantly more likely to follow the doctor's advice if the doctor was the same race as the patient.

kepler1 6y ago
>What they found was that patients were significantly more likely to follow the doctor's advice if the doctor was the same race as the patient. I heard that story/podcast too, and it may surprise you to know that I am totally on board with its findings. I am totally not surprised by that situation, and I know there are legitimate reasons. But here's where I'll probably get roasted alive for believing: I think whoever needs to be treated by a doctor of the same appearance and race, is not going to be as successful as others who can put aside their emotions and be treated/learn from/emulate people who don't just look like them. Why do you read books, visit HN, discuss and learn from people who don't look like you (or you cannot even see)? The amount of potential benefit in this world is far greater than your own race. It's part of the growing up process to be able to extract information, sort out what's right or wrong, choose leaders, administer society regardless of what the person you're dealing with looks like. Suspicion, mistrust, need for "role modeling", etc. You've got to learn to leave that behind to make progress. Elect someone to represent you because they look like you, have lived the exact same life? Ok. But I think it will also hold you back that you can only ever be represented by such someone. In my view, the attitude you're pointing out will never help someone get out of their bias in the long run. It may temporarily help, but generally only reinforces it.
imtringued 6y ago
I'm not really seeing the problem. It's not like it's the doctor's job to brainwash patients. If patients do not trust their doctor then they can just visit a different one.

tuesdayrain 6y ago

"Diversity" has unfortunately become an Orwellian word for me. I find it unsettling that people are essentially being treated like collectibles and corporations strive to own every different color/gender. You could have a group of people with the same color and gender yet vastly different personalities, ideas, culture, etc. But HR will take one look at them and assume they are inherently similar. As if only adding in some other colors and genders could bring the desired level of uniqueness. The high level of focus on skin color and gender strikes me as extremely racist and sexist, despite attempting to be the opposite.