48 ms·

The elephant in the room is that due to rather dark times in the U.S. history, there are cultural differences between an average Black and an average White fami

The elephant in the room is that due to rather dark times in the U.S. history, there are cultural differences between an average Black and an average White family. It doesn't mean that every family of a certain race will fit the stereotype, but if you look at numbers, they do check out. This isn't fair, this isn't nice, but it's a very important piece of the puzzle and you cannot solve the problem without admitting it. Many of these cultural differences are crucial to getting high-paid positions. Like nagging on your kids to study. Like making sure their role models are scientists and inventors, and not gang leaders. Like stressing out delayed gratification and showing how planning and persistence pays off in long term. If you look very carefully at company founders and people on high-paying jobs, almost every one of them will be from a family with these long-term values. Many Blacks have adopted these values and are successful. Nobody is telling them to go to a different drinking fountain, it's not 1930s anymore. So if you want to fix the problem for good, you need to advertise these values more, teach them at school, and give good examples. Maybe, remove roadblocks like providing free textbooks programming lessons for those in need. Unfortunately, this takes time, effort and only pays off for the next generation. So the racial equality movement has been hijacked by politicians that offer a short-term solution: divide people by the most visible factor, such as skin color, then take from the overrepresented and give to the underrepresented. Except in the long term, it makes the society more divisive. If you hire a weaker candidate based on quotas, other employees will see the weakness and won't respect them. The employee will perceive this as racism and get offensive. If you try to further address it by promotion quotas, you start getting cliques where Blacks always side with other Blacks, and Whites always side with Whites. You've just created racism out of nowhere.

cjohnson318 6y ago
> So the racial equality movement has been hijacked by politicians that offer a short-term solution: divide people by the most visible factor, such as skin color, then take from the overrepresented and give to the underrepresented. I think this is totally backwards. If anything, the U.S. government takes from the underrepresented and gives to the overrepresented. This is achieved through gerrymandering districts to dilute minority votes, limiting voting sites, and asking "concerned citizens" to "monitor" voting locations. Our social welfare programs pale in comparison to the subsidies and tax cuts given to big businesses, and other overrepresented groups.
- john_moscow 6y ago
  I'm not talking about the federal government. I meant affirmative action programs on institution level. I guess, "activists" would be a better word than "politicians".
  - cjohnson318 6y ago
    So are you talking about "activists" in HR, or management? I don't know what you're talking about with respect to taking from the "overrepresented" and giving to the "underrepresented". Under- and overrepresentation is unusual wording for salaried employees in an institution.
- marcusverus 6y ago
  >Our social welfare programs pale in comparison to the subsidies and tax cuts given to big businesses, and other overrepresented groups. Tax cuts aren't spending and untaxed externalities aren't subsidies. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the use of intentionally misleading language isn't as taboo as lying, so we'll keep seeing this old canard for the foreseeable future.
  - cjohnson318 6y ago
    I am not trying to mislead anyone, this is my reasoning for using the language that I did. A subsidy is a sum of money given by the government to a corporation, so it is analogous to government spending on social welfare programs. A tax cut reduces the government's income, which on a balance sheet, has the same effect as government spending. Sure, a tax cutting policy is not the same as a spending policy, but their net effect on cash flow are both negative.
proc0 6y ago
"Many of these cultural differences are crucial to getting high-paid positions. Like nagging on your kids to study. Like making sure their role models are scientists and inventors, and not gang leaders. Like stressing out delayed gratification and showing how planning and persistence pays off in long term." Haven't you heard these are racist values? Seriously, many of these values are frowned upon, and deemed "white", even though it's what has worked for so long across the world. I'm afraid this equity, as best-intention as it might be, will make the problem worse by creating a dependency that will further define the culture as needing this form of victimhood status. Imagine the year 2143, people will have digital assistants, flying cars and also diversity and inclusion training will tell you how oppressed some people still are. It's easier to blame history than to admit you are stupid and need to make better decisions in life.
diffrinse 6y ago
> The elephant in the room is that due to rather dark times in the U.S. history, there are cultural differences between an average Black and an average White family. It doesn't mean that every family of a certain race will fit the stereotype, but if you look at numbers, they do check out. This isn't fair, this isn't nice, but it's a very important piece of the puzzle and you cannot solve the problem without admitting it. I am loving this utter shit assumption that is clearly being taken as gospel given the upvotes. Do you actually believe the AVERAGE Black person you describe is not only engaging in tech with gusto but also good enough to get an interview for a senior staff position at Microsoft? Ah, but the assumption is not only that this will be the case, but that Microsoft will also just blindly hire said person to "satisfy quotas"... WHEN HAS THAT EVER HAPPENED!?!? You don't even have a personal anecdote of seeing this happen, and I doubt few of the people upvoting this dribble actually have, and more than likely not to any significant degree in the aggregate either. Like, holy shit, if your description of an average Black is true, that entire curve on the bell don't even COME CLOSE to participating in tech AT ALL. Good job on the completely un-contextual resort to "statistical reasoning" to dunk on Black people. Not to mention you show your colors when you fail to account for the children of African immigrants rather than the descendants of slaves in the US. But no, let's believe there's a line of unwashed Black masses, brutish and poorly educated, standing in an employment line that wraps around the Redmond campus waiting to get that hand-out job. Fuckin hell, what is really happening in the tech industry is that a number of you aren't hiring perfectly qualified people because their afro or some such made you uncomfortable so they were told they weren't hired for "culture fit".
- john_moscow 6y ago
  I am not trying do dunk anyone. I am merely trying to suggest a solution that will be less divisive, because the current one is creating tension rather than easing it. Also unfortunately, our brains are not naturally good with statistics, so many things may seem counter-intuitive until you look into details. Here's some napkin math model (numbers are arbitrary). Assume that we can assign an abstract "techiness score" to every person that will correlate with their chances of being hired. Assume we have 10 people of population A and 10 people of population B. For population A it's: * 1 person with score 0 * 7 people with score 5 * 1 person with score 9 * 1 person with score 10 For population B it's: * 1 person with score 0 * 1 person with score 1 * 7 people with score 5 * 1 person with score 10 The difference it not that large, but if you simply hire everyone with score 8 and up, you get 2 people from population A and 1 person from population B. If you talk to these 3 people, you will see that there is no difference between them in terms of score and can easily conclude that the 2x difference is due to treating people based on their population. If you introduce a hiring quota, you are forced to hire 1 person with score 5 from population B, and that's where the problem starts because they will be perceived weak and will trigger divisive behavior I mentioned. As I said several times, I'm not concluding that ALL or MOST Blacks are bad or anything. I'm saying that there are statistical differences that are hard to measure and that can explain workforce underrepresentation. Other metrics you may want to look at is: * Black-on-white crime vs. white-on-black crime. * Families with both parents. * Change in student loan principal after 5 years. This shows whether a certain population is choosing degrees that pay off.

cjohnson318 6y ago

> So the racial equality movement has been hijacked by politicians that offer a short-term solution: divide people by the most visible factor, such as skin color, then take from the overrepresented and give to the underrepresented. I think this is totally backwards. If anything, the U.S. government takes from the underrepresented and gives to the overrepresented. This is achieved through gerrymandering districts to dilute minority votes, limiting voting sites, and asking "concerned citizens" to "monitor" voting locations. Our social welfare programs pale in comparison to the subsidies and tax cuts given to big businesses, and other overrepresented groups.

john_moscow 6y ago
I'm not talking about the federal government. I meant affirmative action programs on institution level. I guess, "activists" would be a better word than "politicians".
- cjohnson318 6y ago
  So are you talking about "activists" in HR, or management? I don't know what you're talking about with respect to taking from the "overrepresented" and giving to the "underrepresented". Under- and overrepresentation is unusual wording for salaried employees in an institution.
marcusverus 6y ago
>Our social welfare programs pale in comparison to the subsidies and tax cuts given to big businesses, and other overrepresented groups. Tax cuts aren't spending and untaxed externalities aren't subsidies. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the use of intentionally misleading language isn't as taboo as lying, so we'll keep seeing this old canard for the foreseeable future.
- cjohnson318 6y ago
  I am not trying to mislead anyone, this is my reasoning for using the language that I did. A subsidy is a sum of money given by the government to a corporation, so it is analogous to government spending on social welfare programs. A tax cut reduces the government's income, which on a balance sheet, has the same effect as government spending. Sure, a tax cutting policy is not the same as a spending policy, but their net effect on cash flow are both negative.

proc0 6y ago

"Many of these cultural differences are crucial to getting high-paid positions. Like nagging on your kids to study. Like making sure their role models are scientists and inventors, and not gang leaders. Like stressing out delayed gratification and showing how planning and persistence pays off in long term." Haven't you heard these are racist values? Seriously, many of these values are frowned upon, and deemed "white", even though it's what has worked for so long across the world. I'm afraid this equity, as best-intention as it might be, will make the problem worse by creating a dependency that will further define the culture as needing this form of victimhood status. Imagine the year 2143, people will have digital assistants, flying cars and also diversity and inclusion training will tell you how oppressed some people still are. It's easier to blame history than to admit you are stupid and need to make better decisions in life.

diffrinse 6y ago

> The elephant in the room is that due to rather dark times in the U.S. history, there are cultural differences between an average Black and an average White family. It doesn't mean that every family of a certain race will fit the stereotype, but if you look at numbers, they do check out. This isn't fair, this isn't nice, but it's a very important piece of the puzzle and you cannot solve the problem without admitting it. I am loving this utter shit assumption that is clearly being taken as gospel given the upvotes. Do you actually believe the AVERAGE Black person you describe is not only engaging in tech with gusto but also good enough to get an interview for a senior staff position at Microsoft? Ah, but the assumption is not only that this will be the case, but that Microsoft will also just blindly hire said person to "satisfy quotas"... WHEN HAS THAT EVER HAPPENED!?!? You don't even have a personal anecdote of seeing this happen, and I doubt few of the people upvoting this dribble actually have, and more than likely not to any significant degree in the aggregate either. Like, holy shit, if your description of an average Black is true, that entire curve on the bell don't even COME CLOSE to participating in tech AT ALL. Good job on the completely un-contextual resort to "statistical reasoning" to dunk on Black people. Not to mention you show your colors when you fail to account for the children of African immigrants rather than the descendants of slaves in the US. But no, let's believe there's a line of unwashed Black masses, brutish and poorly educated, standing in an employment line that wraps around the Redmond campus waiting to get that hand-out job. Fuckin hell, what is really happening in the tech industry is that a number of you aren't hiring perfectly qualified people because their afro or some such made you uncomfortable so they were told they weren't hired for "culture fit".

john_moscow 6y ago
I am not trying do dunk anyone. I am merely trying to suggest a solution that will be less divisive, because the current one is creating tension rather than easing it. Also unfortunately, our brains are not naturally good with statistics, so many things may seem counter-intuitive until you look into details. Here's some napkin math model (numbers are arbitrary). Assume that we can assign an abstract "techiness score" to every person that will correlate with their chances of being hired. Assume we have 10 people of population A and 10 people of population B. For population A it's: * 1 person with score 0 * 7 people with score 5 * 1 person with score 9 * 1 person with score 10 For population B it's: * 1 person with score 0 * 1 person with score 1 * 7 people with score 5 * 1 person with score 10 The difference it not that large, but if you simply hire everyone with score 8 and up, you get 2 people from population A and 1 person from population B. If you talk to these 3 people, you will see that there is no difference between them in terms of score and can easily conclude that the 2x difference is due to treating people based on their population. If you introduce a hiring quota, you are forced to hire 1 person with score 5 from population B, and that's where the problem starts because they will be perceived weak and will trigger divisive behavior I mentioned. As I said several times, I'm not concluding that ALL or MOST Blacks are bad or anything. I'm saying that there are statistical differences that are hard to measure and that can explain workforce underrepresentation. Other metrics you may want to look at is: * Black-on-white crime vs. white-on-black crime. * Families with both parents. * Change in student loan principal after 5 years. This shows whether a certain population is choosing degrees that pay off.