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As someone else mentioned, when we say "marginalized" in the context of diversity hiring not just referring to the hiring process. There's value in hiring peopl

As someone else mentioned, when we say "marginalized" in the context of diversity hiring not just referring to the hiring process. There's value in hiring people who have been marginalized elsewhere. Black people in the United States go through life in a totally different manner than white people. Immigrants face hurdles that citizens are not even aware of. Women face obstacles like harassment and dismissiveness everywhere from their local grocery store to parent-teacher conferences to their jobs and even in the courtrooms. Having teams that reflect these viewpoints in the room where it happens is valuable. Consider a lot of the camera-related fiascos in the tech industry recently. Until very recently, Twitter routinely cropped out non-white faces on photo previews. Why? Potentially because people of color weren't involved enough in the process to notice. Augmented reality and facial recognition routinely fail when paired up with the faces of people of color. Amazon in the not-so-distant past tried to use AI to filter resumes, and it wound up throwing out all of the women. If more women had been involved, perhaps that might have been caught earlier. A lot of these are hypotheticals, and we may never know how the ethnic composition of the teams affected the final output, but it's hard to argue that having a more diverse team is a bad thing when it comes to issues like this. And for what it's worth, the thought isn't "ugh, we gotta hire this white guy," but rather "does hiring yet another white guy bring something to the table that we don't already have and couldn't get from a woman or person of color?" The answer is "probably not."

epicureanideal 5y ago
I have heard words very similar to "ugh, we gotta hire this white guy" actually expressed out loud. So yes, that really is the thought some people have. It is NOT "does hiring another white guy bring something to the table...". And even if it were the latter form, it would still be an ugly thing to say. Also, not all white people, black people, or any other group of people based on their skin color, sex, or other obvious characteristics are the same. A black person and a white person both with a net worth above a million dollars will have life experiences more similar than two white people, one of which grew up incredibly poor and one of which has a million dollars. In my opinion, we shouldn't be trying to achieve diversity on the basis of outward characteristics. What that ends up doing is giving huge advantage to already-advantaged people who look like people from sometimes marginalized groups, and a huge disadvantage to non-advantaged people who look like people from sometimes advantaged groups, statistically speaking. We should judge people as individuals, not as members of categories. What about the advantage and disadvantage of people who grew up in single parent vs two parent households? What about people who are first vs 3rd generation college students? People who had to work during college vs those who didn't? What about their mental health? Abuse as a child? Are we going to put all these on a questionnaire? There are too many possible influences on a person's life to account for, and focusing only on the outward physical appearance seems like a very blunt and inaccurate instrument.
wheelinsupial 5y ago
> Consider a lot of the camera-related fiascos in the tech industry recently. Serious question. How much of this is due to “move fast and break things” and incompetence as opposed to discrimination and biases caused by white people? I keep hearing the narrative in podcasts that this is an issue caused by having white people be involved in tech, but I’ve seen many cases where developers just ship something out and expect the users to do testing.

epicureanideal 5y ago

I have heard words very similar to "ugh, we gotta hire this white guy" actually expressed out loud. So yes, that really is the thought some people have. It is NOT "does hiring another white guy bring something to the table...". And even if it were the latter form, it would still be an ugly thing to say. Also, not all white people, black people, or any other group of people based on their skin color, sex, or other obvious characteristics are the same. A black person and a white person both with a net worth above a million dollars will have life experiences more similar than two white people, one of which grew up incredibly poor and one of which has a million dollars. In my opinion, we shouldn't be trying to achieve diversity on the basis of outward characteristics. What that ends up doing is giving huge advantage to already-advantaged people who look like people from sometimes marginalized groups, and a huge disadvantage to non-advantaged people who look like people from sometimes advantaged groups, statistically speaking. We should judge people as individuals, not as members of categories. What about the advantage and disadvantage of people who grew up in single parent vs two parent households? What about people who are first vs 3rd generation college students? People who had to work during college vs those who didn't? What about their mental health? Abuse as a child? Are we going to put all these on a questionnaire? There are too many possible influences on a person's life to account for, and focusing only on the outward physical appearance seems like a very blunt and inaccurate instrument.

wheelinsupial 5y ago

> Consider a lot of the camera-related fiascos in the tech industry recently. Serious question. How much of this is due to “move fast and break things” and incompetence as opposed to discrimination and biases caused by white people? I keep hearing the narrative in podcasts that this is an issue caused by having white people be involved in tech, but I’ve seen many cases where developers just ship something out and expect the users to do testing.