4 ms·

I'd be curious how they define race. Do they have a rule book with color pigment density, size of external attributes and maybe even a grading scale of good to

I'd be curious how they define race. Do they have a rule book with color pigment density, size of external attributes and maybe even a grading scale of good to bad "diversity factor"? I find it more disturbing they consider diversity on a pseudo scientific race definition than the supposed lack of diversity. What if in those they call white, many are women, many are young or old, fulltime or partime, idealists or pragmatists, some kind of attributes that could actually matter for writing ? I d be more worried if all journalists are students of the same school of thought than if they were all blue-skinned. And I say that myself as a minority where I am (happen to be white-skinned western europe pigment variant, italian hair-colored, northern continental medium sized, but live and work in China...) where Im still probably graded as part of a non diverse "race" in my company's corporate diversity index :D And when the government in China asked me my "self reported racial origin" last census, I said "Other: Normandy", not sure what exactly they want to mean by "westerner" as opposed to "vietnamese" in the multiple choice combo box...

flowerbeater 5y ago
I think the fundamental question that everyone avoids answering is whether it's possible to tell race from appearance. If the answer is yes, then there should be some specific unspoken criteria that exists, so what are they? If no, then how do people tell whether a panel is diverse, or a class or company is diverse, when it's not self-reported?
agentdrtran 5y ago
There's obviously not a perfect definition of race, but it's also obvious that many news orgs are, by basically any definition, very disproportionally white compared to the racial markup (however you decide to define that) of their candidate pool.
endisneigh 5y ago
Is there any definition of race, other than “human”, where the authors point changes in correctness or lack thereof?
- nverno 5y ago
  Yes, a common conception of race is nation/region/tribe- eg. Trojan, Roman, Mongol, or the various SA tribes. So, a modern US-centric version could be the state you are from, or rural/urban, etc. It's meaningless, though, unless society adopts the concept, and given the worldview nowadays it's hard to imagine anything more granular than continental origin gaining traction (at least in US).
nverno 5y ago
I think of race as an ideology- different groups seem to have roughly similar views about it when they have shared history- it's a social construct, so it's difficult/impossible to really convey to other people what it means to someone. For example, the concepts of white/black races seem to have originated in the US somewhere around 1700 [1], and are noticeably absent from older writings. For some people, skin color is as meaningless as eye color, but for others everything is viewed through the lens of race, so it has the added difficulty that its meaning is context dependent. The racial jargon is often so amorphous, it's impossible to interpret literally. 1. https://www.amazon.com/Birth-White-Nation-Invention-Relevance/dp/1622127226/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+birth+of+a+white+nation&qid=1637358204&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Birth-White-Nation-Invention-Relevanc...

flowerbeater 5y ago

I think the fundamental question that everyone avoids answering is whether it's possible to tell race from appearance. If the answer is yes, then there should be some specific unspoken criteria that exists, so what are they? If no, then how do people tell whether a panel is diverse, or a class or company is diverse, when it's not self-reported?

agentdrtran 5y ago

There's obviously not a perfect definition of race, but it's also obvious that many news orgs are, by basically any definition, very disproportionally white compared to the racial markup (however you decide to define that) of their candidate pool.

endisneigh 5y ago

Is there any definition of race, other than “human”, where the authors point changes in correctness or lack thereof?

nverno 5y ago
Yes, a common conception of race is nation/region/tribe- eg. Trojan, Roman, Mongol, or the various SA tribes. So, a modern US-centric version could be the state you are from, or rural/urban, etc. It's meaningless, though, unless society adopts the concept, and given the worldview nowadays it's hard to imagine anything more granular than continental origin gaining traction (at least in US).

nverno 5y ago

I think of race as an ideology- different groups seem to have roughly similar views about it when they have shared history- it's a social construct, so it's difficult/impossible to really convey to other people what it means to someone. For example, the concepts of white/black races seem to have originated in the US somewhere around 1700 [1], and are noticeably absent from older writings. For some people, skin color is as meaningless as eye color, but for others everything is viewed through the lens of race, so it has the added difficulty that its meaning is context dependent. The racial jargon is often so amorphous, it's impossible to interpret literally. 1. https://www.amazon.com/Birth-White-Nation-Invention-Relevance/dp/1622127226/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+birth+of+a+white+nation&qid=1637358204&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Birth-White-Nation-Invention-Relevanc...