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I'm an Asian. I learned 2 lessons after I came to America. First, I was taught racism here. I didn't aware any racism in my home country. Here, after I became

I'm an Asian. I learned 2 lessons after I came to America. First, I was taught racism here. I didn't aware any racism in my home country. Here, after I became a victim of reverse racism, I learned how this industry works: holding the barometer needle and pretending the pressure are changing. Second, for the competitiveness, we can't fool ourselves, and others as well. If I join a competitive group that I don't deserve because of my quality, I know I don't deserve to be here, hence will feel inferior. I can fool the admission office, but cannot fool myself. Top science requires top brains. Now I can see US is importing more and more top brains worldwide, because she cannot produce enough here. Immigration country is built on sand. Top brains can easily find other better places to live, if you don't treat them equally, no matter what the so called "original intention" is. That's how free market works. Above are my 2 lessons.

raxxorrax 5y ago
If the original intention makes you believe it allows you to discriminate, you have successfully rationalized racism for yourself. Intentions are relevant, but it remains what it is. I believe that some people are quite apt at fooling themselves is a problem here too. There is difficulty of breaking out of a culture and certain cultures do not play well with classical education. Compliant cultures will always excel in a conventional schooling system, which can only approximately determine performance. The lack of individual education leads to very smart people often having trouble in school, the effect mostly lessens in higher education at some point. Additionally there is a positive feedback for behavior not relevant to education and I think that is a large problem. There are countless problems with the way people get educated, how resources are artificially restrained and how the profession of teaching is seen in wider society. But not enough of a problem to allow for racism at any point.
anon13098709134 5y ago
One thing that I rarely see expressed clearly enough in these discussions is a breakdown of what /value/ someone brings to a group. We're always talking about whether or not you should hire the one best suited for a position, without going into what that actually means. The obvious part of that is how skilled the applicant is at the task to be performed in that role. This is where the "hire the one best suited for the job" argument comes in, and usually where it stops. At least in the case of a group/organisation that will work together though there is the more hidden value of differing viewpoints. That, in itself, also has value. I think there's a clear argument to be made that the value in hiring, for example, a developer with weaker (though still "good enough") programming skills in many cases could be the better option when that developer is expected to bring additional value in differing viewpoints compared to a developer having stronger programming skills but otherwise fitting the norm in the industry/business. That is, for the weaker programmer, the sum of the contributed values might still be higher than for the stronger programmer. I think, expressing the problem this way, and being clear about it, makes it easier to reason about. If the aspects taken into consideration were expressed in this way in a job application, I would probably be easier to accept for rejected applicants too, possibly both in the parent comment and in the article. There is however the question of what, exactly, the motivation is for diverse hiring. I'd argue that in a healthy business, it should be what I outlined above; the team is, overall, expected to perform better with more diverse viewpoints. Although, I'd wager a guess that many times is more about the image of the business than actual performance. While the image is important, and of course will affect profit, it would probably be hard to justify, publicly, such hiring choices on those grounds.
- zephrx1111 5y ago
  Having diversity and having diversity NOW are tow diff concepts, like lose weight and lose weight NOW. With the diversity NOW mindset, politicians will impose many shortsighted policies, that has much much bigger false positive and negatives. The current policies are harming Asian poors, and benefiting rich minorities, for sure. Are we confident these policies are "effective", and will carry them over say for the next 20 years?

raxxorrax 5y ago

If the original intention makes you believe it allows you to discriminate, you have successfully rationalized racism for yourself. Intentions are relevant, but it remains what it is. I believe that some people are quite apt at fooling themselves is a problem here too. There is difficulty of breaking out of a culture and certain cultures do not play well with classical education. Compliant cultures will always excel in a conventional schooling system, which can only approximately determine performance. The lack of individual education leads to very smart people often having trouble in school, the effect mostly lessens in higher education at some point. Additionally there is a positive feedback for behavior not relevant to education and I think that is a large problem. There are countless problems with the way people get educated, how resources are artificially restrained and how the profession of teaching is seen in wider society. But not enough of a problem to allow for racism at any point.

anon13098709134 5y ago

One thing that I rarely see expressed clearly enough in these discussions is a breakdown of what /value/ someone brings to a group. We're always talking about whether or not you should hire the one best suited for a position, without going into what that actually means. The obvious part of that is how skilled the applicant is at the task to be performed in that role. This is where the "hire the one best suited for the job" argument comes in, and usually where it stops. At least in the case of a group/organisation that will work together though there is the more hidden value of differing viewpoints. That, in itself, also has value. I think there's a clear argument to be made that the value in hiring, for example, a developer with weaker (though still "good enough") programming skills in many cases could be the better option when that developer is expected to bring additional value in differing viewpoints compared to a developer having stronger programming skills but otherwise fitting the norm in the industry/business. That is, for the weaker programmer, the sum of the contributed values might still be higher than for the stronger programmer. I think, expressing the problem this way, and being clear about it, makes it easier to reason about. If the aspects taken into consideration were expressed in this way in a job application, I would probably be easier to accept for rejected applicants too, possibly both in the parent comment and in the article. There is however the question of what, exactly, the motivation is for diverse hiring. I'd argue that in a healthy business, it should be what I outlined above; the team is, overall, expected to perform better with more diverse viewpoints. Although, I'd wager a guess that many times is more about the image of the business than actual performance. While the image is important, and of course will affect profit, it would probably be hard to justify, publicly, such hiring choices on those grounds.

zephrx1111 5y ago
Having diversity and having diversity NOW are tow diff concepts, like lose weight and lose weight NOW. With the diversity NOW mindset, politicians will impose many shortsighted policies, that has much much bigger false positive and negatives. The current policies are harming Asian poors, and benefiting rich minorities, for sure. Are we confident these policies are "effective", and will carry them over say for the next 20 years?