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Affirmative Action is always going to be a very controversial topic. Personally I'm for it, but I understand why people dislike it. I do strongly believe that,

by yashap 4y ago

Affirmative Action is always going to be a very controversial topic. Personally I'm for it, but I understand why people dislike it. I do strongly believe that, even with Affirmative Action policies, it's still a lot harder to succeed as a non white male than it is as a white male, today. For example, no matter how you slice it, white Americans are ~3-4x more likely to become millionaires than black or hispanic Americas (source: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-millionaire-odds/ https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-millionaire-odds/). I think there's a TONNE of reasons for race and gender based inequality, but IMO most of them have to do with "momentum". If you grow up in a wealthy family, you've got easy access to great education, mentors, role models, capital, etc. If you grow up in a poor family you have way less of all of this. It wasn't long ago that racism and sexism were much, much worse than they are today (and there's still lots of conscious and unconscious bias today), so white families are a lot wealthier today than minority families, and that propagates to the next generation, and the one after that, etc. Slavery wasn't abolished in America until 1865, the Brown vs. Board of Education decision (ending racial segregation of schools) came in 1954, Rosa Parks was 1955, Jim Crow laws weren't really sweepingly overturned until 1965. If you're a black American in their 40s today, your parents were probably born in the Jim Crow era, where the impediments to their financial success were immense. If, as a society, we don't try to actively help non white males reach an equal footing in terms of opportunity, it'll be really, really hard to close these "momentum" gaps. I view Affirmative Action as a temporary approach to narrowing these gaps. It's realizing that it's too hard to succeed financially as a minority in America, and temporarily giving minorities a leg up on hiring and promotions to help even the wealth/opportunity gap. Once the gap more or less goes away, you remove the Affirmative Action policies, but that'll take time. If you hire based purely on qualifications, education, experience, etc., the gap isn't going away for an extremely long time, because white families are a lot wealthier than minority families today, so a disproportionate number of kids from those families are going to have those advantages, and the gap persists.

rhacker 4y ago
What I don't understand is, that if it's purely skin color and upbringing and background, why is most of SV absolutely dominated by Indian people: My dad is Indian and grew up with his family in a single room. He is in his 80s now and has a net worth in California of probably $3M. I'm half Indian and half white. At my age (42) he was doing way better than myself (accounting for inflation of course). When my dad was going through all the same stuff, 50 years back there was no affirmative action yet he still grew in the ranks. He's not a "black person" but his skin color is the same. I think there is a lot of perceived racism when in reality people are promoting strong individuals already. Look at head of Google, Twitter, and a series of other companies. For some reason people shy away from calling out racism when it comes to people from India because of their American success story. But again, if it's about skin color - how did this happen?
bufbupa 4y ago
> it's still a lot harder to succeed as a non white male than it is as a white male. Part of the issue is that you're presupposing a uniform definition of success. Different cultures have different priorities, and not everyone wants to spend 80 hrs a week in the office to climb the ladder and become a millionaire. Some cultures prioritize family/social relationships, sports, or a connection with nature. Unsurprisingly, these different cultures can often be racially affinitized. Sure, most people wouldn't mind being rich, but many do mind the hustle often accompanying that form of success. I think part of what you describe around momentum holds merit, but I don't think affirmative action goes about the remedy in a constructive manner. It's fighting racism with more (albeit different) racism. You turn it into a zero sum game where your political posturing can be more valuable than your work contributions. That incentive structure is degenerative for all parties. > If you grow up in a wealthy family, you've got easy access to great education, mentors, role models, capital, etc. If you grow up in a poor family you have way less of all of this. Genuinely curious, would you support an initiative to shuffle all babies between families at birth? Your argument seems to be "who you're raised by gives an unfair advantage in life, and we should correct for this societally". It seems to me that a random shuffle would equally distribute any inherent bias relative to generational momentum.
Manuel_D 4y ago
"Affirmative action" is a vague term. I, too, agree that if you select a White, Asian, Latin, and a Black teenager at random there's substantial barriers to the latter two training and becoming an engineer or software developer. The latter two are less likely to be exposed to engineering and programming, and are less likely to enter university to study those fields. That said, does discrimination in companies' hiring and promotion process yield improvements? Affirmative action like this just increases the representation within Microsoft, and does nothing to help Black or Latin youths become software developers. The gap isn't actually being closed. The same dismal percentage of Black and Latin people are entering the tech workforce. It's just that they're more likely to end up at Microsoft than some other company. Affirmative action in the form of sponsoring coding camps in underserved communities would actually work towards closing the gap between the rate at which Asian and white people become software developers and Latin and Black people becoming so. Progress will be made when companies leave the mindset of trying to increase their representation by clawing over each other for the limited pool of diverse talent, and instead work towards increasing the diversity of the workforce.
km3r 4y ago
> but IMO most of them have to do with "momentum". If you grow up in a wealthy family, you've got easy access to great education, mentors, role models, capital, etc. If you grow up in a poor family you have way less of all of this If this is the issue, why are we targeting certain races rather than all those whose family is lacking momentum?

by yashap 4y ago

rhacker 4y ago

What I don't understand is, that if it's purely skin color and upbringing and background, why is most of SV absolutely dominated by Indian people: My dad is Indian and grew up with his family in a single room. He is in his 80s now and has a net worth in California of probably $3M. I'm half Indian and half white. At my age (42) he was doing way better than myself (accounting for inflation of course). When my dad was going through all the same stuff, 50 years back there was no affirmative action yet he still grew in the ranks. He's not a "black person" but his skin color is the same. I think there is a lot of perceived racism when in reality people are promoting strong individuals already. Look at head of Google, Twitter, and a series of other companies. For some reason people shy away from calling out racism when it comes to people from India because of their American success story. But again, if it's about skin color - how did this happen?

bufbupa 4y ago

> it's still a lot harder to succeed as a non white male than it is as a white male. Part of the issue is that you're presupposing a uniform definition of success. Different cultures have different priorities, and not everyone wants to spend 80 hrs a week in the office to climb the ladder and become a millionaire. Some cultures prioritize family/social relationships, sports, or a connection with nature. Unsurprisingly, these different cultures can often be racially affinitized. Sure, most people wouldn't mind being rich, but many do mind the hustle often accompanying that form of success. I think part of what you describe around momentum holds merit, but I don't think affirmative action goes about the remedy in a constructive manner. It's fighting racism with more (albeit different) racism. You turn it into a zero sum game where your political posturing can be more valuable than your work contributions. That incentive structure is degenerative for all parties. > If you grow up in a wealthy family, you've got easy access to great education, mentors, role models, capital, etc. If you grow up in a poor family you have way less of all of this. Genuinely curious, would you support an initiative to shuffle all babies between families at birth? Your argument seems to be "who you're raised by gives an unfair advantage in life, and we should correct for this societally". It seems to me that a random shuffle would equally distribute any inherent bias relative to generational momentum.

Manuel_D 4y ago

"Affirmative action" is a vague term. I, too, agree that if you select a White, Asian, Latin, and a Black teenager at random there's substantial barriers to the latter two training and becoming an engineer or software developer. The latter two are less likely to be exposed to engineering and programming, and are less likely to enter university to study those fields. That said, does discrimination in companies' hiring and promotion process yield improvements? Affirmative action like this just increases the representation within Microsoft, and does nothing to help Black or Latin youths become software developers. The gap isn't actually being closed. The same dismal percentage of Black and Latin people are entering the tech workforce. It's just that they're more likely to end up at Microsoft than some other company. Affirmative action in the form of sponsoring coding camps in underserved communities would actually work towards closing the gap between the rate at which Asian and white people become software developers and Latin and Black people becoming so. Progress will be made when companies leave the mindset of trying to increase their representation by clawing over each other for the limited pool of diverse talent, and instead work towards increasing the diversity of the workforce.

km3r 4y ago

> but IMO most of them have to do with "momentum". If you grow up in a wealthy family, you've got easy access to great education, mentors, role models, capital, etc. If you grow up in a poor family you have way less of all of this If this is the issue, why are we targeting certain races rather than all those whose family is lacking momentum?