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(Black man here) Two things can be true at once. I have built great things. I can stand on my own. My merits are great. I do not want to be the token employee

(Black man here) Two things can be true at once. I have built great things. I can stand on my own. My merits are great. I do not want to be the token employee that is trotted around for Diversity Points (tm). I do not like the diversity porn that a lot of these DEI groups get off on. That being said, I do recognize that I have benefited from these groups (at least at their most genuine). There are groups that are aimed at cultivating black people in tech. Prior to this, in the earlier internet age, you had to cut your teeth on IRC and forums. That was where technical people were in the computer tech space. Do you know VIRULENTLY anti-black (or woman, or gay) these communities were? I can't begin to describe it. That is totally off-putting to someone who has the ability succeed but does not want to deal with the hate. There's also the fact that most (read: all) of the computing pioneers are white. I respect all of those people, but it does help to have someone to look up to. I'm positive that Satya and Sundar are great motivators for indian kids to look up to (as they should be). These DEI initiatives aren't perfect in any way, but the goal is to give the affected groups the foundations to succeed. To put people in the affected communities out front as role models. I accept the annoyances for the sake of good and progress. EDIT: In the below thread are many people who personally identify as omnipresent IRC Gods, so my experience must have happened in an alternate universe. My bad.

f6v 4y ago
> Do you know VIRULENTLY anti-black Many communities were and are generally anti-human.
Pegasus930 4y ago
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trenchgun 4y ago
> Prior to this, in the earlier internet age, you had to cut your teeth on IRC and forums. That was where technical people were in the computer tech space. > Do you know VIRULENTLY anti-black (or woman, or gay) these communities were? I can't begin to describe it. That is totally off-putting to someone who has the ability succeed but does not want to deal with the hate. Wow, thank you. Gives me a new perspective.
- catiopatio 4y ago
  He’s completely, totally, and absolutely incorrect. I spent decades on IRC starting in the early 90s, and this is a politically-driven contemporary re-imagination of what existed at the time. We were open to all because we ourselves didn’t fit in elsewhere.
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    Some communities did have a lot of virulently racist and male-chauvinist trolling. The infamous 4chan forum culture didn't just spring up out of thin air, after all. It's a bit harder to tell whether that was anywhere close to representative, of course.
    - moomoo11 4y ago
      Yeah but 4chan and sites like it are shit. Why even go there? For one of those low tier sites there were hundreds of forums and communities which were normal. Not a valid data point. You’re picking some fringe element and assuming the whole internet is like that.
    - spoiler 4y ago
      I think 4chan can hardly be put in the same category as freenode channels. It's just an incredible leap in reasoning in my experience with both (albeit not much experience with 4chan, others than the occasional snippet I've seen online)
  - deleted 4y ago
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  - dylan604 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - spoiler 4y ago
      My experience is different, too. I've never experienced these racist/sexists IRC communities in the past either. Sure, there'd be the occasional asshole like everywhere else online, but they'd get warned (and banned eventually). Why is your comment so passive aggressive, though? While the counter claim hasn't presented any proof, the same holds true for the original claim. You seem to be only thinking critically of the comment that goes against your confirmation bias. It's not a good habit to have.
aliqot 4y ago
Growing up on IRC, I have very much the same experience as you but quite opposite as I experienced hardly any racism, and nobody knew my identity either. Nobody wanted to involve their personal lives or details until recently when identity and identifying became the thing.
- John23832 4y ago
  It's not about telling people your ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation, it's about WHAT IS SAID about your ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation. The beauty of the internet is anonymity (to a certain extent), but that doesn't mean that you can't see or hear things that exclude you.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    Exactly. The old saying was "The beauty of the Internet is nobody knows if you're a dog." ... except they didn't mean dog, and we never said why it might matter what you are or what other people were assuming you were absent further information.
    - catiopatio 4y ago
      No, we literally meant dog. It was a joke. Why might it matter? Because the rest of the world was a lot more racist and sexist, but IRC wasn’t.
      - spoiler 4y ago
        No, no. You need other people to tell you what you meant. It's how things work now. Don't you dare think otherwise! And now we're doing this whole "guilty of X by technology choice". /s Where and when does this this neurosis stop?
      - some_furry 4y ago
        The joke is even funnier if you're a furry, and the entire point of your online persona is people knowing you're a dog. (Even if your fursona actually is, say, a cat. The joke is enhanced.)
catiopatio 4y ago
Are you joking? We were absolutely not “virulently” anti-anyone on early IRC. We didn’t even have real names or photos. Nobody had any idea who was behind the keyboard, and that was okay.
- John23832 4y ago
  Why would I be joking? I'm glad you didn't have a negative experience, but my point wasn't about you. You are not a "we" in the masses of the internet. You don't have to know anything about anyone to say derogatory things about a group they identify with. Just look at the bigotry shared on social media today.
- jakelazaroff 4y ago
  Do you think it’s impossible to say something racist without specifically directing it at someone in the conversation?
- stirfish 4y ago
  If there's a text box anywhere, the first thing people will type into it is the n-word
- camgunz 4y ago
  I can say with experience that there was an assumption that these groups were pretty much all white men and boys. Maybe not everywhere all the time, but enough. I wouldn't categorize it as virulent, but I would say that a lot of insensitive things were written about minorities, women, and LGBTQ people. It's like when you go back to watch Friends and cringe at all the anti-gay jokes. Is it virulent? I guess not. Is it fun to watch if you're gay? I doubt it.
- tyingq 4y ago
  It's hard to characterize with absolutes. There were a lot of different networks and channels in IRC. It's true it was anonymous, but I'm also sure there were inappropriate jokes, perceptions, etc, shared in IRC.
- Quarrelsome 4y ago
  to be fair "there are no girls on the internet" is technically somewhat misogynistic and was a popular meme of the era.
zozbot234 4y ago
Is it any better when supposedly "tech" focused communities are virulently anti-white, anti-male or anti-Asian? These things have no place in genuine professional discourse.
- backzerman 4y ago
  > virulently anti-white, anti-male, or anti-Asian I'm a white guy. I've sat through many a DEI session. I've never, ever felt this. How could I? 85% of the people in the room are white or Asian men. I'm not trying to sound disingenuous here, but I really want to know, how does "virulently anti-" empirically manifest itself in the communities you speak of? Hiring? Pay? Promotion decisions? Possibly freedom of speech? Even then it seems like I'm free to say whatever I want as long as I stay on topic.
  - flippinburgers 4y ago
    Yeah you are free to say whatever you like as long as you say what you are told to parrot.
AdrianB1 4y ago
I am on some IT forums for almost 20 years; I don't know what is the gender or race of most people there, I have no idea what is their sexuality and there is no racism, sexism or any "ism" in these communities. The day someone will bring the argument "I am a green isomorph Martian, so for me DDR4 is way slower than DDR2 with the same CAS" then the acid answers will not be related to the color green, Martial descent or anything else but lack of merit of that statement.
ndjsnsinsis 4y ago
I suppose if that's the goal, we should have a defined goal. I grew up in India and I think we have the problem of a runaway effect of this. I totally agree that it helps, there are remote tribal communities or disadvantaged communities in India (say based on caste that historically, and even currently, face stuff like untouchability) but there's got to be a goal at which point you stop. When I had to pick a college for undergrad in India, there are so many quotas put aside based on caste, tribals, sports, defence, rural/urban, language medium of schooling etc that college quotas available for general merit is roughly 50% (haven't kept up recently, but should be there abouts). Some people game the system to try and get paperwork to show you belong to such a section so that college enrollment, public sector jobs etc get a lot easier.
- pocman 4y ago
  )))Some people game the system to try and get paperwork to show you belong to such a section so that college enrollment, public sector jobs etc get a lot easier. Prominent lawmakers in the US also game the system. https://www.npr.org/2019/02/01/690806434/warren-apologizes-to-cherokee-nation-for-dna-test https://www.npr.org/2019/02/01/690806434/warren-apologizes-t... https://www.vox.com/2018/10/16/17983250/elizabeth-warren-bar-application-american-indian-dna https://www.vox.com/2018/10/16/17983250/elizabeth-warren-bar... VOX: New evidence has emerged [SENATOR!] Elizabeth Warren claimed American Indian heritage in 1986 Warren identified as “American Indian” on a registration card for the State Bar of Texas, according to a Washington Post report. By Ella Nilsen Updated Feb 5, 2019, 8:29pm EST (TLDR for those not in the US: wealthy powerful while woman rose in ranks after abusing DEI quotas, now has huge influence over tech industry and always angry about an industry which has real diversity (tech:Asians) but conveniently not angry about lack of diversity at Harvard or Senate.
jablongo 4y ago
To be clear, do you think race-based diversity hiring is good? I can agree that having good role models and educational opportunities is important but I'm not so sure race-aware hiring is a good thing, for the reasons stated by OP and others. At what point do you think DEI should stop? Is there any metric or threshold at which these programs/events should end? One of the biggest issues for me is that these measures are either argued as good because "diversity is intrinsically good" or because "we are righting historical wrongs", meaning reparations. While one could argue for or against either of these justifications, it would seem that the former would terminate once some ideal demographic composition is achieved, while the latter would end once some calculated total sum of restitution is reached. To me, these details are very important, since race-based hiring is an intrinsically bad thing that should be avoided. After all, it is part of the reason people of color got so screwed over in the 20th century in the first place.
- nullfield 4y ago
  They’ll never end, because 1. The people making money off of running them don’t want them to, and 2. “historically oppressed groups” never (and can never) become “not historically oppressed”; it’s my belief that this is intentional via the choice of words used by the DEI cadre.
dbrueck 4y ago
Not disputing your bad experiences, but do you know how virulent some of those communities were to just about everyone? :) Speaking of 2 things being true at once, what's amazing about BBSs/USENET/IRC/etc. especially in the early years was that they had: - online discussions where a lot of things just didn't matter. Race, gender, etc. just didn't matter. You got judged on the merit of your ideas, not what you looked like, not what you sounded like. It wasn't white people and black people talking together. It was just people. Genuine friendships developed between people that otherwise probably would have never connected because of societal barriers. - online discussions where people were insanely cruel. Prior to getting online, I thought I understood how mean people could be. Boy was I wrong. It was a real learning experience to be on the receiving end of vile hatred, bigotry, insults, just... meanness. There are interests I walked away from because the toxicity of the community was too much to deal with.
- mostly_lurks 4y ago
  I think you might want to reflect for a minute on why you thought "but do you know how virulent some of those communities were to just about everyone?" was an appropriate response to a black person talking about their experience of racism. I recognize you believed yourself to be mitigating the effect of your statement by prefacing it with "Not disputing your bad experiences," but I think you'll find that the net effect of your comment is still one of dismissing a black person's lived experience, or at least pulling focus away from it in an unhelpful way.
  - JLCarveth 4y ago
    And you're here dismissing their experience because they're not black. See the issue?
    - mostly_lurks 4y ago
      Being dismissive of the experiences of members of oppressed groups is objectively more harmful than being dismissive of someone not part of a similarly oppressed group.
  - 4y ago
rayiner 4y ago
> I'm positive that Satya and Sundar are great motivators for indian kids to look up to (as they should be). I'm doubtful about that. At least among my cohort (first generation south asian immigrants to the east coast) there's not a strong sense of racial identity. There's strong identity in the sense of ties to religion, home countries, culture, and traditions, but not group identification or a feeling of collective destiny. I recently told my dad about being at a professional event where there were three south asians "at the table" so to speak. He was like "huh, that's interesting." He had a stronger positive reaction when I mentioned that Chris Sununu (governor of New Hampshire) went to the same high school as my brother and me. I have to think it's similar to Jewish Americans--they're not looking up to Mark Zuckerberg because he's Jewish. I also disagree that Indian kids "should" look up to Pichai or Nadella because of their ethnicity. Insofar as there is an "us"--a definable group with distinct interests--"representation" will never advance those interests. Pichai or Nadella will run their companies how white shareholders want them to, exactly the same way as a white CEO would. They wouldn't have been selected if that wasn't the case. The "representation" doesn't advance the agenda of the group in any meaningful way. To the contrary, "representation" is used by white people to obtain the support of minority groups without giving them anything. I see white people pressuring my daughter to look up to Kamala Harris (because Harris "looks like her"). This is just manipulation. Harris will not meaningfully advance the distinct interests of south asian people, nor is she a good model of south asian culture or values. As to your main point--for sure people on the internet have better manners today. Is that creditable to DEI initiatives? Can we have online spaces and workplaces where nobody is made to feel excluded because of their immutable characteristics without forcing people to write diversity statements or having Robin Di Angelo types come in to lecture white people about their inherent racism?
- rirze 4y ago
  I was hoping to find a reply like this; glad someone could articulate it better than I could. Overall, I believe that culturally-same role models is a stand-in for lazy parenting. Children whose parents constantly push their kids to be better, push harder will look towards successful people of any cultural background. Compare that with children with apathetic parents, who I surmise will only have the imagination to self-associate with those who "look" like them.
throwawaydei 4y ago
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- domain8543 4y ago
  In other words, if you received hate it was probably something you did. I literally cannot fathom the idea that something was wrong was us.
slackfan 4y ago
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- flippinburgers 4y ago
  If by new era of enlightenment you mean a new era of unquestionable bigotry I suppose you are correct.
  - slackfan 4y ago
    You know what doesn't translate in text? Sarcasm.
- eldaisfish 4y ago
  way to miss the point and your argument is a strawman. People on IRC didn't care about "Who you were" because the assumption was that you came from privilege. Privilege usually translated to white, urban, heterosexual male. Those groups said some horrible things about other communities because they felt the space was "safe". Now that this is changing and calling people "orientals" or "gay" is no longer acceptable, there is an attempt to rewrite history - as you are trying to do here.
  - slackfan 4y ago
    Privilege is not assumed, it is given. Who is this privelege given by?
  - raxxorraxor 4y ago
    I thought people on IRC are far more likely to be social outcasts. Yes, there was vulgarity, but to say this was indicative of prejudices misses the point by far.
- barneygale 4y ago
  > unless you made your incidental identity the central topic of discussion in unrelated conversation http://bash.org/?top http://bash.org/?top try ctrl-fing for "fag", "homo", "jew", etc. These insults were routinely used on the early internet _without_ anyone volunteering their gender/ethnicity/sexual preferences/whatever.
MockObject 4y ago
> Do you know VIRULENTLY anti-black (or woman, or gay) these communities were? I can't begin to describe it. That has not been my experience at all, whatsoever, and my involvement in tech communities, both online and in the flesh, dates back to the 1980s. > There's also the fact that most (read: all) of the computing pioneers are white. I respect all of those people, but it does help to have someone to look up to. I don't need people with whom I share superficial characteristics to look up to. I can look up to brilliant white men, men from all over the globe, or even women, believe it or not.
- abenga 4y ago
  > That has not been my experience at all, whatsoever, and my involvement in tech communities, both online and in the flesh, dates back to the 1980s. Do you believe you have had the same experiences as a person of the races/genders experiencing the -isms, or that you will perceive as -isms the same things they do?
  - MockObject 4y ago
    > Do you believe you have had the same experiences as a person of the races/genders experiencing the -isms What do you mean?
gfodor 4y ago
The key thing is there needs to be a falsifiable condition whereby we agree these programs have achieved their primary goal, and that the risk of scope creep, corruption, or other externalities like the ones the OP mentions has exceeded the potential further benefits, so they should be wound down. I'm not going to state my opinion here, but if such a condition is not identified in any way, we should assume these groups will do what it takes to perpetuate themselves far past their point of utility, like any bureaucracy that doesn't have a way to prove directly how they're contributing to the bottom line.
- grumpy_coder 4y ago
  Very much agree with this comment, creating and gaming KPIs is at the heart of most DEI departments now. We do need long term improvements at the start of the funnel, but no-one is adding a 7 year KPI for improving stats of 14 year old girls quitting AP math.
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  The falsifiable condition is that the underlying social attitudes driving the racism/sexism/etc have dissolved. Problem is, this is a social process that takes centuries to complete. You are never going to hit a point in a single institution where you can say "We fixed our diversity problem, let's go home", because it can just come back as you hire more people and older hires leave. Furthermore, society is frustratingly prone to generating new discriminatory attitudes. America is pretty conscious of a handful of very specific racial minorities, and we have a vague idea of what sexism looks like, but we have little knowledge of things like caste discrimination[0], colorism[1], classism and so on. To fully explain why this is a problem, try re-reading your original comment, but pretend it's talking about the police instead of DEI initiatives. What's our falsifiable condition where we say "ok, all the crimes are solved, let's abolish the police?" [0] Discrimination based on the occupation of your ancestors, typically driven by religious beliefs. India is the poster child for this though Japan had a form of it too. [1] Skin-color discrimination within a specific race. We don't see this in the US or Canada all that often because the mix of European ancestry that we brought over and called "White" is universally one skin color. Latin America has this in droves.
gautamdivgi 4y ago
This is true. Here is the other thing. Promotions in corporate America are based on how well you know the hiring manager chain of command. Golf buddy? Oh he’s a great guy for a promotion. Church person - yup very ethical, let’s promote him. Know him personally - maybe went to the same college or support the same college football team, oh yes they’re a candidate for promotion. Corporate America needs to get promotions out of the hands of the hiring manager chain of command. Create a board that’s independent and can deal with promotions impartially. In absence of and independent entity handling promotions DEI is needed and necessary. Otherwise a lot of promotions are just plain nepotism.
nonethewiser 4y ago
> There are groups that are aimed at cultivating black people in tech. Prior to this, in the earlier internet age, you had to cut your teeth on IRC and forums. This reasoning sucks. We need DEI in corporations now because IRC was toxic?
jrm4 4y ago
(Black man here as well) This is a great way to put it. I mean, I'm a bit older and over time I've been used to actually being that token, because for a lot of places I've been it was me and no one else. So, I didn't much mind the role as something of a pioneer. So I'd say, anyone who doesn't like it, e.g. DEI, definitely understand the history, please -- and moreover, the difficulty of externally changing culture. It's ultra-clumsy, but at least for a time it was both inevitable and necessary. I very much don't personally enjoy is at as well -- but I don't think that means it's without value. I suppose I see even the bad parts as a "bug, not a feature," because we're talking about it.
tacitusarc 4y ago
I see a different risk with DEI, and I’d sure love your perspective if you’re willing to give it. I think there’s a certain class of people (mostly young and white though the fact they are white is explainable as a statistical artifact) who feel empowered by DEI to push for changes that are meaningless and burdensome, but give them a feeling of power and virtuousness. This includes changing away from “master” as a branch name, to creating an extensive list of taboo words such as “whitelist”, “blacklist”, and “subordinate”, to chiding colleagues for saying “brown bag lunch”*. DEI not only legitimizes, but actually encourages the above behavior. This seems problematic to me for two reasons: first, it creates a positive feedback loop for (at best) actions that make one feel self righteous without adding anything of real value, and second, it undermines the importance of critical thinking and analysis in engineering. So, all that being said, the justification is these changes help make black people in tech feel more included, a goal I support. In your opinion, do these changes have the intended effect? Are they meaningful and useful? * For those who don’t know, there used to be a racist practice by some fraternities, etc called a “brown bag test” where a brown bag was used to judge skin color for entry. This made brown bags racist, which in turn made brown bag lunches racist.
- DrThunder 4y ago
  There is power in victimhood now. If you can prove you're a victim or prove you're submitting to a certain group you've "victimized" then you are put at the top of the order. You become part of essentially a religious cult and given certain "powers" that you can bash the "sinners" over the head with. I think you're exactly right here, the largest proponents of this stuff tend to be white and left wing (mostly women). In a way I find them extremely racist. To me, they're acting just like OP says. They don't think certain groups are intelligent enough to bring themselves out of squalor and everyone MUST believe like they do; that skin color is an impediment. So, they need the white savior to come rescue them.
  - LordDragonfang 4y ago
    >There is power in victimhood now Anyone who's been to Sunday school can tell you this isn't a new concept, and is at least two millennia old (almost certainly longer, since Judaism has an even longer shared tradition). Christians have continued riding the coattails of their martyrs and "persecution" for centuries after they became the dominant force. If anything, the modern "woke victimhood" is merely the cultural legacy of evangelical Christianity that was (and arguably still is) deeply engrained in US culture.
Dooflegna 4y ago
> EDIT: In the below thread are many people who personally identify as omnipresent IRC Gods, so my experience must have happened in an alternate universe. My bad. It's amazing how blind people can be to experiences that don't match their own. And when you _tell_ them what has happened to you, point at the preponderance of evidence out there about it, they still don't believe you.
excerionsforte 4y ago
IRC was pretty toxic for sure. If you didn't know the other person, you assumed they were white since it is the predominate skin color and American for that matter. Typically wouldn't question it unless they used different wording patterns or languages. IRC was attractive in some ways and offputting in others. I never really got into it outside of my #gamedev interests. DEI initiatives as a backlash against the forced exclusion of people from the broader economy makes sense to me. It's crazy the amount of the legal and government system that was employed in the past because of what people thought to be true about other people. I'm unclear of how much impact the intiatives have on hiring or retention. I feel this is one of the reasons why DEI initiatives highlight token people probably to show they are doing something (results) and the budget for it is justified. Would be nice to see the statistics from mid to large companies on how these initiatives have fared on multiple groups and worker productivity for that matter, but until then it feels like it has no to mixed impact at a company which seems to be the ideas of people not included in these initiatives. DEI just feels vague and threatening to some people. I've seen Reddit threads of people saying they don't support DEI initiatives because how can they "secure a future for their child" which to me is highly obtuse. Who knows what a child will do in the future. I'm all for hiring diverse candidates and helping those who have high curiosity and propensity to just do the work rather than the idea that one must be experienced in order to execute. It's the same way I am towards younger people, though you don't see the same backlash against initiatives in that arena unless older people are losing their jobs for the sake of it. In the end, I want people who will (not can) help with the work and will teach others.
venatiodecorus 4y ago
there are definitely racists online but i think in these environments, where you are limited to text only, certain words became 'weaponized' such as specific slurs. in my experience this is less about racism and more about trolls trying to anger as many people as possible with minimal effort.
kodah 4y ago
> There's also the fact that most (read: all) of the computing pioneers are white Not refuting this take as it's accurate, but if you're looking for someone that's Black in early computing I'd recommend free software pioneer Brian Fox (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Fox_(computer_programmer) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Fox_(computer_programm...) best known for inventing Bash. Kelsey Hightower is also notable as the man that pioneered the use of Kubernetes at many businesses through his book. Marian Croak is the pioneer of VOIP and now heads SRE among other things at Google. Mark Dean pioneered ISA which is still the leading standard today in industrial applications. (Non-exhaustive list, but these are the programmers that are Black that I know of off the top of my head) I'll caveat this with my own take: all these folks worked in what is in the industry referred to as Systems Engineering, which is very much still a "working man's" profession when compared to traditional software engineering and prior to things like SRE paid accordingly less. It's also how a lot of vets, POC, and people without degrees enter the industry.
deleted 4y ago
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coffeemug 4y ago
For context, I grew up in an ex-communist country. Elevating people, giving them opportunities to fulfill their potential, and giving people someone credible to look up to is a wonderful thing. We should do more of it, hopefully a lot more. The problem is that these things start out for a very good reason, but then take on a life of their own. When that happens it's very difficult to stop them, and in the limit case they result in horrendous tragedies. It isn't an abstract philosophical thing. There is an underlying social process, as real as gravity, and it's crucial to study and understand. I saw the consequences of this process first hand in my country. Roughly, it goes like this. When you create a mechanism to oppress someone to fix oppression, however small and ineffectual, this mechanism gets captured by bad actors. Then it grows and grows and grows in their hands. It's very difficult to stop because of a combination of moral-sounding purpose that many people fall for, and the benefits that accrue to a wide variety of interest groups. At the limit of this there is nothing left but oppression, for anyone. I'm not overly concerned about this in America because we're extraordinarily good at preventing centralization of power, but I must say watching bad actors accrue power and watching politicians pander to them has been disconcerting to say the least. I hope we can find a compromise that allows us to create opportunities while simultaneously kicking bad actors to the curb. I promise you you do not want to live in a society where the annoyances continue down their natural course.
whoopdedo 4y ago
> There's also the fact that most (read: all) of the computing pioneers are white. Would you count Katherine Johnson as a tech role model?[1] But I agree with you. The old IRC culture gave the illusion of equity since by default your face isn't seen. But the rose-colored glasses overlook that once a person's age, race, or sex became known they'd be treated differently. And it often was not pleasant because as we've seen the pseudonymity tends to make people, who already generally suck at being kind to strangers, even more awful.[2](warning: language) That's the reason we should have DEI. If the implementations of it are flawed, that should be a motivation to make the programs better. Think of it as fixing bugs in the human codebase. [1] https://www.nasa.gov/content/katherine-johnson-biography https://www.nasa.gov/content/katherine-johnson-biography [2] https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboards-and-other-anomalies https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboa...
jimbob45 4y ago
[flagged]
roenxi 4y ago
A question, perhaps, of babies, bathwater and relative velocity. I'm not sure if anyone worth listening to is complaining about efforts to clean up racism in moderated communities. HN, for example, self polices that sort of thing quite effectively. "Racism bad" as a principle is one of the most solid points of consensus in the modern political sphere. We should keep moderating out racism. But your post is going to different issues than the original one, which was talking about initiatives inside companies. I do not want to be in a position where I look at black colleagues and have formal evidence that they got hired/promoted/praised/ because of their skin colour, not their competence. That is setting up an environment where racists opinions will also be evidence-based and doing a disservice to literally everyone involved. A company initiative supporting building up hiring pipelines is just good business practice. "A cheesy townhall once a month to discuss diversity hires" (from op) is a dangerous precedent for stirring up actual racism. There does need to be debate to decide where the line between these things is drawn, and why. We were on a good thing with the aspiration of skin colour making no difference. It is a shame to see backsliding on that subject amongst many HR departments.
golergka 4y ago
> it does help to have someone to look up to I keep hearing this idea from americans, that it's important to have a role model that has exactly the same ethnicity, gender and sexual identity as you do. It never made any sense to me. Can you explain it please?
- fknorangesite 4y ago
  If you want to do some reading on this, the search term you're probably looking for is "representation matters."
- rovolo 4y ago
  There are two parts to your question which I think are important to address: the importance of role modelling in general; and the importance of ethnicity/gender/sexual identity in particular. First, role models are important because they show you what is possible for you to do. It's much easier to copy what someone has done before than it is to experiment yourself. For example, imagine the different types of work you can do to make money. Would you imagine that you can make money playing video games without seeing other people making money? Watching e-sports or streaming informs you that these are careers where some people are successful at earning a living. Role models are proofs of concept in ways to live your life. Without them, you would have to experiment yourself and make a bunch of mistakes on your way to living that kind of life. Secondly, ethnicity/gender/sexual identity affect both your path and your destination. At least historically, people in the U.S. have been told that they can't do things because they are who they are, whether through explicit discrimination or by a prejudiced view of their capabilities. Seeing someone succeed in a role with a shared characteristic shows that the characteristic doesn't prevent you from achieving that role. Furthermore, the way that these role models fulfill their role can be different than "normal". For one, their success may show that you don't need to hide aspects of yourself to protect yourself from others. Being gay is different from being out and known as gay. If it's easier to be out in some professions than others, then you may avoid being e.g. a teacher because the cost of remaining closeted may make it not worth doing. The role models aren't just for you to emulate, they are also comrades in social acceptance. Finally, I want to acknowledge that these aspects are never the entirety of a person's identity. They are specific aspects which sometimes have zero impact, sometimes a great deal of impact, and very rarely total impact on a situation. The important of ethnicity/gender/sexual identity will vary based on the time and place. Ethnicity, gender and sexual identity are important parts of role models in the U.S. because those have been important parts of identity in the U.S. which have major influence on what people can do. Maybe their importance will wane with time, and other aspects of your identity will rise to prominence.
lynndotpy 4y ago
> EDIT: In the below thread are many people who personally identify as omnipresent IRC Gods, so my experience must have happened in an alternate universe. My bad. For what it's worth, this aligns with what I've seen on IRC as well (in the 00s.) I really think a lot of people just don't see bigotry for what it is when it's not explicit. (E.g. "lol girl = guy irl, there are no girls on the internet" being a common sentiment that might just be easily forgotten.)
- LordDragonfang 4y ago
  This is why it's so sad/annoying that the word "priviledge" has devolved into a meaning-devoid cudgel, because it's such a useful term in discussions like these. If you're not personally affected by something, it's easy to miss something for what it is or even just not see it, even if it's happening all around you.
- Insanity 4y ago
  +1. Not just on IRC but all around the internet and online gaming in those days. Back when you had dedicated servers and they would devolve into more of a chat room anyway.
- _gql5 4y ago
  My experience growing up as a southeast Asian child in the early 00s is that I suddenly had access to practitioners and even experts in the field who now gave me an audience, as both my age and ethnicity were completely inaccessible to my counterparty on the other side of the chat window. No one asked, and no one cared. We discussed technical topics, and what mattered was the strength of your ideas and their ability to withstand rebuttal. Your identity did not factor into the discussion, as the medium being used (IRC) abstracted away all notion of geographic location, physical appearance, skin color, accent, tone of voice, gender, sex, etc... into the written word. That's all everyone saw - your words, and your words only. Now, in our photo and video driven digital landscape, your physical appearance - the way you look, present, the color of your skin, etc. - is front and center. In fact, without a visual representation, you may as well not exist - "pics or it didn't happen." Which makes the matter all the more aggravating - people are now using media that bring cues for common stereotypes (i.e. judging someone for the way they look [0]) to the forefront, while simultaneously declaring that, no, they are completely free from any and all such bias. Why not remove all doubt, the, and use blind Zoom interviews (which I did myself), text fora (such as this one), and text-only protocols (such as IRC)? It's fascinating to see just how differently I am treated and perceived on purely textual media vs. other media where my physical appearance is evident. If IRC was racist, then I would say the new media is orders of magnitude more so, as I have been subject to numerous misjudgments of my character and/or microaggressions based on my physical appearance - which simply would not have been accessible in older, text-based protocols. I can't escape the new "ethnic minority" or "visible minority" label that these DEI initiatives (and related ideologies) have created - they are now automatically and subconsciously applied to me the minute others take a look at me, and as a result all of the associated ideas are subsequently brought to mind - "disadvantaged," "lacking education," "lower socioeconomic status," "hired because of their race," etc. I'd rather go back to IRC. None of these judgments would be possible there, and I wouldn't have to have the "minority" label applied to me if I chose to simply not to disclose my appearance or ethnic background. [0] https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impact-%E2%80%9Cblind%E2%80%9D-auditions-female-musicians https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impac...
qdog 4y ago
Yeah, I dunno if these people hung out on the Care Bears irc channel or what, but every 'open' forum and most of the closed ones had tons of racism/sexism/whateverism. Just look at twitter nowadays to see how awful some posters can be. I've worked with a very small handful of black people over my career, several indians, a fair number of asians and a few hispanics. The demographics in my experience were all pretty abyssmal, without some sort of policy in place, the actual bias that ends up hiring only other white males was never going to end. I would say it's probably still strong, as a recent place I worked was incredibly white and male. My understanding is that hiring becomes much more fair if you are able to remove all racial/sexual details from a hiring process (at least, if resumes are shown without those details you get expected results, but with those details a bias appears). That said, I think a lot of these people are upset by DEI precisely because it is resulting in more diversity. If you are biased against the people who DEI helps get hired, you are obviously going to think they are poor hires, because you always thought "those people" tend to be poor hires. Assuming OP is actually a black man, I think he needs to realize that many, if not most, people who make assumptions about him based on DEI or the like, are always looking for an excuse for their own biases.
- lliamander 4y ago
  > That said, I think a lot of these people are upset by DEI precisely because it is resulting in more diversity. You are exemplifying a fallacy known as asymmetric insight, whereby you assume to know more about someone else's "real" intentions than they do. While at some level we do have to have a mental model of other people's motivations, the temptation is strong to pathologize those we disagree with rather than take their ideas seriously. So tell me, did you come to your conclusion based on sincere effort to actually understand the mindset of those opposed to DEI, or are you using it as an excuse to avoid thinking about their actual arguments?
  - qdog 4y ago
    I certainly haven't conducted a scientific study, this isn't my field. I am, however, a white male who checks most of the 'tech dude' boxes, and I don't usually have to guess what people are thinking about this. I just have to be around at the right time for people to make their opinions known. So my evidence is anecdotal, but no, I don't have to wonder if people have racial bias, they will tell you if you let them. I have also observed a manager who's religion made women subservient, and no woman he ever managed was promoted. Bias or just probability? One of those women is now a very successful director of engineering. (She left his team and was promoted elsewhere) While I can't speak to all DEI programs, the intent at most places I've been is to interview a wider range of people. That might show slight favor to interviewing, but the bar for hiring does not change. This is not just a problem in tech, the relatively recent NFL head coach issue of teams deciding to hire a coach and then interviewing a black coach after that "for compliance" with no intent of actually considering them is a huge problem. If you work at a place that truly only hires people to check a box and doesn't care about that person's success or the impact around them, sure, move on.
lliamander 4y ago
It's certainly not obvious to me, as someone who never ventured on IRC, that IRC culture would have a serious impact on minority representation. Most people (minority or not) were never on IRC to begin with, so I doubt that would explain (for instance) the under-representation of minorities in Computer Science programs. I mean, you say that IRC was virulently anti-gay, and yet gay and trans people are over-represented in tech. Even if we accept that IRC culture drove minorities away from tech, that doesn't justify common corporate DEI policies such as affirmative action, unconscious bias training, etc. Those are just bad, counter-productive polices. > EDIT: In the below thread are many people who personally identify as omnipresent IRC Gods, so my experience must have happened in an alternate universe. My bad. You are generalizing from you own experience, expect others to do the same. And, to be fair, they probably aren't saying that your experience didn't happen, but that it either wasn't representative, or that you are misinterpreting some of it.
Siira 4y ago
As a PoC who has benefited from IRC, I don’t see how they would even know you’re not white unless you tell them yourself. Can you elaborate on your experience?
LarsDu88 4y ago
As someone who was born at the dawn of the internet age, was the early internet really that racist? I feel this is something that will be lost to the history books if it isn't at least recorded for posterity.
NetOpWibby 4y ago
(Also a Black man) I’ve dealt with enough bullshit early in my career that I don’t trust DEI initiatives. I don’t join meetings but your comment makes me think I should at least try.
account42 4y ago
I fail to see how your skin color or sexual preferences coul have any effect on your IRC experience except if you go out of your way to point them out - in which case, perhaps what you perceved was the response to that kind of behavior. > These DEI initiatives aren't perfect in any way, but the goal is to give the affected groups the foundations to succeed. The goal is to distract from other issues such as the increasing class gap or environmental impact.
raxxorraxor 4y ago
IRC isn't IRC. I have never been in a channel like that. On the contrary, these tended to be people that were much more tolerant than the general population by a strong margin. And I was later as I was younger, where conduct might even have been degraded a bit. Sataya and Sundar aren't really computer pioneers. They are managers of multi-billion $ companies. There is also a strong contrast to computer pioneers and its culture. This isn't even comparable. Not saying they are bad people, but it is not a good comparison.
cbeach 4y ago
You said that people in affected communities need to have role models in the industry with the same skin colour. Firstly, young people aren’t stupid. They will be acutely aware if those role models were created in a tokenistic way. Young people know when older people try to distort the real world in order to manipulate them (whether or not it’s with good intentions). Secondly, what makes you so sure that young people are so bigoted/sensitive that they would negatively judge an industry that was largely made up of people of skin colours other than their own? I think young people these days seem confident and tolerant of others regardless of their skin colour.

f6v 4y ago

> Do you know VIRULENTLY anti-black Many communities were and are generally anti-human.

Pegasus930 4y ago

[flagged]

trenchgun 4y ago

> Prior to this, in the earlier internet age, you had to cut your teeth on IRC and forums. That was where technical people were in the computer tech space. > Do you know VIRULENTLY anti-black (or woman, or gay) these communities were? I can't begin to describe it. That is totally off-putting to someone who has the ability succeed but does not want to deal with the hate. Wow, thank you. Gives me a new perspective.

catiopatio 4y ago
He’s completely, totally, and absolutely incorrect. I spent decades on IRC starting in the early 90s, and this is a politically-driven contemporary re-imagination of what existed at the time. We were open to all because we ourselves didn’t fit in elsewhere.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  Some communities did have a lot of virulently racist and male-chauvinist trolling. The infamous 4chan forum culture didn't just spring up out of thin air, after all. It's a bit harder to tell whether that was anywhere close to representative, of course.
  - moomoo11 4y ago
    Yeah but 4chan and sites like it are shit. Why even go there? For one of those low tier sites there were hundreds of forums and communities which were normal. Not a valid data point. You’re picking some fringe element and assuming the whole internet is like that.
  - spoiler 4y ago
    I think 4chan can hardly be put in the same category as freenode channels. It's just an incredible leap in reasoning in my experience with both (albeit not much experience with 4chan, others than the occasional snippet I've seen online)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dylan604 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - spoiler 4y ago
    My experience is different, too. I've never experienced these racist/sexists IRC communities in the past either. Sure, there'd be the occasional asshole like everywhere else online, but they'd get warned (and banned eventually). Why is your comment so passive aggressive, though? While the counter claim hasn't presented any proof, the same holds true for the original claim. You seem to be only thinking critically of the comment that goes against your confirmation bias. It's not a good habit to have.

aliqot 4y ago

Growing up on IRC, I have very much the same experience as you but quite opposite as I experienced hardly any racism, and nobody knew my identity either. Nobody wanted to involve their personal lives or details until recently when identity and identifying became the thing.

John23832 4y ago
It's not about telling people your ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation, it's about WHAT IS SAID about your ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation. The beauty of the internet is anonymity (to a certain extent), but that doesn't mean that you can't see or hear things that exclude you.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  Exactly. The old saying was "The beauty of the Internet is nobody knows if you're a dog." ... except they didn't mean dog, and we never said why it might matter what you are or what other people were assuming you were absent further information.
  - catiopatio 4y ago
    No, we literally meant dog. It was a joke. Why might it matter? Because the rest of the world was a lot more racist and sexist, but IRC wasn’t.
    - spoiler 4y ago
      No, no. You need other people to tell you what you meant. It's how things work now. Don't you dare think otherwise! And now we're doing this whole "guilty of X by technology choice". /s Where and when does this this neurosis stop?
    - some_furry 4y ago
      The joke is even funnier if you're a furry, and the entire point of your online persona is people knowing you're a dog. (Even if your fursona actually is, say, a cat. The joke is enhanced.)

catiopatio 4y ago

Are you joking? We were absolutely not “virulently” anti-anyone on early IRC. We didn’t even have real names or photos. Nobody had any idea who was behind the keyboard, and that was okay.

John23832 4y ago
Why would I be joking? I'm glad you didn't have a negative experience, but my point wasn't about you. You are not a "we" in the masses of the internet. You don't have to know anything about anyone to say derogatory things about a group they identify with. Just look at the bigotry shared on social media today.
jakelazaroff 4y ago
Do you think it’s impossible to say something racist without specifically directing it at someone in the conversation?
stirfish 4y ago
If there's a text box anywhere, the first thing people will type into it is the n-word
camgunz 4y ago
I can say with experience that there was an assumption that these groups were pretty much all white men and boys. Maybe not everywhere all the time, but enough. I wouldn't categorize it as virulent, but I would say that a lot of insensitive things were written about minorities, women, and LGBTQ people. It's like when you go back to watch Friends and cringe at all the anti-gay jokes. Is it virulent? I guess not. Is it fun to watch if you're gay? I doubt it.
tyingq 4y ago
It's hard to characterize with absolutes. There were a lot of different networks and channels in IRC. It's true it was anonymous, but I'm also sure there were inappropriate jokes, perceptions, etc, shared in IRC.
Quarrelsome 4y ago
to be fair "there are no girls on the internet" is technically somewhat misogynistic and was a popular meme of the era.

zozbot234 4y ago

Is it any better when supposedly "tech" focused communities are virulently anti-white, anti-male or anti-Asian? These things have no place in genuine professional discourse.

backzerman 4y ago
> virulently anti-white, anti-male, or anti-Asian I'm a white guy. I've sat through many a DEI session. I've never, ever felt this. How could I? 85% of the people in the room are white or Asian men. I'm not trying to sound disingenuous here, but I really want to know, how does "virulently anti-" empirically manifest itself in the communities you speak of? Hiring? Pay? Promotion decisions? Possibly freedom of speech? Even then it seems like I'm free to say whatever I want as long as I stay on topic.
- flippinburgers 4y ago
  Yeah you are free to say whatever you like as long as you say what you are told to parrot.

AdrianB1 4y ago

I am on some IT forums for almost 20 years; I don't know what is the gender or race of most people there, I have no idea what is their sexuality and there is no racism, sexism or any "ism" in these communities. The day someone will bring the argument "I am a green isomorph Martian, so for me DDR4 is way slower than DDR2 with the same CAS" then the acid answers will not be related to the color green, Martial descent or anything else but lack of merit of that statement.

ndjsnsinsis 4y ago

I suppose if that's the goal, we should have a defined goal. I grew up in India and I think we have the problem of a runaway effect of this. I totally agree that it helps, there are remote tribal communities or disadvantaged communities in India (say based on caste that historically, and even currently, face stuff like untouchability) but there's got to be a goal at which point you stop. When I had to pick a college for undergrad in India, there are so many quotas put aside based on caste, tribals, sports, defence, rural/urban, language medium of schooling etc that college quotas available for general merit is roughly 50% (haven't kept up recently, but should be there abouts). Some people game the system to try and get paperwork to show you belong to such a section so that college enrollment, public sector jobs etc get a lot easier.

pocman 4y ago
)))Some people game the system to try and get paperwork to show you belong to such a section so that college enrollment, public sector jobs etc get a lot easier. Prominent lawmakers in the US also game the system. https://www.npr.org/2019/02/01/690806434/warren-apologizes-to-cherokee-nation-for-dna-test https://www.npr.org/2019/02/01/690806434/warren-apologizes-t... https://www.vox.com/2018/10/16/17983250/elizabeth-warren-bar-application-american-indian-dna https://www.vox.com/2018/10/16/17983250/elizabeth-warren-bar... VOX: New evidence has emerged [SENATOR!] Elizabeth Warren claimed American Indian heritage in 1986 Warren identified as “American Indian” on a registration card for the State Bar of Texas, according to a Washington Post report. By Ella Nilsen Updated Feb 5, 2019, 8:29pm EST (TLDR for those not in the US: wealthy powerful while woman rose in ranks after abusing DEI quotas, now has huge influence over tech industry and always angry about an industry which has real diversity (tech:Asians) but conveniently not angry about lack of diversity at Harvard or Senate.

jablongo 4y ago

To be clear, do you think race-based diversity hiring is good? I can agree that having good role models and educational opportunities is important but I'm not so sure race-aware hiring is a good thing, for the reasons stated by OP and others. At what point do you think DEI should stop? Is there any metric or threshold at which these programs/events should end? One of the biggest issues for me is that these measures are either argued as good because "diversity is intrinsically good" or because "we are righting historical wrongs", meaning reparations. While one could argue for or against either of these justifications, it would seem that the former would terminate once some ideal demographic composition is achieved, while the latter would end once some calculated total sum of restitution is reached. To me, these details are very important, since race-based hiring is an intrinsically bad thing that should be avoided. After all, it is part of the reason people of color got so screwed over in the 20th century in the first place.

nullfield 4y ago
They’ll never end, because 1. The people making money off of running them don’t want them to, and 2. “historically oppressed groups” never (and can never) become “not historically oppressed”; it’s my belief that this is intentional via the choice of words used by the DEI cadre.

dbrueck 4y ago

Not disputing your bad experiences, but do you know how virulent some of those communities were to just about everyone? :) Speaking of 2 things being true at once, what's amazing about BBSs/USENET/IRC/etc. especially in the early years was that they had: - online discussions where a lot of things just didn't matter. Race, gender, etc. just didn't matter. You got judged on the merit of your ideas, not what you looked like, not what you sounded like. It wasn't white people and black people talking together. It was just people. Genuine friendships developed between people that otherwise probably would have never connected because of societal barriers. - online discussions where people were insanely cruel. Prior to getting online, I thought I understood how mean people could be. Boy was I wrong. It was a real learning experience to be on the receiving end of vile hatred, bigotry, insults, just... meanness. There are interests I walked away from because the toxicity of the community was too much to deal with.

mostly_lurks 4y ago
I think you might want to reflect for a minute on why you thought "but do you know how virulent some of those communities were to just about everyone?" was an appropriate response to a black person talking about their experience of racism. I recognize you believed yourself to be mitigating the effect of your statement by prefacing it with "Not disputing your bad experiences," but I think you'll find that the net effect of your comment is still one of dismissing a black person's lived experience, or at least pulling focus away from it in an unhelpful way.
- JLCarveth 4y ago
  And you're here dismissing their experience because they're not black. See the issue?
  - mostly_lurks 4y ago
    Being dismissive of the experiences of members of oppressed groups is objectively more harmful than being dismissive of someone not part of a similarly oppressed group.
- 4y ago

rayiner 4y ago

> I'm positive that Satya and Sundar are great motivators for indian kids to look up to (as they should be). I'm doubtful about that. At least among my cohort (first generation south asian immigrants to the east coast) there's not a strong sense of racial identity. There's strong identity in the sense of ties to religion, home countries, culture, and traditions, but not group identification or a feeling of collective destiny. I recently told my dad about being at a professional event where there were three south asians "at the table" so to speak. He was like "huh, that's interesting." He had a stronger positive reaction when I mentioned that Chris Sununu (governor of New Hampshire) went to the same high school as my brother and me. I have to think it's similar to Jewish Americans--they're not looking up to Mark Zuckerberg because he's Jewish. I also disagree that Indian kids "should" look up to Pichai or Nadella because of their ethnicity. Insofar as there is an "us"--a definable group with distinct interests--"representation" will never advance those interests. Pichai or Nadella will run their companies how white shareholders want them to, exactly the same way as a white CEO would. They wouldn't have been selected if that wasn't the case. The "representation" doesn't advance the agenda of the group in any meaningful way. To the contrary, "representation" is used by white people to obtain the support of minority groups without giving them anything. I see white people pressuring my daughter to look up to Kamala Harris (because Harris "looks like her"). This is just manipulation. Harris will not meaningfully advance the distinct interests of south asian people, nor is she a good model of south asian culture or values. As to your main point--for sure people on the internet have better manners today. Is that creditable to DEI initiatives? Can we have online spaces and workplaces where nobody is made to feel excluded because of their immutable characteristics without forcing people to write diversity statements or having Robin Di Angelo types come in to lecture white people about their inherent racism?

rirze 4y ago
I was hoping to find a reply like this; glad someone could articulate it better than I could. Overall, I believe that culturally-same role models is a stand-in for lazy parenting. Children whose parents constantly push their kids to be better, push harder will look towards successful people of any cultural background. Compare that with children with apathetic parents, who I surmise will only have the imagination to self-associate with those who "look" like them.

throwawaydei 4y ago

[dead]

domain8543 4y ago
In other words, if you received hate it was probably something you did. I literally cannot fathom the idea that something was wrong was us.

slackfan 4y ago

[flagged]

flippinburgers 4y ago
If by new era of enlightenment you mean a new era of unquestionable bigotry I suppose you are correct.
- slackfan 4y ago
  You know what doesn't translate in text? Sarcasm.
eldaisfish 4y ago
way to miss the point and your argument is a strawman. People on IRC didn't care about "Who you were" because the assumption was that you came from privilege. Privilege usually translated to white, urban, heterosexual male. Those groups said some horrible things about other communities because they felt the space was "safe". Now that this is changing and calling people "orientals" or "gay" is no longer acceptable, there is an attempt to rewrite history - as you are trying to do here.
- slackfan 4y ago
  Privilege is not assumed, it is given. Who is this privelege given by?
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  I thought people on IRC are far more likely to be social outcasts. Yes, there was vulgarity, but to say this was indicative of prejudices misses the point by far.
barneygale 4y ago
> unless you made your incidental identity the central topic of discussion in unrelated conversation http://bash.org/?top http://bash.org/?top try ctrl-fing for "fag", "homo", "jew", etc. These insults were routinely used on the early internet _without_ anyone volunteering their gender/ethnicity/sexual preferences/whatever.

MockObject 4y ago

> Do you know VIRULENTLY anti-black (or woman, or gay) these communities were? I can't begin to describe it. That has not been my experience at all, whatsoever, and my involvement in tech communities, both online and in the flesh, dates back to the 1980s. > There's also the fact that most (read: all) of the computing pioneers are white. I respect all of those people, but it does help to have someone to look up to. I don't need people with whom I share superficial characteristics to look up to. I can look up to brilliant white men, men from all over the globe, or even women, believe it or not.

abenga 4y ago
> That has not been my experience at all, whatsoever, and my involvement in tech communities, both online and in the flesh, dates back to the 1980s. Do you believe you have had the same experiences as a person of the races/genders experiencing the -isms, or that you will perceive as -isms the same things they do?
- MockObject 4y ago
  > Do you believe you have had the same experiences as a person of the races/genders experiencing the -isms What do you mean?

gfodor 4y ago

The key thing is there needs to be a falsifiable condition whereby we agree these programs have achieved their primary goal, and that the risk of scope creep, corruption, or other externalities like the ones the OP mentions has exceeded the potential further benefits, so they should be wound down. I'm not going to state my opinion here, but if such a condition is not identified in any way, we should assume these groups will do what it takes to perpetuate themselves far past their point of utility, like any bureaucracy that doesn't have a way to prove directly how they're contributing to the bottom line.

grumpy_coder 4y ago
Very much agree with this comment, creating and gaming KPIs is at the heart of most DEI departments now. We do need long term improvements at the start of the funnel, but no-one is adding a 7 year KPI for improving stats of 14 year old girls quitting AP math.
kmeisthax 4y ago
The falsifiable condition is that the underlying social attitudes driving the racism/sexism/etc have dissolved. Problem is, this is a social process that takes centuries to complete. You are never going to hit a point in a single institution where you can say "We fixed our diversity problem, let's go home", because it can just come back as you hire more people and older hires leave. Furthermore, society is frustratingly prone to generating new discriminatory attitudes. America is pretty conscious of a handful of very specific racial minorities, and we have a vague idea of what sexism looks like, but we have little knowledge of things like caste discrimination[0], colorism[1], classism and so on. To fully explain why this is a problem, try re-reading your original comment, but pretend it's talking about the police instead of DEI initiatives. What's our falsifiable condition where we say "ok, all the crimes are solved, let's abolish the police?" [0] Discrimination based on the occupation of your ancestors, typically driven by religious beliefs. India is the poster child for this though Japan had a form of it too. [1] Skin-color discrimination within a specific race. We don't see this in the US or Canada all that often because the mix of European ancestry that we brought over and called "White" is universally one skin color. Latin America has this in droves.

gautamdivgi 4y ago

This is true. Here is the other thing. Promotions in corporate America are based on how well you know the hiring manager chain of command. Golf buddy? Oh he’s a great guy for a promotion. Church person - yup very ethical, let’s promote him. Know him personally - maybe went to the same college or support the same college football team, oh yes they’re a candidate for promotion. Corporate America needs to get promotions out of the hands of the hiring manager chain of command. Create a board that’s independent and can deal with promotions impartially. In absence of and independent entity handling promotions DEI is needed and necessary. Otherwise a lot of promotions are just plain nepotism.

nonethewiser 4y ago

> There are groups that are aimed at cultivating black people in tech. Prior to this, in the earlier internet age, you had to cut your teeth on IRC and forums. This reasoning sucks. We need DEI in corporations now because IRC was toxic?

jrm4 4y ago

(Black man here as well) This is a great way to put it. I mean, I'm a bit older and over time I've been used to actually being that token, because for a lot of places I've been it was me and no one else. So, I didn't much mind the role as something of a pioneer. So I'd say, anyone who doesn't like it, e.g. DEI, definitely understand the history, please -- and moreover, the difficulty of externally changing culture. It's ultra-clumsy, but at least for a time it was both inevitable and necessary. I very much don't personally enjoy is at as well -- but I don't think that means it's without value. I suppose I see even the bad parts as a "bug, not a feature," because we're talking about it.

tacitusarc 4y ago

I see a different risk with DEI, and I’d sure love your perspective if you’re willing to give it. I think there’s a certain class of people (mostly young and white though the fact they are white is explainable as a statistical artifact) who feel empowered by DEI to push for changes that are meaningless and burdensome, but give them a feeling of power and virtuousness. This includes changing away from “master” as a branch name, to creating an extensive list of taboo words such as “whitelist”, “blacklist”, and “subordinate”, to chiding colleagues for saying “brown bag lunch”*. DEI not only legitimizes, but actually encourages the above behavior. This seems problematic to me for two reasons: first, it creates a positive feedback loop for (at best) actions that make one feel self righteous without adding anything of real value, and second, it undermines the importance of critical thinking and analysis in engineering. So, all that being said, the justification is these changes help make black people in tech feel more included, a goal I support. In your opinion, do these changes have the intended effect? Are they meaningful and useful? * For those who don’t know, there used to be a racist practice by some fraternities, etc called a “brown bag test” where a brown bag was used to judge skin color for entry. This made brown bags racist, which in turn made brown bag lunches racist.

DrThunder 4y ago
There is power in victimhood now. If you can prove you're a victim or prove you're submitting to a certain group you've "victimized" then you are put at the top of the order. You become part of essentially a religious cult and given certain "powers" that you can bash the "sinners" over the head with. I think you're exactly right here, the largest proponents of this stuff tend to be white and left wing (mostly women). In a way I find them extremely racist. To me, they're acting just like OP says. They don't think certain groups are intelligent enough to bring themselves out of squalor and everyone MUST believe like they do; that skin color is an impediment. So, they need the white savior to come rescue them.
- LordDragonfang 4y ago
  >There is power in victimhood now Anyone who's been to Sunday school can tell you this isn't a new concept, and is at least two millennia old (almost certainly longer, since Judaism has an even longer shared tradition). Christians have continued riding the coattails of their martyrs and "persecution" for centuries after they became the dominant force. If anything, the modern "woke victimhood" is merely the cultural legacy of evangelical Christianity that was (and arguably still is) deeply engrained in US culture.

Dooflegna 4y ago

> EDIT: In the below thread are many people who personally identify as omnipresent IRC Gods, so my experience must have happened in an alternate universe. My bad. It's amazing how blind people can be to experiences that don't match their own. And when you _tell_ them what has happened to you, point at the preponderance of evidence out there about it, they still don't believe you.

excerionsforte 4y ago

IRC was pretty toxic for sure. If you didn't know the other person, you assumed they were white since it is the predominate skin color and American for that matter. Typically wouldn't question it unless they used different wording patterns or languages. IRC was attractive in some ways and offputting in others. I never really got into it outside of my #gamedev interests. DEI initiatives as a backlash against the forced exclusion of people from the broader economy makes sense to me. It's crazy the amount of the legal and government system that was employed in the past because of what people thought to be true about other people. I'm unclear of how much impact the intiatives have on hiring or retention. I feel this is one of the reasons why DEI initiatives highlight token people probably to show they are doing something (results) and the budget for it is justified. Would be nice to see the statistics from mid to large companies on how these initiatives have fared on multiple groups and worker productivity for that matter, but until then it feels like it has no to mixed impact at a company which seems to be the ideas of people not included in these initiatives. DEI just feels vague and threatening to some people. I've seen Reddit threads of people saying they don't support DEI initiatives because how can they "secure a future for their child" which to me is highly obtuse. Who knows what a child will do in the future. I'm all for hiring diverse candidates and helping those who have high curiosity and propensity to just do the work rather than the idea that one must be experienced in order to execute. It's the same way I am towards younger people, though you don't see the same backlash against initiatives in that arena unless older people are losing their jobs for the sake of it. In the end, I want people who will (not can) help with the work and will teach others.

venatiodecorus 4y ago

there are definitely racists online but i think in these environments, where you are limited to text only, certain words became 'weaponized' such as specific slurs. in my experience this is less about racism and more about trolls trying to anger as many people as possible with minimal effort.

kodah 4y ago

> There's also the fact that most (read: all) of the computing pioneers are white Not refuting this take as it's accurate, but if you're looking for someone that's Black in early computing I'd recommend free software pioneer Brian Fox (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Fox_(computer_programmer) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Fox_(computer_programm...) best known for inventing Bash. Kelsey Hightower is also notable as the man that pioneered the use of Kubernetes at many businesses through his book. Marian Croak is the pioneer of VOIP and now heads SRE among other things at Google. Mark Dean pioneered ISA which is still the leading standard today in industrial applications. (Non-exhaustive list, but these are the programmers that are Black that I know of off the top of my head) I'll caveat this with my own take: all these folks worked in what is in the industry referred to as Systems Engineering, which is very much still a "working man's" profession when compared to traditional software engineering and prior to things like SRE paid accordingly less. It's also how a lot of vets, POC, and people without degrees enter the industry.

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coffeemug 4y ago

For context, I grew up in an ex-communist country. Elevating people, giving them opportunities to fulfill their potential, and giving people someone credible to look up to is a wonderful thing. We should do more of it, hopefully a lot more. The problem is that these things start out for a very good reason, but then take on a life of their own. When that happens it's very difficult to stop them, and in the limit case they result in horrendous tragedies. It isn't an abstract philosophical thing. There is an underlying social process, as real as gravity, and it's crucial to study and understand. I saw the consequences of this process first hand in my country. Roughly, it goes like this. When you create a mechanism to oppress someone to fix oppression, however small and ineffectual, this mechanism gets captured by bad actors. Then it grows and grows and grows in their hands. It's very difficult to stop because of a combination of moral-sounding purpose that many people fall for, and the benefits that accrue to a wide variety of interest groups. At the limit of this there is nothing left but oppression, for anyone. I'm not overly concerned about this in America because we're extraordinarily good at preventing centralization of power, but I must say watching bad actors accrue power and watching politicians pander to them has been disconcerting to say the least. I hope we can find a compromise that allows us to create opportunities while simultaneously kicking bad actors to the curb. I promise you you do not want to live in a society where the annoyances continue down their natural course.

whoopdedo 4y ago

> There's also the fact that most (read: all) of the computing pioneers are white. Would you count Katherine Johnson as a tech role model?[1] But I agree with you. The old IRC culture gave the illusion of equity since by default your face isn't seen. But the rose-colored glasses overlook that once a person's age, race, or sex became known they'd be treated differently. And it often was not pleasant because as we've seen the pseudonymity tends to make people, who already generally suck at being kind to strangers, even more awful.[2](warning: language) That's the reason we should have DEI. If the implementations of it are flawed, that should be a motivation to make the programs better. Think of it as fixing bugs in the human codebase. [1] https://www.nasa.gov/content/katherine-johnson-biography https://www.nasa.gov/content/katherine-johnson-biography [2] https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboards-and-other-anomalies https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboa...

jimbob45 4y ago

[flagged]

roenxi 4y ago

A question, perhaps, of babies, bathwater and relative velocity. I'm not sure if anyone worth listening to is complaining about efforts to clean up racism in moderated communities. HN, for example, self polices that sort of thing quite effectively. "Racism bad" as a principle is one of the most solid points of consensus in the modern political sphere. We should keep moderating out racism. But your post is going to different issues than the original one, which was talking about initiatives inside companies. I do not want to be in a position where I look at black colleagues and have formal evidence that they got hired/promoted/praised/ because of their skin colour, not their competence. That is setting up an environment where racists opinions will also be evidence-based and doing a disservice to literally everyone involved. A company initiative supporting building up hiring pipelines is just good business practice. "A cheesy townhall once a month to discuss diversity hires" (from op) is a dangerous precedent for stirring up actual racism. There does need to be debate to decide where the line between these things is drawn, and why. We were on a good thing with the aspiration of skin colour making no difference. It is a shame to see backsliding on that subject amongst many HR departments.

golergka 4y ago

> it does help to have someone to look up to I keep hearing this idea from americans, that it's important to have a role model that has exactly the same ethnicity, gender and sexual identity as you do. It never made any sense to me. Can you explain it please?

fknorangesite 4y ago
If you want to do some reading on this, the search term you're probably looking for is "representation matters."
rovolo 4y ago
There are two parts to your question which I think are important to address: the importance of role modelling in general; and the importance of ethnicity/gender/sexual identity in particular. First, role models are important because they show you what is possible for you to do. It's much easier to copy what someone has done before than it is to experiment yourself. For example, imagine the different types of work you can do to make money. Would you imagine that you can make money playing video games without seeing other people making money? Watching e-sports or streaming informs you that these are careers where some people are successful at earning a living. Role models are proofs of concept in ways to live your life. Without them, you would have to experiment yourself and make a bunch of mistakes on your way to living that kind of life. Secondly, ethnicity/gender/sexual identity affect both your path and your destination. At least historically, people in the U.S. have been told that they can't do things because they are who they are, whether through explicit discrimination or by a prejudiced view of their capabilities. Seeing someone succeed in a role with a shared characteristic shows that the characteristic doesn't prevent you from achieving that role. Furthermore, the way that these role models fulfill their role can be different than "normal". For one, their success may show that you don't need to hide aspects of yourself to protect yourself from others. Being gay is different from being out and known as gay. If it's easier to be out in some professions than others, then you may avoid being e.g. a teacher because the cost of remaining closeted may make it not worth doing. The role models aren't just for you to emulate, they are also comrades in social acceptance. Finally, I want to acknowledge that these aspects are never the entirety of a person's identity. They are specific aspects which sometimes have zero impact, sometimes a great deal of impact, and very rarely total impact on a situation. The important of ethnicity/gender/sexual identity will vary based on the time and place. Ethnicity, gender and sexual identity are important parts of role models in the U.S. because those have been important parts of identity in the U.S. which have major influence on what people can do. Maybe their importance will wane with time, and other aspects of your identity will rise to prominence.

lynndotpy 4y ago

> EDIT: In the below thread are many people who personally identify as omnipresent IRC Gods, so my experience must have happened in an alternate universe. My bad. For what it's worth, this aligns with what I've seen on IRC as well (in the 00s.) I really think a lot of people just don't see bigotry for what it is when it's not explicit. (E.g. "lol girl = guy irl, there are no girls on the internet" being a common sentiment that might just be easily forgotten.)

LordDragonfang 4y ago
This is why it's so sad/annoying that the word "priviledge" has devolved into a meaning-devoid cudgel, because it's such a useful term in discussions like these. If you're not personally affected by something, it's easy to miss something for what it is or even just not see it, even if it's happening all around you.
Insanity 4y ago
+1. Not just on IRC but all around the internet and online gaming in those days. Back when you had dedicated servers and they would devolve into more of a chat room anyway.
_gql5 4y ago
My experience growing up as a southeast Asian child in the early 00s is that I suddenly had access to practitioners and even experts in the field who now gave me an audience, as both my age and ethnicity were completely inaccessible to my counterparty on the other side of the chat window. No one asked, and no one cared. We discussed technical topics, and what mattered was the strength of your ideas and their ability to withstand rebuttal. Your identity did not factor into the discussion, as the medium being used (IRC) abstracted away all notion of geographic location, physical appearance, skin color, accent, tone of voice, gender, sex, etc... into the written word. That's all everyone saw - your words, and your words only. Now, in our photo and video driven digital landscape, your physical appearance - the way you look, present, the color of your skin, etc. - is front and center. In fact, without a visual representation, you may as well not exist - "pics or it didn't happen." Which makes the matter all the more aggravating - people are now using media that bring cues for common stereotypes (i.e. judging someone for the way they look [0]) to the forefront, while simultaneously declaring that, no, they are completely free from any and all such bias. Why not remove all doubt, the, and use blind Zoom interviews (which I did myself), text fora (such as this one), and text-only protocols (such as IRC)? It's fascinating to see just how differently I am treated and perceived on purely textual media vs. other media where my physical appearance is evident. If IRC was racist, then I would say the new media is orders of magnitude more so, as I have been subject to numerous misjudgments of my character and/or microaggressions based on my physical appearance - which simply would not have been accessible in older, text-based protocols. I can't escape the new "ethnic minority" or "visible minority" label that these DEI initiatives (and related ideologies) have created - they are now automatically and subconsciously applied to me the minute others take a look at me, and as a result all of the associated ideas are subsequently brought to mind - "disadvantaged," "lacking education," "lower socioeconomic status," "hired because of their race," etc. I'd rather go back to IRC. None of these judgments would be possible there, and I wouldn't have to have the "minority" label applied to me if I chose to simply not to disclose my appearance or ethnic background. [0] https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impact-%E2%80%9Cblind%E2%80%9D-auditions-female-musicians https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impac...

qdog 4y ago

Yeah, I dunno if these people hung out on the Care Bears irc channel or what, but every 'open' forum and most of the closed ones had tons of racism/sexism/whateverism. Just look at twitter nowadays to see how awful some posters can be. I've worked with a very small handful of black people over my career, several indians, a fair number of asians and a few hispanics. The demographics in my experience were all pretty abyssmal, without some sort of policy in place, the actual bias that ends up hiring only other white males was never going to end. I would say it's probably still strong, as a recent place I worked was incredibly white and male. My understanding is that hiring becomes much more fair if you are able to remove all racial/sexual details from a hiring process (at least, if resumes are shown without those details you get expected results, but with those details a bias appears). That said, I think a lot of these people are upset by DEI precisely because it is resulting in more diversity. If you are biased against the people who DEI helps get hired, you are obviously going to think they are poor hires, because you always thought "those people" tend to be poor hires. Assuming OP is actually a black man, I think he needs to realize that many, if not most, people who make assumptions about him based on DEI or the like, are always looking for an excuse for their own biases.

lliamander 4y ago
> That said, I think a lot of these people are upset by DEI precisely because it is resulting in more diversity. You are exemplifying a fallacy known as asymmetric insight, whereby you assume to know more about someone else's "real" intentions than they do. While at some level we do have to have a mental model of other people's motivations, the temptation is strong to pathologize those we disagree with rather than take their ideas seriously. So tell me, did you come to your conclusion based on sincere effort to actually understand the mindset of those opposed to DEI, or are you using it as an excuse to avoid thinking about their actual arguments?
- qdog 4y ago
  I certainly haven't conducted a scientific study, this isn't my field. I am, however, a white male who checks most of the 'tech dude' boxes, and I don't usually have to guess what people are thinking about this. I just have to be around at the right time for people to make their opinions known. So my evidence is anecdotal, but no, I don't have to wonder if people have racial bias, they will tell you if you let them. I have also observed a manager who's religion made women subservient, and no woman he ever managed was promoted. Bias or just probability? One of those women is now a very successful director of engineering. (She left his team and was promoted elsewhere) While I can't speak to all DEI programs, the intent at most places I've been is to interview a wider range of people. That might show slight favor to interviewing, but the bar for hiring does not change. This is not just a problem in tech, the relatively recent NFL head coach issue of teams deciding to hire a coach and then interviewing a black coach after that "for compliance" with no intent of actually considering them is a huge problem. If you work at a place that truly only hires people to check a box and doesn't care about that person's success or the impact around them, sure, move on.

lliamander 4y ago

It's certainly not obvious to me, as someone who never ventured on IRC, that IRC culture would have a serious impact on minority representation. Most people (minority or not) were never on IRC to begin with, so I doubt that would explain (for instance) the under-representation of minorities in Computer Science programs. I mean, you say that IRC was virulently anti-gay, and yet gay and trans people are over-represented in tech. Even if we accept that IRC culture drove minorities away from tech, that doesn't justify common corporate DEI policies such as affirmative action, unconscious bias training, etc. Those are just bad, counter-productive polices. > EDIT: In the below thread are many people who personally identify as omnipresent IRC Gods, so my experience must have happened in an alternate universe. My bad. You are generalizing from you own experience, expect others to do the same. And, to be fair, they probably aren't saying that your experience didn't happen, but that it either wasn't representative, or that you are misinterpreting some of it.

Siira 4y ago

As a PoC who has benefited from IRC, I don’t see how they would even know you’re not white unless you tell them yourself. Can you elaborate on your experience?

LarsDu88 4y ago

As someone who was born at the dawn of the internet age, was the early internet really that racist? I feel this is something that will be lost to the history books if it isn't at least recorded for posterity.

NetOpWibby 4y ago

(Also a Black man) I’ve dealt with enough bullshit early in my career that I don’t trust DEI initiatives. I don’t join meetings but your comment makes me think I should at least try.

account42 4y ago

I fail to see how your skin color or sexual preferences coul have any effect on your IRC experience except if you go out of your way to point them out - in which case, perhaps what you perceved was the response to that kind of behavior. > These DEI initiatives aren't perfect in any way, but the goal is to give the affected groups the foundations to succeed. The goal is to distract from other issues such as the increasing class gap or environmental impact.

raxxorraxor 4y ago

IRC isn't IRC. I have never been in a channel like that. On the contrary, these tended to be people that were much more tolerant than the general population by a strong margin. And I was later as I was younger, where conduct might even have been degraded a bit. Sataya and Sundar aren't really computer pioneers. They are managers of multi-billion $ companies. There is also a strong contrast to computer pioneers and its culture. This isn't even comparable. Not saying they are bad people, but it is not a good comparison.

cbeach 4y ago

You said that people in affected communities need to have role models in the industry with the same skin colour. Firstly, young people aren’t stupid. They will be acutely aware if those role models were created in a tokenistic way. Young people know when older people try to distort the real world in order to manipulate them (whether or not it’s with good intentions). Secondly, what makes you so sure that young people are so bigoted/sensitive that they would negatively judge an industry that was largely made up of people of skin colours other than their own? I think young people these days seem confident and tolerant of others regardless of their skin colour.