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One thing that's irked me about Tech DEI is that it overwhelmingly benefitting non-URM women, while I really only see the justifications for benefitting racial
by Manuel_D 3y ago
One thing that's irked me about Tech DEI is that it overwhelmingly benefitting non-URM women, while I really only see the justifications for benefitting racial minorities on Dei grounds.
The justifications for benefitting underrepresented racial minorities seem way, way stronger than gender. Black and Latin students are less likely to go to college, while women are more likely to go to college than men. Some try to justify affirmative action for women in tech on the grounds of ameliorating the pay gap, but that too has reversed and now favors women. The idea that favoring women over men is justified to the same degree as favoring disadvantaged ethnic minorities seems absurd to me.
I'd be way more motivated to spend time mentoring or otherwise helping aspiring high school and college students from underprivileged backgrounds. But instead effectively all of the "DEI" I've seen has been preferences for well off White and Asian women, rather than people coming from underprivileged backgrounds
I want to be clear I don't fault or resent non-URM women. Many (most?) agree that diversity initiatives ought to be focused on ethnic disparities. These women also had no agency over these policies, they are institutions by leadership, often over the objections of the supposed beneficiaries.
- hightrix 3y agoPardon my ignorance, what does URM refer to in this context?
- AwaAwa 3y agoUnderrepresented Racial Minority
- hightrix 3y agoThank you!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Manuel_D 3y agoUnderrepresented Racial Minority. Basically Black, Latin, or Native American. The last is a bit hand-wavy because there's huge rates of intermarriage in Native families, and many ethnically identify as white. Ideally I'd prefer if there was some mechanism to actually examine people's backgrounds. I'm Latin myself, but had educated parents, went to a top 10 school, and basically not disadvantaged in any way. But aggregate disparities do exist and I see reason to take action on them.
- hightrix 3y agoThank you. Today I learn a new thing!
- MyShawdowySelf 3y ago> it overwhelmingly benefitting non-URM women This is sadly a reality that is difficult to talk about. I would even go further and say that we have a tendency to benefit the "least" minority of the minority. Hiring a black or Hispanic or women from MIT is from my perspectives not really what this work should be about. Those outliers already have enough opportunity, but tend to be the one benefiting from most efforts. I would love to see deeper investment like 3 or 4 year before college in more at risk communities.
- Manuel_D 3y agoI agree wholeheartedly. I'm a Latin Stanford graduate, from a wealthy two parent household. I'm sure there were some people who escaped genuine poverty among my classmates, but for the most part anyone at Stanford is privileged regardless of background. I find that companies only care about improving their annual diversity report pie chart, and have adopted a cynical attitude along the lines of "the diverse talent pool is limited so we need to make sure we get more of them than our competitors". Nobody is actually trying to get more underprivileged people into tech as a whole. A company instituting a DEI initiative where employees take one day a week mentoring students at a less affluent high school would do way more good than a percentage quota. The former actually makes the world have more software developers of underrepresented backgrounds. The latter just increase the share of "diverse" devs at that particular company, doesn't actually shift the needle in the industry as a whole.