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IBM's Red Hat Sued by Stephen Miller's Legal Group for Anti-White Male Bias
- cozzyd 3y agoBeing sued by Stephen Miller is a pretty good indicator that you're doing something reasonable.
- slackfan 3y agoIf being racist is reasonable, then reasonableness is overrated.
- verdverm 3y agoAre you familiar with the kinds of things Stephen Miller says? You might want to be before defending him to get an idea, he hangs out with Steve Bannon and Roger Stone
- Manuel_D 3y agoYeah, awful horrendous things like, "companies and universities should treat applicants without regard to protected characteristics like race, gender, and religion." Truly heinous.
- verdverm 3y agoone quote without context does not counter the litany of awful statements Stephen Miller has made throughout his career
- Manuel_D 3y agoIt's interesting that despite repeatedly insisting that Miller has said awful things, you have yet to actually share said statements.
- verdverm 3y agoBecause HN has rules about comments and reaction baiting that I'm not going to break They are easy to find with a search engine if you want to learn
- Manuel_D 3y agoDo not attempt to hide behind the HN rules here, if it's not insulting another member and it's relevant to the discussion it is permitted to share bigoted quotes. Sharing Miller's statements to substantiate your claims that he's a bigot is totally within the rules. I have searched him and did not find any bigoted quotes. Even his SPLC page only has quotes of him wanting to restrict immigration, which is a common and mainstream opinion and quite the stretch to use as an example of bigotry.
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- Manuel_D 3y agoAre explicit gender and racial quotas reasonable?
- staticautomatic 3y agoConstitutional law says they are in some circumstances when practiced by the government.
- Manuel_D 3y agoIBM is not the government. And those circumstances are fairly narrow, reserved for situation where a company explicitly discriminated against applicants in the immediate past. And not the "systemic" kind of discrimination, like requiring a college degree. But explicitly refusing to hire people of a particular group.
- cozzyd 3y agoLike most things, it depends, in this case on some combination of context, degree and purpose. I don't know the particulars of this situation, but based on my priors I'm much more inclined to believe that RH is doing something reasonable then that Stephen Miller doing something reasonable.
- Manuel_D 3y agoWhat Red hat is doing is described in the article: > The conservative legal group said Red Hat announced DEI goals that involved “quotas”, aiming “to remake its workforce demographic, seeking to reach 30% women globally and 30% associates of color in the United States by 2028.” > Miller’s group cited video footage of IBM’s CEO Arvind Krishna and Red Hat CEO Paul Cormier discussing diversity. Krishna says in the video that corporate executives’ bonuses can be affected if they don’t meet DEI goals. The video reference is this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q53zscZdtdA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q53zscZdtdA Notably, the CEO explicitly states that "people of color" does not include Asians. It's very likely that the 30% quota exceeds the representation of "people of color" in the workforce. Remember, quotas and caps are two sides of the same coin. "Reach at least 30% women" is the same as saying "reduce men* to below 70%". And in a field where men make up 80% of the workforce, that's unambiguously disadvantaging men. * and nonbinary to be pedantic
- Manuel_D 3y ago> The conservative legal group said Red Hat announced DEI goals that involved “quotas”, aiming “to remake its workforce demographic, seeking to reach 30% women globally and 30% associates of color in the United States by 2028.” If true, this is a pretty clear case. If explicit racial and gender quotas isn't discrimination, what is? This goal could be equivalent phrased as "reduce the share of male employees below 70%, and the share of white (and probably Asian, too) below 70%".
- HeatrayEnjoyer 3y agoIt's unlikely to be inequitable and have discriminatory effect until the makeup of the staff are similar to that of the actual population. If the resident population is 30% minority but only 3% of the company staff are, it is neither de facto nor de jure discrimination to prioritize undoing the existing actually discriminatory workplace.
- Manuel_D 3y agoThe people in the workforce are often significantly different than the general population. A quota of 50% women programmers or 50% male nurses will match the population but require a 4 to one disparity between female and male applicants.
- HeatrayEnjoyer 3y agoCorrecting the disparity is entirely the point.
- Manuel_D 3y agoSo would a company be justified in setting a cap of 1.7% for Jewish employees? Or how about setting a quota - or "inclusion goal" or "diversity milestone" or whatever other euphemism - of 98.3% for gentiles. After all, it's just correcting the disparity. Disparities that arise due to discrimination are a problem, and should be ameliorated by eliminating the discrimination. Anonymize applications, make zoom interviews blinded and voices masked. I'd be totally behind that. Disparities that arise due to differences in preferences are not to be "corrected". Some cultures prize doctors more than others, "correcting" that disparity isn't eliminating discrimination, it's perpetrating it. "Correcting" software development roles to be closer to 50/50 male and female is no less sexist than setting gender quotas on pediatrician mandating fewer women in the field.
- faeriechangling 3y agoLooks like Red Hat screwed up. You're supposed to discriminate against Gen Z white men who have never been in the workforce at the hiring stage, where they can't even prove that you discriminated against them. You aren't supposed to actually dismiss older white men who already have power and savings and employment history and insight into the internal dealings of the company. They'll sue you. I guess IBM was tripped up by its desire for youth and hatred for its older employees though.
- verdverm 3y ago> Hanlon's Razor states: never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by neglect, ignorance or incompetence. This is IBM we are talking about. I was laid off 5 weeks into my first job post-PhD there