4 ms·

If you're implying that HN would generally prefer more female coworkers and don't really prefer to have more black ones, you may be on to something obvious :)

If you're implying that HN would generally prefer more female coworkers and don't really prefer to have more black ones, you may be on to something obvious :) I guess the above explanation is too uncharitable, and people don't believe they're racist but do believe they (or the industry) are sexist. I feel like racism is somehow more evil. I think "low level racism" is a decent label - you shouldn't be surprised that at a superficial level of acquaintance (resume screening), people subconsciously pull expectations of competence/"fit" according to the reference class they see the resume as belonging to (oh, another 25 yr old brogrammer!) Also, there are more women in the U.S., so if women and blacks were similarly discouraged from coding, we'd want to throw more resources at encouraging women, hypothetically.

nashequilibrium 13y ago
"If you're implying that HN would generally prefer more female coworkers and don't really prefer to have more black ones, you may be on to something obvious :)" I was thinking along the same lines but to put it more plain context, i wonder if HN sees white female > black person? As i was looking at this trend today, i got detoured onto this topic and started to see if there is any evidence of this kind of stuff. Its seems that in South Africa, after apartheid ended the Black government instituted affirmative action for black people and white woman. A few yrs later they dropped white woman from the AA policy and released numbers that showed white females reached their goal quota levels while black male and females hardly made any ground. Therefore it seems like the next best thing after a white male is a white female in a model that stifles white male employment. Very interesting!