3 ms·

More people seem to care about one sentence in the article than the rest of it. In fact, many people are missing this sentence: "I don't know if there's any s

More people seem to care about one sentence in the article than the rest of it. In fact, many people are missing this sentence: "I don't know if there's any solution to this. I certainly don't advocate not hiring people Roy's age -- I'm now older than he was then." ...and thus taking the following sentence out of context: "But every time a company hires someone who is not a young male, they run the risk that the new hire isn't there to work, rather is there to scam you." Edit: that said, the author really needs to rephrase his words or he is going to piss more people off.

danso 13y ago
I think people seem to care more about that sentence because it is an honest summary of Dave's takewaway here: non-status-quo groups have a greater risk of screwing you over because they have this legal loophole they can exploit. Which hey, I could see why that'd be controversial.
- gavanwoolery 13y ago
  I agree :)
- mahyarm 13y ago
  This is the real takeaway here. Statistically any class of people who have a 'special power' to use against you will eventually have a person who will use it against you if your exposed to enough of them. Applies to police, protected employment classes, a wild bear attacking you, etc.
jessedhillon 13y ago
I've also noticed that a lot of people complain when the statement immediately following "I'm not racist but..." is given more emphasis than the preceding disclaimer. /s
- gavanwoolery 13y ago
  Yep, or worse yet the disclaimer just hits the beehive harder. Sort of an inverse poising of the well, I guess? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well
- scrabble 13y ago
  Part of the reason for this is that when people hear the word "but" they mentally remove all the words in the sentence preceding it. One way to get around this is by replacing "but" with "and." That's my opinion, but I'm not an expert.
  - waps 13y ago
    The real problem here is that legal protections for certain classes by themselves create a disincentive for hiring those people. Discrimination/racism protections especially suffer from this. I've had some experience with this as well. In Europe (Brussels) it's plain to see that most companies don't hire certain "bad" minorities, then fix their legally mandated "racism stats" (ie. a quota) by demanding the cleaning company provide them with contractor cleaners of the correct ethnicity. Why ? Because if they sue, the damage is 24x their monthly pay, which is next to nothing. This is a horribly bad factor for people like Jewish programmers, black sysadmins, and the like. They're doubly fucked : there's a very good legal reason for companies not to hire them, and they have a good legal incentive to be incompetent assholes, so they get fired and get legal damages from their legal anti-discrimination rights. In addition, the government's education incentives cause and strengthen the racist prejudices. Black sysadmins/programmers are worse than white sysadmins ... well of course ! If the law mandates a passing grade for black sysadmins in university is 40% where whites have to score 60%, this would be exactly the expected result wouldn't it ? In the end there is no substitute to waiting for immigrants to naturally work their way up the food chain like has mostly happened in America. Problem is simple : this takes multiple generations. This is one of the many reasons it's really bad to protect certain classes of people, doubly so when we're talking ethnicities or religious groups (as opposed to say, stem graduates, legal professionals, ...). Plus it generally seems to me to fly in the face of the idea of non-discrimination. You cannot achieve a colorblind society with racist law, in fact you're achieving the opposite. Of course the problem is that discrimination laws are not trying to achieve a colorblind society. Rather they're trying to throw a religious/ethnic group a bone to prevent them from rioting, and making their situation worse in the process. Let's face it, in Western Europe if you're muslim/jewish/black/... (and not self-employed) you want to be an incompetent asshole, because that's what the law rewards. You can effectively get 2 or 3 wages paid out if you do that. Nothing to do with ethnicity or religion, has a LOT to do with people attempting to take shortcuts in fixing observed injustices. There are some that are creating their own companies and avoiding the problem this way. But this is much, much harder than making it as an employee. I have a lot of respect for the few that do this, though.
- csbrooks 13y ago
  In my experience, if you find yourself starting a sentence with "I'm not racist but..." you need to think long and hard about what you're saying.
wglb 13y ago
he is going to piss more people off. I think it was Tim Bray who said that lots of folks don't get along with Dave Winer. I don't find Dave's stuff useful, including here on HN.

danso 13y ago

I think people seem to care more about that sentence because it is an honest summary of Dave's takewaway here: non-status-quo groups have a greater risk of screwing you over because they have this legal loophole they can exploit. Which hey, I could see why that'd be controversial.

gavanwoolery 13y ago
I agree :)
mahyarm 13y ago
This is the real takeaway here. Statistically any class of people who have a 'special power' to use against you will eventually have a person who will use it against you if your exposed to enough of them. Applies to police, protected employment classes, a wild bear attacking you, etc.

jessedhillon 13y ago

I've also noticed that a lot of people complain when the statement immediately following "I'm not racist but..." is given more emphasis than the preceding disclaimer. /s

gavanwoolery 13y ago
Yep, or worse yet the disclaimer just hits the beehive harder. Sort of an inverse poising of the well, I guess? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well
scrabble 13y ago
Part of the reason for this is that when people hear the word "but" they mentally remove all the words in the sentence preceding it. One way to get around this is by replacing "but" with "and." That's my opinion, but I'm not an expert.
- waps 13y ago
  The real problem here is that legal protections for certain classes by themselves create a disincentive for hiring those people. Discrimination/racism protections especially suffer from this. I've had some experience with this as well. In Europe (Brussels) it's plain to see that most companies don't hire certain "bad" minorities, then fix their legally mandated "racism stats" (ie. a quota) by demanding the cleaning company provide them with contractor cleaners of the correct ethnicity. Why ? Because if they sue, the damage is 24x their monthly pay, which is next to nothing. This is a horribly bad factor for people like Jewish programmers, black sysadmins, and the like. They're doubly fucked : there's a very good legal reason for companies not to hire them, and they have a good legal incentive to be incompetent assholes, so they get fired and get legal damages from their legal anti-discrimination rights. In addition, the government's education incentives cause and strengthen the racist prejudices. Black sysadmins/programmers are worse than white sysadmins ... well of course ! If the law mandates a passing grade for black sysadmins in university is 40% where whites have to score 60%, this would be exactly the expected result wouldn't it ? In the end there is no substitute to waiting for immigrants to naturally work their way up the food chain like has mostly happened in America. Problem is simple : this takes multiple generations. This is one of the many reasons it's really bad to protect certain classes of people, doubly so when we're talking ethnicities or religious groups (as opposed to say, stem graduates, legal professionals, ...). Plus it generally seems to me to fly in the face of the idea of non-discrimination. You cannot achieve a colorblind society with racist law, in fact you're achieving the opposite. Of course the problem is that discrimination laws are not trying to achieve a colorblind society. Rather they're trying to throw a religious/ethnic group a bone to prevent them from rioting, and making their situation worse in the process. Let's face it, in Western Europe if you're muslim/jewish/black/... (and not self-employed) you want to be an incompetent asshole, because that's what the law rewards. You can effectively get 2 or 3 wages paid out if you do that. Nothing to do with ethnicity or religion, has a LOT to do with people attempting to take shortcuts in fixing observed injustices. There are some that are creating their own companies and avoiding the problem this way. But this is much, much harder than making it as an employee. I have a lot of respect for the few that do this, though.
csbrooks 13y ago
In my experience, if you find yourself starting a sentence with "I'm not racist but..." you need to think long and hard about what you're saying.

wglb 13y ago

he is going to piss more people off. I think it was Tim Bray who said that lots of folks don't get along with Dave Winer. I don't find Dave's stuff useful, including here on HN.