> If I were a white man with the same experience, I might not even be here?
I can understand how DEI initiatives might undermine your self-esteem and I'm sorry you are made to feel this way, but take solace in the fact that you have a job. Imagine how the white guy who was excluded from employment because of his skin color feels. That's who the real victim is here - the person who was racially discriminated against.
> In my opinion, it would be beneficial if DEI initiatives were confidential and kept "hush hush" within a company.
Personally, I prefer companies to be loud and proud about their DEI initiatives so that I know which companies engage in racial discrimination, rather than it all happening behind closed doors.
The U.S. has a long history of discriminating against brown people and an especially nasty history of discriminating against black people. This discrimination was so ingrained amongst the white population that after desegregation public pools declined. Blacks were discriminated against when it came to getting a mortgage. Whites fled the major cities to the suburbs leading to cities having gutted public schools due to lack of funding.
How does a nation overcome that legacy with its accompanying negative effects on people of color? We aren’t all equal when the effects of centuries of policies and attitudes can still be seen. I don’t know the answer but I think it is OK for companies to be cognizant of these issues and attempt to go out of their way to hire qualified people of color.
It sucks for one to feel they didn’t get a job because they are white but I think this doesn’t happen in statistically significant numbers. It’s known that people with “black sounding” names are less likely to get interviews. I don’t know the solution. I suspect that if we didn’t tie health care to employment and had a better system for unemployed people then the issue of reverse discrimination would largely go away.
That is obviously not a valid translation. It appears you did not understand what I wrote. When dealing with a complex problem, in this case several hundred years of discriminatory practices and laws, it’s not possible to come up with a remedy that is satisfactory to all. An all or nothing mindset leads nowhere. We must go with imperfect solutions since perfection does not exist. We can try to minimize negative side effects but not erase them. On the whole the ongoing level of discrimination against blacks is at least an order of magnitude greater than the amount of reverse discrimination.
Us blacks only make up 7.4% of the tech industry. It's always amazing how if you were to take the anecdotes in DEI threads seriously, you would think there weren't any whites in the tech field as they had all been replaced by black people.
You're right. The US should end DEI/AA efforts and just pay reparations for the $trillions in debt owed to descendants of slaves and others who were oppressed and robbed by law for centuries.
Right; the companies that are pro DEI are like the man at the bar with a swastika arm badge. Sure it's morally repugnant, but at least you know ahead of time what you're dealing with.
I don't know enough about the subject, but I will say that arguing on the basis of the purported reasons for creating a movement is totally irrelevant to the movement's effects.
For example a white friend in South Africa has a daughter who years ago, when looking at university applications, was distraught because to study to be a doctor she had to hit over 90% in her exams, vs 70% for her black South African classmates. Does it matter to her that this wasn't meant to happen? Or is reality also worth talking about?
> Please take a moment and reflect on why these sorts of initiatives exist.
These sorts of initiatives are trying to cure a racial or sexual bias with a different sort of racial or sexual bias. How does the question "why they exist" help those of us who think, in Kant's deontological terms, that racial or sexual biases are wrong?
Very respectfully, I do not read Kant - and I wish I had the opportunity to do so in the very poor high school I attended.
Please consider an old house you may buy if you live in New England or Europe. Sure, if you were building a new house everything should be plumb and level. But the house you’re able to buy in old cities is not brand new. So what does one do if you wish to have a level floor? We add shims to obtain some objective reasonable result, accepting that to get to a this result we must try to address systemic problems that are not our fault, but are now our responsibility.
> So what does one do if you wish to have a level floor?
Let me offer you a different metaphor about levels :-) In Greek mythology, there was a character named Procrustes. He had an iron bed of a certain size, to which he strapped his captives, and if they happened to be taller than the bed was long, he cut off their legs to fit the bed; whereas if they were shorter, he stretched them to fit the bed tearing their sinews and muscles. That's what I think of when I hear about arbitrary levels applied to living people.
I appreciate your analogy and I will politely remind you that in American history, members of certain classes did indeed have limbs cut off or their body parts stretched for arbitrary reasons.
In fact, this practice only really ended in the 1960s; controversially, one might even say that this practice continues to today.
So what do we do when confronted with an anecdote from antiquity versus system inequities from our modern era?
> So what do we do when confronted with an anecdote from antiquity versus system inequities from our modern era?
I guess, in the spirit of the analogy, your options are to either stop cutting off body parts from anyone, or to start cutting them off those who look like people who engaged in body cutting two or more generations ago. DEI prefers the second option. Some people would rather see the first.
I imagine that there are lessons in antiquity where a famous Greek or Roman thinker chooses a pragmatic option instead of a spiteful or absolutist option.
Yes - allowing blacks in America to attend college and move into neighborhoods without the threat of being killed was an act designed to chastise them.
I think posts of this nature (including OP) reflect a fear of not belonging to the dominant ‘caste’ and of being seen as either losing status (dominant caste men not getting jobs they are ‘the best’ for); or, alternatively, lower caste men wanting to be seen as valuable in a space they continually feel they do not belong in.
I say this as a someone who is a minority who regularly is discriminated against - and who has easily attained markers of success. There is no way to avoid feeling like we do not belong, but returning us to poverty and shutting us out of jobs is definitely not a way to attain a feeling of belonging.
Finally, DEI initiatives are very public - nepotism, alma mater connections etc are not. Let’s be careful in assuming that the only non-LEET code metric used to hire people is the color of the skin or their biological sex.
Thank you for pointing out that last part. I think folks forget how vital that foot in the door is/was, whether it's the school on your resume or the reference from the internship your uncle got for you. You might get 99% of the way there by hard work but if the other applicant's essentially grandfathered in (analogy intentional), what have you gained?
What does "statistically should" mean? How skin pigment have anything to do with qualifications? Using skin pigment as a lens for "statistically should be employed", what are your thoughts on requiring the NBA to be more diverse?
Is the top comment on this thread seriously a reverse racism rant?
You are right about something, affirmative action is racist, but I feel it is absolutely necessary to try to balance out current inequities. I strongly believe people making arguments like yours, people fighting against affirmative action need to propose an alternative rather than just complain about it.
There are lots of people alive today that couldn't drink from the same fountain or use the same bathroom as white people, and people who had friends and family members lynched (and in the eyes of many George Floyd's death was a lynching). Their neighborhoods were bulldozed to make the highways and they were systematically excluded from housing by redlining. You won't convince me for a second that their children and grandchildren got an equal opportunity. There is so much evidence of systemic disadvantaging of PoC communities today too, underfunded schools because of how we fund schools with local property taxes, turning lots of the public school system into effectively fancy private schools for families well off enough to live in rich neighborhoods.
So I will say it again, I do think at the surface level affirmative action is racist, but it's such a simple thing to realize it seems extremely pointless to even bring up. It is fighting centuries of truly heinous racism and genocide with just a tiny bit of an attempt at positive racism and white people still find a way to be pissed off they aren't getting everything the "deserve".
> people fighting against affirmative action need to propose an alternative rather than just complain about it
Not only is an alternative proposed, it's already implemented for quite a while: discrimination is illegal. Equal outcome vs equal opportunity. You can argue for any side you want, just don't pretend you don't see or don't understand the other position.
I see this as just as simple and misguided of a take as noticing that affirmative action is racist. People have been making this argument forever, we passed all laws and did all the work we needed to when we ended slavery, oh wait nope we got it right in 1967 with the civil rights act, no more work to do, the only tragedy left is that the damn "riff raff" and lefties just can't stop talking about race. They're the real racists!
This thread is depressing as fuck and really is making me rethink how often I ought come to this site, and interact with this community. And I really didn't realize how much this toxic bullshit was pervasive in tech. I am going to be participating more in DEI initiatives going forward, while taking the feedback and criticism of the OP into account.
I said nothing like "damn lefties" or anything similar, don't know why you are replying this to me. Nor do I understand why you had to explain how repulsive the other side of the debate is to you.
As for "simple and misguided" - that is exactly how I see affirmative action where the recipients are selected by skin color and not by socioeconomic status and where the help comes in the form of outcomes and not opportunities.
This is the general course of any thread concerning DEI on HN. It's filled with concerns about reverse-racism, and how "skin color shouldn't matter" and whatnot. The history behind why such initiatives exist is intentionally ignored.
> Imagine how the white guy who was excluded from employment because of his skin color feels. That's who the real victim is here - the person who was racially discriminated against.
White guys are not discriminated against in tech. This is such a racist take.
I bet you also think that reparations for slavery and Jim Crow -- literally, the government actually discriminating and harming people for their skin color -- would be bad because they somehow "hurt" white folks today.
This take is radically wrong, and you're just reinforcing OP's insecurities. How do you know that OP has a job at the expense of a white person? How do you know that OP isn't in fact the best candidate for the job? You're making a whole lot of assumptions here that are bordering on outright racism
> How do you know that OP has a job at the expense of a white person?
Which part of the parent's message says that he does?
What it does say that if an organisation gives preferential treatment to a certain group based on their skin color, then it follows, inevitably, that people with non-preferred skin color will lose to those with the preferred one, all else being equal. And thus, there will inevitably be "the white guy who was excluded from employment because of his skin color" (or sex, or both). Whether it was OP or someone else who was preferred to that guy is unknowable, and thus ultimately irrelevant. But that must take place in an organisation that is truly committed to DEI; because otherwise this abbreviation is meaningless.
That assumption was suggested by the OP, not me. Thanks for suggesting I'm racist, but I'm basically immune to such thought stopping non-arguments at this point.
If disagreeing with making hiring decisions on the basis of skin colour is racist, then I suppose I'm racist.
OP never said he was hired due to the color of his skin though. Not once. Is it possible that's the case? Sure. But for all we know, he was hired on merit.
While it's not certain that the OP was hired over a white person, it is mathematically certain that DEI policies cause whites to be discriminated against in aggregate.
1. There are fewer qualified black and Hispanic candidates per capita (i.e. without a college degree, without the right experience, etc.) than white and Asian candidates. The cause of this is irrelevant to the argument, it is factually true.
2. There are a finite amount of positions at any given company paying any given amount.
3. If companies hire a larger percentage (beyond a certain margin of error) of black and Hispanic candidates than actually exist in the hiring pool then they must commit racial discrimination against whites and Asians in order to accomplish this. You can try to redefine racism and discrimination as "prejudice plus power" or whatever you want to justify the fact that you mistreat people on the basis of their skin color, but factually that is what is being done.
It's completely fair to look at the big picture, but it's dangerous to look at specific situations and make assumptions is the only point I was trying to make. Without DEI, OP may have still gotten the position he has. We have no way of knowing that. I wasn't fond of the original replier making it seem like he got the position over a white person only due to the color of his skin, which is an unfair assumption to make
I can understand how DEI initiatives might undermine your self-esteem and I'm sorry you are made to feel this way, but take solace in the fact that you have a job. Imagine how the white guy who was excluded from employment because of his skin color feels. That's who the real victim is here - the person who was racially discriminated against.
> In my opinion, it would be beneficial if DEI initiatives were confidential and kept "hush hush" within a company.
Personally, I prefer companies to be loud and proud about their DEI initiatives so that I know which companies engage in racial discrimination, rather than it all happening behind closed doors.