#FFFFFF Diversity

The authors address the criticism here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wendy-m-williams/women-scienti...

Most of this criticism doesn't stand up to even a cursory reading. For example: "not only are there less women in STEM fields [..]" No shit, Sherlock, I don't think anybody disputed that.

Or the study that shows a disadvantage for mothers vs. fathers. The very same study shows a hiring/renumeration disadvantage for childless men vs. childless women. So yes, there's a dynamic here, but it's not male/female.

Also, the original comment I replied to was that outstanding developers are overlooked. None of the studies I've seen that show gender/racial bias (there are a few), deal with outstanding candidates (the Wiliams/Ceci did, IIRC). And incidentally not sure why you refer to "studies", your two links refer to the same single study.

There was another study (I think it was a different one) touted as showing hiring biases in STEM, except it turns out the study was performed in psychology departments.

Etc. etc.

There's some great information out there on the web in case you are interested, for example the Pinker / Spelke debate. Here's a quote:

"PINKER: But that makes the wrong prediction: the harder the science, the greater the participation of women! We find exactly the opposite: it's the most subjective fields within academia — the social sciences, the humanities, the helping professions — that have the greatest representation of women. This follows exactly from the choices that women express in what gives them satisfaction in life. But it goes in the opposite direction to the prediction you made about the role of objective criteria in bringing about gender equity. Surely it's physics, and not, say, sociology, that has the more objective criteria for success."

http://edge.org/3rd_culture/debate05/debate05_index.html

Who is this author? This Erica Joy? Is she real? While the story told by the author sounds plausible and real. I can't verify if Erica Joy is the true author nor if Erica Joy is a real authentic person.

Before you dismiss me, I ask these questions because who's to say that some sexist white men realizing that women were organizing to stop sexism didn't come up with a propaganda ploy to cause division and diversion among women. How can I verify that this story and article is not controlled by someone employing a provocateur?

How did the extremely wealthy capitalists maintain more control and slow down the rise of the labor force? They pitted the workers against each other...

How can I verify Erica Joy (without spending vast amounts of time)?

EDIT: I see she has a twitter account. And her posts and info appear real. But think about it how easy it would be for some sexist white men to setup a web of fake information to infiltrate these media outlets in order to start a fake fight between white and black women in an attempt to keep women divided (and looking bad for fighting)?

quotas lead to inclusion. and inclusion is what's important. inclusion includes being represented at conferences.

I am in no way arguing against the actual idea of including every human being, regardless of whether I think they have historically been oppressed. I'm arguing against the idea of choosing one slice of humanity that I need to "be more inclusive" to today, and the idea that that alone is practical, effective, fair advice.

"Be more inclusive" sounds like a platitude that's not very actionable. How do I know if I'm failing? Is it when I don't meet some arbitrary quota or percentage? But I thought quotas were bad. And who gets to decide what the numbers are? Do I know I'm failing when people write articles like this? By that standard I'll never succeed.

> none of that applies when you're actively going out of your way to be more inclusive of POC.

So, should I not go out of my way to "be more inclusive" of Jews or gays? In other comments, you talk about how Asians are successfully assimilated or whatever, so I guess you would prefer I "be more inclusive" more to Black people than to Asian people? Does that mean Asians are excluded from being POC? Or just that "who I need to go out of my way for" is constantly changing and entirely subjective? I feel like a racist for even googling POC to make sure I know the definition, let alone the idea of evaluating what I think someone's racial heritage is, to decide what race-based treatment they should get. ("Does she just pass as white, or is she really white? Hmm, I'd better consult Wikipedia on racial nose shapes and eye colors." This is a deliberately absurd response, but my point is that being "inclusive to POC" means being able to reliably identify POC, which is difficult and pretty much racist.)

[Same poster as ohhimark, had forgotten my password]

Maybe so, but what I mean is that I (and presumably the people she is writing this for) are not black women. They're not indians, asians and many other things too of course (which is my point).

As an opinion piece (which I suppose it is), it's something interesting to think about. Yet, doesn't it say something about everyone of us if even minorities advocating for equal rights don't see the bigger picture and advocate for more than their specific situation?

It's a self-defeating argument in a way: the author is arguing that people are caring mostly for only one type of inequality… by decrying only their specific situation while making no mention of all the other types.

I guess what I am saying is that I wish the author would have framed her case as an example tying in to the general case.

When one gets to this point in their reasoning, perhaps they'd realize that we are resource-constrained and no matter what we do, we'll be "excluding" some categories.

And yet what I just wrote is too dismissive. I don't know what the best way to go about all this is, but it sure is very upsetting to be blamed, as part of the "dominant group", for not doing enough when the very people pointing the fingers seem to have similar biases towards minority groups they are not part of.

Then again, perhaps in this case they could have just called the event "inclusion for women" since that's what it's currently focused on.