I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room
imallika.com
I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room
1–10 of 147 posts
Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room
#2This article was flagged unfairly. It's substantive and grounded in personal experience. Those are good qualities for an HN piece whether one agrees or disagrees, so I've turned off flags and rolled back the clock on this submission to give it a second shot.
If you want to comment here, please (re-)familiarize yourself with the site guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, including this one: Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Edit: I feel bad about not being able to find a way to let the author know that her article is currently being discussed on HN, so if any of you know her, could you give a heads-up? When people submit an article, it doesn't get attention, and then we re-boost it, we always email them if we can.
Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room
#3This seems like a good illustration of the soft bigotry of low expectations. Yes, we should make an effort to be inclusive of all individuals, but when that's done by putting people on a pedestal simply because they're a minority, it's superficial, cringy and embarrassing for everyone involved.
Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room
#4One side ostracizes the "other" in an attempt at superiority and domination, as they are naturally driven to do. The other side places the "other" on a pedestal, in an attempt at submissiveness and placation, as they feel natural.
The "other" sees this for what it is - 2 people pandering instead of including them into a group of 3 equals. When confronted, each side will claim this is how they include people, and accuse of sowing dissent.
The more people I meet, the more I realize there is no "them" - there is us, just us, and more of us.
Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room
#5This seems like a good illustration of the soft bigotry of low expectations. Yes, we should make an effort to be inclusive of all individuals, but when that's done by putting people on a pedestal simply because they're a minority, it's superficial, cringy and embarrassing for everyone involved.
In my team, where we have a 50-50 target goal, we were told that if we know a potential woman hire we should refer her not to the regular hiring track, but to a special "woman friendly" hiring track.
Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room
#6This seems like a good illustration of the soft bigotry of low expectations. Yes, we should make an effort to be inclusive of all individuals, but when that's done by putting people on a pedestal simply because they're a minority, it's superficial, cringy and embarrassing for everyone involved.
In my team, where we have a 50-50 target goal, we were told that if we know a potential woman hire we should refer her not to the regular hiring track, but to a special "woman friendly" hiring track.
Is that evidence that there's a "softer" path to employment, or that the regular hiring track sucks?
Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room
#7"All one should care about is - is this excellent or is it not? Is this right or is this wrong?"
I generally agree with this article. But you can't be a white male and speak this way in silicon valley without being shamed and being labeled a Trump supporter. Especially if your company has militant diversity advocates.
Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my team, where we have a 50-50 target goal, we were told that if we know a potential woman hire we should refer her not to the regular hiring track, but to a special "woman friendly" hiring track.
Is that evidence that there's a "softer" path to employment, or that the regular hiring track sucks?
That's exactly what I'm also wondering. Given that the whole company seems genuinely devoted to increasing diversity, I would tend towards the first possibility, especially since the team manager boasted a lot that his team has one of the highest female to male ratio in the company.
Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room
#9The political correctness climate is so unpredictable. I'm considered both sexist & feminist due to being a white male who doesn't pay attention to the gender of my non romantic relationships. Laissez faire ideals makes you an enemy of everyone in an age of 'allies'
Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room
#10>It's substantive and grounded in personal experience.
Yes, but it's the personal experience of someone who has never "had to defend their choice of or fight an uphill battle while selecting engineering as a career choice". Which makes it seem like more of an "argument by outlier" than the expression of some deep universal insight-- yes, maybe Mallika doesn't appreciate someone listening to her talk as "being supportive", but maybe women who have had to fight an uphill battle would appreciate the show of solidarity and the chance afterwards to swap war stories.
(I do agree that it was unfair to flag the article.)