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New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

ethicalsystems.org

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Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#81

'For two-thirds of the population, talking politics sincerely, on the job, is uncomfortable. People who hold certain, commonplace views, stay silent believing that expressing those views will carry penalty not reward. ' This sounds like a recipe for disaster for any company. When I worked in the UK no part of my job description was about 'talking politics sincerely' or sharing my 'commonplace views'. I did that in th…

People with, shall we say, radically progressive views, are more than comfortable to share them openly in the staff rooms, kitchens, before and after meetings, etc. without anybody contending with them. Anybody with more centrist, or God forbid conservative views, saves them for the pub afterwards or for their private gatherings. The Overton window seems to shift weekly.

I remember working at a company that had a library room which was sometimes booked for meetings.

Every single time I was in a meeting there, without fail, at least one progressive person in the room had to loudly make some negative remark about Ayn Rand and scoff, sigh loudly, or roll their eyes to express their disapproval. Maybe they'd do all three at once. It was a real meme. I think this was because the room had a poster with quotes from various authors and Ayn Rand may have been on the list, although I'm unclear in my memory.

I always found it funny, the behavior was over-the-top childish coming from grown adults. I just bit my tongue, they were otherwise decent people as coworkers.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#82
I find it far easier to get along in work environments by never discussing sports, religion or politics. Sports, because I don't care; religion and politics - because I want to get my work done and go home. I have worked with people who wore both on their sleeves all day long and found them to be uniformly unpleasant to work with.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#83
post #62
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true... but so does the presumption that the world can be divided up into races based on the superiority of certain races over other races. And that expands beyond expressing political opinions. When management is labeling your entire being and your whole family as inferior, it sucks to even be at work. Edit: I don't mean to oversimplify, it's not just an issue of casual racism, for some things it's life and d…

Evidence of managements labeling your family as inferior?

The world is a big place. Many times I've seen local job ads for computer programmers that explicitly state "male only".

Where I am it is common for the hierarchy within a corporation to have a clear separation along ethnic lines, e.g. construction workers will be local, their supervisors will be from a nearby country, and the big bosses will be from another larger, wealthier country.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#84
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One account is banned and the other not. There's no bot trying to decide what comments are "reasonable"—that would indeed be stupid.

Thanks for your response. I thought the one line offensive response would be easily picked by the bot. But of course I don't know how the bot works.

There is no bot, according to the moderator you're responding to.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#85
post #12
post #3

I don't trust this article. The phrase "Losing viewpoint diversity" is of course crafted to make it sound like a chilling trend. Pretty clear what they want you to think about it. But if you drill into what that's referring to, whether you think it's a bad thing is entirely up to what you think of how the viewpoints are changing. "Fewer racists than ever" also maps to "less viewpoint diversity" but is totally a good…

For the same reason I always look skeptically on other research about "polarization". The trend tends to be that in the past it was common for otherwise-sane people to advocate crazy stuff like bans on interracial marriage. Now the only people who are against interracial marriage are straight-ticket crazy people, and this sorting of society is superficially "polarization" but I can't find the negative in it, because…

Polarization has nothing to do with the craziness of ideas, but the lack of a middle ground.

Polarization has to do with the clustering of beliefs. If attending BLM protests makes you less likely to attend pro-life protests, that is polarization. The strength of that correlation is the amount of polarization.

Acceptance of Inter-racial marriage is a topic that was once far more polarized. That depolarization is exactly allowed us to make progress on the topic as a society.

Thus polarization inhibits cultural growth and change.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#86
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But many conservative viewpoints are not hostile to identities. If I don't agree with Affirmative Action, am I hostile to someone's identity? A majority of Californians at the ballot box will disagree with AA but none of them will say it out loud at the workplace. It's the misconception that identities are "opposed" by certain viewpoints that leads to this.

Many conservative viewpoints are perfectly acceptable to share in the workplace. Down with taxes, small government, privatize and monetize, down with regulations, etc. Well. Except there's some lines. If you work in the oil industry and you complain about regulation of food products, fine. But if you complain about environmental regulations that pertain to your business and an inspector happens to overhear, then your…

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Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#88
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your response. I thought the one line offensive response would be easily picked by the bot. But of course I don't know how the bot works.

There is no bot, according to the moderator you're responding to.

There's software, which is probably what temp8964 meant by "bot".

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#89

I consider myself a very politically informed person. I'm not a politically active person however, largely for the reasons mentioned in the article. I considered myself a liberal by the standards of the time I grew up in. My views on some social issues, particularly 'free speech', are considered a conservative now. I am one of the people the article is concerning who will not publicly voice their political opinions i…

I think one aspect of Polarization in the US is that a big part of it is our expectations of polarization. I think we strongly overestimate the degree to which we can predict someone's political views and world outlook from a single statement.

I am worried we are in a positive feedback were perceptions of polarization lead to self-censorship among the less polarized, which further drives the perceptions of polarization.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#90

Advocating for “viewpoint diversity” is sometimes just code for “I don’t want to be held accountable for my racist views”. Not all political opinions should be tolerated in the workplace. White supremacists, if allowed to run unchecked within your company, will push out people of color. Misogynists will push out women.

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