The Oxymoron of “Data-Driven Innovation”

Completely agree. I actually do understand feeling like you're not part of the mainstream culture if you're not in a major city like NYC or LA. But that is not even close to the same thing as the problems of the marginalized communities the author wants to connect this to (who are either poor, have disabilities, have been targeted by racism, etc.)

I also find this whole style of argument very dubious. The author clearly started from the conclusion first here - that it's important to consider the needs of marginalized groups - which they believe in for purely moral/ideological reasons. And then they're somewhat awkwardly and very transparently back-fitting a different rationale in front of it and arguing that actually this is what's best for your business. The argument is flimsy, and it's also entirely beside the point. If convincing counter-evidence were brought up that shows this entire argument is flawed, is the author going to reverse their stance and say "ok, I was wrong, let's just ignore marginalized groups because they aren't that important to the bottom line"? Of course not.

I feel like this kind of back-fitting argument probably does more harm than good, and might just end up back firing later. Let's just be honest about what we're asking for here - we want companies to consider the needs of marginalized groups, for its own sake because it's the right thing to do.

I can't imagine that you are arguing that non-white, non-cis, and non-hetro people haven't been prejudiced against by whitecishetromales. That's where the "turnabout" comes into play.

If you are pointing out that the "turnabout" is also prejudicial, then I obviously agree. The point I was making is that when it is misapplied, it's potentially helpful (in creating additional awareness in those who are on some spectrum of "allied") and when it is accurately applied, it's detrimental (as it is likely to lead to "defensiveness and entrenchment"). In this way, it may also serve as a way to measure our own position.

Also, I don't think anyone knows whether "many" is accurate. The same point is made by saying "some."

Great post -- thank you for sharing. I love this quote: "Visionary ideas derive directly from centering people at the margins"

> if you want to fix racism in the US you need to address the very real and still very powerful and connected [] racists.

Yes, exactly. And assuming all white/male/heterosexual/whatever people can and should be lumped together helps said racists, as might be expected from their being the ones who originally did so.

That lumping is, again, descriptive. And it's an often-useful description/category in large part because of that historical racism.

Getting worked up over that is a huge waste of time, to the point that I now wonder if it's a sideshow. If we waste our time arguing about if this "the diverse hires left and the new hires after them were white" description is bad, we've been successfully distracted.

The idea that anyone is actually offended or feels harmed by that paragraph we're talking about is absurd - could you imagine how such people would feel if they were part of one of the out-groups instead and didn't just get lumped together but also had been attacked by the centuries of racism in the US?

This is the paragraph in question, once again:

> For example, I once worked for a company that poured a lot of effort into inclusive hiring: they made an inclusion skills rubric, placed ads in “diverse” tech spaces, et cetera. Two years later, all the “diverse people” they had carefully collected had left, and the company had backfilled with almost exclusively cishet white guys.

If you don't let yourself look at the demographics, you blind yourself to any ability to evaluate effectiveness in terms of fighting the historical and present effects of white supremacy in the US. Note that the "diverse people" are similarly lumped together because it's non-judgmentally discussing the effects of a policy, nothing more. I don't see any way someone takes offense at that paragraph, but I see lots of ways someone would pretend to in order to make reactionary/distracting claims about if we even need to try to fight that historical racism.