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Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

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Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

#41

Post by sokoloff »

whimsicalism wrote: post #37
xondono wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you took the assumption that black people are innately less interested in tech as true. Or maybe more interested but much more discriminated. The point is that you can’t see equality of opportunity by looking at the output.

I think a good baseline is similar levels of innate interest. The fact that the output is so skewed seems to logically suggest some issue with equality of opportunity?

I agree it suggests that possibility. Now what?

IMO, you have to look deeper to try to understand the drivers of the suggested inequality for fixing the drivers is what fixes the system.

What are the filters or moments that create skew between interest and eventual accomplishment? How do we remove/reduce them?

Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

#42

Post by noslenwerdna »

Traster wrote: post #24

Some of this looks quite.... questionable, and ironically for people that spend so much of their time attacking "the media", this authors would do well to learn something about journalism, and some of it seems downright disingenous. For example, the author talks about representation and talks about that in terms of percentage of white people hired in big tech, but if you dig in to those numbers you find out that basi…

The author calls for tech journals to release their race data. This is why the author has to resort to the approximations you take issue with.

"Big Tech Media corporations should do the right thing and release the demographic breakdown of their employee base. There is even a federal requirement to file the form EEO-1 Survey which breaks this data down."

Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

#43

Post by whimsicalism »

sokoloff wrote: post #41
whimsicalism wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a good baseline is similar levels of innate interest. The fact that the output is so skewed seems to logically suggest some issue with equality of opportunity?

I agree it suggests that possibility. Now what? IMO, you have to look deeper to try to understand the drivers of the suggested inequality for fixing the drivers is what fixes the system. What are the filters or moments that create skew between interest and eventual accomplishment? How do we remove/reduce them?

Oh I absolutely agree that you have to look deeper to understand the drivers. I also agree that many of the drivers are from far before any candidate hits the hiring pipeline or anything like that.

But given that in this thread there are lots of people denying that this is even suggestive of a problem, I can also see the merit in collecting the information just to demonstrate that a problem even exists - it is hard to get buy-in among people who do not believe that race should be discussed in the 21st century.

Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

#44

Post by mjburgess »

adwn wrote: post #13

Where's my PC Bullshit Bingo (TM) card? I need to cross off a couple of fields: 1) reducing "diversity" to "different skin colors" 2) fixating on the Third-Reich-esque concept of "human race" 3) insisting that skin colors can be neatly sorted into 4-5 discrete categories 4) lamenting the ratio between these categories, without stating what the correct ratio should be, and why

It's better to read this as just a form of "genuine politics" in the sense that it's one group saying they want more resources than they have.

Here, the message is basically: our people want more of what your people have. ("Proper ratios" arent the point). This is what most of these movements are about, a certain type of economic-political warefare most accute when high-status positions are rare and there's a lot of competition for them.

I think this perspective also, in some sense, "humanises, justifies and rationalises" this type of agit-prop. Ie., I actually have a lot of sympathy for "genuine politics" -- ie., competition over finite resources and their allocation.

It's just some people saying, "we think we're owed more than we have" -- and that's a real political claim everyone, at somepoint, makes justifiably. Here, I say: let them make their demands. It's part of politics. It is likely this author (or their group) wants a resource: a job in journalism. There arent many. If they have some grounds to demand it, let them demand it. (It is however dressed up and disguised in this weird theology of race, gender, etc.).

Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

#45

Post by hagbard_c »

orangepurple wrote: post #4

"Anti" racists are professional victims. Don't engage with them. They will always find a way to twist a disagreement going against their favor into an oppression narrative.

"Anti" racists are racists, leading to the last few years seeing an enormous increase in the number of explicit racists in the public discourse. Their methods are very similar to those of the groups they claim to shun while their numbers are far higher. They have also managed to achieve positions of power from where to express their explicit racism and have been doing so at an increasing pace because they don't get any real blowback. I can only assume this to be caused by the fact that this is such a recent and brazen phenomenon that people are just stunned into silence, not willing to believe that the public discourse has suddenly been set back a century.

Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

#46

Post by dayvid »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #10

Compared to programming and tech, success in a lot of fields in the humanities, including journalism is far more connected to who you know, what family you were born into, what college you went to, and your overall personal network. In such an environment, it is unsurprising that there is a severe lack of diversity. I have never received a satisfactory answer for why a lot of people from these fields are all about "E…

People hate on tech interviews, but it's honestly a lot more fair than traditional interviewing if done properly. You only gauge the candidate on their ability to solve and think through a problem. I also follow a trainer's pattern who doesn't read the candidate's resume before a technical screen to further reduce bias.

Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

#47

Post by furgooswft13 »

whimsicalism wrote: post #36
emsy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I‘m from Germany, so I’m close to France but still have an outside perspective and your comment is ridiculous.

Based on? Nobody with as close of ties to white supremacy has ever gotten as near to the presidency in the US as Marine Lepen. US nightclubs do not routinely filter based on race, unlike a sizeable percentage of Paris nightclubs from past investigative reporting. Is it possible that maybe you just don't notice the brunt of it because there are fewer people of African descent in both of these countries?

[flagged]

Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

#48

Post by aspaceman »

whimsicalism wrote: post #39
kleene_op wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I'm convinced the most racist people are those who can't stop talking about race, and that would include a fair amount of self-proclaimed and vocal "anti-racists".

This seems extremely premature given the massive disparities that still exist today racially. The average wealth of a black family in Boston is $8 whereas the average wealth of a white family is about $200,000. How do we talk about these disparities if we throw away the language to talk about race? Or is your argument that these disparities are innate? Or that they are not at all due to the legacy of explicitly race…

By talking about policies that uplift the poor generally. And worker friendly policies all around.

If more black people are poor, then more black people will be helped by such policies. If we want to help the poor, let's help the poor.

If we only help the "black poor" we have to precisely codify what being black is, and I'm sick of such race science. The argument that being black implies the need of additional help is even _further_ condescending.

Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

#49

Post by twofornone »

whimsicalism wrote: post #36
emsy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I‘m from Germany, so I’m close to France but still have an outside perspective and your comment is ridiculous.

Based on? Nobody with as close of ties to white supremacy has ever gotten as near to the presidency in the US as Marine Lepen. US nightclubs do not routinely filter based on race, unlike a sizeable percentage of Paris nightclubs from past investigative reporting. Is it possible that maybe you just don't notice the brunt of it because there are fewer people of African descent in both of these countries?

Maybe people like LePen are growing in popularity because people like you absolutely refuse to acknowledge the social, cultural, and financial costs of importing millions of, as you put it, "brown people"? Maybe these people are tired of being dehumanized as nazis for attempting to voice legitimate grievances?

Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

#50

Post by whimsicalism »

aspaceman wrote: post #48
whimsicalism wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems extremely premature given the massive disparities that still exist today racially. The average wealth of a black family in Boston is $8 whereas the average wealth of a white family is about $200,000. How do we talk about these disparities if we throw away the language to talk about race? Or is your argument that these disparities are innate? Or that they are not at all due to the legacy of explicitly race…

By talking about policies that uplift the poor generally. And worker friendly policies all around. If more black people are poor, then more black people will be helped by such policies. If we want to help the poor, let's help the poor. If we only help the "black poor" we have to precisely codify what being black is, and I'm sick of such race science. The argument that being black implies the need of additional help i…

> If more black people are poor, then more black people will be helped by such policies. If we want to help the poor, let's help the poor.

But I don't think the causes of poverty are universal, and for lots of black people, they are racially driven.

Discussing policies around the "poor generally" while banning discussion of race means abdicating any attempts at integrating schools, means that it is impossible to address discrimination against pepole with black sounding names (50% less likely to get a callback), means that it is impossible to discuss ongoing discrimination in the housing market (rampant, https://projects.newsday.com/long-island/real-estate-agents-... is a great resource if you want to see what racism in the urban US in the 21st century looks like).

None of those problems - all of which are likely large proximate causes for the racial disparities here - could be addressed if we are only allowed to talk about class and not race.

No compelling reason for why any discussion of race should be taboo has been provided. If the people who are discussing race in this manner are the "most racist", they're doing a pretty bad job at it given the massive disparities benefiting white poeple in pretty much all sectors of society in the country.

It seems ridiculous to me that the solution is to stop discussing race at all in a country that had legally enshrined anti-black discrimination within living memory.

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