Ask HN: Is discrimination to promote diversity okay?

Actually, I think there is, at least recently: people flag anything they dislike, they find offensive, they strongly disagree with or simply don't like to see being discussed.

This is, to put it bluntly, insane.

If a system is biased in favor of X, removing that bias doesn't entail that there is now a bias against X. Replacing a biased coin with a fair coin doesn't mean the fair coin is biased just because it's different from the biased coin.

I can't understand why anyone would think differently.

The only people saying that are bitter idiots.

Reading all these anecdotes of disinterested people of color just confirms to me people want to strawman this issue, as they always do.

Nobody is talking about forced hiring of disinterested people. The problematic situation is when several candidates who are perfectly confident, able and willing are not hired, because the hiring manager for some reason just liked that white person better. Every single time. Just... a gut feeling, since they were all pretty much equal.

That practice, where the person hiring always defaults to the white person, even in a mixed group of people with equal skill, is what's problematic, and what needs to be tackled.

Yet people have already begun imagining the most extreme fantasy scenario possible... bad thing is that when you start imagining that, some people actually start doing it because they think they have to. Repeat a lie enough, and people will start thinking it's the truth.

From a more long term point of view, it's also important to increase diversity. Simple from the argument that the more groups you get interested and comfortable with joining a certain industry, the more skill and competition will eventually come around.

Giving more people starter positions and the chance to learn, is exactly how you robustly increase a workforce. But more importantly: having strict rules against abuse.

Here's my time for anecdotal evidence: known several people, perfectly skilled, who just left tech companies because of the casual racism and sexism that HR just decided to ignore.

And when only 1 or 2 people are involved, you can keep the larger workforce thinking there's nothing bad going on. And so when people see a thread like that, they go "I've never seen that". Well yeah, it's being kept out of sight...

Of course this will also stigmatize anyone that could fall under the label 'minority'. If management cannot look beyond the horizon on this simple dynamic, it is probably very bad management.

But since you probably won't, your proclamation to fight racism is very hollow. You might just like to discriminate, projecting your anger or vanity on others.

The goal is to reach equality and you are in the way of it. There aren't any metrics that could satisfy the strive to "diversity" anyway.

> But I would encourage you to focus on the much more widespread similar feeling felt by those being helped up by such efforts.

We teach 4 year olds about the problems with compensatory justice, but you are revealing yourself with that comment. Worse, you try to compensate for different generations. People championing diversity call themselves progressive but at the same time espouse ethics from the 17th century. But here racism is primarily a you problem, not a society problem.