Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

Not surprised we have arrived here on HN. After BLM, there were a flurry of posts supporting DIE as if it's the tyleonal to the racism headache.

"If we hire non-whites, WE can solve systemic racism!".

People didn't stop to think that it hurts everyone all around. White people are now ignored for hires based on their race (as is the Left's proposition towards black names on resumes) and minorities are paraded around as if they are corporate mascots.

I feel for you OP. IMO the next hiring landscape is in anonymous handles providing superior results. Keep increasing your skills and climb above the DIE garbage hole.

Is the top comment on this thread seriously a reverse racism rant?

You are right about something, affirmative action is racist, but I feel it is absolutely necessary to try to balance out current inequities. I strongly believe people making arguments like yours, people fighting against affirmative action need to propose an alternative rather than just complain about it.

There are lots of people alive today that couldn't drink from the same fountain or use the same bathroom as white people, and people who had friends and family members lynched (and in the eyes of many George Floyd's death was a lynching). Their neighborhoods were bulldozed to make the highways and they were systematically excluded from housing by redlining. You won't convince me for a second that their children and grandchildren got an equal opportunity. There is so much evidence of systemic disadvantaging of PoC communities today too, underfunded schools because of how we fund schools with local property taxes, turning lots of the public school system into effectively fancy private schools for families well off enough to live in rich neighborhoods.

So I will say it again, I do think at the surface level affirmative action is racist, but it's such a simple thing to realize it seems extremely pointless to even bring up. It is fighting centuries of truly heinous racism and genocide with just a tiny bit of an attempt at positive racism and white people still find a way to be pissed off they aren't getting everything the "deserve".

Personally, I really dislike DEI initiatives and think they should be avoided. Just treat everyone the same. How hard is it, really? Unfortunately, because I am a white man that express these thoughts I am now a racist and a sexist even if the ones who actually commit the racist/sexist/etc acts nowadays mostly are the ones who claim to fight it.

If more people would view people as individuals instead of some kind of collective, I believe a lot would be improved.

As a Hispanic man, I can say that I don't care about whether I earned my spot or lucked into it through my ancestry. Life isn't fair, and I'll gladly take whatever advantages I can scrounge up.

The software interview process in particular is already so capricious that I feel absolutely no shame in tilting it in my favor in any way that I can.

> Prior to this, in the earlier internet age, you had to cut your teeth on IRC and forums. That was where technical people were in the computer tech space.

> Do you know VIRULENTLY anti-black (or woman, or gay) these communities were? I can't begin to describe it. That is totally off-putting to someone who has the ability succeed but does not want to deal with the hate.

Wow, thank you. Gives me a new perspective.