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Howard University opens a new campus at the Googleplex

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Re: Howard University opens a new campus at the Googleplex

#111

Post by tptacek »

mynameishere wrote: post #107
tptacek wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a crazy prediction. "White" means a lot less than people pretend it does. Before the 20th Century, it excluded many European ethnicities. At various points, the Irish, Italians, Greeks, and Jewish people have been "non-white". Solidarity among the relatively fair-skinned only became a thing during the fight to perpetuate Jim Crow, and as a response to the Great Migration. It's hard to pin this down because…

Quit spreading lies. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...

First, don't address me or anyone else on HN that way.

Second: this post is playing a sneaky lawyer trick. It acknowledges --- ferociously --- that there's historically been a hierarchy among European ethnicities in the US, then frames "whiteness" exclusively in terms of the early 20th century, when --- as I said --- Jim Crow and the Great Migration forced a measure of solidarity among European ethnicities against encroachment from blacks. Whites surveyed in 1958 don't appear concerned about intermarriage between Anglo- and Irish- Americans? You don't say!

Re: Howard University opens a new campus at the Googleplex

#113

Post by downandout »

Programs like this promote the very discrimination that they are intended to counteract. People of all other races will see this and argue - correctly - that black students at Howard now have an advantage over them at one of the premier employers in the tech industry. This is wonderful for Howard students, and probably for black CS students looking for employment at Google in general, but not so great for everyone else.

You cannot fix racism by implementing racist programs. You do it by removing race from the hiring equation to the maximum extent possible, and making it known that applicants of all races are welcome and that they will be judged based solely on their skills and qualifications. The kind of program announced today will, and should, backfire on Google.

Re: Howard University opens a new campus at the Googleplex

#114

Post by srssays »

cercatrova wrote: post #103
reader5000 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you're not the person AA hurts. AA doesnt hurt top 1% people, it hurts say top 10% people who are in the wrong ethnic group and lose out to people in the correct ethnic group. Just ask a lower class Asian person with top 10% MCAT scores, and why he lost a med school spot to a middle class URM person with top 20% scores.

But isn't that how you achieve systematic equality? For example, say there are two races X and Y. X is the overachiever (doesn't even have to be a majority, there could be a 50/50 population), while Y is the underachiever, for whatever historical reasons these two groups faced. So, to get Y on the same level as X and restore a meritocracy, you must admit more of Y, even if X does better in some cases. Meritocracy onl…

It's absolutely fine to give extra advantages to people with low incomes. That's economic progressivism.

It's wrong to give extra advantages based on genetics, essentially saying that some people "genetically poor" or "genetically rich", which is what Affirmative Action does.

Re: Howard University opens a new campus at the Googleplex

#115

Post by throwawaymac »

nonce42 wrote: post #96
jedberg wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> silicon valley white Interesting term. Does that basically mean Asian (both eastern and southeastern) and White?

My prediction is in 20 years Asian will be considered part of white. Maybe it's just being in the Silicon Valley bubble, but it already feels much of the way there. (Not trying to offend anyone, but feel safer with throwaway account.)

Asians will never be white until dick size jokes are not a thing, which will never happen.

Re: Howard University opens a new campus at the Googleplex

#116

Post by burkaman »

downandout wrote: post #113

Programs like this promote the very discrimination that they are intended to counteract. People of all other races will see this and argue - correctly - that black students at Howard now have an advantage over them at one of the premier employers in the tech industry. This is wonderful for Howard students, and probably for black CS students looking for employment at Google in general, but not so great for everyone el…

The point of affirmative action is that it's impossible to remove race from the hiring equation, because race affects your applicants right up to the point they send in an application. If you say "I'm colorblind", you're also pretending that everyone else in the world is colorblind, and race had no impact on your applicants' resumes.

Race is a society-wide issue, and it's not possible to solve without recognizing and correcting for it. If you close your eyes and ignore it, racism will still exist and continue to affect people. Even if racism disappeared from America overnight, the issue would not be solved because there would still be lingering cyclical effects from past racism. Parents with fewer opportunities raise kids with fewer opportunities because we live in an imperfect world, and these things require active correction.

Re: Howard University opens a new campus at the Googleplex

#117

Post by [deleted] »

swframe2 wrote: post #110

I want to suggest a naive way to reduce the effect of affirmative action. 1) Join forces to donate to educational institutions specifically to increase the number of students they enroll. If there are X spots being reserved for AA, then ask the school to add X additional spots not usable for AA. Donate specifically for them to build additional dorms, classrooms, etc. For some schools, their endowment is so large, the…

[deleted]

Re: Howard University opens a new campus at the Googleplex

#118

Post by lowbloodsugar »

downandout wrote: post #113

Programs like this promote the very discrimination that they are intended to counteract. People of all other races will see this and argue - correctly - that black students at Howard now have an advantage over them at one of the premier employers in the tech industry. This is wonderful for Howard students, and probably for black CS students looking for employment at Google in general, but not so great for everyone el…

A thought experiment. You have a program that costs $5. You collect that $5 at the door. In order to get to your program, participants must walk down a corridor. In that corridor there are people who will, at gunpoint, take all the money, except $2, from ethnic group A, but not ethnic group B. There is no way to ask for the money later.

You can do nothing about the gunmen in the corridor. You cannot move. Its a thought experiment.

Do you:

a) Say the cost is $5. Because to do otherwise would be racist. No people from group A can take your course.

b) Say that the cost is $5, unless you are from ethnic group A, in which case the cost is $2. Everyone who shows up can take your course. Because to do otherwise would fail to acknowledge the inherent racism of the larger system.

In the US, the larger system is demonstrably racist. People who should have $5 have $2. People who should have 4.0s have 2.0s.

This will backfire on Google in the same way that the "But they ask algorithms questions in their interviews" will backfire on Google: they'll attract smart people who can do the job.

Re: Howard University opens a new campus at the Googleplex

#119

Post by thex10 »

This sounds really cool to me just because of the novelty of having a campus at a megacorporate site. I would've loved to work at the Googleplex as a college student! I think it's really cool that kids these days can have that opportunity, and hope more companies will follow suit.

Re: Howard University opens a new campus at the Googleplex

#120

Post by Kalium »

swframe2 wrote: post #110

I want to suggest a naive way to reduce the effect of affirmative action. 1) Join forces to donate to educational institutions specifically to increase the number of students they enroll. If there are X spots being reserved for AA, then ask the school to add X additional spots not usable for AA. Donate specifically for them to build additional dorms, classrooms, etc. For some schools, their endowment is so large, the…

> There doesn't have to be a zero-sum battle between those who benefit from AA and those who don't.

When resources (jobs, college admissions slots, government funding for programs, etc.) are scarce, there often will be.

When I was in college, one of my classes included a unit on public speaking. We were encouraged to speak on a contentious topic and attempt to be persuasive. On the day I presented, I sat through multiple presentations on the subject of affirmative action. All of them were against it on the basis that it hurt certain ethnic groups. None of the people presenting on that subject were white.

(Me? I was ranting against DRM. Not important.)

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