Facebook’s diversity efforts show little progress after five years

Post by manfredo » Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 4:25 PM UTC

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #45

pwaivers wrote: post #31

> "The upside to this is that white people no longer make up the majority at Facebook." I am all for diversity, but this sentence upsets me. Decreasing one population in the place should not be the goal.

Increasing a minority will require decreasing the share of the majority. Either you're okay with that or you're not.

I'm not sure I follow. If a company has 75% from group A and 25% from group B while these groups make up 66% and 33% of the population respectively then it makes sense to address the underrepresentation of group B. But why would we applaud a 50/50 ratio? Isn't that just an underrepresentation if group A? A majority is not necessarily an overrepresentation.

This line if thing seems liable to give credence to the notion that "diversity" is a dog whistle for achieving an underrepresentation of undesirable groups (men, Whites, and increasingly Asians).

Post by aylmao » Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 7:08 PM UTC

dongkyun wrote: post #46

aylmao wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why this is getting downvoted; he has a very valid point. Economic class/background is as important when it comes to diversity. I feel like there's little conversation about it because it's an even harder problem to tackle and a less obvious one to see. I will say though, to a large extent economic class and race still remain tied in the US.

They're getting downvoted because the people who do care about racial and gender equality very much do care about class mobilization and to premise the question with the idea that they don't care means at best, OP doesn't know what they're talking about and at worst, OP is using class issues in bad faith to bludgeon away any attempts at talking about the former.

> They're getting downvoted because the people who do care about racial and gender equality very much do care about class mobilization

I think this is an overgeneralization. I don't doubt this is mostly the case but I don't think it's conclusive that it is always the case, especially when you look into the activism within and by wealthier classes and corporations.

> to premise the question with the idea that they don't care means at best, OP doesn't know what they're talking about

The way I understood the comment is in reference to Facebook/tech, in which case it's very true: Facebook seems to survey gender and race but there's no mention in their diversity efforts about social/economic background. For all we know, all those great paying jobs could be going to well-off people. 4.9% hispanics of 25000 employees is 1,225 people: Are they first-generation college students born in the US to immigrant parents, middle-class graduates from Mexico's engineering schools or well-off kids from Latin America whose parents could afford them a Harvard education? For the record I know people who would fall under each of these three buckets and I think the idea of classifying them under the same category in diversity efforts is very short-sighted.

> at worst, OP is using class issues in bad faith to bludgeon away any attempts at talking about the former.

I don't know in what faith OP posted, but from his last sentence I gather he is vouching to include economic status as part of "social justice as well", not instead-of.

Re: Facebook’s diversity efforts show little progress after five years

Re: Facebook’s diversity efforts show little progress after five years