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Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

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Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#141

Post by Futurebot »

balls187 wrote: post #130
dijit wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, it's fine that it's racist, because I as a white male have it so good? Seems odd to me mate, there are things that being white certainly doesn't buy, it's not a ticket to middle-class. Being cis doesn't make me any more worse at my job than being gay would, don't judge me on that merit it's bullshit. FWIW I grew up incredibly poor and my "advantage" in IT was that people don't care about your background. If I had…

> Seems odd to me mate, there are things that being white certainly doesn't buy, it's not a ticket to middle-class. Perhaps not. But there are things that being white does grant you: 1. Police won't hassle you for driving a nice car. 2. Police won't hassle you for walking in a nice neighborhood. 3. People won't report you as "suspicious looking" for wearing a hoodie and walking in a neighborhood. 4. Police won't be a…

Exactly. This is a frequently misunderstood set of points. Having non-economic privileges does not automatically make you wealthy or even non-poor, and it doesn't automatically give you the best jobs or even any job. Some non-econ privileges are also relative not just to each other, but to each other in a geographic sense (skin color privilege helps you a lot more in Atlanta than in a town in Appalachia, for example.)

What it can do, for example, is help keep you from getting shot by the police on the way to your interview.

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#142

Post by ASpring »

ps4fanboy wrote: post #127

I dont want to live or work in a society where employees at every company reflect the demographics of that society, where everyone gets equal pay, feels less and less like diversity and more and more about conformity. Its the road to socialism, if all of this diversity was valuable the market will reward companies accordingly.

And it does. More diverse companies perform better financially.

https://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/impactge...

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#143

Post by ASpring »

pwim wrote: post #119

Previously I thought hiring diversity for diversity's sake didn't make sense, and hiring should be based solely on "merit". After all, as a company, you want to hire the best people. However, since then, I have found there is research that indicates diverse groups can be more advantageous than homogenous groups of highly talented people [1], [2]. So from this perspective, striving for diversity makes economic sense.…

I'm glad someone is making this point. Here is a concise summary pdf from NCWIT.

https://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/impactge...

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#144

Post by balls187 »

Futurebot wrote: post #141
balls187 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seems odd to me mate, there are things that being white certainly doesn't buy, it's not a ticket to middle-class. Perhaps not. But there are things that being white does grant you: 1. Police won't hassle you for driving a nice car. 2. Police won't hassle you for walking in a nice neighborhood. 3. People won't report you as "suspicious looking" for wearing a hoodie and walking in a neighborhood. 4. Police won't be a…

Exactly. This is a frequently misunderstood set of points. Having non-economic privileges does not automatically make you wealthy or even non-poor, and it doesn't automatically give you the best jobs or even any job. Some non-econ privileges are also relative not just to each other, but to each other in a geographic sense (skin color privilege helps you a lot more in Atlanta than in a town in Appalachia, for example.…

> Having non-economic privileges

I can't stand referring to my comment as "white privilege." It's just another way to discount a person simply because of their race.

Being white is like starting a race at the starting line. Being black can be like starting that same race 10 feet back.

Starting at the starting line, isn't a privilege--it's just how a race should be, in order to be fair for everyone participating.

What it also means is that being black means you just have to run faster to win.

> What it can do, for example, is help keep you from getting shot by the police on the way to your interview.

Which we should solve the problem, not badger whites to feel guilty by calling it a privilege.

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#145

Post by almostApatriot1 »

whatever_dude wrote: post #64
guessmyname wrote: post #12

This blog post reads to me like the Pokemon motto "Gotta Catch 'Em All". Being non-american (I'm from a South American country) it is hard for me to understand the importance giving to these things associated to racism and sexism. The United States is the only place I have seen where people invest a considerable amount of time and resources just to put people from minor groups or specific genders in pedestals just to…

> You will (probably) never see such thing in Latin American because no one cares why color your skin is or what gender you identify with in order to get a specific job. That is not true. Racism (and other forms of discrimination) exist in South/Latin America. It's just very well hidden. It does not exist in discourse, but profiling is blatant and in many ways even accepted. I'd argue that it's so culturally entrench…

It's complete BS. Even anti-semitism in South America is through the roof.

"A 2011 poll conducted by the Gino Germani Research Institute of the University of Buenos Aires on behalf of the Anti-Defamation League and Delegación de Asociaciones Israelitas Argentinas showed that a majority of Argentines held anti-semitic sentiments or prejudices. Of the 1,510 Argentines surveyed, 82% agreed with statements "that Jews are preoccupied with making money," 49% said that they "talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust", 68% said that they have "too much power in the business world", and 22% said that the Jews killed Jesus. The majority of people interviewed also expressed belief that Jews are more loyal to Israel than their country of birth"[0]

[0] http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-Features/Study-reve...

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#146

Post by mcguire »

superpatosainz wrote: post #39
superpatosainz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mapuches you mean? Well, living in Chile, I've learnt that there's no racism here BUT: -There's classism, a lot. Both from the lower classes to the upper and vice versa. There's also a lot of anger left from the various dictatorships that ruled in the eighties. -In some countries, here included, there's also big prejudice against native cultures like the Mapuches. "They're all lazy drunkards". These problems mostly s…

To add (and replying to rco8786): I think this is not racism. Because ethnicity is not race, and almost everybody by now through mestizaje has native blood. The early colonial period might have a racist component with "sistema de castas" (Spaniard born in America = Criollo, Spaniard with Native = Mestizo, Spaniard with African slave = Mulato, so on). But now race doesn't even matter because we are all almost the same…

Genetically, "races" don't exist; discrimination based on what you want to call ethnicity is exactly the problem

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#147

Post by almostApatriot1 »

danudey wrote: post #117
guessmyname wrote: post #12

This blog post reads to me like the Pokemon motto "Gotta Catch 'Em All". Being non-american (I'm from a South American country) it is hard for me to understand the importance giving to these things associated to racism and sexism. The United States is the only place I have seen where people invest a considerable amount of time and resources just to put people from minor groups or specific genders in pedestals just to…

Europe doesn't have the sort of ingrained racism that exists in the United States. For example: > Despite similar rates of drug use, black people are nearly four times as likely to be arrested for marijuana use,⁴ and black males are often given longer sentences for crimes than their white peers.⁵ [ from https://medium.com/@dan_nott/what-is-mass-incarceration-ff73... ] Likewise, women tend to make significantly less m…

Europe has a different type of racism though. There's a reason why the Muslims there become extremists but stuff like that almost never happens in the USA.

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#148

Post by joseph1337 »

danudey wrote: post #117
guessmyname wrote: post #12

This blog post reads to me like the Pokemon motto "Gotta Catch 'Em All". Being non-american (I'm from a South American country) it is hard for me to understand the importance giving to these things associated to racism and sexism. The United States is the only place I have seen where people invest a considerable amount of time and resources just to put people from minor groups or specific genders in pedestals just to…

Europe doesn't have the sort of ingrained racism that exists in the United States. For example: > Despite similar rates of drug use, black people are nearly four times as likely to be arrested for marijuana use,⁴ and black males are often given longer sentences for crimes than their white peers.⁵ [ from https://medium.com/@dan_nott/what-is-mass-incarceration-ff73... ] Likewise, women tend to make significantly less m…

It would be good if the article took into account if the blacks had other felonies in their history.

>Likewise, women tend to make significantly less money for doing the same work

This has been debunked many times, women usually don't take overtime and generally work less than men. On a per-hour basis they make basically the same, many times a tad more.

The rest of your comment about "diversity" (reducing the number of whites) is basically typical leftist-kumbaya BS with no data to support it.

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#149

Post by paloaltokid »

guessmyname wrote: post #12

This blog post reads to me like the Pokemon motto "Gotta Catch 'Em All". Being non-american (I'm from a South American country) it is hard for me to understand the importance giving to these things associated to racism and sexism. The United States is the only place I have seen where people invest a considerable amount of time and resources just to put people from minor groups or specific genders in pedestals just to…

> You will (probably) never see such thing in Latin American because no one cares why color your skin is or what gender you identify with in order to get a specific job.

Are you aware that Brazil, the largest South American country, imported more slaves than anyone else? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Brazil

I find it extremely hard to believe that racism does not exist in Latin or South America.

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#150

Post by paloaltokid »

e40 wrote: post #83
dragonwriter wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've known a number of people from various Latin American countries, and am married to one of them, and they've pretty consistently report that racism is a feature of society there, though the particular forms vary. Anti-black racism is apparently significant in many parts of Latin America, as is (though not separate in the same places) anti-indigenous racism.

Just the other day I read a comment on HN, I think, about how in Mexico there is racial stratification between light and dark-skinned people, and how they even have different ways of speaking. The point was that people can tell immediately which class you are in and act accordingly. So, yeah, I think this is a (bad) feature of humans everywhere, not just the US.

An Indian colleague of mine told me that she felt it was the same in India with respect to the caste system (she was born a Brahmin). She said she could tell from the way people spoke what caste they were from.

When I hear folks from India talk about the caste system, it sounds very similar to how people in the US talk about racism against blacks.

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