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Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

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Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah those damn Christians blowing up the WTC, trying to shoot up a drawing contest, blowing up people in Boston, etc. Islam is a religion of peace, I'm glad that you see it!

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#152

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 plenty of ingrained racism. I was born there and I can tell you for a fact that racism is alive and well in Europe.

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 shouldn't be a privilege, but that's how things worked out. History made it a privilege. If we ever reach a place in societal development where everyone starts at the same place, we can, and perhaps will, stop calling it that. Until then, it is a privilege, and people will continue calling it that.

No one should feel guilty for having it, and others shouldn't being trying to make others feel guilty for having it (both of those things obviously happen, and people should speak against that, too. Some in the social justice world do exactly that.) Social Justice language is sometimes used as a cudgel, used opportunistically, used cynically, and abused in half a dozen ways (non-identarian left vs identarian liberal fights are often over these issues.) That doesn't mean the language is all wrong, or the meaning is wrong, it means bad people can use tools just like good ones can.

Those with some privileges, but without economic privilege or other similar power can help by speaking out, and may change some minds; those with all kinds of privileges can help even more. When Sam Altman talks about diversity hiring, for example, he does the work of potentially thousands of non-Sam Altmans. It's not about guilt, it's about using power for purposes of a more equitable society.

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#155

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...

After reading the sources I would say there is evidence that employees in the survey they conducted self reported better financial performance from the following options:

"how would you compare your organization’s performance over the past two years in terms of market share? .|.|. Would you say that it was (1) much worse, (2) somewhat worse, (3) about the same, (4) somewhat better, or (5) much better?”

Surely we can be more factual than this?

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#156
In NBA, 74% players are Blacks while Asians are at 0.2%. Maybe some SJWs should lobby to get NBA "reflect more the demographics of the society"???

If you haven't figured out already, I was being sarcastic. This just shows how ridiculous and superficial this whole trend is.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_NBA

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#157
post #20

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…

> 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 please other people. It's not "just to please other people"; it's to attempt to counteract the institutionalized discrimination against minorities that exists throughout the country. Studies have shown[1] that, for example, peop…

"Institutional racism,"(has it undergone re-branding as "institutionalized discrimination"?) is this vague, boogey-man term used as an explanation of last resort to explain the "achievement gap," among other divergences between the races.

The thing is, there is tenuous evidence at best for "institutional racism," and in nowhere near the quantity that would be needed to account for all of its supposed effects. Indeed to the contrary we've had decades of policies seeking parity between between certain segments of society on various measures, and yet the gaps remain virtually unchanged.

There are other exceedingly more plausible explanations for the "achievement gap" and the other divergences. But people in certain segments of polite society have a nasty habit of trying to ruin the lives of anyone who so much as mutters these other explanations.

For the "institutional racism" proponents...

Has anyone attempted to explain why all this "institutional racism" seems to be working to such great benefit for north-east Asians in the US, who consistently rank above the supposed "evil white oppressors" in various socio-economic metrics?

Or why we see common patterns of achievement and behavior between races across societies with wildly different institutional histories?

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the "too busy doing important things" argument for why nobody should spend any time thinking about diversity. Of course, deciding what is important in life is an entirely subjective matter. But just to aid in my understanding of this argument, I would be interested to hear some examples of which companies and activities constitute actual important shit.

Important things: producing a good or service that is valuable to some market and that supports the livelihoods of employees/stakeholders in an equitable way. Not important things: disfavoring groups of people that it is currently stylish to consider as "oppressive", "problematic", or "triggering" in favor of other groups of people that are currently deemed to be "diverse", "oppressed", "modern". Real life isn't hand…

So obviously there is quite a lot of overlap between companies doing important things (by that incredibly broad definition) and companies that devote some of their resources to diversity. It's almost as if working on important things and caring about diversity are not mutually exclusive, that people/companies can care about multiple things...

I don't get why it is so irksome to you that a company would make a diversity effort. It should be irrelevant to the question of whether they are working on important things.

I would guess that you're straight, white, and male, and just don't care how achieving one's goals might be significantly more difficult for other people in the US, because you "don't have time" to consider things that don't affect your own life. Which is all well and good, really, I'm pretty much in the same boat, but I just don't understand what's so bothersome about people that do care about those things.

The words you've chosen to put in quotes are telling...the diversity effort is not a personal crusade against you. It's not about "problematic" groups of people. It's about elevating groups of people who may actually have been systemically disadvantaged through no fault of their own. Do you assert that that doesn't happen? Or just that nobody should care about it?

"Real life isn't handing out stickers to preschoolers." I don't even know what that means. Where is the Code of Real Life written? If people want to hand out stickers, why does that upset you?

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Saying that someone is suffering from "black hinderance" sounds even more terrible.

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#160

In NBA, 74% players are Blacks while Asians are at 0.2%. Maybe some SJWs should lobby to get NBA "reflect more the demographics of the society"??? If you haven't figured out already, I was being sarcastic. This just shows how ridiculous and superficial this whole trend is. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_NBA

You jest, but discrimination in the NBA is a real issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvaM0pMj-8o
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