Hey everyone, author here. It seems like this post have been flagged, but I'd like to add a little comment here so it may clarify things. First, a little over a week ago we were having a similar discussion here [1] and I promised I'd post my article about it. This is the article. Second, I want people to understand that this is a complex issue and the solution might/should be as complex. It's not a case of, OK let's…
Viewpoint: 'I feel like I was accidentally hired'
181–190 of 288 posts
Re: Viewpoint: 'I feel like I was accidentally hired'
#182Hey everyone, author here. It seems like this post have been flagged, but I'd like to add a little comment here so it may clarify things. First, a little over a week ago we were having a similar discussion here [1] and I promised I'd post my article about it. This is the article. Second, I want people to understand that this is a complex issue and the solution might/should be as complex. It's not a case of, OK let's…
Thanks for speaking up. I don't know how to fix any of this, but I do know that we need to value each other's experiences, and that can't happen without us sharing them for what they are. Hard as it is for you, and easy as it is to say for me, I do believe your uncomfortable experiences are changing things for the better. Every VC that hurries out of a room may not have invested in your company, but you just pushed a…
Re: Viewpoint: 'I feel like I was accidentally hired'
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Like when someone performs a racist act, how should we respond in a modern society? You'd first have to define what a racist act is and who gets to decide that it is so. We have a working system for these matters - legislative and judicial branches of government.
I feel like you're trying to look at this from a very abstract place where it is impossible to come to some all encompassing grand unifying theory and it feels like without that we shouldn't act until we have an answer to that question. I'm asking a question that says in spite of not having a perfect answer when you are in a situation and you watch a friend do a racist act, what response if any do you think is approp…
Re: Viewpoint: 'I feel like I was accidentally hired'
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think he's saying that discrimination in many forms is often - but not always - a side effect of evolutionary tribal tendencies and that if we don't take that into account when trying to reduce discrimination our efforts won't be successful. To me that sounds like realistic, if also extremely depressing, point. I'm optimistic though. We've been successfully living in larger and larger cultures throughout history an…
I want to be clear, I wasn't debating there was some truth to the idea that racism is that thing that you can tie to an evolutionary biological level around a fear of outsiders. But I guess it is the second part that you touched on here as well. When you say take that into account.. how specifically? Like when someone performs a racist act, how should we respond in a modern society?
One part of anti-racism is establishing principles that allow "tribes" to coexist and treat members of other tribe fairly. That's all the anti-discrimination rules, requiring commerce and employment to happen on fair principles for outsiders as well; that's all the control of violence, hate speech, threats of violence.
The other part (or is it a different direction?) is to try to form a single tribe - unification, assimilation, rallying together against an external threat, general acceptance etc. "Building a nation" if you will, reducing differences and establishing national unity, though often at the cost of some international tribalism.
If we look at the specific situations described in the original article, it seems to me that there in most of them there are no "racist acts" (violations of the first part) involved, this story (unlike many others) does not involve the "other tribe" acting horribly against the members of "his tribe" - the article focuses mainly on the fact that mr. Diallo is not treated as a "member of this tribe", and provides many illustrative examples of natural emotional pain and alienation caused by being treated as an outsider, even if outsiders are treated fairly.
And that's conceptually very different. It's reasonable to mandate fair treatment for everyone. But it's not reasonable to mandate every tribe or subtribe to accept someone (especially because usually "the tribe" is not organized enough, it's effectively a sum of individual decisions) - freedom of association is a quite fundamental thing, it's completely reasonable for someone to (for example) treat only their extended family as "their tribe"; or for someone to treat only members of their particular religion as "their tribe", shunning those familymembers who are not. It's a free individual choice. It's worth noting that if you look at any list of prohibited discrimination types, then there's a "tribe" in almost all cases. People can and will treat someone else as "not my tribe" for all kinds of reasons - political beliefs, sports team preferences, having not seen (or not liking) a particular TV show, etc, and that is their right. You can't mandate being friends with someone; it's permissible to treat Bob as an outsider just because Bob is kind of an asshole, and it's permissible to treat Bob as an outsider just because you are kind of an asshole and hate him for no good reason.
You can implement various policies to try and slowly erode factional/"tribal" differences. But you can't eliminate the tribes or determine their membership. If (for example) Montagues and Capulets hate each other, you can't mandate them to stop that hate. If someone from the Montague "tribe" wants to marry a Capulet, then you can (and should) have policies so that they can marry despite the wishes of the tribe (if they're adults, unlike Romeo&Juliet), however, if the "tribe" wants to expel them because of that and treat them forever as outsiders, that's their right which can not (and should not) be prevented.
Re: Viewpoint: 'I feel like I was accidentally hired'
#185The author hits on something really important. Many people who entered the field 10+ years ago are people who had computers as children. If you’re 30+ right now, that means your family had some means, because computers were very expensive up until pretty recently. Hopefully we’ll see the pipe really getting wide now, and many more people from many different backgrounds entering this excellent field.
Nope. My parents were refugees and arrived in this country with just the clothes on their backs. They worked factory jobs their entire life and never made much more than minimum wage. I scraped and saved to buy my first computer and teach myself about the internet. We were never given anything from anyone.
Re: Viewpoint: 'I feel like I was accidentally hired'
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Like when someone performs a racist act, how should we respond in a modern society? You'd first have to define what a racist act is and who gets to decide that it is so. We have a working system for these matters - legislative and judicial branches of government.
I feel like you're trying to look at this from a very abstract place where it is impossible to come to some all encompassing grand unifying theory and it feels like without that we shouldn't act until we have an answer to that question. I'm asking a question that says in spite of not having a perfect answer when you are in a situation and you watch a friend do a racist act, what response if any do you think is approp…
Which leads me to believe that my definition of a racist act, is different from yours.
Please provide your definition.
Re: Viewpoint: 'I feel like I was accidentally hired'
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lol. The classic "no YOU'RE racist for pointing out race exists!" Deny that black Americans are terrorized by cops. Pretend that people of color is a non concept all you want. It won't change reality. You are aiding a racist status quo when you fight against ally causes like BLM.
it seems to me a rather dangerous precedent to argue that one must ally with blm. after all if you are not a social conservative you are perpetuating an immoral status quo. of course one might work to end qualified immunity for example or to equalize the education and economic gaps without being a Marxist. let's not confuse ends and means.
Re: Viewpoint: 'I feel like I was accidentally hired'
#188> Black people make up 13% of the US population, we are naturally in the minority. But in the tech workforce, we are missing. Among the top eight largest tech companies in the land, black people account for only 3.1% of the workforce. I think the right metric to look at is the "percentage of black people who have the necessary degrees or equivalent qualifications". You can't blame companies for the problem if the dis…
How many major tech companies have serious hubs in Atlanta? Some of them, but certainly not all.
People don’t like to move. A nontrivial amount of the pipeline problem can be addressed by opening offices in the southeast.
Re: Viewpoint: 'I feel like I was accidentally hired'
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pray, tell. Why would these repressed Cubans not live together with hispanics, in hispanic ghettos. Speaking the same language and all. After all, that would make them a stronger force, and definitely give them more diversity.
They... Do...? That's why an empowerment movement might focus on Latinx in general, and as you go more local you might find some of the same people at the state Latinx rally as you do at a city's Cuban American resource exchange group or whatever. The point is that self-sorting doesn't by definition mean that humans are inherently racist or that it's natural/ethical to oppress minority populations, which I take as on…
So the cubans now live side by side with mexicans? And both they and mexicans/south americans self-identify as hispanics/latinx and not cubans, mexicans or something else?
And having a Cuban American cultural exchange is just an oddity of history? And is now more the latinx american cultural exchange?
Re: Viewpoint: 'I feel like I was accidentally hired'
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here is an interesting observation. If we take a look at how different nations are distributed across big cities, we can see that many neighborhoods are race specific. A lot of cities have chinese, jewish, russian, mexican, etc. neighborhoods, meaning that people _naturally_ want to live with _similar_ people. What's more important, it happens organically. It's not like some organization or government forces people t…
You are right. Some of the sibling replies argue the contrary by using a sleight of hand; stating the desire to associate from only one of the two parties. Take for example the relationship between a man and woman. If both want to live with each other, everything is fine. What if the man wants to associate with the woman, but she doesn't? Do we force her to accept the man? Does he have a right to access her? Obviousl…
And this is undesirable with no restrictions which is why societies constrain the freedom of association, in particular, in the US, via various "Civil Rights" acts.