Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company • Hacker News Board

Re: Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

#481

Post by dbrueck » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 4:58 PM UTC

zamalek wrote: post #422

dbrueck wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm... this sounds an awful lot like, "because you're responding to a comment made by a black person, the only acceptable response is one of total agreement". I think you might want to reflect for a minute on the importance of nuance in a discussion, and the net effect of trying to police comments on others' behalf. I completely believe the commenter's experience, but I also witnessed the opposite a lot (and was deep…

> the only acceptable response is one of total agreement That's not exactly it. The only informed response about a black person's experience on these platforms is a black person's. When people talk about "lived experience," the implication is that empathy is practically impossible. The best you can offer is sympathy. > I've been on the receiving end of racist remarks offline I am a white person who has been on the re…

> The best you can offer is sympathy. > I can almost guarantee that you have not [experienced racism] - especially if you are American.

My goodness! How can you honestly make such an assertion? I am American, I've visited every state and lived in a dozen of them. I am well-acquainted with many forms of racism and am fascinated that you could believe such a statement. All I can say is that you are unequivocally wrong.

> Don't wash the black community's suffering with white experiences.

This is absurd - finding common ground is the key to rooting out and overcoming things like racism. Always insisting that someone's experience is too different for others to understand only serves to perpetuate division.

I will never know what it's like to be a black person and all of the stupid things black people have to up with. But experiencing unkindness and bigotry helps me understand a little. And while having just a couple of experiences where someone judged me and was cruel to me simply for being white is nowhere near the same thing as dealing with it for years, it's something I can extrapolate from, and it taught me more about racism than any number of books or articles ever could.

Re: Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

#482

Post by PuppyTailWags » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 4:58 PM UTC

busterarm wrote: post #300

grogenaut wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet the n-bomb, gay and b*tch and other words as a universal slur and negative adjective were everywhere on irc. Casual rape references were constant, it was about as bad as Xbox voice chat. I have trouble going back and reading much of bash.org's top 100 due to the things you're claiming didn't exist. http://bash.org/?99060 http://bash.org/?5775 http://bash.org/?23601 Just because you didn't mean it or it didn't bot…

anything on bash.org is pretty solidly mid->late era IRC, not "early IRC" as was discussed above. "Early IRC" ends with The Great Split (ircnet fork). Heck, most of Early IRC is extremely Euro-centric even.

ngl the implication that something happened in the world of irc that turned it from this apolitical, progressive utopia to a jew-joke, rape-joke, -ism-everywhere cesspool is fascinating and please tell me more about it, not sarcastic

Re: Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

#483

Post by PuppyTailWags » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 5:01 PM UTC

hnuser123456 wrote: post #480

PuppyTailWags wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's nuanced. Women experience way more sexual harassment and being stalked than men online, even though men as slightly more likely to experience any online harassment in general. I can totally understand being specifically stalked or sexually harassed is on a totally different field than being called a retard for a suboptimal leetcode answer.

I had someone pay money, like $10 to attach a banner to my name on a forum, denying that I had a certification that I revealed I had to back up my claims of knowing a superior answer to some pointless argument. It was unsettling and aggravating for about a month before I found humor in it all. It's still one of my favorite communities and overall far more mature than when that happened ~10 years ago. Most people ther…

That doesn't address my point that women are way more likely to explicitly receive sexual harassment and stalking even when men report receiving more online harassment generally. I'm not arguing that you weren't harassed online, only that harassment is way more nuanced than whether or not everyone was equally victimized.

Re: Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

#484

Post by colpabar » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 5:02 PM UTC

AdrianB1 wrote: post #459

_wolfie_ wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yellow is not a color? I always assumed that Asians are included in PoC.

What we learned in school decades ago is no longer considered correct by some people. Also logic is not a strong point of DEI people, for them math is racist [0] and logic is the basis of most math, so it is also racist. Also white is a color and white people are not even white, but pink [1]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29650790 [1] https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Pink_skin

Technically, white is all colors.

Re: Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

#485

Post by SargeDebian » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 5:02 PM UTC

rel2thr wrote: post #13

fatnoah wrote: post #4

I think you raise some good points, and I think there are ways to handle DEI hiring well, and ways not to do it well. IMHO, when it's done well, DEI hiring isn't about filling quotas or giving anyone an edge, but it's about making sure that everyone has an equal chance. I've been part of DEI hiring at a couple companies, and my role has been much more about answering questions and making sure that candidates start th…

> it's about making sure that everyone has an equal chance How does that look in practice? In most companies it seems that means that under-represented people get green lighted at the resume screen step at a much higher percentage than over-represented people. But the bar is the same at the interview stage. But don't you see how that is a big dis-advantage for the median over-represented applicant?

If you're doing this at selection time, you're already late.

* Make sure you have a campus presence on a diverse set of universities. I'm not American, but as I understand it that could mean Historically Black Universities, and not just the Ivy League or a place where the current workforce went

* In line with that, think through which organizations you partner with. An employer that traditionally hired from/sponsored fraternity-like organizations that are mostly white, could also work with student associations that represent a broader spectrum of potential talent, or that specifically represent underrepresented groups

* One job ad I saw had a line "Did you know women are less likely to apply if they don't meet all criteria, whereas men are more likely to apply when they meet a few? If you think you can add value to our team, we encourage everyone to apply". I thought that was helpful.

Anyone can still apply, and the best candidate gets picked. Just not the one that happens to come from a specific background.

Re: Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

#486

Post by marknutter » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 5:03 PM UTC

The replies to this thread are giving me hope that the DEI madness is starting to wane.

Re: Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

#487

Post by f6v » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 5:03 PM UTC

John23832 wrote: post #90

(Black man here) Two things can be true at once. I have built great things. I can stand on my own. My merits are great. I do not want to be the token employee that is trotted around for Diversity Points (tm). I do not like the diversity porn that a lot of these DEI groups get off on. That being said, I do recognize that I have benefited from these groups (at least at their most genuine). There are groups that are aim…

> Do you know VIRULENTLY anti-black

Many communities were and are generally anti-human.

Re: Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

#488

Post by venatiodecorus » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 5:03 PM UTC

fsociety wrote: post #368

oceanplexian wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Online discussions where a lot of things just didn't matter. Race, gender, etc. just didn't matter. You got judged on the merit of your ideas, not what you looked like, not what you sounded like. We actually had real diversity and inclusion before these rent-seeking social media corporations and their fake DEI came in and ruined it. On IRC no one knew I was a 14 year old, or an 80 year old retiree, or male or femal…

This ignores the rampant racist/sexist comments often made on IRC/BBS, which were a reflection of society. Anyone who spent a good amount of time in these communities know it was a problem - hence why some very small invite-only communities were formed. So yes, the idealism is there. No one knows who you identify as in a text channel unless you let them. But it does not remove the fact that these communities could of…

i'm curious how much of this was actual racism vs spouting off a specific n-word in order to anger as many people as possible via minimal effort

Re: Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

#489

Post by DonaldPShimoda » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 5:04 PM UTC

hnuser123456 wrote: post #450

The5thElephant wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know for a fact a lot of the people participating in these communities were fully adults, and the age of the people being racist does little to mitigate the impact it has on the people on the receiving end of it. I find it really bizarre how many people here are insistent on diminishing or excusing the experience the original commenter had.

I find it bizarre you're diminishing mine. I got roasted by leetcode pros and othered by turbonerds too. That's humanity. I bet they haven't gotten as far as me since then, and that's an attitude that anyone who has faced pointless discrimination should keep in mind.

> I find it bizarre you're diminishing mine. I got roasted by leetcode pros and othered by turbonerds too.

But you weren't targeted for this behavior due to your gender identity or skin color, and you more or less started off with "I don't think your issues as a Black person/as a woman have been that bad because my experience hasn't been bad." Like you immediately centered yourself in a discussion about other people, and have done nothing to show any effort to even hear what they're saying.

Additionally, one person's positive anecdotes do not outweigh another person's negative anecdotes. If I'm thinking about joining some arbitrary group of people and most of my friends say it's a good time, but even one person says "I showed up and all the men either sexually harassed me for being female or witnessed the harassment and did nothing about it", well, that tells me a lot more than the other person who says "They kind of joke around a bit but it's really a mostly positive place!"

Re: Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

#490

Post by dbrueck » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 5:04 PM UTC

The5thElephant wrote: post #412

dbrueck wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm... this sounds an awful lot like, "because you're responding to a comment made by a black person, the only acceptable response is one of total agreement". I think you might want to reflect for a minute on the importance of nuance in a discussion, and the net effect of trying to police comments on others' behalf. I completely believe the commenter's experience, but I also witnessed the opposite a lot (and was deep…

But it is unclear what you are disagreeing with. They never said that there was nothing positive in those communities. So what is the point of your comment? To make sure no one leaves this thread thinking that those communities were a net negative or something? I understand the desire to defend something you were a part of and got something positive out of, but the original commenter isn't criticizing people for enjo…

This is a discussion site, so not every comment needs to fit neatly in a 'agree' or 'disagree' bucket. That said, I'm in agreement with the comment I was replying to, and not actually defending anything at all - I meant for my comment to be taken at face value, nothing more.