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Viewpoint: 'I feel like I was accidentally hired'

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Re: Viewpoint: 'I feel like I was accidentally hired'

#61

Post by mattm »

andreygrehov wrote: post #22
cal5k wrote: post #3

This is a bit of an aside, but... What I think is getting obscured in all of the overheated rhetoric about race is the fact that all humans want a tribe. We want to feel like we belong to something greater than ourselves. I'm Canadian, but I can imagine if I were to move to France to learn French it would be similar. Many people would be welcoming, but some might be impatient with my shitty French and say/do rude thi…

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…

This couldn't be further from the truth and disregards the history of how these areas started. For example, San Francisco's Chinatown:

"This, combined with a number of racist and restrictive laws limiting where Chinese were allowed to live within the city, led to the growth of Chinatown, which today comprises 24 square blocks." https://timeline.com/in-pictures-the-making-of-san-francisco...

This video talks about how African-Americans were driven to certain communities by realtors and discriminated against from living in other, more desirable areas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RHppw20Zm8

Re: Viewpoint: 'I feel like I was accidentally hired'

#62

Post by watwut »

andreygrehov wrote: post #22
cal5k wrote: post #3

This is a bit of an aside, but... What I think is getting obscured in all of the overheated rhetoric about race is the fact that all humans want a tribe. We want to feel like we belong to something greater than ourselves. I'm Canadian, but I can imagine if I were to move to France to learn French it would be similar. Many people would be welcoming, but some might be impatient with my shitty French and say/do rude thi…

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…

Quite a few of Jewish neighborhoods developed because they were not allowed to live elsewhere.

With regards to Eastern European people living close to each other was when mutual help due to shared struggle was needed. It however spreads out as people get integrated, in the second generation latest.

The black/white racial segregation did not happened by random either. At minimum, there was economic motivation to keep street whites only. (Keeping it black only was not as economically advantageous, there is asymmetry there.)

Re: Viewpoint: 'I feel like I was accidentally hired'

#63

Post by hombre_fatal »

networkimprov wrote: post #54
staticautomatic wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, it’s important to treat them...the way you should treat everyone. True statement. I think you’ll need to elaborate further on what the philosophical and semantic difference is between ignoring and noticing, because the outcome is the same in your example.

Intending to overcompensate is an effective method to actually treat them the way you should treat everyone.

Eh, that only works if you have trouble treating people equally otherwise which is quite the character trait. That advice goes back to this idea that white people are born with the original sin of racism.

I find it incredibly patronizing to actively pursue "okay, black guy is talking, let me me play everything up a little bit!" Yikes. Reminds me of kneeling to talk to a child in a baby voice when they're crying that borders on a weird manipulation.

If you have such a hard time giving people of other races equal footing and need a roleplay minigame like this to do it, please speak for yourself and not everyone else.

A good leadership + empathy trait is to recognize people who aren't able to get their word in, in general, and use some of your leverage to help them. This may be the one male substitute teacher on a team of professional women teachers, or the whitest kid in a Mexican school (my experience), or a woman in a male-dominated workplace, or a black guy on a team of east asians.

I'd rather be teaching that. That's the actual moral bedrock that you're trying to get at here but in the wrong way.

And once you realize this, you'll realize there are plenty of other people in meetings that don't have equal footing for all sorts of reasons, like the soft-spoken guy with low self-confidence, probably the most common in our field.

Re: Viewpoint: 'I feel like I was accidentally hired'

#64

Post by oh_sigh »

tobyhinloopen wrote: post #15

Now that I think about it: I’ve met more female programmers than black ones. And I might have met maybe 2 female programmers, and 0 black programmers. Weird. Now imagine being a 50 year old black female programmer and getting hired. Anyway I’d welcome colleagues of any color and gender.

In America, females make up 50% of the population and black people make up 14%. You should expect to see more female programmers than black programmers.

Something which does break the mold is my FAANG remote office has more trans women(4 that have explicitly came out, or whatever the right term is) than black people(2 by visual inspection) as software engineers.

Re: Viewpoint: 'I feel like I was accidentally hired'

#65

Post by komali2 »

staticautomatic wrote: post #42
joshribakoff wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I try really hard to ignore color One thing I was taught in anti-bias trainings at big tech companies was that trying to "ignore" color helps perpetuate biases. It is important that if an under represented co-worker speaks up, you pay extra attention, explicitly ensure their idea is credited to them, be vocal when you agree even if you otherwise would not, help others to understand their contributions, etc. Biases…

So, it’s important to treat them...the way you should treat everyone. True statement. I think you’ll need to elaborate further on what the philosophical and semantic difference is between ignoring and noticing, because the outcome is the same in your example.

You assume that the unconscious biases are less powerful than the conscious ones, which may not be true (I don't believe it is).

A personal example - I "treated everyone equally" for a long time, and then I was brought to be aware of the "don't ignore color" perspective. I started paying active attention and realized I was talking over women in meetings regularly. Crazy regularly. I had no idea. And then I noticed that almost all the men on my team were doing it.

By acting as an ally to people in that situation you can turn the tide. If even one person in the meeting is aware of this tendency, they can lend strength to someone who's "given up" trying to get their voice heard, with a simple "hold on, I think {{name}} had something to add."

"Ignoring color" means you assume everyone has the motivation and power to play on a level field with a bully, conscious or otherwise. It means you assume there's no such thing as unconscious bias, which is wrong.

Re: Viewpoint: 'I feel like I was accidentally hired'

#66

Post by watwut »

zosima wrote: post #59
davidgay wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> _naturally_ want to live with _similar_ people You are forgetting that those kinds of neighborhoods have developed in part because other people have taken mild-to-extreme steps to prevent "those" people from living with them. Known steps in the US include at the very least: - rules preventing "those" people from living in some places - mild-to-extreme actions against "those" people when they move in - people leavin…

So all of these groups choose to live in separate neighborhoods, because they all are racist to each other? Not because they want to be around people that are similar to themselves? And the fact that the same pattern shows up basically everywhere. In Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and to some extent South America, does not change your perception?

Is there something about European or Asian or American history that would make it reasonable to assume that racism was not factor shaping societies?

Europe had pogroms before it had WWII. United States were racially legally segregated long after WWII. The Asian history does not lack racism either.

Re: Viewpoint: 'I feel like I was accidentally hired'

#67

Post by cowmoo728 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #12

This seems like such a hard problem to really solve, since so much of what we consider racism, or at least borderline racism, has a significant basis in fundamental human thinking. I really feel for the guy, but it's hard to know where to start. I try really hard to ignore color, but I'm not immune to at least noticing . Then I try hard not to double-take. It's completely expected to meet Indians at the workplace, bu…

It's also unclear that private companies are capable of solving this. I'm not sure when we collectively decided that FAANG companies and private universities should take on a problem that was created by government policy. Government broke it, and government should fix it. Equitable funding for primary school STEM programs and subsidized childcare could be a good start. I get the sense that so many Americans have given up on government to the point that we would rather ask Twitter and Harvard to fix social issues.

Re: Viewpoint: 'I feel like I was accidentally hired'

#68

Post by catalogia »

082349872349872 wrote: post #48
cowboysauce wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the United States, there were periods of time where Irish and Italian people were discriminated against. Yet today, the idea that an Irish people is part of the out-group and wouldn't fit in a workplace is completely out-dated. The Rwandan genocide was Hutus killing Tutsis, yet the distinction between the two was very arbitrary and in a lot of cases boiled down to "the Belgians liked your ancestors more so declare…

Emacs or vi? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilliput_and_Blefuscu > The novel further describes an intra-Lilliputian quarrel over the practice of breaking eggs. Traditionally, Lilliputians broke boiled eggs on the larger end; a few generations ago, an Emperor of Lilliput, the Present Emperor's great-grandfather, had decreed that all eggs be broken on the smaller end after his son cut himself breaking the egg on the la…

Ironic that the great unifying software is called 'evil.'

Re: Viewpoint: 'I feel like I was accidentally hired'

#69

Post by [deleted] »

davidgay wrote: post #47
andreygrehov wrote: post #22

Earlier 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…

> _naturally_ want to live with _similar_ people You are forgetting that those kinds of neighborhoods have developed in part because other people have taken mild-to-extreme steps to prevent "those" people from living with them. Known steps in the US include at the very least: - rules preventing "those" people from living in some places - mild-to-extreme actions against "those" people when they move in - people leavin…

[deleted]

Re: Viewpoint: 'I feel like I was accidentally hired'

#70

Post by komali2 »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #63
networkimprov wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intending to overcompensate is an effective method to actually treat them the way you should treat everyone.

Eh, that only works if you have trouble treating people equally otherwise which is quite the character trait. That advice goes back to this idea that white people are born with the original sin of racism. I find it incredibly patronizing to actively pursue "okay, black guy is talking, let me me play everything up a little bit!" Yikes. Reminds me of kneeling to talk to a child in a baby voice when they're crying that…

> white people are born with the original sin of racism.

No, it doesn't, but this is generally speaking a perfect encapsulation of the "all lives matter" perspective, which is morally incorrect, usually not because of raw KKK level hatred or racism but instead simple ignorance of what unconscious bias and racism is really like for POC in America.

> I find it incredibly patronizing to actively pursue "okay, black guy is talking, let me me play everything up a little bit!"

This is also a common trope I've encountered time and time again. Some call it "racism of low expectations." The important distinction to make is that being an ally isn't patronizing, it's an active recognition of the reality of racism and unconscious bias that POC face in the workplace. The fact that you jump all the way to comparing it to speaking to a child in a baby voice says more about your own lack of empathy than an effective rhetorical attack on the position that "seeing color" as an ally is good and helpful.

I don't know you but your position is identical to a lot of people who think they aren't racist but I have observed act in a biased way, unconsciously.

The playing field isn't level. Doing nothing aids the status quo, and the status quo is systemic racism against POC.

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