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

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

#651

Post by dbrueck »

zamalek wrote: post #556
dbrueck wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You, as a white person, have been a victim of racism? Have I been told to leave somewhere because they don't want "whiteys" there? Yes. Have I been yelled at for being a "honky"? Yes. Have I been told things like, "all white people are ___"? Yes. Have I been in a group when someone said, "don't give any to the white kid" ? Yes. Have I been threatened with violence with the sole given reason being that I am white? Y…

> Have I been told to leave somewhere [...] Why do some black people hate white people? Because their great grandparent perished on a cotton plantation, because their friend was hunted by some white folks in a truck, because their friend was choked to death by a white policeman, because your race is targeted by disenfranchisement. Why do some white people hate black people? Because they hate black people. There is a…

You're conflating racism with the reasons for racism.

It doesn't matter how good or bad your reasons are: once you are feeling or expressing prejudice simply because someone is a member of a particular ethnic group, that's racist.

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

#652

Post by snovv_crash »

kfajdsl wrote: post #157
aliqot wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Growing up on IRC, I have very much the same experience as you but quite opposite as I experienced hardly any racism, and nobody knew my identity either. Nobody wanted to involve their personal lives or details until recently when identity and identifying became the thing.

I'm much much younger than John23832, but I definitely recognized a lot of the same in some of the gaming communities I was a part of in the mid to late 2010s. There wasn't quite as much racism (at least in the places I hung out), but there was plenty of sexism and homophobia. It wouldn't necessarily be explicit, but there were lots of offhand comments and jokes. That's how racism (and sexism, homophobia, ...) tends…

Angsty teens trying to push the boundaries of what is socially acceptable are unfortunately heavily overrepresented in Internet culture, from what I've found.

A bit of pushback and people are usually super apologetic. Usually they're just aping someone else who said something counter-culture because they thought it sounded badass, and don't really believe it.

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

#653

Post by ProfessorLayton »

Manuel_D wrote: post #520
Firmwarrior wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Hispanic man, I can say that I don't care about whether I earned my spot or lucked into it through my ancestry. Life isn't fair, and I'll gladly take whatever advantages I can scrounge up. The software interview process in particular is already so capricious that I feel absolutely no shame in tilting it in my favor in any way that I can.

Would you be okay with white and Asian people similarly applying in-group advantage towards their own races to the detriment of ours? The software interview process is capricious, but this doesn't justify racial discrimination. If we're so nonchalant about racism favoring us, we're hypocrites for criticizing racism favoring other groups over us. I am deeply troubled by racial discrimination favoring Latin people, des…

>Would you be okay with white and Asian people similarly applying in-group advantage towards their own races to the detriment of ours?

This isn't a great take because there's tons of in-group advantages going on today that are deeply rooted in racial discrimination.

The U.S. is still reeling from its deeply racist housing policies. What does this have to do with this DEI thread?:

- Wealth is the highest indicator of educational attainment, and in turn education is a high indicator of wealth. [1]

- Zoning laws were explicitly racist and meant to keep out certain races from white neighborhoods. My parent's home built during the WWII era in the SFBAY had covenants attached to it that stated under no uncertain terms that no PoC may live in the home (No longer enforceable of course). The racist roots of these laws is not a matter of speculation.

- Most household wealth is through homeownership. [2]

- High quality education is tied to housing via school districts, more expensive houses are located in schools with better funding and higher quality education.

- Many zoning rules such as absurdly large minimum lot sizes, high setbacks, height limits (Designed to make it more expensive to buy for PoC in particular) remain in place today. It's a positive feedback loop where those who had an advantage are more likely to retain that advantage.

As OP stated, life isn't fair, and the rules are indeed rigged to favor those in power. Rebuking a group for using their limited advantages while ignoring the plethora of advantages for those up top isn't very equitable.

[1] https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/page1-econ/2017....

[2] https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/disp...

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

#654

Post by rirze »

rayiner wrote: post #257
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…

> I'm positive that Satya and Sundar are great motivators for indian kids to look up to (as they should be). I'm doubtful about that. At least among my cohort (first generation south asian immigrants to the east coast) there's not a strong sense of racial identity. There's strong identity in the sense of ties to religion, home countries, culture, and traditions, but not group identification or a feeling of collective…

I was hoping to find a reply like this; glad someone could articulate it better than I could.

Overall, I believe that culturally-same role models is a stand-in for lazy parenting. Children whose parents constantly push their kids to be better, push harder will look towards successful people of any cultural background. Compare that with children with apathetic parents, who I surmise will only have the imagination to self-associate with those who "look" like them.

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

#655

Post by 0_____0 »

balls187 wrote: post #551
0_____0 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming you’re white and male: there are loads of white boxers and game devs! And you probably know some of them! Think about how men feel about traditionally femme activities which may be stigmatized for hetero men. If you see even one other straight man get their nails done at a salon it sort of implicitly opens that door to you.

Not sure about getting a manicure, but speaking as a hetero man, getting a pedicure is amazing and I recommend every person with the means to, try it once.

I was hoping someone would chime in with this!

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

#656

Post by throwaway894345 »

SpeedilyDamage wrote: post #526
seneca wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the classic excuse. "Bad outcomes aren't the fault of X, you're just doing X wrong" even though X always leads to the same bad outcomes. When an initiative fails, the solution is rarely to do more of it.

Except study after study shows that good outcomes result from hiring diverse candidates...

My impression is that the mechanism is that racial/gender/etc diversity proxies for some amount of viewpoint diversity, and it's the viewpoint diversity which is improving outcomes. Assuming I'm correct on that point, my strong suspicion is that a lot of DEI programs in the US are not resulting in much more diverse hiring than their peer groups while simultaneously limiting viewpoint diversity pretty considerably (or if they're not limiting the viewpoint diversity of the people they hire, they're limiting the willingness of those people to express diverse views--probably a combination of the two).

I'm also vaguely of the impression that at least some research is finding DEI initiatives to be neutral or perhaps even counter-productive, but I'm having a hard time finding those papers--if this is jogging anyone's memory, I would appreciate links.

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

#657

Post by kodah »

Manuel_D wrote: post #628
kodah wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's different reasons we design different systems to combat discrimination or lop-sided outcomes. White and Asian people, if that is their only identifying class characteristic, are not discriminated against generally. An argument could be made that white and Asian people from poor backgrounds don't make it into programming as much, but again - class lines. We probably should compensate for class more in discrimi…

I don't think I've ever been discriminated against for being Latin. Quite the contrary, I likely had significant advantages on account of my race in university admissions. I'm not sure if I've had such advantages in tech hiring, as I don't outwardly advertise my Latin identity precisely because I don't want progressive race-realists to use it as a factor in hiring, but if they did find it it probably did help. Unlike…

Every story is going to be different I think. Having tools that marginally shift our statistical outcomes makes sense to me. What doesn't make sense to me is the people who propose specific proportions as a set of diversity criteria, as it's difficult to determine what those proportions should be. At the moment I think most people are comfortable saying, "better than what they are".

It also stands out in my mind that most of these statistics rely on self-identification. I don't know if anyone's dug into the validity of self-identification.

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

#658

Post by rirze »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #78
monero-xmr wrote: post #25

It boils down to a core philosophical difference - do you want to emphasize equal access to opportunity, or do you want to emphasize equal outcomes? Some would argue it isn't an either-or thing, and we can do both at once, but I argue mandated equality of outcomes is insidious and causes social strife. If you are a minority and get hired, and the company has an explicit policy of hiring N% of minorities, then you wil…

On the other hand, if you only emphasize equal access of opportunity you will never reach equal outcomes. White men have centuries of cultural expectations, family wealth, and other advantages, and minorities have none of those advantages, and may be only a few decades (if that) removed from illiterate, impoverished inequality. Give those groups equal opportunity and it's unsurprising when an inequality of outcomes i…

The only thing minorities lack is a proper value system. There are multiple immigrant groups that start from nothing and achieve upper middle-class status in a generation's time. Once we realize, as a society, that what minorities really need is internal support to reform their cultural systems, only then will minorities will empower themselves to do better.

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

#659

Post by [deleted] »

avip wrote: post #264
moomoo11 wrote: post #176

I wish we would transcend to a point where we look up to people based on their achievements and separate their race from it. I’m Asian btw. I can relate to Lebron just as much as I can relate to Neil Armstrong or Satya or Matz or Woz or Marie Curie because they are all excellent at what they did/do. I want to be excellent like them. Because we all are humans.

It's also funny to use the term "Asian". I'm also "Asian" (from Israel). There are hundreds of completely non-related ethnical groups in this vast continent.

[deleted]

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

#660

Post by jensensbutton »

crackercrews wrote: post #572
SpeedilyDamage wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, what evidence do we have that diversity does result in a company performing better, or gaining that amazing employee? He argues that this is an unfounded assumption. It's not an assumption. > Along all dimensions measured, the more similar the investment partners, the lower their investments’ performance. For example, the success rate of acquisitions and IPOs was 11.5% lower, on average, for investments by p…

I haven't read all these studies but wonder if they claim causality or mere correlation. I see lots of correlation, which could be reverse correlation in disguise. Companies that are on a good trajectory decide to engage in more DEI than companies that are fighting to survive. Analysts conclude that DEI and success are correlated. They don't consider the possibility that the causal arrow runs the other way.

> I haven't read anything, but I have opinions.

Great contribution.

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