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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

#661

Post by rnk »

John23832 wrote: post #589
cmh89 wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This isn't true. Paper bags were never racist. I don't know where you picked this from. This is a misleading description to make anti-racism seem absurd. What do you mean by 'isn't true'? It's at least real to some extent, without regard to how widespread it was. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_Paper_Bag_Test https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/question/2014/febr... It's also the case that DEI groups want…

> What do you mean by 'isn't true'? It's at least real to some extent, without regard to how widespread it was. The paper bag test doesn't make paper bags racist. It's a shade test. > It's also the case that DEI groups want people to stop using 'brown bag lunch'. I can't say that this hasn't happened. But if it has, this is one of the useless things that I take umbrage with in my original post.

Yes! Brown bags aren't racist, fraternities doing things like that were racist, at least as I see it.

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

#662

Post by anonymouskimmer »

gfodor wrote: post #640
anonymouskimmer wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you assume any particular DEI goalpost will persist for years or decades or centuries? It's not as if generalized racism has persisted against the same categories since the late 1500s. And why do you assume the generalized tribalism will persist based on particular initiatives? The old initiatives used to be hire from the gentry. Attitudes amongst the many do change. It doesn't matter if some vocal minorities…

The entire question of this thread is the mechanism by which DEI can unwind a given goalpost. (And if/when the last goalpost evaporates, so would DEI.) It sounds to me like your own perspective there is no way for them to do so, given that any given goalpost could be argued as possibly at risk of regression. Concretely, if your own perspective is taken as the standard, we ought to expect that without any motive or st…

Irrational bias will always exist, but it will always be a bunch of shifting goalposts.

Once DEI systematizes enough it can be incorporated into whatever HR eventually turns in to, instead of being a separate division.

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

#663

Post by hedgehog »

ianhawes wrote: post #613
hedgehog wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US discrimination based on skin color is widespread and goes back to before the country's founding, and access to opportunities is very uneven based on wealth. The PoC term is a reflection of the general pattern of discrimination as practiced here. This situation both has strong inertia (easier to get access to opportunity if you have relatively wealthy parents and/or blend in with wealthier people who tend to…

Discrimination in the US is based on socioeconomic status just as much as race.

There are both, and they are related. For example family wealth and wealth accumulation in the US is weighted heavily to home ownership and appreciation, the GI bill that powered a great deal of home purchases was structured to exclude blacks, and the combination of those facts shapes the distribution of wealth today. Expensive neighborhoods tend to have better public schools, the quality of that schooling is a lifelong advantage, yet redlining was only banned around 50 years ago. This directly affected the cohort of people in their 60s who are still part of the work force. Overall social mobility in the US is pretty poor compared to other wealthy countries but I'm not sure if there is any rigorous work to attribute causes.

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

#664

Post by Tycho »

foolswisdom wrote: post #619
LordDragonfang wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is power in victimhood now Anyone who's been to Sunday school can tell you this isn't a new concept, and is at least two millennia old (almost certainly longer, since Judaism has an even longer shared tradition). Christians have continued riding the coattails of their martyrs and "persecution" for centuries after they became the dominant force. If anything, the modern "woke victimhood" is merely the cultural l…

Clarification please - where do you find "power in victimhood" in Judaism 2000+ years ago?

The argument is probably that Judaism was the first religion to introduce concern for the victim into its moral teachings, and therefore inevitably there would be people hijacking that to differentiate themselves, boost their status through claims to victimhood.

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

#665

Post by Spoznaja »

spangry wrote: post #21

> If I were a white man with the same experience, I might not even be here? I can understand how DEI initiatives might undermine your self-esteem and I'm sorry you are made to feel this way, but take solace in the fact that you have a job. Imagine how the white guy who was excluded from employment because of his skin color feels. That's who the real victim is here - the person who was racially discriminated against.…

Right; the companies that are pro DEI are like the man at the bar with a swastika arm badge. Sure it's morally repugnant, but at least you know ahead of time what you're dealing with.

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

#666

Post by Spoznaja »

syzarian wrote: post #86
spangry wrote: post #21

> If I were a white man with the same experience, I might not even be here? I can understand how DEI initiatives might undermine your self-esteem and I'm sorry you are made to feel this way, but take solace in the fact that you have a job. Imagine how the white guy who was excluded from employment because of his skin color feels. That's who the real victim is here - the person who was racially discriminated against.…

The U.S. has a long history of discriminating against brown people and an especially nasty history of discriminating against black people. This discrimination was so ingrained amongst the white population that after desegregation public pools declined. Blacks were discriminated against when it came to getting a mortgage. Whites fled the major cities to the suburbs leading to cities having gutted public schools due to…

Translated; "Racism is bad, so we're going to use racism now to counter balance previous racism." This won't end well for anyone.

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

#667

Post by Animats »

rirze wrote: post #658
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are multiple immigrant groups that start from nothing and achieve upper middle-class status in a generation's time.

Irish, Italians, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Koreans...

In Martin Luther King's day, the line was that all that was needed was equality of opportunity.

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

#668

Post by anonymouskimmer »

Manuel_D wrote: post #578
anonymouskimmer wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A genuine bad rewrite would tend to affect all candidates uniformly (except those who have pre-anonymized their applications, thus gaming the process), but a find-replace is more problematic.

If that's an issue, the companies could just tell applicants to pre anonymize their resumes to eliminate any potential gaming.

I think it's worthwhile A/B testing your idea.

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

#669

Post by Spoznaja »

pessimizer wrote: post #210
spangry wrote: post #21

> If I were a white man with the same experience, I might not even be here? I can understand how DEI initiatives might undermine your self-esteem and I'm sorry you are made to feel this way, but take solace in the fact that you have a job. Imagine how the white guy who was excluded from employment because of his skin color feels. That's who the real victim is here - the person who was racially discriminated against.…

[flagged]

What does "statistically should" mean? How skin pigment have anything to do with qualifications? Using skin pigment as a lens for "statistically should be employed", what are your thoughts on requiring the NBA to be more diverse?

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

#670

Post by Spoznaja »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #165
jaltekruse wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the top comment on this thread seriously a reverse racism rant? You are right about something, affirmative action is racist, but I feel it is absolutely necessary to try to balance out current inequities. I strongly believe people making arguments like yours, people fighting against affirmative action need to propose an alternative rather than just complain about it. There are lots of people alive today that could…

This is the general course of any thread concerning DEI on HN. It's filled with concerns about reverse-racism, and how "skin color shouldn't matter" and whatnot. The history behind why such initiatives exist is intentionally ignored.

If racism is wrong (which I believe it is), then it is always wrong, no matter which groups are benefited or harmed.
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