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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

#721

Post by naasking »

sn9 wrote: post #714
naasking wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It wouldn't necessarily be explicit, but there were lots of offhand comments and jokes. That's how racism (and sexism, homophobia, ...) tends to present itself; it's a lot more subtle than people straight up going "I hate ${group}". Don't conflate those jokes and offhand comments with hate. You're erasing all sorts of meaningful differences between basically harmless husbands joking about their wives or differences…

The problem is that if you don't personally know the views of the people involved, racist jokes are often indistinguishable from hate. Outside of a context where the humor is understood by all like a stand-up comedy act, you aren't entitled to how other people perceive your behavior. If you walk like a racist and talk like a racist, people are just gonna assume you're a racist. If that's a problem for you, there's a…

The point is you don't know how this person walks or talks, you only see a fragment of a conversation typically taken out of context. I hope you see the problem here, to say nothing of the problem with assuming someone is intrinsically evil unless they toe your specific line.

Furthermore I'm entitled to argue for what I think are good practices for communicating online, just like everyone else.

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

#722

Post by [deleted] »

_gql5 wrote: post #704
rayiner wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> To the contrary, "representation" is used by white people to obtain the support of minority groups without giving them anything. I see white people pressuring my daughter to look up to Kamala Harris (because Harris "looks like her"). This is just manipulation. Harris will not meaningfully advance the distinct interests of south asian people, nor is she a good model of south asian culture or values. It's also not ha…

[deleted]

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

#723

Post by jtmcmc »

catiopatio wrote: post #124
trenchgun wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Prior to this, in the earlier internet age, you had to cut your teeth on IRC and forums. That was where technical people were in the computer tech space. > Do you know VIRULENTLY anti-black (or woman, or gay) these communities were? I can't begin to describe it. That is totally off-putting to someone who has the ability succeed but does not want to deal with the hate. Wow, thank you. Gives me a new perspective.

He’s completely, totally, and absolutely incorrect. I spent decades on IRC starting in the early 90s, and this is a politically-driven contemporary re-imagination of what existed at the time. We were open to all because we ourselves didn’t fit in elsewhere.

absolutely not...the amount of homophobia and racism and antisemitism and nationalism etc... was pretty intense compared to what you see in most parts of the current internet.

IRC tended towards super edge humor and was a big piece of like early internet culture generators like somethingawful and 4chan.

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

#724

Post by faangiq »

No one cares. Your race/DEI/BIPOC/whatever is a tool used by super genius puppet masters to wage a multi century war on other races. You think Bill Gates cares about black people? You think [soulless middle manager] cares about black people? It’s all a game and you should exploit these companies to the max.

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

#725

Post by goatlover »

hedgehog wrote: post #663
ianhawes wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lifel…

There's also trailer parks, Appalachia and dying mid-western towns. I'm guessing a majority of them don't have access to better public schools. Sounds more of a problem of how public schools are funded than structural racism, which benefits richer districts. This is a good example of a class issue, since there's no shortage of poorer white folks as well. Yes, there's a smaller percentage of them, but also a larger overall number (5.3 million non-Hispanic white children in 2019 compared to 4.1 million black).

https://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/44-children-in-...

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

#726

Post by fknorangesite »

golergka wrote: post #541
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…

> it does help to have someone to look up to I keep hearing this idea from americans, that it's important to have a role model that has exactly the same ethnicity, gender and sexual identity as you do. It never made any sense to me. Can you explain it please?

If you want to do some reading on this, the search term you're probably looking for is "representation matters."

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

#727

Post by enragedcacti »

vmilner wrote: post #679
John23832 wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I see a different risk with DEI, and I’d sure love your perspective if you’re willing to give it. I think there’s a certain class of people (mostly young and white though the fact they are white is explainable as a statistical artifact) who feel empowered by DEI to push for changes that are meaningless and burdensome, but give them a feeling of power and virtuousness. Yes there are plenty of people who want to sit…

Well, it (brown bag lunch) made the Stanford harmful language list. I agree there is enough moronic content on that list to give the impression that the writers were playing false-flag games. But I’m prepared to believe they were sincere.

Just to add some context for that infamous Stanford list, it was a proposed internal list within the IT department about language to use for the text on official Stanford websites. As far as I'm aware that's the only place it was intended to be applied by the authors and it was never implemented. I know your intent wasn't bad but I found a lot of the media coverage massively over the top for what was essentially an overzealous suggestion to modify a website style guide.

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

#728

Post by dylan604 »

spoiler wrote: post #696
dylan604 wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just dismissing someone else's claims out of hand because they don't fit your personal experience--while not on the same level of negative as making actual racists posts--it's not helpful to say the least. when someone makes posts of their personal experience, the follow up posts that claim "my experience is different" proves what? are you honestly suggesting you're having a better experience? that's great for you. a…

I can't tell if your questions are genuine or not, since they seem passive aggressive. But I'll humour you: They made a blanket statement about how all of IRC is a racists/sexists shithole. They obviously have some unresolved resentment, and I am not denying it seems from a bad experience; certainly wouldn't from good ones. My comment wasn't meant to make them feel bad (maybe that's something you indulge in, given yo…

The original comment I replied to:

"He’s completely, totally, and absolutely incorrect."

that's a very very bold comment to make about someone else's personal experience. what you're going on about seems very strange in this context. it's not like they said, "this person's experience is totally different from mine". No, they said the guy is absolutely wrong. that's where all credibility fails for me. to be correct, that would mean there was never a case of harassment, racist, homophobic, or any other kinds of negative experiences on any of the interweb services regardless of how early days it was. that's just an odd hill to die on for protection of one's memories of the early web.

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

#729

Post by redwolfb14 »

Another black man here, the facts of the matter are that DEI is needed, forget the research that has been done proving that for a moment and just look around. The world is getting smaller everyday and this idea that ONE group can satisfy the needs of the global population is just fool-hardy. The problem with DEI in the corporate setting is that corporate structures and governance simply can't solve cultural problems. What ends up happening is that you get a DEI board that's all white (that's how most DEI boards look), or that has token participants that have no cultural of corporate power to effect change. Even then, you'd still need to solve the cultural problem of racism, or discrimination as it relates to your organization all the way down to individual contributors? Who is doing all of this work? The same employees you hired to actually do the work of the organization. If DEI is going to work it has to be cultural from the start and the only way you get there is:

1. Find a utopia of people of all races and creeds living in harmony. 2. Externalizing an "OTHER" that's currently not apart of the equation. Aliens attacking Earth. 3. As a group, (black persons) outpace ALL of the other groups and subject them to the same behavior they've practiced. 4. Or lastly, treat everyone equally.

Those are the options, until then, the ruse of DEI will continue, is it helping? To date, no. Numbers are stagnant and have been for the last 30 years.

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