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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

#781

Post by KwisatzHaderack »

ericmcer wrote: post #471
tjpnz wrote: post #14

Tangential to the current discussion but why do I always sense a reluctance to include matters relating to social class in these programs? When I bring it up during D&I discussions I'll usually get blank stares, and in one instance there were crude comments made about needing to beef up building security first.

Social class, attractiveness, intelligence, charisma, mental health, physical health, luck, etc. all play a big role in your success in life but we don't try to equalize those at all. Race and gender are probably just really easy to quantify vs "we have a program to make sure we hire people who are dumb, ugly and socially awkward".

Not even joking, we should have affirmative action for ugly people. Everything they have they had to work twice as hard as attractive people for.

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

#782

Post by tristor »

GrinningFool wrote: post #569
PaulHoule wrote: post #6

It's a problem. In our town people went past "Black Lives Matter" to a lot of cheap pandering to the effect that "Black people are awesome" and maybe all of them are right out of Wakanda Forever. It comes across as not based in reality, not really sincere, and not really attending to black people in the community. I voted an Alumni Trustee ballot on the weekend and there were two black people on the ballot. One was a…

> The first one was someone who proved black people could get it done This phrasing suggests an base expectation that a black person needs to prove they could get it done [like a white person could]. What I think DEI tries[1] to do is normalize the idea that anyone of sufficient ability /can/ do the work by giving more opportunity to people who 'traditionally' have not received those opportunities. And in so doing, r…

> This phrasing suggests an base expectation that a black person needs to prove they could get it done [like a white person could].

Your response suggests a base expectation that a white person doesn't have to prove they can get it done. The realities of the job market suggest otherwise. Turns out, with a /very narrow/ set of exceptions based on direct nepotism, white people too must go through interviews, demonstrate some capability to do the job, and undergo performance reviews which might lead to termination if their performance is lacking on the job.

A common occurrence in DEI circles is to look at the experiences of the top 0.01% of society, notice that these extraordinarily wealthy families have children who go on to have absolute silver-spoon up ass level privilege in the workplace, and then extrapolate that for the many millions of people who constitute the other 99.9% of society. It doesn't matter in America if you're white or a man, it does matter if your daddy has a last name that is known publicly as part of high society and your family net worth starts with a B.

The basic reality is that EVERYONE must prove themselves. With the exception of the most wealthy and privileged minority of society, nobody is given shit just for being born.

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

#783

Post by tristor »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #16
tjpnz wrote: post #14

Tangential to the current discussion but why do I always sense a reluctance to include matters relating to social class in these programs? When I bring it up during D&I discussions I'll usually get blank stares, and in one instance there were crude comments made about needing to beef up building security first.

DEI took off right after Occupy Wall Street. The whole purpose is to destroy the class discussion entirely and use DEI issues as a weapon against anyone who brings up class. That's why DEI feels so disingenuous, because at its core, that's exactly what it is.

This is exactly it. The entire DEI-driven conversation about "white privilege" is designed to distract from the reality that privilege in American and Western society is based on social class and economic status, not on skin color. Those two things are often correlated due to historical race-based discrimination, but they are not the same, and there are many many millions of white people who are lower class and treated horribly in America on the basis of their socioeconomic status.

DEI is all about dividing poor people based on immutable characteristics so they don't have a way to effectively organize against the wealthy elites. There's a reason DEI is most popularly held and enforced by elites with high levels of education, and not by those who are the working masses.

Frankly, it's /exactly/ the same stuff that was done to create white vs PoC racism in the US prior to the civil rights era to divide the working class to prevent labor organization. It's just the other side of that same coin, and basically the same tactics with a veneer of paint.

Socioeconomic class has always been the primary leading indicator of outcomes for people born in the US, and that has not changed significantly in the last 30 years as DEI rose to prominence.

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

#784

Post by tristor »

parasense wrote: post #381

> However, when I have to join a cheesy townhall once a month to discuss diversity hires, it makes me feel like I have no right to feel proud of any accomplishments I've made within the company. I feel the same way, kinda... I'm male, and not a PoC, so perhaps maybe my perspective is different? I'm told that I'm privileged, but that's not how I feel. I'm told due to systemic bias that I'm probably unaware of my privi…

> I'm not sure if I'm actually the bad guy, or if I'm being gas lighted.

Neither, but more gas lighted than bad guy.

The reality is that what is currently described as "privilege", isn't. It's actually the absence of oppression. Most oppression in Western society is based on class, not race or gender, and therefor all but a tiny minority of people in Western society face some oppression at some point in their life. Some oppression is based on race and gender, and this oppression is limited to people of that race or gender, and therefore some people experience more oppression in their life than others.

The gas lighting is two-fold:

1. DEI advocates ignore class issues (intentionally, and arguably maliciously), and focus only on race and gender, extrapolating as hard as possible from the most wealthy and privileged minority to the majority.

2. "Privilege" as the absence of oppression is discussed as special treatment, rather than a default state to strive for that should apply to all people. The entire movement to take white people and especially white men down a peg or two, is actually just increasing oppression in totality, rather than reducing oppression in any way. The correct path away from oppression is not adding more oppression, and it is asinine for any rational person to consider a temporary and situational absence of oppression as a form of "privilege".

Actually solving these issues is complex and likely intractable, but there are constructive and well-researched ways to improve these issues on societal scale. The, primarily white elites, advocates for DEI though are not interested in actually improving these issues, but getting social status from paying lip service to the issues without improving them to a point at which they could no longer talk about them.

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

#785

Post by SpeedilyDamage »

tristor wrote: post #768
SpeedilyDamage wrote: post #767

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering all of science is having a replication crisis, you are going full flat earther, then. I really cannot overemphasize how detrimental to your argument what you just wrote is to any thinking human being. Blindly claiming all research, from literally every institution in the world, is both inaccurate and rigged somehow on a widely studied topic, is an insane claim only made when you've given up on the entire…

STEM fields don’t have a replication crisis in the same way that humanities do. The issue in STEM fields is that essential elements to replicate (like the code) are not being published, yet the underlying science is solid enough for production technology people rely on every day to be built on it. In the humanities the replication crisis is that a significant amount of published “research” is essentially made up whol…

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

#786

Post by account42 »

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 fail to see how your skin color or sexual preferences coul have any effect on your IRC experience except if you go out of your way to point them out - in which case, perhaps what you perceved was the response to that kind of behavior.

> These DEI initiatives aren't perfect in any way, but the goal is to give the affected groups the foundations to succeed.

The goal is to distract from other issues such as the increasing class gap or environmental impact.

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

#788

Post by spoiler »

dylan604 wrote: post #728
spoiler wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, t…

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

#789

Post by abenga »

MockObject wrote: post #288
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 (or woman, or gay) these communities were? I can't begin to describe it. That has not been my experience at all, whatsoever, and my involvement in tech communities, both online and in the flesh, dates back to the 1980s. > There's also the fact that most (read: all) of the computing pioneers are white. I respect all of those people, but it does help to have someone to look up to. I…

> That has not been my experience at all, whatsoever, and my involvement in tech communities, both online and in the flesh, dates back to the 1980s.

Do you believe you have had the same experiences as a person of the races/genders experiencing the -isms, or that you will perceive as -isms the same things they do?

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

#790

Post by [deleted] »

tptacek wrote: post #752
idlewords wrote: post #750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the parallel to Marxism that is being made here is more about epistemology and the rules of debate than about economic systems. In Marxist terms, when your opponent disagrees with you, you don't engage with their argument on its merits, but look for deeper structural factors that have led them into such serious ideological error, factors that render your opponent incapable of understanding the truth of your c…

I'm more inclined to take your word for it than Chris Rufo's, but I don't see what's distinctively Marxist about the rhetorical pathology you're talking about. That same nihilistic structuralism animated fascism, too, didn't it? If you're describing a thing and it's opposite at the same time...?

[deleted]
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