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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

#791

Post by throwaway894345 »

SpeedilyDamage wrote: post #731
throwaway894345 wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Just… stop. DEI works when well executed. Accept that. If you want to police DEI initiatives to ensure they’re properly implemented, go for it, but the constant aversion to a so thoroughly researched concept is bordering on flat earther level conspiracy.

Continuously asserting that they are “thoroughly researched” does not make them so. Comparing “criticizing DEI” with “advocating flat earth” is pretty absurd, not least of all because DEI programs are incredibly diverse (of course, you are unhelpfully referring only to the “good ones”).

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

#792

Post by rayiner »

tptacek wrote: post #769
wahern wrote: post #759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Critical Race Theory emerged from mid-20th century Black Power and Colonial Independence movements, which often either were literally Marxist movements in their own right, or intimately tied to them. There are countless examples of the close relationship, but one of the most pertinent embodiments would in be Frantz Fanon, who is one of the most important if not the most important ideological fathers of both Critical…

Oh boy. Look, I just wanted to ding Rayiner for buying Rufo's schtick. In the Rufo cinematic universe, Gramsci is the most dangerous thinker of the 20th century. Would Crenshaw agree that Fanon is the beginning and end of CRT? Race, Reform, and Retrenchment[1] contains an extended, detailed critique of Critical Legal Studies for instrumentalizing and superficializing Black struggle, and for the premise that in a conf…

> Look, I just wanted to ding Rayiner for buying Rufo's schtick

It’s so funny that criticism of Rufo always revolves into this esoteric academic debate. I’m a plebe and I’ve never heard of any of those people. Rufo came to my attention because he leaked material that was given at a teacher training in Loudoun County, right next to where I grew up. As far as I can tell the bulk of his journalism is just publishing these leaks.

Maybe a better comparison is to the imams in madrasas teaching young Muslim kids that they’re oppressed by the west? Who knows? Whatever you label it, these materials shouldn’t be in the same building as kids, and the people who green lighted that should be out of a job.

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

#793

Post by acjohnson55 »

If you watch The Office (US) Season 1, even though it's almost 2 decades old, it captures the conundrum that minorities can both be subjected to casual racism/sexiam/homophobia and misguided corporate interventions. I've personally never seen what you describe, but I'm sure there are companies that are particularly clumsy at DEI.

I believe, however, that doing DEI well is a strategic advantage. It's less about making sure every single individual feels represented and included (even though that's important), because it's not really possible to explicitly enumerate every possible identity. Rather, it's about building the conscientiousness that makes people better at serving a diverse customerbase, and better at collaborating with people, who are diverse in ways that may or may not be apparent.

It's not about walking on eggshells to avoid offending anybody. It's about taking ownership and being open to learn.

The best trainings I've had really nail this. But it is not easy to do. Or, I should say, it's easy to half-ass.

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

#794

Post by bigbillheck »

thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #736
John23832 wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dog was used a a euphemism for undesirable. In the more specific case of the image, black. Look at the color of the dogs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_...

Maybe. Maybe not. It was newsprint, so the color is not clear. Maybe the dog was brown: https://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyimages/1862.gif Not that it matters much. I agree with the quote from the Wikipedia article: Sociologist Sherry Turkle elaborates: "You can be whoever you want to be. You can completely redefine yourself if you want. You don't have to worry about the slots other people put you in as much. T…

> It was newsprint

Not in the New Yorker it wasn't.

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

#795

Post by tristor »

SpeedilyDamage wrote: post #785
tristor wrote: post #768

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[flagged]

Your response to me is utterly uncalled for, and you continue to double down after I pointed this out. There is no point in having a discussion with you, as you are determined to straw man me, libel me, and otherwise behave in a manner which is inappropriate for HN and civil discourse generally.

You know nothing about me, and your claims about me are not only wrong, they’re laughably so. I hope I never have to work with you or otherwise interact with you off the Internet, you have made it clear by your behavior here that you’re truly a horrid person.

Best of luck in life.

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

#796

Post by jaltekruse »

trabant00 wrote: post #206
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…

> people fighting against affirmative action need to propose an alternative rather than just complain about it Not only is an alternative proposed, it's already implemented for quite a while: discrimination is illegal. Equal outcome vs equal opportunity. You can argue for any side you want, just don't pretend you don't see or don't understand the other position.

I see this as just as simple and misguided of a take as noticing that affirmative action is racist. People have been making this argument forever, we passed all laws and did all the work we needed to when we ended slavery, oh wait nope we got it right in 1967 with the civil rights act, no more work to do, the only tragedy left is that the damn "riff raff" and lefties just can't stop talking about race. They're the real racists!

This thread is depressing as fuck and really is making me rethink how often I ought come to this site, and interact with this community. And I really didn't realize how much this toxic bullshit was pervasive in tech. I am going to be participating more in DEI initiatives going forward, while taking the feedback and criticism of the OP into account.

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

#797

Post by DrThunder »

Firmwarrior wrote: post #713
DrThunder wrote: post #700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're strawmanning a lot of what I said. My comment is just about what it leads to if we have a society that bases their hiring on specific skin colors. It seems like you're failing to differentiate between exactly what you're personally doing and the society wide affect of sitting back and accepting race based hiring.

You're talking about how we're on a slippery slope to creating "the superior class" and then try to claim that I'm being combative? Comeon man. To attempt to salvage this subthread: What I'm personally doing is exactly what DEI is for the most part. BigCo gives you a yearly training that says "Make sure you give someone a fair shot even if they don't wow you with their resume". BigCo sends out a slideshow with some e…

"What I'm personally doing is exactly what DEI is for the most part."

No, it's not and if you think this is true you've been burying your head in the sand for the last 5 years. Companies don't create specific Diversity/Equity coordinators and entire DEI departments just to tell you to occasionally look closer at some people you think aren't getting a fair shot.

You're just gaslighting now or blissfully ignorant of the current state of things. The OP is black man literally telling everyone this isn't the case for him and there are multiple other commenters saying the same.

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

#798

Post by DrThunder »

supercheetah wrote: post #716
DrThunder wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, and my point is that doing the exact same thing as those people did in the past isn't doing better. You don't fix oppression by moving that oppression to a new group. Simply pointing out that victimhood has always existed serves no purpose at all in response to my original comment. "This is, imo, what things like intersectionality begin to address." How? All intersectionality does is create a competition for the…

Your description of intersectionality is the exact opposite of what it is. It's entire purpose is to show everyone that playing the operation Olympics is a pointless game that no one wins. It's too show that everyone's struggles don't fit into neat little boxes that define them, and show that social problems are multidimensional that don't have simple solutions, and shows that a lot of DEI initiatives are superficial…

"everyone that playing the operation Olympics is a pointless game that no one wins"

Except reality has proven you wrong. We've never lived in a time where people are more well fed, have more personal belongings, longer life spans etc.

It is in fact, objectively, not a pointless game.

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

#800

Post by welshwelsh »

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…

No way. Racism is when you treat people differently because of their race. It doesn't matter what the reason is or if that reason is justified.
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