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Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

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Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

#81

Post by Jensson »

whimsicalism wrote: post #71
Jensson wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems ridiculous to me that the solution is to stop discussing race at all in a country that had legally enshrined anti-black discrimination within living memory. You can make it illegal to discriminate against black people without creating a race database of every single worker in the country. Requiring every employer to ask every applicant "what kind of human race are you?" is so dumb that you can't make that…

Not going to continue arguing because I think my point has been clear. I think it is telling on HN that many seem more up in arms around the reporting requirements stemming from the 1964 Civil Rights act than any of the huge racial disparities I've identified above. Given that the government has not been able to do anything about rampant racial discrimination in the real estate space, I am unsure how you think the go…

Everyone knows that the employer discriminates against you based on what race you select in the survey you have to fill in. Black people have to constantly lie about or deny their race or get discriminated against before people even see that they are black. I don't care what reason you say you have, that is a horrible practice that just makes the race problem you have worse. I am certain that racism would be less of an issue if you didn't give racists such a powerful tool to both keep themselves relevant and to discriminate as they please. It is much harder to do anything if you don't even get called in for an interview.

Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

#82

Post by whimsicalism »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #79
whimsicalism wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.connexionfrance.com/Archive/Clubs-accused-of-rac... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/08/sports/psg-racial-profili... https://www.luminosoa.org/site/books/m/10.1525/luminos.39/

Several isolated incidents does not make a larger problem

So you want me to provide statistical evidence of a broader problem in a country where it is illegal to collect any statistics around race?

https://www.newsweek.com/french-activists-39-percent-paris-t...

39% of Parisian hiring agencies agreeing to filter out non-white job applicants: You would never get anywhere near that number in an urban US core.

Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

#83

Post by NikolaeVarius »

whimsicalism wrote: post #82
NikolaeVarius wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several isolated incidents does not make a larger problem

So you want me to provide statistical evidence of a broader problem in a country where it is illegal to collect any statistics around race? https://www.newsweek.com/french-activists-39-percent-paris-t... 39% of Parisian hiring agencies agreeing to filter out non-white job applicants: You would never get anywhere near that number in an urban US core.

> So you want me to provide statistical evidence of a broader problem in a country where it is illegal to collect any statistics around race?

Yes? Since apparently you feel perfectly comfortable with a link trying to prove this very fact, but lets see the claims of the article you linked.

> called 69 temporary employment agencies in the Paris area posing as employees from a construction firm.

Already an extremely small sample

> The French government said it would summon the companies in question.

Audited

> It said 55 percent of the branch offices it contacted refused requests to discriminate.

Okay

> Although limited in scope to a small number of agencies, the findings highlight what anti-racism campaigners say is a wider problem of discrimination in some French workplaces.

A claim of wider effects from a noted small sample

Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

#84

Post by ghaff »

grenoire wrote: post #3

Isn't it a luxury to be able to put down money for a journalism degree tuition in the US? I think this may already be explained quite well for the US higher education system, how do these ratios compare to journalism degrees'?

A journalism degree is by no means a pre-requisite to working as a journalist. In fact, a fair number of people would argue it's a negative relative to real-world experience. I'm not sure any of the working tech journalists I know have a J-school degree.

Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

#85

Post by Zababa »

beaconstudios wrote: post #58
adwn wrote: post #13

Where's my PC Bullshit Bingo (TM) card? I need to cross off a couple of fields: 1) reducing "diversity" to "different skin colors" 2) fixating on the Third-Reich-esque concept of "human race" 3) insisting that skin colors can be neatly sorted into 4-5 discrete categories 4) lamenting the ratio between these categories, without stating what the correct ratio should be, and why

> fixating on the Third-Reich-esque concept of "human race" what does this mean? I'm no historian, but I'm pretty sure the Third Reich was focused on the "German race", to the exclusion of all others. As for ratios, the ratio indicates an uneven pipeline. If idk, programmers were all white and highly rewarded, you might ask why that is. The reason can be one of two things: white people are culturally/systemically adv…

> what does this mean? I'm no historian, but I'm pretty sure the Third Reich was focused on the "German race", to the exclusion of all others.

In France, we don't consider that people have a different race. We may talk about ethnicity, culture, but not race. Asking what race someone belongs to is something that would be seen as very offensive. Part of it would be because of the racists undertones (we don't make much of a difference between people that think human races exists, and people that think human races exists and some are better than others), part of it because it would be treating someone like a dog. Races are concepts that we apply to animals, not humans. Saying "the white race", "la race blanche" or "the black race", "la race noire" in French, would always be interpreted as racist, and most of the time white supremacist.

> As for ratios, the ratio indicates an uneven pipeline. If idk, programmers were all white and highly rewarded, you might ask why that is. The reason can be one of two things: white people are culturally/systemically advantaged in getting those jobs (for example, those jobs are only available in predominantly-white areas or the education to do the job is more accessible to white people), or white people are more fundamentally capable of programming than others. The former is a social critique, the latter is white supremacy.

It feels very weird to me that you consider that races exists, but then reject any differences between them. I honestly fail to understand why everyone should perform the same in every field. That's the opposite of everything I know about biology and evolution. I also think that those things are not so easy to separate. People will tend to do things they are good at, so a field that is dominated by X people will often correlate with X people being better in this field. You then have two solutions: positive discrimination, or changing the field.

As an aside, it also feels weird to me that you call believing "white people are more fundamentally capable of programming than others" "white supremacy". According to Wikipedia, white supremacy is "the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them". I personally reject the idea of races. Even if I have to work within that framework, I personally don't believe that white people are superior to those of other races. But even more fundamentally than that, if white people were fundamentally superior to those of other races (which I don't believe), I absolutely reject the idea that this would give them any right or legitimacy to dominate other people. I believe profoundely in self-determination. I believe that we shouldn't have the right to tell people what they do, even if it means they may make mistakes, or non optimal choices. I find it surprising and a bit disturbing that you would jump so easily from "white people are superior in one field" to "white people are the superior race and should dominate others".

Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

#86

Post by ghaff »

ilamont wrote: post #18

So here is a more comprehensive data bank of 982 individuals across 14 publications. This is not comprehensive. It's a subset consisting of newer online technology publications, skewing toward consumer niches. Enterprise-focused publications are not included. Editors are not included unless they are on the masthead and/or have bylined articles. That excludes specialist roles such as copy editors and feature editors.…

I hadn't thought of that but, yeah. While I know people who jumped straight to name publications based on some combination of connections and college newspaper experience, it was also pretty common to "pay your dues" at small town papers before (again, often through connections) landing at some big-time pub.

And, as you say, those small-town newspapers are pretty hurting these days where they still exist at all.

Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

#87

Post by whimsicalism »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #83
whimsicalism wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you want me to provide statistical evidence of a broader problem in a country where it is illegal to collect any statistics around race? https://www.newsweek.com/french-activists-39-percent-paris-t... 39% of Parisian hiring agencies agreeing to filter out non-white job applicants: You would never get anywhere near that number in an urban US core.

> So you want me to provide statistical evidence of a broader problem in a country where it is illegal to collect any statistics around race? Yes? Since apparently you feel perfectly comfortable with a link trying to prove this very fact, but lets see the claims of the article you linked. > called 69 temporary employment agencies in the Paris area posing as employees from a construction firm. Already an extremely sma…

variance = p*q/n, gives an estimate of ~0.3% which puts >95% probability of the the true proportion of racist french temp agencies >25%.

It's more than large enough of a sample size to put a tight confidence interval around the proportion.

Again, as I've said - you would never get anything remotely like this in the urban core of the US.

Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

#88

Post by jackling »

whimsicalism wrote: post #39
kleene_op wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I'm convinced the most racist people are those who can't stop talking about race, and that would include a fair amount of self-proclaimed and vocal "anti-racists".

This seems extremely premature given the massive disparities that still exist today racially. The average wealth of a black family in Boston is $8 whereas the average wealth of a white family is about $200,000. How do we talk about these disparities if we throw away the language to talk about race? Or is your argument that these disparities are innate? Or that they are not at all due to the legacy of explicitly race…

Could you provide a source for the average wealth based off race? $8 is pretty wild and hard to believe.

I agree with your point, if disparities exist, they should be discussed.

Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

#89

Post by whimsicalism »

jackling wrote: post #88
whimsicalism wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems extremely premature given the massive disparities that still exist today racially. The average wealth of a black family in Boston is $8 whereas the average wealth of a white family is about $200,000. How do we talk about these disparities if we throw away the language to talk about race? Or is your argument that these disparities are innate? Or that they are not at all due to the legacy of explicitly race…

Could you provide a source for the average wealth based off race? $8 is pretty wild and hard to believe. I agree with your point, if disparities exist, they should be discussed.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/12/11/that-was-typo-t...

sourcing: https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/one-time-pubs/color-o...

Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

#90

Post by zeusk »

skulk wrote: post #66
rayiner wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Compared to programming and tech, success in a lot of fields in the humanities, including journalism is far more connected to who you know, what family you were born into, what college you went to, and your overall personal network. In such an environment, it is unsurprising that there is a severe lack of diversity. This is one of my concerns about the recent antipathy toward standardized testing. My family came ov…

What do you think about the system on the subcontinent? I'm not sure how it's done in Bangladesh, but in India your higher education is basically decided by your score on a few objective measures which are orders of magnitude more difficult than the SAT. It's actually mind-boggling how much harder IIT JEE math is compared to SAT math.

The physics and chemistry aren't any easier. I'd say at-least Physics had the largest delta compared to SAT subject tests or even APs.

While the SAT was asking about basic kinetic motion in classical mechanics, JEE was asking about wave-particle duality and calculating uncertainty in motion of photon-electron collisions iirc.

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