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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

#811

Post by mikrotikker »

throwaway4848 wrote: post #599
tacitusarc wrote: post #372

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. This includes changing away from “master” as a br…

> 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. A more compelling reason is because demonstrating "leadership" in DEI is a prerequisite to getting a promotion or getting a management job. It's…

This will only be made worse by the ESG/stakeholder capitalism.

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

#812

Post by raxxorraxor »

travisjungroth wrote: post #595
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…

> Yes there are plenty of people who want to sit at the top of the food chain by way of gathering a "diverse" crowd. Woah this suddenly made the behavior of some people who gave me the creeps but were doing "all the right things" make sense. Thanks. On the brownbag thing, I've had someone tell me we shouldn't say "picnic" because of a racist etymology. When I showed her this etymology wasn't real, she said it didn't…

I think it makes it absurd indeed and even worse I think it has a overall negative impact. It completely disregard intent, a pretty extreme position to take for any form of communication. Now you are not using the definitions of racists, which opinion might be worth disregarding, you are also using fictitious ones.

You won't get through life without being hurt and learning to understand the meaning behind people using words is a skill you cannot skip to acquire. Misunderstanding happen and you need strategies to deal with them. It can but rarely results in conflict. You cannot expect everyone only using thoughts, associations and words you are content with. It is a false strategy without solution.

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

#813

Post by mikrotikker »

DrThunder wrote: post #431
tacitusarc wrote: post #372

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. This includes changing away from “master” as a br…

There is power in victimhood now. If you can prove you're a victim or prove you're submitting to a certain group you've "victimized" then you are put at the top of the order. You become part of essentially a religious cult and given certain "powers" that you can bash the "sinners" over the head with. I think you're exactly right here, the largest proponents of this stuff tend to be white and left wing (mostly women).…

DEI is Latin for God. Is that a mistake? Surely it is.

I've heard this called the racism of low expectations. It's disgusting.

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

#814

Post by mikrotikker »

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…

Intersectionality? The ideology famous for having a victim heirarchy so you have an ideological rating of how much of a victim someone is?

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

#815

Post by raxxorraxor »

Tycho wrote: post #664
foolswisdom wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I do think DEI has many religious and dogmatic believes that mirror other religions. It is pretty weak on the absolution part though. That is what a church sells, DEI sells an inquisition, making it even worse in some parts.

It is a bit weird overall. It decries conservatism, but is very heavy on fundamentalism. It is far more conservative than other groups it indicts with sexism/racism. And mostly these accusation are also false.

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

#816

Post by ModernMech »

koonsolo wrote: post #766
ModernMech wrote: post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that as we started to transition to a world that didn’t discriminate against racial groups based on skin color, the people who wanted to discriminate against those groups changed tactics. They discriminated using other signals strongly correlated with race, largely with the same effect. The coup de grace was then declaring racial discrimination “over”, all the while maintaining the same racially discri…

> The promise of a colorblind world was naive, and it won’t work. I'm all for equality and anti-racisms. But if you say "game is on between the races", well then let's go and see who wins. Edit: Maybe I wasn't clear, but if you are going to discriminate me for whatever skin color I have, I'm not going to roll over and cry. I'm going to fight you. Fair and simple.

That’s not what I am saying and it’s sad to me that you interpret my words to mean I intend to discriminate against you based on your race. Im not advocating any competition between races.

The point is that creating a “colorblind” world, without correcting the other indicators which strongly correlate with race, doesn’t lead to a a diverse outcome.

For instance, let’s say we institute a policy that to eliminate hiring bias, we will only look at the school you went to. We sort the applicants by top schools, and interview only the top achievers at each of the top schools. This selection process, while “colorblind”, will not necessarily result in a diverse population. I hope the reasons are obvious but if not I can explain why.

To correct this, we can institute a policy that says: not only will we look at the traditional top Ivies, but we will also consider top HBCUs.

Does this mean that whereas before you passed the filter, now you may be passed over for someone else who may be a minority? Yes.

Does this mean that person is less qualified than you? No. The best students at most schools can be just as good as or better than top Ivy students.

Does that mean you were passed over because of your skin color? No, it could mean the applicant pool was widened and you didn’t make the cut after more talent was considered.

None of this has to do with your skin color or really anyone’s. What it has to do with is eliminating systemic bias in the hiring process. As they say, to the privileged equality can feel like oppression, but that’s not what is happening. It was a privileged position for a long time that whites got priority consideration. Now they don’t and it feels to whites like oppression. Be that as it may, it’s still not racist.

Does this explanation put my comment into a better perspective for you?

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

#817

Post by mikrotikker »

not_a_pet_rock wrote: post #631
tablespoon wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * For those who don’t know, there used to be a racist practice by some fraternities, etc called a “brown bag test” where a brown bag was used to judge skin color for entry. This made brown bags racist, which in turn made brown bag lunches racist. I think that's a inaccurate and misleading description. I think the correct term is "colorism" not "racism," and it sounds like those distinctions were more significant wi…

colorism is just racism.

I think that in the DEI ideology, racism is not the sane, traditional definition, but rather that postmodern power + prejudice equation that is used to prop up the idea that only whites can be racist.

So in order to keep their ideology consistent in the face of clear and present racism throughout the non white communities as well, they had to invent the term "colorism".

So yes colorism is just racism.

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

#818

Post by MockObject »

abenga wrote: post #789
MockObject wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> Do you believe you have had the same experiences as a person of the races/genders experiencing the -isms

What do you mean?

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

#819

Post by adultSwim »

Thank you for sharing your experience. I wish the discussion here had been more robust.

If it was programming, people would have offered a range of ways to understand and navigate this situation. It would be based on both experience as well as scholarly theory.

For instance we often get to hear from functional programmers, some backed by the deep foundations in theory. Yet here we seem ill equipped and unprepared.

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

#820

Post by mikrotikker »

_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…

It is "anti-racist" because "anti-racist" does not mean against racism. It is a specific ideological term within DEI.
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