I thought you were being over the top about the racism but then I saw the slides in the article: http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/56b3d2462e526543008...
My first reaction is that the language of "us" vs "them", victims vs oppressors, reeks of hatred. Hatred undermines productive conversation, which undermines any attempt at building a good culture.
I would have to listen to the whole presentation before I render final judgement.
- "This is not work for white folks to lead"
- "Some of the biggest barriers to progress are white women"
- "we need solidarity with our Asian friends and colleagues"
[1] https://github.com/todogroup/opencodeofconduct/issues/82
[2] https://github.com/todogroup/opencodeofconduct/blob/gh-pages...
>Our open source community prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort. We will not act on complaints regarding: > ‘Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’
Coded language for sanctioned discrimination.
Related reading:
Tact Filter: http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/tact.html
Ozark English: http://ozarque.livejournal.com/176349.html
When Nerds Collide: https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-collide-31895b01e68c
The law disagrees with you. I can very easily see Github on the losing side of workplace racial discrimination claim here.
I hope we can move past this some day, but that's not happening today.
For other reasons? Yeah. They get help too, though.
I'm just glad I dumped Github. I'm pretty sure they'd find my white female friends [some of whom needed to transition] being discriminated against as okay based on those slides.
You shouldn't be generalizing on race if you want me to believe that.
Honest question: does it have to be directed by "a privileged ethnic group" or is it valid if it is by any general group or even a single, privileged person?
That said, I'm no academic, but I remember reading something about this a few years ago, in the case of a woman in France accused of anti-white racism.
Well, it's not. It's kind of missing the point if your diversity initiative is being run by white people.
- "Some of the biggest barriers to progress are white women"
Second wave feminism, largely led by white women, often leaves out women of color. I mentioned this below, but the publishing industry is 79% white and 78% female. This has a huge impact on the types of stories that get to be published, which subsequently has real results on culture and society.
- "we need solidarity with our Asian friends and colleagues"
I mean yeah, sure, nothing super deep on that one. There should also be solidarity with white friends and colleagues, preferably ones that do a lot of listening and understand how not to take up all the space.
> Well, it's not. It's kind of missing the point if your diversity initiative is being run by white people.
On the one hand, sure, it would be odd if it were entirely led by a group of people that the initiative is not meant to directly benefit.
But on the other,
1. The title implies it is white people that must be left out of leadership there. It does not mention Asian people, which is odd, as the tech industry is currently mostly white and Asian men. Asian people are highly overrepresented, much more than white people, relative to their percentage in the country. That means if you have objections to putting a white person in a leadership position for a diversity initiative, you should have a similar objection to an Asian person. Not having that mentioned can't help but seem racist against white people.
2. Diversity initiatives need to work with everyone, not just the newcomers, but also the existing tech industry, which is mostly white and Asian men. White and Asian men could be helpful in guiding the industry towards more diversity, in particular, by doing so in a way that gets as many other white and Asian men on board with such changes. They might know best what would work to convince them, for example.
3. And, in the end, it is just always wrong to say "this is not work for [race X]". That's racist and offensive. Instead, it would have been fine to say "this is work where we need a strong leadership presence of currently underrepresented groups".
Asian people are highly overrepresented, much more than
white people, relative to their percentage in the country.
That said, I believe Asian people are overrepresented, more than white people, relative to their percentage in California, but it's not nearly as disproportionate as the figures relative to the entire country.
Your link shows 14.4% for Asian people in California, but in the tech industry, they are at least twice that. Whereas in California white people are 73.2%, which is about equal or even less than their ratio in tech.
And about most people not moving more than 500 miles - is that true for tech jobs in California? See for example
http://www.siliconvalleyindex.org/index.php/people/talent-fl...
which indicates that your general rule might not apply, as over a third of Silicon Valley people are foreign-born. That means even from outside of the US, not just outside of California. And it's obvious the valley is full of people from the rest of the US, in fact tech workers that grew up in the area are a clear minority.
With this in mind, I'm very curious if we're asking the question of what these overrepresented groups are doing differently and if there are lessons to be learned by and applied by underrepresented groups.
As someone born in Brazil, when I meet a Brazilian in SF, we get to talking about where in Brazil we're both from at some point and one thing I've discovered is that Brazilians from the state of Goias are very much overrepresented in SF despite the fact that São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are typically more represented globally with Brazilian expats. Why are Brazilians from Goias over-represented in the Bay Area? Near as I can tell from the numerous conversations is that there is a strong network of weak ties, à la Granovetter, at play and that this is the same phenomena that can be see among Asian and Indian communities in SF.
In fact, the only Indian-Brazilian person I know in the Bay Area (and in the world, since there isn't much cultural exchange between Brazil and India) is a VC and he has commented that he wishes there was as much community and support on the Brazilian side of the Silicon Valley as there is on the Indian side, because he has seen that as one of the greatest external factors (i.e. outside what the individual himself is capable of) helping Indians move to the region in the first place and be successful once they arrive and establish themselves. Perhaps more efforts to establish professional and social networks of weak ties would be an effective strategy within identities group that are underrepresented. I'm curious how effective directing energy towards helping those within your identity in-group is versus fighting for your identity in-group as a whole relative to other identity in-groups?
It's not purely about representation, although that is important too. It's about centuries of white dominance. A couple decades of people of Asian descent having a strong presence in an industry isn't enough. How many of those overrepresented Asians are holding positions of senior leadership?
"And, in the end, it is just always wrong to say "this is not work for [race X]"."
You're missing the ending part of that statement, which is "to lead". That makes it very different. No one said white people can't be involved, as long as they are not taking up all the space.
I didn't miss "to lead", I referred to it. My point is that no matter the position - rank and file, or leadership; technical or non-technical; etc. etc. - it is never ok to say "this position is not for [race of gender X]". It's just wrong.
Again, it's fine to say "it would be helpful to have a presence of [group X] here". That focuses on the positive, doesn't exclude a specific group, and there are valid reasons to indeed want a presence of underrepresented minorities, because it's about them.
In other words, this entire initiative could be done in a non-racist way.
Again, no one said white people can't be involved. It says it is not for white people to lead. No one is leaving white people out of this.
"...and there are valid reasons to indeed want a presence of underrepresented minorities, because it's about them."
Think about that for a second. Do you see the subtlety in what you're saying? You're acknowledging that some power should be yielded from those that hold it "because it's about them", but you're not giving people of color the power to run the thing that is in and of itself about them. Only giving up token pieces instead of yielding power is one of many ways that white supremacy gets passed on over the centuries.
Instead, I focus on fairness and equal treatment. Individuals - all of them - should be given respect and opportunity. That's what really matters, and if we do that, then we can wipe out discrimination and intolerance.
Our points of view lead to some identical things we want - we both want to end any and all existing discrimination against underrepresented minorities. However, from there, there is divergence.
This is a political difference of opinion. It can't easily go away. What I think is important is that people like you and people like me find ways to meet on common ground and work towards those shared goals. But to do so, we have to accept some political viewpoint differences.
Side note: I find comments like "think about that for a second" etc. from you as potentially condescending. As if you're trying to play the role of a teacher, guiding me to some truth that you already grasp. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that you didn't mean it that way.
But yes we disagree. Of course all individuals should be given respect and opportunity, no one is arguing otherwise. The fact of the matter is that that's not the current state of the world. We can talk about fairness and equal treatment all we want, but that doesn't address the systemic racism that is happening right this second. People of color don't have the time to wait around for white people to decide to be respectful and fair. I don't see any way to overcome it than from a yielding of power.
I'm down to find common ground, but it has to be on something concrete, not vague ideas of fairness (which are subjective anyways). I personally think it's silly to have diversity initiatives led by white men. What do you suggest?
Again, I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here, but I think any reasonable person could interpret that as condescending.
> I personally think it's silly to have diversity initiatives led by white men.
I might see a 10-person board of a diversity nonprofit that is 100% white men as silly. But to have some Chief of Diversity officer in one company happen to be a white man sounds fine to me - if he's good at it. No more odd than a professor of Russian history being Indonesian.
To say otherwise, as you just did, strikes me as racist. Do you really not see it?
> What do you suggest?
For example:
1. Educate hiring committees on implicit bias.
2. Make sure hiring is done as blindly as possible, e.g., coding tests can be done via text and not in person. This has worked wonders in other industries.
3. Have companies' HR departments focus on diversity, e.g. talking to employees (anonymously, or as they prefer) to see if there are current issues, and if so, to try to address them.
All those steps are already being taken by most major software companies, including the one I work at. Progress is happening. And it can happen without
1. Posing the problem as "group A" vs "group B", as you are doing. That's the type of thinking that got us into this problem in the first place, that led to prejudice and racism.
2. Acting and talking in ways that appear racist to a large segment of the tech industry, as Github is doing.
Forgive me if I think she is more qualified for that job running diversity initiatives than I am, even though I'm very well read on the topic.
But it's not the only qualification necessary for the job. The other is to effect change in the organization. By your logic, if a black person is better at understanding the problems black people face, perhaps a white person would be better at getting white people to change things in the company.
I actually think both of those are wrong. You can feel horror at the Rwandan genocide or the holocaust or other massive injustices without being African or Jewish. You don't just intellectually understand racism in the US - I hope - you also feel it has to change.
Again, I agree the perspectives of underrepresented minorities are crucial here. But that doesn't lead to "every single chief of diversity must be non-white."
Exactly, but it is one qualification of many. If you have a white man with a stellar application for that position, and a woman of color with a similarly stellar application for that position, doesn't the woman of color necessarily get the job because she has more qualifications than the white man?
The point is there is always going to be a person of color that is more qualified than the white man for that leadership position because their experience as a person of color makes them more qualified for the position, everything else being equal, and they should thus be given it. Is that not reasonable?
"The head of diversity should be a white male because they are the only ones qualified to understand white male privilege and therefore will be more effective at working and communicating with others that also have the same privilege and coming up with ways to get others with privilege to change their behavior. Seeing that those with privilege are a majority in the industry, a white male leading it would be more effective leading more people to changing attitudes."
Anyhow, in practice, I doubt it matters: most applicants to such positions are likely not white men anyhow. So the racism inherent in such statements as "white folks are not suitable for this role" is not only wrong, it is also unnecessary.
White people are already in charge of everything, they don't also need to be in charge of diversity. That's exactly why these positions are being created in the first place.
> It's just that people of color are even more qualified
which you're ignoring again. Is it because the argument wasn't clear? Should I try again?
How can anybody who advocates equality say no white person can lead a diversity movement? Just because somebody is white doesn't mean they aren't an oppressed minority (female, transgender, Jewish or some other oppressed group like a furry).
I think we collectively need to declare it's not okay to say "people with skin color ____" cannot possibly understand Y or have an opinion on Y. To do so is institutionalized racism.
edit: typo
When the discussion is about "social impact", the conversation is about diversity. Diversity != equality. In the view of many, equality isn't enough, because the "un-oppressed" are fundamentally privileged. The concept of "reverse racism" is there to deflect the inevitable awkward questions that arise, when clearly biased statements are made and practices get institutionalized.
IMO, all this stuff is problematic. I wish we could all embrace the golden rule and move on.
If your idea of fairness requires we become systematically biased against certain majorities (white, heterosexual, male, cis-gender) for your cause then I don't want to be part of your cause, and moreover I find that cause discriminitory and dangerous.
Exactly. As mentioned earlier, in the case of Github the cultural transition appears to be from prioritizing meritocracy to codified diversity for the sake of diversity.
Then that's not equality - equality is, or should be enough, because if the issue of diversity and equality is 'minimizing / eliminating privilege' then by definition, equality is that privilege is the same for all (or zero).
For many though, this becomes a good cover for 'preferential treatment above and beyond equality, in the name of 'compensation'.'
You may be saying that the non-white leadership is the kind of leadership that allows collaboration and influence from followers, which is what I would do, but the evidence in the Github case is to the contrary.
This sounds excessively harsh, do you really think that's how GitHub will run the program?
Whiteness changes with political needs. Hilariously, Irish-Americans, Jews, etc weren't always considered white. They had to become white. Nowadays, certain Asians are held up as model minorities and may get some honorary whiteness.
With children getting murdered by the state for being black, it's obvious race is about white supremacy. (Analogously, sexism is about male supremacy, also known as patriarchy.)
The US is 77.7% of the US population. I hardly think that a 2% imbalance is an issue to create divisiveness over. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_State...
I think you mean 77.7% white? It should be noted that the census counts North African and Middle Eastern as white, which is inaccurate. That number also drops to 62.6% when you take out Hispanics that describe themselves as white. So it's probably more like a 20 point difference than 2.
This sort of thinking is stupid.
White Supremacists: Jewish people are 2% of the american population, but they hold the majority of top positions in the publishing industry. Do you oppose diminishing Jewish Supremacy? Are you saying it's okay?
Both of these arguments are terrible, and are both based on the premise that over-representation of some group in some industry or position constitutes a serious problem and probable conspiracy.
Ah, ok, so you don't think representation is an issue. Most people of color that have dealt with white gatekeepers will disagree with you. If you care to examine the part of you that holds that belief I'd suggest reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X, followed by some James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Frantz Fanon, and bell hooks to start. Hate read it if you must, but give some experiences orthogonal to yours a chance.
1) Diversity isn't just about race and the fact you think it is is why I'm honestly horrified by you.
2) Sexual orientation, transgender issues are serious problems and not really protected classes in many respects and they have as much of a "fixed" bag from genetics as you do.
The majority of sexism and racism that I've seen is probably subconscious and doesn't really seem intentional per se. People often just don't realize the side-effects of what they're saying or doing, or how it can come across to people sometimes. You certainly won't build shared camaraderie and empathy by antagonizing entire classes of people.
- "This is not work for white folks to lead"
It's a stretch as a comparison, but no-one gets sued for refusing to hire ugly models. It's because a model's job is to be good looking. That's just the way it is. In a similar way, a head of diversity should probably be... diverse. Although that could include gay white men, for example - maybe that text is shorthand that was qualified in the actual presentation, none of us know.
The white women one mystifies me, though. Women are usually a minority in the workplace, surely their views are valid.
I'm sick of this politics of division. It pits people against each other and treats them as members of some helpless group instead of as individual human beings, with their own unique story and their own untapped potential.
I don't see how you can guarantee that. Don't get me wrong, I totally understand what you're saying. But this is a one-line bullet point in a slideshow, I'd like to see some more context before I grab my pitchfork.
We've invented tools to deal with this: language and literature. Almost everyone has experienced some form of discrimination, even if for many it is only occasional and minor, and that's enough to give a good writer an opening to get inside the reader's head and use that to build upon and paint a vivid picture of the more frequent or major discrimination the writer has dealt with.
This kind of outpouring of rage, to be frank, is why Hacker News has such a bad reputation. Look around at the comments here: there are people complaining about the very notion that there might be something wrong with how hiring and promotion happens in technology. There are people, like @yoodenvranx, equating their own anecdotal problems with the victimization of white men. There are countless comments asserting that we are capable of "pure meritocracy," a notion that is invalidated by research on implicit bias.
The overwhelming consensus here is that (a) there is no problem, and (b) GitHub's attempts to address it are unjust. This is why Hacker News looks to the outside world like a self-affirming bubble with no grounding in reality.
I also don't think your comment extends good faith you are demanding to the comment and commenters which you're addressing.
there are people complaining about the very notion that
there might be something wrong with how hiring and
promotion happens in technology.
Comments like yours, on the other hand, are the reason I come to HN. Measured rebuttals without being too biased one way or the other-- it really enhances the reading experience of those going through this thread.
It's hard to convey my appreciation through an upvote, since that can be confused for just popularity, so I had to say it here.
But we also have to remember that, to someone not in those well-represented groups, it's not a huge consolation. Diversity isn't a floating-point number between 0.0 and 1.0.
Overall, I rarely if ever see anyone arguing for diversity asking hard questions like "Why are there many Asians and Indians even though there aren't many Women, Hispanics/Latinos and Black people?". What are these successful identity groups doing differently that is affording them much success in being well represented or even over represented? How might the under represented groups adopt the same approaches to achieve the same success?
I'm not saying that we shouldn't solve unconscious bias as well, but I'm less inclined to first consider solutions that address unconscious bias if those solutions are proposed by someone who hasn't also considered other explanations and solutions because they aren't applying the null hypothesis in their thought process.
Also, how about some multi-variate analysis to determine which factors most greatly contribute to the diversity gap for each underrepresented group? We can't adequately fix what we don't measure and I really don't see a lot of measurement going on. For example, all successful startups understand and apply concepts of a user acquisition funnel and pipeline, but then people complain loudly in simplistic terms that the "pipeline problem is a myth". I don't understand how you can the former technique with great success and hold the latter incongruous thought in your head at the same time.
https://medium.com/life-tips/the-null-hypothesis-loves-you-a...
Why is it OK to make these kinds of generalizations?
If people can get thrown out of conferences for their tweets on unrelated things, if Eich can get in hot water over a political donation, then it is little surprise to see the knife cutting both ways.
You wouldn't forgive a developer for speaking at an MRA conference--why should these people be forgiven for unrelated presentations?
This is the future you chose.
EDIT:
Downvote all you want. This is the kind of goodthink/badthink politicking that happens once you move away from "Does the code work?"
The thing being complained about by my parent poster here is completely consistent with the social norms that have prevailed lately. I would say don't be surprised at the sudden double-standard, but logic apparently isn't the strong point of the mobs.
We've spent so much time lately attacking meritocracies that it is somewhat cathartic to watch the inevitable consequences.
EDIT2:
Just to make this painfully clear--we have decided as a community that it is okay to judge people based on their actions in unrelated contexts. That applies just as much to folks that have slides about "white women being obstacles" in some unrelated context to their work in HR as it does to people that tweet bigoted things while being maintainers of projects.
The logic and principle is exactly the same.
I don't understand it completely, but here is a related wikipedia article.
- what you mean by racial?
- how what I read on that slide is racial, not racist
They have enterprise services, or can be self-hosted.
I know the slide needs more context, but even so, it is a very disturbing statement to make.
Something is amiss and lots of explanations are needed.
PS: now I am more than happy with my choice of keeping my repos on Bitbucket.
Furthermore, I don't understand the racist attitude that somehow white or male people are somehow less qualified to lead a diversity program. Interpersonal skills, knowledge of the myriad diversity initiatives and approaches tried elsewhere and how effective they have been, knowledge of hiring practices, knowledge of recruiting practices, knowledge of retention practices, knowledge of the law surrounding hiring, recruiting and retention practices, professional network, etc. are all the type of things that should be relevant when choosing the most qualified candidates for such a position. Discounting all these and elevating someone's race and gender to utmost importance is blatantly racist policy/attitude.
An equally absurd corollary to "those that have experienced discrimination have unique insight into preventing discrimination" is "those that have experienced privilege have unique insight into privilege and how to dismantle it".
Just because you're on one side or the other doesn't make you more qualified by experience. We need people with understanding of both sides of the coin. In other words, we need diversity with respect to experiencing privilege and discrimination to understand what is happening and how to address it. When you don't have people on the other side of the coin, racist attitudes like the ones reflected in that slide proliferate.
Being white doesn't disqualify you from having experience being discriminated either. There are gay, lesbian and transgender white men, women and other gender identities. Head over to The Advocate and read some essays/blog posts from gay white males.
Furthermore, discriminating white people and men from this sphere of work (or any other) gives them some similar experiences and insight into discrimination.
What this thread shows is the sentiment that, if you claim diversity is important, leaving out a group specifically to increase diversity (as opposed to, say, merely reducing their proportion in the cohort) is in fact not being intellectually consistent or honest.
Don't fall into the flippant "Oh ho ho if white's aren't involved I guess it can't ever be legit" sarcastic dismissal. That's neither fair nor accurate.
"Some of the biggest barriers to progress are white women"
When diversity initiatives become an "us vs them" discourse, everyone loses. Except for the fat cats with full wallets at the top, who have no issue with the plebe infighting as long as it's between themselves (see the not so subtly placed "this is not about socio economic class").
My take is that it's not "us vs them", but a need to illuminate where the barriers lie.
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/27/us-study-finds-...
[2] https://www.facebook.com/marlon.james1/posts/101537967097308...
For the life of me I can't understand why people insist on having equal representation in every industry. It'd be on thing if there were numbers proving a massive backlog of people of a certain race/gender wanting positions in a field but unable to get them. It's another entirely when there's no demand, and we insist on artificially generating it to make people feel warm and fuzzy that every job on the planet has equal representation across race/age/gender.
how many chinese restaurants are run by non-chinese?
these stats don't make any sense, if you just look at them that way. maybe whites like being editors more… if you don't find the reason, you won't find the solution.
US Census Quick Facts Data Sheet by State: http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/index.html
[1] http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/11/21/365707391/...
I'm inclined to believe that there is no correct percentage and that even trying to simplify as you have is disingenuous and leads to simple but wrong explanations that ignore all sorts of contributory factors.
I'm a cis-male that identifies as agender, but I haven't seen any evidence that I'm under-represented in the publishing industry because my gender is discriminated against. That's an extraordinary claim and requires extraordinary evidence.
Furthermore, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on base rates and how they contribute to measurements of diversity?
It's an inherent problem that as you fight something, you tend to mirror it. You almost have to do so in order to be effective. The problem is that at some point, it just feeds the cycle.
I am at fault for that, and have been trying to stop recently.
It's funny how we (I) is okay with using old wisdom when it comes to engineering, but dismiss quotes like that even though it comes with significant experience across generation and culture. Chalk it up to young and (incredibly) stupid
I think that most people think the same way, and as a result there are absolutely no consequences when the activists go from "challenging" to "outright hateful."
"During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die." ~ Nelson Mandela [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Prepared_to_Die]
IMHO, this position is more philosophically consistent than what many circles in American academia espouse. As I recall, Mr Mandela had to fight a lot of over-zealous activists in his own party who wanted to implement punishment or retribution to the white apartheid supporters. Though it cost him greatly in terms of discontent and difficulty but stands to me as an example. But it's been widely acclaimed after the fact.
There are plenty of places where I, as a competent white male, can get hired and promoted without difficulty. The fact that Github isn't one of those is not a systematic problem. More power to them.
Github is a major software company, and there are similar signs at other major companies, most of whom are starting down a similar path.
When it's actually hard to get a job as a white male developer. We're very far from that point.
I think it's reasonable to worry well before that.
(I don't know what if anything we can or should do aside from worry.)
I don't know what your definition of major is, but Github is not it in my book. Don't get me wrong, they make a semi-decent product, better than anyone else at this point, but they are by no means the only solution in their market.
Hey, very scary to hear you say that. My email is in my profile. Write me anytime if you want. Lots of people on HN love to help other people. Don't be shy about reaching out.
That said, I don't think I "prefer" anything about the way the world works now.
I tweeted a response stating this was racism and was blocked within 20 seconds.
The article put that tweet in a context where it could be interpreted as "white males in Github are bad, let's fire them" and I think he says something completely different.
Lots of unsourced speculation as to what's going on behind the scenes, but I wonder if a few years from now, we'll all look back at the day they decided to throw out meritocracy (symbolically, as the rug, and realistically, as the reorganization) as the beginning of the end...
Aside: I'm getting rather tired of being downvoted and nobody bothering to at least explain why.
What some people seem to want instead is some sort of egalitocracy, but I have no idea how to make such a beast productive or useful, particularly for tech work, which has a fairly high intellectual bar.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10905356
I've been watching github closely as they are one of our main competitors in the enterprise offerings.
I had the same reaction. I'm surprised nobody else has noticed this and made a comment about it.
People from that circle were proposing the idea of creating 'black lists' to make people unemployable for political reasons; they managed to get Brendan Eich expelled from Mozilla; they're pushing for "Codes of conducts", which again aim at expelling people from open source communities for political reasons - eg things they said in completely unrelated places, like their own Twitter feeds (see "Opalgate").
Also see PronounGate, DongleGate, past scandals at Github (meritocracy rug, Julie-Ann Horvath departure), discussions/scandals around CoC/"Contributor Covenant", etc etc etc.
One thing they frequently claim, is that they are NOT censoring anything, people are free to do whatever they want.
Yet they keep pushing for this behaviour (black listing people that disagree with feminism, nagging companies until they decide to not launch products in some markets because fear of feminist backlash, and so on).
I honestly don't see how they don't notice how illogical their position are.
I have a friend on Twitter who's a raging feminist. I asked her if she was concerned about Carly Fiorina being excluded from the GOP debate since she was the only woman and actually had more votes in the Iowa caucus than two other male candidates who they kept in the debate.
Her response was that she never cared about any GOP candidate. It just makes no sense to me. If you're for women's rights, then it shouldn't matter what race, religion or political party someone is, in order to support them - they're women, and should be supported regardless.
WTH are you talking about? If you're for women's rights you support people who are also for women's rights, regardless of race, religion or gender they are.
I don't know who Carly Fiorina is, but I know Margaret Thatcher, and she did nothing for women. By your logic though, just because she was a woman, feminists should have supported her over men in the opposing (socialist) party that supported women's rights?
No hatred ever got fixed by pouring more hatred into the cauldron. Sure, you can be the conquerer, but you just created more people gunning for you. If you are not about equality and love of all, then you are just another part of the problem. It is very much like the H1-B threads. Its important to see the system is broken and not the H1-B applicants doing the best they can in the system.
I sit here on a reservation and see the problems. A university adding requirements in a job search that weren't there before for one. I've lived through a bit of it, and people like him won't solve anything. All they will do is cost the company money in lawsuits.
Want to fix diversity? Fix the diversity and STEM education in pre-K and K-6. We learn to dream then. Let's think about everyone having a chance to dream of STEM.
They are in a special cognitive dissonance zone, they are wildly successful and that cures a lot of problems. They have time and money to worry about issues that aren't the products, and be vocal about it. Now the community seems to be mostly pacified, they like git and github has the mindshare, but they are coasting. Or so it seems, maybe the enterprise version I've never used has some badass features.
I haven't lived in the US for a while, but lately, I keep hearing all these expressions of straight up racial hatred of white people, all the way up to taking pleasure in white people "dying off" and so on. This kind of thing can't end well and needs to be stopped.
It's like saying Reddit is nothing but Red Pill / MRA / gamergate types, or HN is nothing more than clueless Valley types. Or that Twitter is nothing but people sending each other 140 character descriptions of lunch. I really hate lazy stereotypes of complex interactions, especially on a place like HN where people should be "native" enough to digital culture to know better.
The combined result is that, on Tumblr, you'll subscribe to people for one thing, and then inevitably they'll "signal-boost" other things into your feed that you didn't sign up for. The most often "signal-boosted" thing is Social Justice discourse. This is why people get the impression Tumblr is a Social Justice website: if you subscribe to blogs about porn, cats, and tech, you'll end up with a dashboard containing porn, cats, tech, and "signal-boosted" Social Justice.
Personally, my problem isn't with Social Justice, but with "signal-boosting" itself. I (very carefully) use Tumblr, and enjoy doing so, but only by strictly following a policy of unsubscribing from any blog that "signal-boosts" anything. I think this means that I end up following only blogs that are completely disconnected from Tumblr's social graph, though, so I don't know how precisely I can be said to be "using Tumblr" at this point, rather than just being subscribed to some blogs that happen to be hosted there.
I have no idea how you know what your downvoters think about Tumblr.
> It's like saying Reddit is nothing but Red Pill / MRA / gamergate types [...] I really hate lazy stereotypes
Who is the "they" in your post then, below, if not a generalised "Reddit" of nothing but Red Pill / MRA / gamergate types?
"Reddit is leaking. Tumblr: the scapegoat for everything they don't like."Because Tumblr is brought up here and on Reddit frequently as this hellhole of idiotic far leftist thought. All I can think is: "have you actually looked at Tumblr beyond following some link at /r/tumblrinaction?" because there's so, so much more than that.
>Reddit is leaking...
Well, one thing you can count on from Reddit (or at least the vocal people in the defaults and conservative subs) is a fear and loathing of Tumblr, as well as considering SRS to be the root of all evil. Any time someone wants to panic about the threat of "SJWs", Tumblr is not far behind in the fear factor.
Hence, "reddit is leaking.." which was a joking way of referring to "tumblr is leaking".
But I still defend Reddit to my friends who are dismissive of it. Reddit contains a lot more than the awful stuff it's well known for. The defaults might be a hive of scum and villainy but there's a ton of great stuff in the smaller subs.
Internet induced sociopathy has infected an entire generation. No conversation is ever a conservation, everything is a performance for the benefit of third parties. Even face to face every conversion is haunted by what will this sound like when it is posted online. No one deserves the benefit of the doubt because they aren't real people, just words on a screen.
It's the so-called SJWs and the alt-right. It's GG and anti-GG. It's facebook and tumblr and twitter and reddit and lord knows 4chan.
It's sick, it's no ones fault, it's probably unfixable and that's heartbreaking.
I even read of people claiming they are trans-black because they inside them feel black (and I am quoting literally) and so other people must see them that way.
You find this on tumblr, on pseudo-feminism propaganda sites, etc... a lot of this is collected in the subreddit reddit.com/r/tumblrinaction
Wouldn't that constitute cultural appropriation?
As for German or Russian philosophers - that seems far fetched. This is an American phenomenon, and in its explicit and mainstream form, it is a fairly recent one.
BTW, do you want to get started on explaining away "we can't teach white male managers empathy or compassion"?
Not wanting to be an ally unless you're allowed to be in charge is a pretty perfect illustration of why the slide exists.
"the white folk"? That's pretty close to "you people"/"those people".
I really don't like this trend of painting everyone with white-ish skin as a homogenous oppressor class. It's pretty clear to me that a diversity department that explicitly bans white people from leadership positions will not represent my interests if I am discriminated against.
How stupid can you be to post a "no white leadership", in writing?
Sorry, as a white male, I don't have to take this kind of blatant racism, abuse, and shaming when it comes to hosting my code. BitBucket does a good job without the uppity diversity attitude.
Hierarchy != Non-meritocracy
You can have hierarchy and still be based on productivity and merit.
I assume you're speaking for yourself. I will bear none of that with you. Never have I participated in any way to hold down anyone because of their race, gender, or otherwise.
When the blameless volunteer to take blame we have serious social problems. Better find the actual cause and fix it.
> Its once famous remote-employee culture has been rolled back. Senior managers are no longer allowed to live afar and must report to the office. This was one reason why some senior execs departed or were asked to leave, one person close to the company told us. > There was a remote culture and very little hierarchical structure which worked wonderfully when they were 30 and 50 people, but at 500, it doesn't work.
More accurately, that statement is both anti-white and misandrist, almost by definition, by equating white plus male with damage.
It blows my mind that some people really believe that only white people can be racist. It's like they completely redefined the meaning of the word "racist".
That's the point. Redefine words so that it's impossible for someone who doesn't share their point of view to have any moral high ground.
That makes your followers who have adopted the new definitions fairly immune to persuasion. Some cults work like this. I've never seen it done by anyone with a defendable agenda.
Being poor and white is a lot better than being poor and black or poor and <not white> because you're not fighting additional problems that come with being a minority.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/34667100/poor-white-bo...
> If you're white, male and poor enough to qualify for a free meal at school then you face the toughest challenge when starting out in life.
> That's what the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has said in "the most comprehensive review ever carried out on progress towards greater equality in Britain".
Frankly the debate should really be "How do we give everyone the best start in life" rather than "how do we cripple some groups so everyone gets an equal start in life".
Poor students have an immensely huge problem already (being poor), the problem is how do they climb out of poverty? There is no easy path but being "white" is easier in that (for ex.) looking for a job, there won't be people who discriminate against you because you're black, asian or latino. The same minority applying to the same job now also has to deal with any preconceived discriminatory outlooks of the hiring manager. that is the _out_ that white people get.
I agree that we should, "we give everyone the best start in life", but you act as though whites don't already get that or are being penalized now by your, "how do we cripple some groups so everyone gets an equal start in life" statement. White people have always been unequal from other minorities in that they've always had an advantage. Your view of "crippling" is everyone else's view of a level playing field.
Edit: holy batman the downvotes. I never considered the possibility that maybe #hnwatch is right.
It would be absurd to tell someone to recognize their privilege that the odds were in their favor but nonetheless they rolled poorly. It's like telling some white guy on death row to feel privileged he had a lower chance of being there.
Being a white male is being allowed at a table in a casino where the expected value of the game is positive, and much higher than any other table. You can still lose, but the players in general don't. You should be thankful for being allowed to play a game with the highest expected value.
I think that's a reasonable thing to assert. That's what privilege is: the number of times you can fuck up (self-inflicted bad things) or be unlucky (externally inflicted bad things) before you lose all your chips.
That's the nice things about probability and statistics. They allow us to compare an individual to a group.
Of course feelings are important- The feeling you wish to elicit is guilt, not simply acknowledgement.
Getting white males, whether successful or not, to even say "yes, the system discriminates for us, regardless of outcomes" is such a huge barrier that their acknowledgment of the issue is the first thing that must happen before any kind of "fixing of the system" could happen.
So at our losers' table, you would ask the white winners to help you out over me, and over the other white guys at the losers' table, because we, the white losers, must have fucked up more to get here. The underprivileged losers are entitled to disproportionate aid from the winners.
A winner comes over to the losers bar, and you want him to give every loser, white or black, the same number of chips.
The problem is that after you all get your re-up, you get to go play at the white table again, and they go back to play at the black table again, which means that you have a way greater chance to not come back to the losers' bar.
Ideally, you'd make both games have the same probability distributions, and that might happen eventually, but until then, the underprivileged losers should get more resources to have similar outcomes.
Expected value is everything.
In this simplistic example, it comes down to one party using guilt tactics to convince the other party to provide an advantage or a leg up, which necessitates working against their own interests. Guilt tactics are required because it's a social engineering goal; the total number of people at the losers' bar remains the same.
You don't have to show up at the bar.
What I am saying is: "Regardless of personal outcomes, whites and blacks are playing a game with a different probability distribution. That's a statistical fact. I want you to either acknowledge that it's a fact, or provide evidence that it is not. If you do agree that it's a fact, I want you to say 'I'm sorry you guys are playing a statistically rigged game', however, I don't want you to feel guilty and give up your shit."
Saying 'I am sorry' is not the same as feeling guilty. If you really object to the words 'I'm sorry' and can't fathom saying them and not feeling guilty, try saying 'it sucks that you guys are playing a statistically rigged game'. If the words "I promise to remember that if I ever manage to leave the losers' bar" seem to imply to you that it's a promise to later feel guilty and give up some of your shit when you have some, it isn't. Certainly you can remember what it is like to be a loser while being a winner, and then do nothing to help current losers.
What you seem to be saying is: "Regardless of whether 'the black game is disadvantageous to the white game' is a fact or not, the reason anyone tells me that is because they want to elicit guilt and then proceed with resource redistribution, rebalancing and social engineering", and I think that's wrong.
Just like it is incorrect to say that there is a white/asian/indian-male-libertarian-programmer-hivemind on Hacker News, it is incorrect to state that everyone that makes the observation that I am making is there to elicit guilt and proceed with resource redistribution.
There is a philosophical maxim that states "you can't derive an 'ought' from an 'is'." Interpret your opponents with sufficient charitability to believe that they are obeying this maxim, especially when they say "I am obeying that maxim."
I think he simply couldn't back up his own argument with any logic, so resorted to a tired cheap shot about Nazis in frustration.
It's a pity your apology makes it seem like you simply referred to the Nazis without knowing he was German, when you actually specifically blamed him and every other (white) German ("you guys") for what the Nazis did, because he said he was in Germany.
> FWIW, only ElComradio was engaging with me in an actual discussion there, and his replies are reasonable, but I am thoroughly downvoted anyway, so how's that for evidence of a hivemind?
Out of five posts in that discussion, you have one post that is white. I wouldn't call that "thoroughly downvoted".
Oh, never mind, I forgot for a second you're addressing something/someone specific with generalisations that are meaningless to him and have nothing to do with his life or status.
Your argument is piss poor; that's why you were downvoted (not by me). Congrats on your successful upvote fishing, by implying/imagining some kind of HN conspiracy/agenda/hive mind.
I'm not sure if pointing that out was what violated the guidelines or just the way I did it, but in future, assuming this has not been banned, I'll try to keep my opinion of someone's argument or intellect to myself. Thanks for the heads up.
Your entire comment upthread was uncivil. If you're sincere about abiding by the guidelines (as I hope you are), it would be an instructive exercise to rewrite it in a neutral, respectful way, editing out the nose-tweaking and every trace of snark. Do that on three or four occasions and you'll see how much better your contributions get, regardless of what you're arguing for. I know that sounds patronizing, but I don't mean it that way—it's a process that many of us, including me, have gone through, and it helps.
I hope it's still possible to disagree, argue or take a negative position towards someone's post or argument without it necessarily being taken as personal or uncivil though.
It's definitely still possible to disagree, of course. It's entirely a matter of how.
> Edit: holy batman the downvotes. I never considered the possibility that maybe #hnwatch is right.
Its unfortunate that you are being downvoted without comment. The downvotes may or may not be evidence that #hnwatch is correct, it would depend on the motivation. It would not be rational for us to assume that the downvotes are evidence that #hnwatch is correct, in the absence of any explanation for the downvotes.
IDK why, but people tend to not like being blamed for things they didn't do.
If that's not the mesaage we're supposed to take out of the concept, them somebody has got a lot of work to do to figure out a better way of communicating it. Someone who is not me, because I'm a programmer, just trying to take care of my own family, not a sociologist.
Its too common for people to be so certain of their own viewpoint that they will simply assume the worst (ie racism and sexism) of anyone who disagrees with them, rather than consider that their critics might have damn good (non-racist, non-sexist) reasons for disagreeing with them.
No one talking about white privilege says it means white people can't ever have a tough life. Just as being black doesn't mean you can't ever be successful.
It's simply argued that if all other things were equal, chances are you'd have it harder as a minority.
As an example: http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html
> a white name yields as many more [job] callbacks as an additional eight years of experience
False. Many people who speak frequently about white privilege actually do sometimes make the argument that white people's lives are so intrinsically easier than POCs, that we need not ever worry about harming any white people.
This mentality is most visible when a gang of righteous ideologues are waging a vicious doxxing or "harass their employer until they fire them" campaign against an accused white person.
harder as a minority.
To me it seems like rhetorical sleight of hand, redefining "racism" to depend on a mysterious "power" component which is never adequately demonstrated or explained, or only explained in terms which are themselves actually racist, e.g., "whites have power because most politicians are white".
In other words, "Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man."
It is far, far away from science or empiricism, and yet it is used to inform law and policy. Insanity
By replacing flat meritocracy and remote work with traditional top-down management?
> "don't think we'll succeed teaching white, male middle managers empathy and compassion anytime soon, so let's limit their scope of damage"
So the technical director and member of the social-impact team is a blatant racist.