To the extent that you can focus on what is under your personal control, you are likely to be happier and more productive. To the extent that you focus on things that are not under your control and can't be changed, you will be unhappy, unproductive, and will have a built-in excuse for your failures. This is not an either-or choice, it is a spectrum. And the farther you manage to go towards taking responsibility for your life, generally the better you will do.
This does not diminish the real challenges that various historically disadvantaged groups have. It is what I believe the best advice is for them based on everything that I have learned..including from people I respect who are members of various disadvantaged groups.
The interesting thing is that your line of advice really just needs a single, model minority person to prove it right. "Look! She didn't accede to the haters! Please ignore all the other people like her who gave up along the way! She obviously focused on what was under her personal control, and that's all that mattered."
But it isn't all that matters. If that were true, diversity in tech would not be an issue. Instead, only the most resilient people, those most willing to overlook the ongoing and systemic discrimination, make it.
Furthermore the REASON why I pointed out that it is a spectrum is that it isn't all or nothing. If you're truly stuck feeling like a victim a lot of the time and can't change it, you're still better off than you would be otherwise. Better off does not mean well off - discrimination is real. It just means better.
But that isn't a reason to deny people help, deny people the chance to say "hey, look I'm feeling really alone right now". I wouldn't be as "tough" as I am now if it weren't for a few people who gave me a hand when I truly needed it. I wouldn't be where I am without reading a ton of blogposts by other marginalized people who feel the same way as I did.
There are, no doubt, people who like to wallow in their insecurities, but they aren't any worse than the people who say the marginalized should just suck it up and work harder, or that people who feel marginalized should shut up.
The phrase, "To the extent that you can..." was meant to convey the fact that the perfect ideal is not feasible. I also tried to make it clear that the attempt is worthwhile because even if your best is only an occasional success, you'll still wind up better off than you would otherwise.
On the question of toxic organizations, I'd like to point out that recognizing that the organization is toxic and choosing to be elsewhere was under your control. I commend you for making that choice. There will always be toxic people and toxic organizations. Some, like the police, we have little choice about dealing with. But there is no need to put up with ones that we can avoid. And by avoiding them, we make our lives better.
However experience suggests that you are likely to wind up around people who are quick to explain all failures as discrimination. Because they do this for themselves, they are unlikely to be successful. If you adopt this attitude, your odds of success are also hurt.
However, I believe you can’t possibly extend that (positive and helpful) feeling to an outside “political” statement. If our aim is to make the industry welcoming and accepting to everyone, I believe we should do more than what you describe and try to figure out a way to make it right.
It might not help minorities in tech right now, but it will eventually.
If you have a minority that has every disadvantage but believes that they CAN succeed by their own effort, that minority will succeed and it will reduce bigotry against them. Indeed the history of the USA supports this - we have had wave after wave of disadvantaged immigrants. They have nothing, have trouble with the language, and are widely discriminated against. But a generation or two later you have seen Italians, Koreans, Chinese, Vietnamese, Russian Jews, Afghans, and many other minorities integrate into the mainstream and do well.
But get a victim culture established in a minority, and things won't improve for them. They are unlikely to actually face more discrimination than, say, Cambodians did when they arrived here penniless and not speaking the language about 40 years ago. But they will have a worse future.
Look at it a different way. If you're from a disadvantaged minority, you've likely got a strike against you for having a bad background, and another for current discrimination. Add a victim mentality, and you're out. It doesn't matter how good the evidence is that you're an actual victim, it is the mentality that you can't afford.
Maybe those things can't be changed in the short run, but maybe speaking up about them helps move society in the direction of changing them in the long run.
Short, fat, scrawny, aging, young, poor, immigrant, religious, atheist, nose-picker.
Maybe identifying as a card carrying member of a "disadvantaged" group isn't the healthiest outlook to have.
Maybe some people don't walk around looking for every opportunity to trumpet their social group like an American Express card and just have certain realities that they deal with that individuals who aren't say a minority, a woman or physically disabled aren't privy to and sometimes have baggage thrust upon them just by virtue of their position.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12090093
This comment comes to mind and I think illustrates an example of what I mean by this.
We all have such realities, and typically few if any other people realise what's going on. Just be kind. To everyone (note to self: be better at this).
It's not specific to any particular group (though: apparently short men have it quite a bit worse than other "protected" groups: http://www.jonathanrauch.com/jrauch_articles/height_discrimi... )
For some people, their identity and association as a member of %group% is something they outwardly display to be observed and consumed by others, and they have their reasons for it. For others, it's something they keep to themselves and prefer to carry on and be judged on the merits of their contributions to work and family, and they have their reasons for that. These things don't invalidate one another.
For others still, their association with %group% isn't something they choose, and is prominent and obvious by merely walking into a room and for good or ill, a person often finds themselves navigating all sorts of assumptions, guesses and biases about that association whether or not they can control it. That was the thrust of my comment.
http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
> Most people reading this will already be fairly tolerant. But there is a step beyond thinking of yourself as x but tolerating y: not even to consider yourself an x. The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you.
Some women choose to openly identify as (for example) feminist and embrace all of the connotations and reactions that come with that.
Some women choose to identify as feminist more privately and live their life being fair with others and only discussing their group association among certain circles they feel allow them to do so free from worry of being ostracized or criticized for that group association.
Some women choose not to identify as feminist at all, want nothing to do with the modern brand of 'feminism', but might still have to put up with some of the externalities of being a woman in certain spaces that sometime get associated (sometimes unfairly) with, or are critiqued by modern feminism.
This is an example. This is my point.
The comment I referenced above perfectly illustrates an example: just because I am a member of the black community doesn't automatically mean I desire to constantly be the spokesperson for position n that impacts the black community. Some individuals choose to be in that role, other's don't; however that there are those who don't want that burden shouldn't be taken as an indicator to mean they're immune from the biases and assumptions that come from onlookers who see me as an opinionated and (I'm trying to hold back from typing this word because of the baggage inherent to it in this context) articulate black man and ask me "Well what do you think about Black Lives Matter?"
Does that clear it up at all?
> doesn't automatically mean I desire to constantly
> be the spokesperson for position n that impacts
> the black community.
Sure. But again, everyone has something like that. I am German. When I lived in the US, do you know how many times I had to give my opinion on Hitler? Or dissuade people from the notion that because I am German I must obviously be a fan? When discussing things with British people, you know how many times they dig up "2 wars"?
As a man, I have to put up with the fact that women who know nothing whatsoever about me will see me as a danger, even though in fact they are almost certainly more of a danger to me than I am to them.
That's life.
And that's my point. We agree more than you think we do, we're just using different ways of arriving at the exact same nexus. It's life, it doesn't however mean I have any obligation to indulge those curiosities, and I for my part, have no desire to. There's no more wrong with me understanding and acknowledging the position some people are in and their willingness to engage than there is with my own position and my tendency to go "No thanks" when asked to give some explanation on the black experience.
It's life. Absolutely. I don't have anything to say to the contrary.
Who here isn't a member of some disadvantaged group? Being "white" and "male" doesn't mean you're home free. So I don't need to "imagine" being one of "those people"; I am one.
> If you are a member of a disadvantaged group, you often do
> not have the ability to identify as a professional first and
> a group member second. That is the effect of being disadvantaged.
> Other people will make your life seem primarily about being a group
> member.
With regards to having the right to fire people you've previously hired, I think that's justified. In places like Italy, where they make it hard to fire someone once hired, youth unemployment is abnormally high, because it's quite natural to shy away from entering into a contract you can't get out of.
The fundamental problem is believing every thought that pops into your mind. We do that when we're not conscious of thought. Whether a compulsive thought concerns "internal characteristics of a person" or "external factors of a situation" is not relevant.
Life is inherently intractable. If you can't stop thinking about this fact, you indeed do have a problem.