> These sorts of groups get a lot of flak from folks who don't think these groups should exist or that companies should not focus on "diversity"

Including myself (mixed race). I find the "hang out with people who look like me" mentality to be really weird and when a company's idea of diversity is basically this, it's more offensive than racial slurs to be honest.

I am a white male and in my department we have a lower percentage than a lot of the groups who have an ERG. Sometimes I toy with the idea of opening up an ERG for white males. I wonder how this would come across.

I don't really understand why all these groups are around race, sexuality or gender. This seems to me the opposite of diversity. In my view there should be groups around interests instead.

Usually it's about cultural or other shared affiliations. My dad was a big member of the "Emerald Society" at his employer, which was a group of Irish immigrants and mostly first-generation US born children.

A great, non third-rail example of why this is relevant can be seen in the movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding". There's a shared cultural, religious and other heritage and story that holds the characters together.

As a white guy, I would find a white-guy club really weird. I could see something like a dad group, baseball team or fan group, engineering society, a catholic religious/service group or something similar as something that I would potentially identify with. Maybe some sort of Irish heritage thing, but I don't know if that would be relevant to me, as there isn't really a shared experience there.

Also as a white guy, my ancestors have been in North America for quite a while, are mixed between and culturally disconnected from European identities since before the current NA countries were created, also since before some of the current European countries were created, and the ones that did exist back then have probably attacked us at one point or another. Even though I like them, adopting an European cultural identity would be fake and I absolutely hate fakeness. It is true that there are still lots of interesting groups to join, but none based on culture.

When I started my current job I was the only white person in engineering.

The reason that it makes no sense to have a "white male" group is that's the dominant culture generally. A lot of that culture, the "baseline American" culture, is of interest to people who aren't in that group, but the reverse is true way less frequently. Indian-Americans are going to know what Christmas is and might even participate in a gift exchange, but are white people going to observe Diwali?

I was the only LGBT person, and THAT experience is way more isolating.

Groups around interests are great, but you run the risk of creating groups that are popular/mainstream and still fail to include those who are not as mainstream in their interests.

The whole point is to help people who feel like they are different find their place, and a lot of potential interest groups can start to look like a white male club under a different label. For instance, consider a craft beer group, or an (American) Football group.

If you're serious about this a "white male" ERG is probably not politically correct (sorry). I'd probably just go with a "special interest group" not tied to race or gender. A gaming club, pickup sports club, something for dads.. I think Google has an ERG for older folks..

I am not serious a white ERG. My point is that race, gender or sexuality based groups are not "diverse". I also find it hypocritical that only some groups are allowed to have a race/heritage based ERG whereas others will be called racist if they do so.

I saw someone write something pretty good about this in relation to the idea a few years back and let me try and regurgitate it. I'll probably screw it up though so please use the principle of charity when reading.

-- Why are 'black pride' and 'white pride' not equal?

The 'white' cultures of the west usually made it through to their colonies fairly intact and recognizable. The French, the Irish (ignoring changing notions of what 'white' is), the Germans etc. So be proud! Be proud of your Irish heritage, your French heritage, your Croatian heritage.

Black people in America... African slaves came from all over Central and West Africa. Their culture was very quickly all melted together in America and the genealogy muddied and for the most part a modern descendant can't say empirically exactly where in Africa their ancestors came from, let alone have had the elements of culture from that place handed down to them reliably. So the only 'shared experience' of black people in America is... being black in America. Then combine in the historic issues of being a 'lesser' race in American history and "black power" or "black interest groups" and holidays like Kwanzaa are a response to that. ---

Anyway, they're not my thoughts but I've paraphrased them as best as I can remember. It makes sense to me at least as a starting point. What do you think?

The real spanner in the works for this line of thinking is 'asian' groups lumping together all the individual cultures of asia!

Ideally, one day we'll have lived alongside each other long enough that this is all a historic curiosity in the same way 'whiteness' has vastly broadened it's scope in the last 100 years.

>I don't really understand why all these groups are around race, sexuality or gender. This seems to me the opposite of diversity. In my view there should be groups around interests instead.

I don't see why a reason why you can't have both?

When you've grown up facing a particular set of hardships that most of the people around you aren't familiar with, it's important for your mental health to be able to spend time with folks who get it. It doesn't mean you spend all your time together chatting about oppression, but it's easier to relax and let your guard down with someone when you know they won't lecture you for being nervous around police, or try to smother their dismay when you mention your boyfriend, or whatever. It's more of a support group than a hobby meetup.

As a white male you haven't experienced any of that, which is fine! But you should try to put yourself in the shoes of people who weren't so lucky.

EDIT: I was addressing the poster directly. As a white guy with autism, I'm well aware that white males in general can experience lifelong hardship for any number of traits. But anyone who says "I don't really understand why all these groups are around race, sexuality or gender" presumably hasn't experienced that, or they'd immediately understand why someone would want to associate with folks who've been through the same shit.

(Or maybe I'm still giving him too much credit. But I try assume ignorance rather than malice.)

>As a white male you haven't experienced any of that, which is fine!

You know absolutely nothing about this person and yet feel completely at liberty to issue blanket statements about their life and what they have experienced and how they 'should' feel.

White privilege is obviously real. However, that doesn't mean that a white male hasn't ever been nervous around the police or felt queer thoughts.

This is why people resent contemporary 'identity politics' and 'diversity' initiatives. Not because of the end goals themselves (that is, to mitigate racism and prejudice) but because the rhetorical methods currently employed are cloying, tone-deaf, and frankly just plain condescending. The overall point you are making is a noble and important one - to self-reflect and put yourself in other people's perspective - but I don't think this is the most effective way to convey it.

See my edit, please.

"As a white male you haven't experienced any of that,"

Not all white males are the same and face the same challenges. Life is very different if you are good looking, tall, athletic, outgoing vs. being short, non-athletic, nerdy and socially awkward. I was in the second group and faced a lot of discrimination, bullying and ridicule when I grew up. I probably had a lot of advantages too but it's not that simple. There are plenty of rich non-white kids who probably have it much easier than most whites.

But obviously you haven't faced the specific set of challenges that only apply to non-white or non-male people. That is what the parent is suggesting, that it is helpful to have support groups containing people who have faced the same sorts of challenges as you. That doesn't mean that all non-white or non-male people universally have harder lives than all white/male people.

Of course not, but the clumsy racism of the grand-grandparent poster immediately invalidated all of the otherwise good points that were made and clearly turned off a wide swath of an otherwise reasonable and receptive audience. There's quite a few politicians that could learn a great lesson from this thread.

It's not the responsibility of nonwhite/nonmale people to package issues of racism in a pleasing way for white/male people. Implying as such is basically implying that white/male people are the gatekeepers of respect and consideration. maxxxxx asked a question and PhasmaFelis gave an answer which is consistent with the reality of the situation. It's not a pleasing answer because race issues are not a pleasing topic.

No need to package them in a pleasing way, but factually is important. No special kind of respect or consideration is necessary -- just don't tell other people what experiences they have or have not had based on their skin color when you know nothing about them.

What racism?

Then shouldn't you start a short nerd ERG instead of a white male ERG?

I am starting neither. But if I followed the normal pattern i would start a male or a white group. All other groups we have are either gender or ethnicity based.

Then I'm not sure why it's so strange to you that people might want to associate with folks who've grown up with the same hardship. I'm a nerdy white guy with autism; I probably went through much the same shit you did. That's why I sympathize with other minority groups. I know how much it sucks to face discrimination for something you were born with, and I want everyone who's suffered that to find welcoming support.

>As a white male you haven't experienced any of that

This is almost unbelievably blind.

See my edit, please.

>I was addressing the poster directly.

You don't directly know what the poster has gone through. Prefacing the statement with "as a white male" implies that you know what the poster has gone through because of his race. It is willfully blind. You can make convincing statements that white people in general in certain states at certain times face certain kinds of systemic discrimination. You cannot truthfully make the statement that the poster has not encountered serious discrimination, malice, or personal difficulties merely by knowing his race and sex.

>presumably hasn't experienced that, or they'd immediately understand

This is a Scotsman fallacy. I am certain I could find some people who have faced terrible racism that would agree with the poster's opinion.

I think of these groups as a shallow proxy for common interests, as mentioned I've seen ERG type groups at my company that don't have to deal with sexual, racial, gender, etc identity.

These groups are similar to an ice breaker in a conversation with someone new, usually I try to find something common with a person I've just met that we can share experiences over.

The ERGs at my org are not exclusive at all, the Latino, Women, and Black ERGs organize a yearly leadership conference that everyone is invited too and has a very diverse set of topics that can be discussed. The new grads at my company are automatically enrolled into the ERG mailing list and I've developed really tight bonds with folks I met there, there is a yearly ski trip with about 25 people that I'm apart of that started with folks who met through the new grad ERG.

I doubt it's "we share a skin color, let's hang out" for anyone.

It's more of a "we share the same challenges and hardships, let's compare notes" mentality.

Interesting how this comment went from very upvoted to downvoted. Must be a controversial topic. Anyone care to explain why the downvotes?

I try to avoid repeating mistakes and I don't have a lot of comments in the negative. Pointers would be awesome.

As per the site's rules:

    Instead of "you're doing it wrong", suggest alternatives. When someone is learning, help them learn more.

Your post suggests that people with the same skin color share the same challenges and hardships, which just doesn't seem correct to me.

I have no idea if that's why your post was downvoted but anecdotally, asking why you were downvoted only ever elicits more downvotes. Quoting site rules is definitely not going to help your case. They're just imaginary points. Best to just forget about it and move on.

Based on personal experience, I strongly believe that people with the same nationality, religion or gender do share the same a lot of the same challenges and hardships. That's the entire point of those groups.

That was my direct answer to atom-morgan's post who said: “I find the "hang out with people who look like me" mentality to be really weird”.

As for the points themselves I don't care, it's how the post slowly rose to positive and then hit negative in an instant that made me confused. But then again, perhaps I should put away my tinfoil hat.

I wish people of my color, gender, or belief were allowed to make a club, or join yours. It sounds great. Maybe something like this is why whites commit suicide so much more than blacks in America (per CDC [1]). Blacks suffer in many ways but at least they're allowed to make a community just about themselves, and that's valuable.

[1] https://www.realclearscience.com/journal_club/2013/04/05/us_...!

I've found that even if an ERG was created around a particular identity that does not mean that you have to have that identity to be welcome, for instance -- everyone looks forward to when the Indian ERG throws a party because the food is amazing, everyone is invited and the event schedule is public.

Also, ERGs are simply a more formal organization, in my company official ERGs some receive funding to support events. At a previous work campus we set up regular basketball and volleyball games after work using a simple mailing list and a share point like internal forum system.

I've seen groups where the focus is those who identify as "makers" and also a group for drone hobbyists. You can think of these groups as "special interest groups" to use a political term, but most of these groups are not exclusive.. for instance, you can join the NAACP regardless of race.

My (black) spouse has talked with me about their thorough support of this idea. They think there ought to be white student unions, white history month, white studies courses, etc. I wouldn't mind seeing this happen, if white folks could do it without hate or exclusion of others (which probably requires acknowledging and destroying white supremacy).

I think the problem is, the conventional depiction of many events is already 'white'. I had no idea that there were large numbers of African and Indian soldiers on the western front, for instance, until quite recently.

If you mean WW1, there weren't.

There were three Africans (musicians in the German army). Yes, exactly three. Not four or five.

Indians were involved as part of British forces, but numbered well under 1% of men deployed. I wouldn't take anything away from them (good men), but it's inaccurate to say they were significantly represented by numbers.

You need to be careful about people (in this case video game developers) lying to you about history to uphold a moralistic narrative. The facts of history are not politically correct, they are actually correct (by definition), and this is a big difference.

See also: Absurd BBC depictions of Roman-era Britain where there are random black characters all throughout the society at every level of power and influence. A pure lie.

Basically what you get from media these days (95% progressive by survey) is comparable to what you'd get if the media was 95% evangelical Christians, but in another direction. Just keep the source in context.

Is the wikipedia article wrong? The numbers are a little unclear, but it suggest that 1.3 million Indian men volunteered for the British army in WW1, with 75,000 or so dying in the process. That's about a tenth of the casualties, so I'd assume the Indians were a similar proportion of active-duty soldiers. There was also a pretty nasty war in East Africa, although the details are hazy in my mind.

I'm also finding about 72,000 colonial casualties on the French side - which is a smaller proportion, given the colossal numbers the French fielded, but still substantial.

The German army is a very misleading case regardless, since they were pretty much the only power without significant non-white minorities or colonies, aside from perhaps Austro-Hungary.

I'm also unsure about to what extent Romans were black. Obviously, about half their traditional dominion was in Africa, so you'd expect some part of them to be black - and there are certainly many archaeological remains suggesting so, even as far north as England. I also don't know if having black characters is any less true to history than having white characters, since Roman Romans were distinctly brownish, and very short to boot.

Perhaps, but I belong to groups based on my interests which are completely orthogonal to race: my Church, various interest groups on Facebook, etc.

I work at a small company (c. 600 people), so it isn't big enough to have these kinds of groups, but I'd be more interested in joining a group based on interests, like software development (I do work for a software company), or maybe tabletop gaming. I don't care what race people are, but what their interests are like. Of course, I'm a white guy, so there wouldn't be a white guy group (nor would I want to see one).

And for what it's worth, there are a lot of immigrants at this company, so whites are a minority among mostly Indians and Chinese, etc.

Well I noted belief; as an atheist I don't get to go to church groups.

Which leaves interest groups on Facebook... that's okay but talking about board games or model trains isn't really the same as talking about who you are and how you exist in the world as a person.

Much of the value is shared challenges. For many other ethnic groups this is because it coincides with the fact that they're actually foreigners.

If you're having trouble having a place where you can talk about the challenges you have and you feel, for whatever reason, uncomfortable to call it a "white people's group", perhaps try forming it functionally? So, for instance, If you have trouble finding mentorship, a Peer Guidance Group may help?

I don't actually know here. Just suggesting in case it helps.

A lot of these ERGs link together peoples with little cultural connection.

Black -> AA as well as African immigrants

Asian -> Japanese, old migrant Chinese, new communist-raised Chinese, Indonesian

The religious ones make more sense; at least religions are belief systems.

"White" is so generic it's meaningless. It only helps when using skin tone to decide things, which is usually bad. There is no "white culture," but there is Irish, German, British, etc. I doubt anyone would bat an eye if you started a group focused on a European ethnicity.

At my employer, people who are not members of the class associated with an ERG are still allowed to join, provided that they are supportive. Is this not the case elsewhere?

Am I reading this right, you think a plausible reason for suicide among whites is that they're not allowed to form white affinity groups?

I think OP was saying that preventing white affinity groups decreases the availability of affinity groups to white people, which can cause an increase in feelings of loneliness and thereby contribute to things like suicide that result from feelings of loneliness.

> Maybe something like this is why whites commit suicide so much more than blacks in America

Whites officially commit suicide more than blacks because blacks who are even slightly inclined to self-destruction find it all to easy to get into situations that produce death by means that won't officially be viewed as suicide.

> Blacks suffer in many ways but at least they're allowed to make a community just about themselves

Whites can, and do, make communities just about themselves. Now, it's true that the ones that aren't purely and nakedly about virulent racism usually do it about some more specific subset of Whiteness (like a particular national/ethnic identity like Italian or Irish, etc.), probably because Whiteness as such (in America, at least) is not a particularly strong shared experience and identity (some other racial identities, particularly Black identity, are, but largely as a consequence of extended subjugation by the broader society which deliberately destroyed other identities in the group and produced a new common shared experience.)

>> Maybe something like this is why whites commit suicide so much more than blacks in America

> Whites officially commit suicide more than blacks because blacks who are even slightly inclined to self-destruction find it all to easy to get into situations that produce death by means that won't officially be viewed as suicide.

Do you have any data to back that up or any type of non anecdotal evidence? Not attacking you. I actually want to know but I don't believe the, "Your data is incorrect because the way you collect data is flawed. However what I think is correct even without any data." argument is particularly strong.

>Whites officially commit suicide more than blacks because blacks who are even slightly inclined to self-destruction find it all to easy to get into situations that produce death by means that won't officially be viewed as suicide.

We all know what you're implying but you're making that statistic up.

> We all know what you're implying

Implying? I was being explicit, if general because I was referring to a broad class of phenomenon. If you think I was using code for something narrowly specific, you are mistaken.

> but you're making that statistic up.

I'm not presenting a statistic, made up or not.

Yes, you're saying that suicide rates for blacks are lower because they are killed by means that aren't seen as suicide at a higher rate. That's a statistic. Please back it.

The average software company is already a white men club. Even more so finance companies.

I'm not sure where you've worked or where you went to school, but as a white person I've infrequently been in the racial majority of my computer science classes or corporate software engineering teams. East Asia and Indian subcontinent has been far better represented than white people, especially at the larger corporations.

Something about you calling yourself a black "employee" instead of black "person" made me think of how the Japanese refer to "black" companies. The ones that are corrupt and overwork their employees. As soon as I hit "Indian" I realized that was probably not what you had meant.

I'm very glad that you have found a sense of community and connection at work. Loneliness and alienation is serious, and fixing it is not easy. I do think that attending groups connected to your workplace is the wrong approach, even if it can benefit you. Perhaps people could join (or start) such groups which are oriented around professionals in an industry who share a certain background, but isn't tied to any specific company? That way if you get fired or need to switch jobs, you minimize that part of your life which is thrown into chaos.

What's an ERG? _Something _Something Group I'll take it?

> As a black employee I'm very plugged in the EMPLOYEE RESOURCE GROUP

I should learn to read, thanks!

Employee Resource Group, I assume.

employee resource group

You are 100% correct. You gotta participate in your company's groups/clubs. Create one if one doesn't exist. We are social creatures.

Holy moly, no! Leaving work at work is the only way to stay sane for me! Except the occasional outing with the select few coworkers I can call friends, of course. I can't pretend to be something I'm not, and I'm not friends with 99% of the people I work with. It would only end badly if I pretended to be.

excellent advice...gym classes on-site or off-site are great comaraderie builders too.

I think your heart in the right place, but your solution is part of the problem - you don't have a community outside of work, because your community interactions are "tainted" by your ERG association.

The original article won't load but I disagree. While building your entire social life around work and work friends can be a bit dangerous, I think ERGs have an important role to play in combating loneliness at work.

Work can be a bit isolating when you have a very different background from a lot of your coworkers. Having a group that shares some aspect of your background that you can talk to about that shared perspective with can help a lot.

Companies should go a bit farther than making groups that are built race/religion/gender lines to bridge that gap. I've been at a lot of companies where there was some shared activity that "everybody does" after work - something that not literally everybody actually does. There should be other ways of including those people.

Often something like that can reflect a cultural background or gender (be it "everyone" is in a fantasy football league or "everyone" is competitive about a certain video game or "everyone" goes out drinking on Thursday).

If you're a member of a small group, be it because you're black, female, LGBT, have children (or don't), whatever it might be - it's easy to feel lonely and marginalized and like you don't have a community at the workplace; it helps if the organization promotes a way to feel like you do.

So that it's not just "oh everyone is talking about that thing I don't do again".

My first full-time job out of school was exactly like that. At first I found it lonely as a lot of my peers were a decade or two older than me with kids, and mostly treated the job like a 9-5.

As investment into the company increased, more juniors were hired that had the similar life situations, liked to do similar activities, etc. My attachment to the company became much stronger after that.

My company has an early career professional group for exactly this. Provides a community of younger junior folks.

These relationships can extend far beyond work. I've had dinner at the home of department heads where work related topics barely came up, I've played soccer and became work out buddies with folks. I know others who babysit each others kids and schedule vacations together based off of relationships established through these networks. As time goes on the fact you work for the same company can become just a footnote if you want it to.

That's all fine as long as you are interacting with peers. I would never consider visiting any supervisor socially outside of work, especially at their home, however. Office holiday parties are sort of a gray area, but I skip those too out of principle.

> the fact you work for the same company can become just a footnote if you want it to

... until you have an HR complaint, or need to manage a layoff, etc.

It makes sense. Being in close proximity and constant contact helps with becoming friends. I have cultivated many friendships with people I've met with work and it's made my life so much better.

Too small right now to have ERGs that don't apply to large groups but the soccer team, the basketball team, our running group, and those who cycle tend to form friendships that Grease the wheels of interaction at work, apart from it just being nice to have friends.

These relationship tend to be lost when people switch jobs.