My younger brother is going into the tech industry but has a much darker complexion than me. I'm not sure what to tell him to be honest.

My older brother is an engineer. He is by all appearances black. His approach was similar to mine but to a greater extreme, he disassociated himself from anything resembling black stereotypes in America down to the very music he listens to, the way he dresses, everything. Unfortunately he takes it a step too far and is quite often jokingly(or not, I can't tell) racist himself. He's finding success in his career but I don't know how much of that is due to the way he presents himself or due to his merit.

I have friends that do the same thing, they have a work face and a home face. I try not to think about it. It's very distracting.

To the extent possible, I've always tried to shape my identity based on what feels right for me instead of what's expected of me, even from my own race. With practice, divorcing yourself from other peoples' opinions of you becomes second nature. When you don't adopt that mindset you're allowing other people to write your story, which some people are fine with but I personally find that intolerable. I can definitely relate to feeling like you have to disown part of your identity but I just can't accept that. It happens in many subtle ways we don't think about. For example, when we sense someone else's self doubt if evokes feeling of self doubt, anger, or sadness in ourselves. In reality, other peoples' flawed opinions don't pay my rent so I try to live in reality and disregard ignorance unless it affects the outcomes I care about.

I chose tech (over politics!) because it seemed like more of a meritocracy and, although I've dealt with some race-related challenges, focusing on doing my best work, creating value, and writing my own story has led to pretty good results.

I do still get distracted wondering whether my story would be different if I weren't black - it's tough.

How did I make this discovery?

At a funeral, meeting some of my dad's friends. One couple said 'you must know Marcus' and then proceeded to describe him by colour. That didn't help. But when they said that he did the posters for the school debating society I remembered who this Marcus character was, and quite clearly. It was his eloquence in the aforementioned debating society that I did remember, not his black skin.

There were other parents-of-contemporaries there who had kids that could not have been white. So I then clocked details I did remember - Asian style eyelids without the crease, darker skin tone etc. Seems as if there was more diversity at the school I went to than I can remember. I had assumed everyone was white, but this was definitely not the case.

We did actually have kids being teased for having ginger hair, I can't remember being the one using the shameful gingerist words but I must have been chuckling away though.

I can remember racist words and how there was no association between the words and the persons who were supposed to be derided by such words. I distinctly remember using a derogatory term for people from the Indian sub-continent and my parents correcting me about that. Beatings were allowed in the 1980's... The context of that was a retail establishment where us kids had a name for it that turned out to be quite racist. We didn't know that, we just thought it was the name of the place. The more backward folks in the older generation had 'taught' us this particular word, we didn't know the connotations.

So, think again, are you sure you didn't go to school with any black kids? You could have been genuinely oblivious.

I also wonder why I was so deluded and what the balance has to be between different shades of skin colour for 'them and us' racism to happen. Had our school been 50% black I am sure I would not have had my naive 'everyone was white' memories, but a small percentage of black folks in a white school would have been memorable too.

Haha, not only I didn't go to school with black kids, but I hadn't seen a single black person on a street until early 2000s in my post-soviet country.

Given how even recent white European immigrants to the UK are treated by the general population (see: Brexit), I would expect afro-Caribbean individuals to not be treated much better, and have, anecdotally, heard as much.

I don't think it makes much sense to categorise people by skin colour. An Afro-Caribbean doesn't in general have more in common with an immigrant from Africa than with an immigrant from Syria or Hong Kong.

People with a different skin colour certainly do get discriminated against. However, if you really want to get discriminated against, try dressing in the wrong way and speaking a foreign language or with a foreign accent. In general, people get judged by their clothing and the way they speak far more than by any physical feature.

Perhaps it doesn't make sense to generalise across the UK, either. Afro-Caribbeans are much more common in the London area than elsewhere. Only in Bradford has someone made me feel like a foreigner by speaking to me slowly in Hindi/Urdu and rolling their eyes when I fail to understand. (Quite cool, I thought: I approve.)

The American condition doesnt have a way to relate to that

As far as the dialog, it is known that Facebook pays PR firms to improve their image by spreading misleading stories (see Definers Public Affairs), so I think there is reason to believe that some comments here may be disingenuous.

There is a need for diversity training but the way I’ve seen it done is off putting to the people who need it most. All it ends up being is a virtue signaling fest for so called allies of minority groups and the real harm persists - people making false, often times demeaning, assumptions about others that adversely affect them.

I work in academia and have never been outside of academia. My belief about diversity training comes solely from my experiences within academia. Do companies spend time on diversity training? Is it a yearly training like it is in parts of academia? Do you find the way it is done off putting? Helpful?

- From a black male entering the tech industry

You claim the site doesn't have thoughtful comments and then you build up a strawman of diversity efforts and then claim being against it is 'literally pathological'. This is the problem.

People with grievances about how diversity programs are ineffective or are causing harm are labeled as 'pathological', etc by people on the left because they think the criticisms are against diversity in the first place. You are making enemies out of people who believe in equal opportunity because they point out flaws and injustices in diversity programs.

I recommend that you reflect on your positions if you want to build bridges. Assuming that everyone who points out flaws in an approach are against the much larger goal is a good way to needlessly divide everyone.

I think an even more subtle problem is people who attack ineffective policies as opposed to focusing on the primary objective, which is coexistence. In other words, people focus on attacking solutions as opposed to helping create better ones. That behavior is pervasive, insidious, counterproductive, and seems to be picking up steam.

Please, reflect on your position for a moment there. You're saying that anyone who is happy with their workplace and thinks things are OK is engaged in "literally pathological anti-social behaviour". That's the kind of overblown, extremist rhetoric that makes diversity initiatives a toxic topic in the modern workplace - it's a demonisation of anyone who thinks that maybe their firm has bigger things to worry about than a never-ending, apparently unsatisfiable quest for "equity".

In other words, people focus on attacking solutions as opposed to helping create better ones. That behavior is pervasive, insidious, counterproductive, and seems to be picking up steam.

It's actually your behaviour that's counterproductive here. There is never any obligation to propose something better when criticising a proposal.

It might be helpful to the proposer, and if someone can think of a better approach then you'd hope they would propose it. But if something is a bad idea, or represents a bad tradeoff (there are no solutions in life, only tradeoffs), then it's a bad idea and shouldn't happen. This is independent of anything else. Indeed, making the status quo worse is absolutely possible with any change, and something people are right to point out if a proposal might lead to it.

That doesn't make them insidious, or counterproductive.

You make some valid points about what constitutes active/passive resistance and your comment made me think. I don't think everyone is obligated to come up with better solutions but I do think if you're going to participate in the dialog, focusing solely on attacking existing solutions is counterproductive and makes me question your motives.

If all of the proposed solutions are garbage and it's a complex problem, rational people will only be attacking them.

Consider when papers are submitted for peer review. The outcome is either paper is acceptable, or you get a bunch of negative feedback. That doesn't mean the reviewers don't want the problem solved, it just means that you're solution is flawed. People who want to solve problems seek peer reviews because they want to find flaws in their logic, data, or methodology.

Critical feedback is absolutely necessary for any solution to a real problem. Calling it counterproductive is misguided at best.

Because many of those policies are actively harmful and are worse than the status quo. You don't need to have a better solution to point out that implementing quotas results in more racism than having no quotas at all.

When it comes to approaches to diversity, many are significantly worse than nothing at all because they embolden divides by highlighting that fact that some people are different and are incapable without special provisions.

>That behavior is pervasive, insidious, counterproductive, and seems to be picking up steam.

They are only counterproductive if you are already convinced reverse discrimination is the answer to discrimination.

The U.S. implemented quotas/affirmative action in the 1960s. Are you suggesting that this caused an increase in racism? Do you think the U.S. would be better off now if it had not implemented those policies? I think you'll have a very hard time adequately supporting the position I quoted above.

I think that's something everybody can agree with. However, I sometimes think that HR, Code of Conduct policies, etc do more harm than good in ensuring that happens.

In the ideal world, we all work together to find something that works. In reality, we're prone to change resistance so when we disagree with a new policy (regardless of whether it really has implications for our own lives) we tend to reject the policy, the premise, the authorities, and any groups that support said policy. There's lots of evidence that suggests that's an inherent dynamic of social systems. When policies have implications for social groups things turn explosive quickly, but beyond that I think the reaction we see to diversity conversations is just run of the mill change resistance. I often find it helpful to highlight the inarguable, universal truths in those situations as a starting point for finding a better way forward but...it's never easy.

Why do you think that?

About this.... There's something I've noticed is that when one group has rights by default, and another doesnt, fighting for equality or equity feels like to the innate group that rights are taken away.

Its the perception of zero-sum game versus a positive-sum game. For the in-group, having others brought up to your status feels like its reducing yours... But it doesn't.

Whereas rights can be assessed for everyone. The more rights we all have is a positive sum. A rising tide raises all boats.

Some groups are making hard stands for calling for equity, and others are calling for equality. I'm refraining on making a judgement call on which one is better, given I'm a tall white male. And the groups demanding this are African Americans who have been wronged by various state policies. I'll refrain from interpreting their meaning, and repeat verbatim.

I also think it's disingenuous to claim what "equity" is. This is a common tactic to define a word, and then destroy the stated definition, thus demeaning the original word. And bringing Marxism is guaranteed for a shitstorm..

The definition I gave is the one widely used in academic disciplines such as "black studies", "gender studies", "women studies" and "whiteness studies". I did not invent it. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_equity_(Canada)

> Some groups are making hard stands for calling for equity

I'm not sure which groups are calling for what, but the 20th century experience is clear: Marxism doesn't work. So identity politics should be resisted as much as possible, irrespective of who's calling for it.

> And bringing Marxism is guaranteed for a shitstorm..

If I didn't do a very good job of arguing why I consider it Marxism, perhaps Jordan Peterson explains it better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqcRVmOpIbY

As to causing a shitstorm - I believe that's inevitable when you have an honest discussion on such an important and divisive topic. That doesn't mean such a discussion should be avoided, on the contrary - the more difficult and divisive the topic is, the more important it is to discuss it openly, so that each side may argue their positions as best as they can and hopefully advance towards solution that works for everyone involved.

This is so ill-defined as to be useless. If by Marxist we are speaking of what mark (and Engels) wrote, then it must be pointed out Marx was against equality as a metric or measure. And that, contrary to popular belief, he did not originate collectivism and egalitarianism, but heavily critiqued the proponents and thinkers of such that existed in his time.

https://anarchopac.wordpress.com/2017/09/07/marx-and-engels-...

> equality of opportunity

Interestingly enough, this is another way of saying no equality at all. That is, the outcome of the competition is, by and large, predetermined. Children born into affluent homes will be sent to better schools, have better tutors, have parents who understand such social systems, and even posses such (seemingly minor, unless we of course want to talk about brain development) advantages as being fed enough nutritious food as to not be hungry. The athlete with access to experts and money and training (and time to spend otherwise not having to earn a living while they train) will outperform the runner who gets in a couple miles after work. (This, of course, extends to everything aspect of business and life. I'm sure there are many people who, if they're parents had had a few extra hundred thousand or million dollars to invest in their child't first few failed businesses, there are a lot of people who could be "successful".) So if we want "equality of opportunity" the first thing we have to do is divorce parents and children in something like Plato's creche. Otherwise we must admit that the system is built not on allowing the meritorious to rise (with whatever definition of meritorious we employ) but instituted by a power class to maintain that same power class.

> plays the game

When survival is on the line, how is it rational to 'play by the rules'. If someone existed in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, would it be rational to to hand over their family's stock of food on the outcome of a chess game?

If this were true, class mobility between generations wouldn't be so frequent like it is in the US. https://www.fa-mag.com/news/most-millionaires-self-made--stu...

Why does the poverty level continue to rise?

Yet, there are more millionaires, this is a fact.

Does it have to be one or the other?

No.

Is there an answer that satisfies both sets of facts?

Yes.

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/america-is-r...

We live in an age of numbers. My own state managed to drastically reduce unemployment. They did it by limiting unemployment benefits to six months. And only those who get unemployment are counted as unemployed. And I know a lot those people who are no longer unemployed. Some of them have already died, some from medical reasons compounded by lack of insurance, others suicide, overdoses, etc. Some of them are working on it. Couples work each two jobs, struggle to payback loans, to pay for the car they need to get to work, always seemingly one payment away from disaster. Children go home from school on the weekend and won't eat anything until they come back to school on Monday and get a free breakfast that there is talk of being cut. Certain of them are dying, not for any technological or medical reason, but because they have no insurance and can't pay any other way and couldn't take off from work even if they did, and it's not that they want to die, it's just that that is the only option on the table. Those with their homes lost, those living in motels. Those who make too much to qualify for food stamps, and those who make too little to qualify for insurance assistance.

This is not some abstraction. I can touch it. I can point: over there is an old couple who don't have enough money to heat their house through the winter, over there is a guy who needs a tooth pulled, but he can't afford it.

Perhaps we've made an error in calculation. Yes, we have stuff. Even the homeless have cellphones now. And yet the society we inhabit, that which was ostensibly supposedly had been constructed to buffer us from the brutal savagery of nature, now mirrors that savagery, so many always one step, one mistake away from maiming and/or death. Yet, yes, many do live in many ways better than kings of yore. But a phone doesn't cure cancer or an abscess or kidney stones or dull pain. But we have stuff. And we wouldn't trade it for anything, not to have medical care, not to feel less lonely, nothing. In one sense, however, at least the jungle, the real jungle, was honest about itself, it would eventually chew you up and compost you. And what use is it to live like a king without the power of one? A kind of Schrodinger's paradox: to live as a king and as a peasant, one in the same, at the same time. A postmodern version of the Prince and Pauper, perhaps?

But, then again, maybe I am crazy, maybe I can't trust my own mind, maybe all of these things I've been seeing around me for a long time aren't real. I don't know anymore. I'm not sure it matters.

I think the world has two futures. In the first, the world simply becomes Dubai. I think that's already happening. Compare what is said there to here[1]. Are the justifications really that different? In the second (the utopia one?), there's a swath of people, how many I can't say, maybe a few hundred thousand, maybe a million, maybe even a billion, it's just a number (to quote Stalin: "Quantity has a quality all its own."), but it is this number of people, this swath of the human population that needs to die so that the remainder can live as millionaires.

[1]https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-har...

The article you linked provides some quotes from Marx and Engels which argue that full equality along all dimensions can never be achieved. But this didn't stop all the implementations of Marxism in real life to still push the equity thing hard. So your argument is actually immaterial.

> That is, the outcome of the competition is, by and large, predetermined.

I disagree. The Western states have social lifts that are designed to allow people from low-income families to still be able to achieve high positions in society, given talent and hard work. Public schools, state-sponsored higher education, public health care, children services are examples of such lifts. If these systems do not work very well, then we should improve them as opposed to favoring a Black kid at the entry exam of university at the expense of an Asian kid who is just as smart. Because once we start discriminating and making preferences, it's very hard to stop.

Especially when the problem we're trying to solve by throwing resources at is not the real problem. E.g. some Black communities have a very particular set of problems absent in other communities, for example MUCH higher rate of single-parenthood than in any other community with similar income in the USA. 73% children in Black families are born out of marriage. Clearly, it's a cultural thing. You can't solve these problems by throwing money at them, money actually can make it worse. So we need to have an honest conversation about the real problems our communities are facing instead of following a blanket "all the people are exactly equal, so every group at the bottom of the hierarchy must be discriminated against" approach.

Saying Marxism is like saying Christian or intellectual property: they're only ever mashed together to profit someone. It's all one convenient blob, until it isn't.

> to still be able to achieve high positions in society, given talent and hard work.

This reminds me of the time Pat Robertson told a mother her child died because she hadn't prayed hard enough. It's a fundamentally tautological position.

What is interesting to me is that before reading this part I assumed you are a man even though there was no hint before this line that you are. How many people thought kwamenum86 is a man from start of his writing?