I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

I was having a conversation about this yesterday with my girlfriend. What minorities need protection and rebalancing?

We rarely talking about supporting the Jewish, for example, or Mexicans, or gays representation in engineering. What is the philosohpy at play here? And what if someday women became the majority, would you then fight to bring men back up to parity?

She didn't have answers, which to me just made me wonder if she was fighting for a vision of equality, or promoting her in-group.

Diversity is intersectional and people who actually fight for diversity absolutely talk about and work so that Mexicans, Asians, latinos, the disabled, gay people, trans people, etc, etc are given equal opportunities and treatment in the workplace. There are literally thousands of organizations in just the US advocating for workplace diversity for pretty much any and every minority you can imagine. I suspect the problem is your "we" has little to no contact with minorities and a even poorer understanding of their everyday struggles.

And none of that matters because the "face" of diversity is a neurotypical White woman with no obvious disabilities.

this seems off, based on my observed and experienced reality. the incredible lack of empathy for the neuro-diverse is one of the most shocking failures of the diversity movement.

I disapprove of this response on a number of levels. One of the biggest reasons I avoid these discussions is ironically, the "safe-space" crowd has managed to offend, insult, and ignore me more effectively than almost any other group, and ironically, they do so because of my race and gender [white, male].

Working in tech I work with probably 80% minorities (Indians, Asians, women, gays, Iranians, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Russians, one Venezualen, one Egyptian). There was at least one time I was the only white guy on a team of 9.

Most of those I asked did not feel discriminated against.

So you tell your sob stories all you want, but the reality is most americans couldn't afford $500 in an emergency, and however bad you think skin color X or gender Y has it, that gulf pales in comparison to the problem of class-ism in America (and I don't here any SJWs speaking to that, and so I really have to question the motives at play).

And you're just dishonest to us and yourself if you are insinuating you, or Google, or SJW-crowd cares 1/10th as much about hiring an proportionate number of hispanics/jews/ugly-people/tatooed-people as it does a proportionate number of women.

>>> I can only assume that the reason why you are being so incredibly defensive, offended and acting like a child is because the criticism hit home.

Uh. You could assume that. You could also consider that perhaps your ad-hominem response plays a role.

I feel like you've successfully illustrated my point for me though and am going to exit this exchange.

If one person can't imagine any minoroties needing help, does that eliminate the possibility a need can't exist?

I know that's not what you're saying, but should minorities have to meet the burden to satisfy the majority in society for them to validate what they may be experiencing?

In the working world, diversity is something I look for in leadership first, down to management, down to front lines, instead of working up the ranks. Diversity doesn't seem to exist if it's not leadership downwards.

Gender diversity is real. All progress on diversity is good as long as voice and support is lent to all groups affected by a lack of diversity.

I wonder if the current gender diversity conversation indirectly has appropriated the voice of diversity issues groups like our visible minorities may experience.

"Intersectionalism" is a clever technique being leveraged by the very people who have, for decades, studied how media influences groups of people to do and think particular things. It is a weapon crafted to create a larger group out of disparate smaller ones. Whether or not it is justified is an entirely different argument. To say that people struggle at different levels in life strictly because of their skin color or ethnicity is hilarious to me. All people struggle in all kinds of ways.