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

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791 points 317070 | 2 comments | 14 Aug 17 16:11 UTC | HN request time: 0.435s | source
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okreallywtf ◴[14 Aug 17 19:21 UTC] No.15011848[source]▶
I see some good points on both sides of the discussion here but one thing occurs to me about the current diversity-pushback that I'm seeing(I'm not going to call it anti-diversity because I think a fair amount of it is well-meaning or at least not explicitly hateful).

We've surprisingly quickly moved from periods where it was common to simply refuse to even consider minorities or women in many fields to a time when many people see political correctness and reverse-racism/sexism as a greater problem than sexism and racism themselves.

I'm glad to see people being very thoughtful about fairness and equality, but I have an honest question: Before quotas and social justice warriors, were you thinking about fairness and equality when the status quo potentially benefited you and excluded others not on their merit but race and gender? I'm asking honestly, not trying to point fingers but I would like to know because this community, while left-leaning on many issues (I think) tends more towards libertarian on issues of race and gender and seems especially defensive when it comes to the tech industry (especially when the term "privilege" is used, it turns downright hostile).

If you were active in supporting equality and diversity (by resisting arbitrarily exclusionary practices) when it wasn't popular to do so and now you are seeing the negative aspects of a push for artificial diversity I would like to know that.

If you have never even considered diversity issues until recently when seeing hiring practices that could negatively affect you I would like to know that too. Do you believe any specific action needs to be taken to promote diversity or will the problem solve itself, or does the problem even exist at all?

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brightball ◴[14 Aug 17 20:45 UTC] No.15012700[source]▶
> especially when the term "privilege" is used, it turns downright hostile

Part of the reason that word is such a hot button is that anybody even has to explain why. It simultaneously dismisses a lifetime of effort of people on both sides of the word based solely on racial and gender stereotypes that nobody can personally validate for any single individual.

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1. okreallywtf ◴[14 Aug 17 20:57 UTC] No.15012804[source]▶
I've tried to have that discussion here and ended up at the point where it seems like its the word itself that causes the problem, but after asking "well what if we just changed the word to be something that evokes the lack of barriers" and the usual response is essentially "fuck you I deserve what I have.", which may be 100% true but straight white men (like me) who think that everyone is on a totally level playing field and we have all the same barriers in life as everyone else I think is nuts. No two people are the same and nobody knows what challenges people have faced (that don't depend on race or gender) but on average it seems pretty clear that being of the majority race and religion and being male avoids a lot of potential problems.

I feel like in any particular situation, what I get out of something is a product of what I put into it. I've never felt at any point in my life like I've not been given the benefit of the doubt and I wish that was the case for everyone.

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2. zo1 ◴[14 Aug 17 21:53 UTC] No.15013341[source]▶
If you ask me, the "fuck you I deserve what I have" is not correct and misrepresents the values you're trying to caricature. If it has to be anything, it would be more: "fuck you, I deserve what I've earned". And if that happens to be an "oppressed" individual that has passed through many barriers and hardships, then they deserve it even more, because they've earned it.

That's the other thing that's problematic about reverse-isms. They essentially dismiss the effort and good work oppressed people have done to rise above their circumstances, by telling them that they need handicap-scoring because they're part of some magical grouping. The commonality is rising above circumstance, and that is something that spans across all the "isms" and groups that are currently hot-topics.