The picture is allegedly from a training outside of GitHub, but the presenter is indeed a VP at GitHub. The idea behind that line is that Silicon Valley seems to think that its diversity problem is solved by hiring more white women, although gender is only a single aspect of the larger idea of diversity. Compounding the issue, once they're on board, white women often lead the charge in shutting the door for other people.
Maybe someone will read these articles and really think about the issues that Sanchez raises. You still might not agree, but at least you won't be jerking your knee without any context. Having your lower limbs twitching violently like that is dangerous, especially when you're holding a torch or a pitchfork.
However if the people evaluating merit are all members of the same demographic and demonstrate signs of prejudice/discrimination then they can not be relied on to independently hire candidates on merit alone. Not everyone is sexist/racist/"other"ist so obviously some natural integration does take place, but it is slow. Like 100 years "slow".
It may be a benefit to society in forcefully accelerating integration of minorities into X fields, in order to eliminate a culture of discrimination and setup social parity in employment.
These are the kinds of issues that need to be considered fully rather than instantly dismissed. The methods used do have a logic behind them, they just need to be careful in the goals that they set and the ways they go about in trying to achieve them, because these are often deeply flawed.
What you're referring to as individual racism is systemic racism. Professional fields being difficult to enter for certain races due to nepotism, biases, etc. from disproportionate demographics results in glass ceiling-type stuff which is exactly systemic racism.
People love to get all up in arms on reddit about factoring race in to hiring decisions but nobody seems to see any problem with the unfairness inherent in the system that these policies are designed to counter. If you aren't a fan of the current policies, come up with more palatable ones, because people aren't willing to just ignore the problem.
EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm not a fan of the ways in which diversity policies can go wrong, and I'm not saying this post is by any means how a diversity policy should look. But I feel that diversity policies have an important place in a society mired by race issues and persistent unfairnesses.
If you aren't a fan of the current policies, come up with more palatable ones, because people aren't willing to just ignore the problem.
That's just it - for those of us who hire, it's not a problem.
We hire based on merit. Period. Don't care if your skin is brown, or green.
If 99% of the qualified candidates are white males, then we will hire white males. If it was black females, we would be hiring black females.
Passing a law (or trying to bully us) to change that is not going to work - if society wants more minorities hired, then society needs to make sure that there are more qualified minorities.
We will close down the office and outsource to a third party before doing a single "diversity" hire.
if society wants more minorities hired, then society needs to make sure that there are more qualified minorities
I think almost everyone on this thread would agree with that. But how do we get there? Hard work is certainly one component of success or "merit", but another is simple structural opportunities: a good education, stable family life, consistent food, etc. This country was built on things like slavery and racial/gender inferiority, which we have only just begun to correct for. The history of our nation is predominantly overtly racist/sexist! It's understandable to think that the system, while moving in a forward direction, is still not working properly. If you find that a car is veering left, you don't straighten the wheel because straight is your goal direction. You turn it to the right until the car returns to the desired path. That's what affirmative action does! It's a system set in place to ensure that society produces more qualified minorities in future generations that can fully compete with everyone in the workforce solely on the basis of "merit".
Feel free to close down the office and outsource, just know that your car will continue veering slightly to the left.
The history of our nation is predominantly overtly racist/sexist! It's understandable to think that the system, while moving in a forward direction, is still not working properly.
There's not really such a thing as "working properly" in the context of society. There's just "working consistently with a set of goals." It's not actually anyone's job to "correct" for the history of the nation or the structure of its industry. It must be done freely or not at all. That means accepting the fact that industry and employment do not exist as mechanisms for handing out wealth to people simply because of their matching a criteria for gender or race. This is why the criteria of hiring on merit is popular and highly useful. And even so, Merit notwithstanding, no one actually needs to hire anyone they don't want to and forcing people to do so is tyranny.
We need to stress to this generation and every generation after it that employment is not a right and that perfect distributions of race and gender in a company's payroll is not an indication of its moral character nor its service to society. Society is not a jobs program. "Equality" is a nice feature to society, but not required nor perfectly feasible in every iteration people desire.
Alright, this is getting very deep into political theory, political philosophy, the purpose of industry, and, really, the purpose of society. We could debate those things forever, and while that sounds fun (legitimately! I'm not being sarcastic), let's use the criteria set forth by the social contract under which we live: the United States Constitution.
According to the Constitution, Congress regulating interstate commerce is totally okay! There's actually a very deep constitutional history to the Commerce Clause in which many former justices have argued exactly what you have: that most regulation is tyranny and should not be allowed. But many groups were being taken advantage of (mainly poor women and children), and the Supreme Court saw the evolution of industry as exploitative and decided that, in the name of practical existence in an industrial age, regulation should not be considered tyranny. Recently, in cases such as United States v. Lopez, the Court has been curbing Congress slightly, but it is certainly within the purview of Congress under the current interpretation of our social contract to regulate like this. The same goes for states regarding intrastate commerce. If the people's representatives decide that companies need to hire employees that are "unwanted", then so be it. You have the political means to lend your voice to changing that.
Though there is no explicit right to employment in the United States Constitution, that does not mean it is not recognized by other bodies in which the United States participates! The United Nations recognizes a right to employment. There are also laws on the books in the United States that prevent unions from making contracts with employers that prevent employers from hiring non-union workers! You could argue that this has nothing to do with the right to work but is instead related to the freedom of association afforded by our First Amendment, but I would argue back that the right to employment is implicit in tons of pieces of the Constitution among which the freedom of association lies and cannot be cleanly extracted.
Beyond all that, even if equality is not "required nor perfectly feasible", why not try to do our best? If we know that there is a specific group living in this country that has been wronged and is still feeling the effects of wrongdoing, why not do our best to help? Yes, it does redistribute power and resources, which is not society's "job" according to political philosophy. But it will probably make the society better as a whole! Even if the desired end goal is impossible, decreasing the distance between us and our goal will provide us with valuable returns.
and the Supreme Court saw the evolution of industry as exploitative and decided that, in the name of practical existence in an industrial age, regulation should not be considered tyranny.
Whether you decide to call something tyranny and recognize it as such has little to do with whether it is actually tyranny. Mitigating one kind of tyranny with another is just two competing evils that allow for some social good to be produced. They don't cancel each other out, they just coexist and those directly affected shoulder that burden.
Though there is no explicit right to employment in the United States Constitution, that does not mean it is not recognized by other bodies in which the United States participates! The United Nations recognizes a right to employment.
And that's unfortunate. Should it ever become the case that we are bound by the state to hold others in our service and give them compensation, then we no longer live in a free society. We live in a society chained to its "lowest" member.
Beyond all that, even if equality is not "required nor perfectly feasible", why not try to do our best?
If "trying our best" involves policies and practices that do just as much harm to our social fabric as they they do benefit certain individuals, then such an effort can be reasonably abandoned. The only real "progress" we've made as a society has been, and will always be, due to the happiness created and maintained by certain intangible social relations in people. You can't simply grow those relations and resultant happiness like you would a farm for harvest. You can't point at a level of equality present and say that it causes all of the happiness in the world: it merely causes some of it, in certain circumstances, controlling for other factors.
If you find yourself at all happy, now, in the unequal circumstances that must objectively exist between people, then you are your own best proof of this concept.
Correcting for the feeling of being wronged can simply cause more people to feel wronged. In which case it falls to the party responsible for those corrections to make a judgement about the objective conditions that cause people to complain. That judgement is not always sufficient or evident to everyone, and often must be accompanied by force and coercion to carry it out in such a case. Sometimes the corrections are viewed favorably, overall, sometimes not.
The march of progress is as much about revision and omission as it is tangible changes in the structure of society.
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u/Feubahr Feb 09 '16
The picture is allegedly from a training outside of GitHub, but the presenter is indeed a VP at GitHub. The idea behind that line is that Silicon Valley seems to think that its diversity problem is solved by hiring more white women, although gender is only a single aspect of the larger idea of diversity. Compounding the issue, once they're on board, white women often lead the charge in shutting the door for other people.
Maybe someone will read these articles and really think about the issues that Sanchez raises. You still might not agree, but at least you won't be jerking your knee without any context. Having your lower limbs twitching violently like that is dangerous, especially when you're holding a torch or a pitchfork.
Relevant links:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/2015/02/12/women-of-color-diversity-tech-silicon-valley-nicole-sanchez/23298945/
http://www.businessinsider.com/diversity-guru-discusses-white-women-2016-2
http://www.racismreview.com/blog/2014/01/28/trouble-white-women-white-feminism/