| There are other conclusions and interpretations you can draw from the two lines of reasoning. Much of the effectiveness of dog-whistle politics is that most of what's said remain non-explicit, so let me pop that: The reasoning that there is a small group who would refuse to fund nonwhites/women, and that has an knock-on effect on everybody else suggests: -that there is a 'culture of racism/mysogyny' -that we need more diversity training -that we need to move the overton window to exclude those people with the unacceptable views (and we should do so via diversity training) -that we need to spend money to fund the people to make the above happen. OTOH, the reasoning that many startups lead by nonwhites and/or women got seed-funding via affirmative action despite not being strong enough to get funded on a level playground, leading to lower average quality, leading to warier investors and difficulty attracting further funding suggests: - that there is no 'culture of racism/mysogyny', just people being rational with their money. - that we need to wind back the irrational AA money that is distorting the market and wasting its investors' money - that 'diversity training' is not the answer and possibly counterproductive. -that the overton window is either fine where it is, or could be moved a bit the other way. It is unfortunate that there is so much attached here, and I'm fairly sure most of those things are not the intended interpretations by the posters, but you can see how this is a very baggage laiden discussion. Partially it's because it echoes many, many similar discussions elsewhere, and many of those previous discussions made many people very angry at each other. |