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by sdml 3380 days ago
>> the mere presence of diversity policies, diversity training, and diversity awards cause white people to be less likely to believe racial discrimination exists and cause men to be less likely to believe gender

This isn't really what the studies demonstrate.

It's unclear in the first study whether participants were male only, so I assume it was mixed gender:

>> Participants in one study read a New York Times article published as a class action lawsuit for gender discrimination against pharmaceutical giant Novartis went to trial [...] Those that read the sentence about theWorking Mother accolade were less likely to believe that the female employees had a valid case against Novartis, even though the rest of the article remained the same.

In the second study, only white people are tested and there's no analysis of other groups:

>> In one version, white people read either a diversity statement, or a mission statement, for a fictional company [...] Participants who had read the diversity statement were less likely to believe that discrimination had occurred and rated the Black employee more negatively

These both present evidence that people have biases. There's no evidence to suggest that white people or men are more likely to be affected by these biases than other groups. This is not to say that tech doesn't have a diversity problem or that biases aren't real, but I don't think any groups are magically immune to bias.