I've stated this multiple times on HN. As a minority, I've not witnessed any discrimination in my 12+ years in the US/SV. While my experience might be an anecdote, I still find claims of discrimination based on minority status a little hard to believe in silicon valley, taking the experience of my friends and family into consideration.
However, I do find women, regardless of race/religion, to be more subjected to discrimination and harassment.
Additionally, the response to [1] in the FAQ by the site author is the most unadulterated form of (reverse) racism that continues it's meteoric rise in acceptance in the media. Tragic!
[1]: "I AM A STRAIGHT WHITE MAN AND I FEEL EXCLUDED BY THIS. CAN YOU MAKE YOUR SITE A LITTLE BIT MORE ABOUT ME, ME, ME?"
Unfortunately​ I primarily see failings on your side _to be tolerant_:
Isn't it fair that others may mistake your origins and are interested in them ?
Is it good or bad that you "clearly" look like someone from place X from earth or that people put you origins in the wrong place? Should they surpress their curiosity? Moving somewhere on earth is so easy today, getting rid of your dna totally not
The last one isn't nice though and I'd wish I was so carismatic that others always reacted in a positive way towards me, but they don't. We are all subject to the judgment of others, may it be positive or negative
> Unfortunately​ I primarily see failings on your side _to be tolerant_:
Well fuck you too. I used to tolerant to all these micro aggressions (that I listed above) for at least 20 years. But now they just piss me off.
The color of my skin is not a conversation starter.
I'm not a sideshow freak here to satisfy your ignorant curiosity.
You want to talk about my origins?
Ask permission.
How do you do that?
Talk to me like a human. Ask me about my childhood. Ask me what my favorite authors are. What's a good pizza topping. Get to know me first. I'll share my origins to anyone who actually shows some love.
I don't get it, I'm an immigrant, and I enjoy people asking about questions about where I'm from and my culture, it feels flattering, it feels they want to get to know me. I don't understand why people take offence to this. I'm fairly certain the natives ask each other similar questions if they are from different regions.
I used to feel the same as you. But now we have Google to learn about other cultures. I'm tired of strangers trying to have a conversation with me solely because of the color of my skin. That's why I take offense.
Same here. 9 years in the industry; not once have I experienced outward racism or discrimination (that I know of). I do believe that some get discriminated against, however. I also believe that some use discrimination as an excuse when none really exists.
So, yes, this is a joke. Obviously. You can stop getting angry now. Or get angry, but get angry at what Rent-a-Minority is angry about. The site is a #satire on a type of tokenism that is particularly rife in the tech and media world.
SV is significantly overrepresented with east and south Asians, compared to the general US public. If you wanted to make SV match the general US demographics, they'd have to hire more white people.
Just because black people specifically are underrepresented in SV doesn't mean that it's (racially) non-diverse.
More than that, part of silicon valley's diversity is (iirc) an unusually high representation of asian men; an assumption of whiteness wouldn't get you far.
One who see's corporations only disingenuously adopting formal policies to hire minorities, only doing it in marketing and for public appearance to appease other white people, rather than offering minorities meaningfully positions of power.
And the other who see these policies as ineffective and bowing down to special interests groups without providing any meaningful benefit to the minority group while simultaneously harming the parent company by hiring people based on their appearance rather than intrinsic value they provide the company.
Attempting to eliminate biases by force or social pressure is always going to be fraught with risk and aversion.
Some of the stories on the stories page [0] are pretty egregious, but some of them are just how the brain works.
When you meet or see someone, you automatically try to categorize people. For now at least, that includes trying to figure out gender and ethnicity. Many of our parents or grandparent had very distinct prejudices. Also, for better or for worse, ethnicity still has a huge impact on someone's circumstances.
It was only a couple years ago that someone finally pushed back on the question "where are you from" to me. Before that, I would never have thought of it being objectionable. I also think context is important here. There's nothing wrong with finding out the ethnic ancestry of your friends, but maybe it's not an appropriate question when you first meet someone.
I'm sad to say that I don't actually know many of my Indian coworkers full names, simply because they are so different from people I was raised around.
I've gotten the "where are you from?" question a few times - I'm multiracial, so I look ethnically ambiguous and talk with a slight accent that isn't possible to place. I just answer "Boston".
If they want to drill into it more, I say "Well, my mom's from NYC, my dad is ethnically Cantonese but was born in the Philippines, and I grew up in Boston. My maternal grandfather was Irish Catholic and my grandmother was a WASP." Usually at that point their eyes start to glaze over though.
That's understandable. It still helps give context to you as a person. I understand that may be lost on someone who first meets you, and it may be too much to explain on initial context.
>I AM A STRAIGHT WHITE MAN AND I FEEL EXCLUDED BY THIS. CAN YOU MAKE YOUR SITE A LITTLE BIT MORE ABOUT ME, ME, ME?
> I'm sorry that your feelings are hurt. I have listened to your feedback and, in response, am currently working on rentamajority.com. Stay tuned. In the meantime, thank you for your interest in maintaining the status quo. I mean, 'equality', it's overrated, right?
This part seems uncool to me. It's posturing straight white men as very self-absorbed, and precluding any concerns or opinions they might have about this, dismissing them merely for being a straight white man. Which seems quite hypocritical, right?
My read on it is that is it anticipating this kind of response or reaction in advance and telling you up front "Yeah, no." It is actually pretty common for white men to come in and derail conversations in a really terrible way and make it all about their feelings. (Not all white men do this, but it is a thing and it causes a lot of problems in internet discussions.)
Though I think the way women and POC typically respond is part of the problem. They often fully cooperate with the derail by all piling on to reply to him rather than sending the message that "the entire world does not revolve around you" by refusing to let the entire discussion revolve around that one guy.
I disagree. Its referring to a very specific kind of white man who tends to flock to these things like moths to a flame and very much does try to reframe things to make white men look like the real victims.
I say this as a white man who calls out racism regardless of whether its directed at minorities or the cis white man.
I think I understand where you're coming from: feels a bit ironic that a site devoted to equality is marginalizing a group of people.
At the same time, I think you've hit on the crux of the point the site is making. You might find it interesting to explore the idea at one level deeper.
I don't know if you identify as a straight, white male, but if you do, you can see how frustrating it feels to be categorized in this way.
Now imagine the majority of panel discussions you attend, board members you see, politicians, etc. all in minor ways, perpetuate that same level of marginalization.
A panelist always seems to be making jokes about how brogrammers are unconsciously racist, the boards of companies are all wearing Muslim garb (with a token white guy thrown in every once in a while), and the number of "people in power" who are supposed to represent you never seem to have the same skin color you do.
If we (I'm a straight, white male) are able to tap into the frustrating that FAQ generates in us, it may help us understand the perspectives of others better; which I personally believe, is the key to doing something about it.
Trying to pretend we're all equal hasn't worked, because we're not all equal - the ecosystems we live in are never a level playing field. Trying to pretend they are exacerbates the problem.
If instead we try to empathize, and understand the experiences of others though, maybe we can be open to making the changes in ourselves necessary to making the playing field a bit more level.
Which is why I appreciate your comment - it represents your true perspective, which makes intuitive sense. I think if you're willing to take the author's argument the next logical step, you might find her/his perspective some makes sense as well.
You're totally misrepresenting the point of that item. It's referring to the knee-jerk yellers. We have them here on HN as well. Look at any article regarding women's experiences, for example, and you'll find a few comments trying to shift the topic to how hard men have it.
I'm a straight, white man and the FAQ item makes total sense to me. I don't do that, but enough of my 'brothers in arms' do. It's derailing and annoying.
I hear that this is totally a real thing in China with white people. Supposedly you can make pretty good money just putting on a suit and going around pretending to be an American business partner at meetings.
"booth babes". what is wrong with women with a sex positive attitude profiting from their hard work?
Perhaps the question is: why are there no booth bros. Well, there are, they're just not in a booth. They're standing bare chested in front of Abercrombie tries to get the lady folk through the door.
Sexiness is sexiness, it is human nature to be attracted to the physically fit, millions of years have literally hardwired our brains to act a certain way. It is nothing to be ashamed of.
I don't think there is parity with how frequently men and women are objectified, as you imply. I'm also sure that like most people their job choice is mostly to do with needing to make money, not their personal attitudes about sex.
People shouldn't put down women who work as "booth babes". Nothing wrong with it, everyone needs a job, not everyone is drowning in opportunities, but criticizing their presence at tech events is legitimate. I can't imagine being a woman and seeing that in a supposedly professional setting.
I used to get annoyed at the booth babe idea, but I once saw a guy doing that job in front of Abercrombie, and all I thought was good for him. Because the guy was clearly working his ass off to be in that kind of shape. Then, I finally realized that same effort also applies to women.
So, IMO we should respect the kind of effort it takes to be a top tier boot babe.
I don't think the person doing the hiring needs to be sexist because it's is legal and works. IMO, it's not nearly as annoying as the hyper aggressive mall sales people that tend to mind carts and keep trying to flag people down.
The 'problem' I'm referring to need not be sexism.
Either way, you can't argue that something should be done on the basis that it is legal and works. You can obviously change the laws, and there's lots of stuff that 'works' while externalizing all the damage done.
The website seems to implicitly say that white men equals bad and any attempt made by white men to improve the situation must be half-hearted and just a PR stunt. Thus all the sarcasm. This view is not unique to this website (if they are even trying to make this claim in some form) but runs through a lot of these initiatives.
Lately, I have even witnessed people complaining that most donations come from white men charities and that this is bad (with some people even suggesting they should refuse those donations to make a point), which seems completely nonsense.
How far does it have to go for these attempts to raise awareness of a problem to turn into racism themselves?
However, I do find women, regardless of race/religion, to be more subjected to discrimination and harassment.
Additionally, the response to [1] in the FAQ by the site author is the most unadulterated form of (reverse) racism that continues it's meteoric rise in acceptance in the media. Tragic!
[1]: "I AM A STRAIGHT WHITE MAN AND I FEEL EXCLUDED BY THIS. CAN YOU MAKE YOUR SITE A LITTLE BIT MORE ABOUT ME, ME, ME?"