[realusername]

I agree with you on the issue (the research part), just not the way to solve it.

So first, it's not because woman or black people are discriminated against by racist or sexist people that they make a distinct "group" themselves, they probably have as much in common as two random people in the street.

Secondly, affirmative action, like you are advocating here is also creating pretty bad side-effects. If you make the criteria for hiring much more favorable for women/black people/whoever you think is discriminated against, you just give more fuel to the discrimination. People will just think "Is this women hired because she is competent or just because it's a woman?", and now they have a legitimate reason to think that because they can point to official policies. I would also add that it's pretty bad for the people benefiting from the affirmative action since they are just reduced to their gender/skin colour/disability, they are just hired to fill a quota and they probably would want to be recognised for their skills or their thoughts instead.

Then as a last point, the team can be as diverse as the field in it, if you have 10% woman in IT, you cannot achieve 50% woman everywhere, it's just basic maths. The efforts should be concentrated in tech school.

[rosser]

I said "over-correct for the tendency", you heard "affirmative action."

As another follow-up to another comment of yours suggests, there are probably many ways to accomplish that end without quotas, or any number of other similar approaches. Asserting the problems with those doesn't negate the principle. "The crude, tip-the-scales-a-bit approach we've tried so far has some problems. I guess we shouldn't try to fix this stuff..."

Huh?

But the specific thing I, personally, want to see people do about this stuff is simple: to question their own narratives about it.

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool." — Feynman