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by zhangela
2794 days ago
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Yep I completely agree that gender and race have an influence on our thought process, and perhaps the title of "I'm not diversity" is a tad overdramatic, because I _do_ bring in a unique perspective. My goal with this post is to convince people to not just limit their views of diversity to race and gender, but also look beyond those 2 to care about the other ways each of us bring in diverse perspectives as well. |
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However, please don't ignore history. Reality is not neat and tidy: there's never a blank slate from which to build anew. Everything real exists in context and has a past, which constrains its possible futures.
Correlation is an important concept because it is evidence of association. And while it's true that associations can be non causal, many associations are causal.
For example, let's run with this description: a white, heterosexual man with XY chromosomes living and growing up in America. There are few absolutely correct inferences made from such a description (e.g. that the individual was and is still benefiting from a soceity built by and for people like him). On the other hand, there are a number of inferences we can make about such an individual that are likely to be true. Or that street true to a varying degree. E.g. we might say that such an individual is likely to view people of color with disdain. Or view women as sexual obejects that exist soley for his pleasure.
Certainly those last two inferences are only correlative. While many men are taught to view women as sexual objects and many white people are taught to believe that people of color are inferior, one can never make such an inference with 0 error.
Working our way back to the conversation thread: correlations are useful for decision making. If I'm hiring people for software jobs, I cannot exclude anyone for their personal, core characteristics of their skin complexion, sex, gender, nationality, ancestry, or age. I can, however, realize that due to the soceity we live in and how it treats people, it's likely that the men applying to my (fictional) company are likely to have some similar viewpoints. And that my woman applicants are also likely to have some similar viewpoints, which are going to be different from the men. Similar reasoning to all of those other characteristics I mentioned above. Knowing history and observing society, I would certainly use such society-level correlations to inform my recruiting strategy.
E.g. Do men take proactive steps to ensure they aren't victims of sexual assualt? On the whole, they do not. Conversely, women often think about this reality and plan around it -- "go out with a friend" or "call me when you get home" or "walk with your keys through the fingers of your hand when you go to your car at night" or "carry pepper spray on your bag". If I'm making a ride sharing service, I better take into consideration that a room full of white men probably won't think about drivers sexually assaulting passengers.
I sincerely hope that my writing here is insightful and informative as to why gender and racial diversity are important in cultivating intellectual and emotional diversity.