[kwamenum86]

The first 3 comments in this thread "The Left is eating itself." "Good thing they shielded me from that post. I don't know if I could have taken reading that." ">ex manager >manager why would their opinion be at all relevant"

That pretty much sums up the state of the dialog in the industry and it's pretty sad that you can't even find thoughtful comments on Hacker News. Regardless of your politics, everyone deserves a fair shake. I'm a black engineer and manager with experience at several tech companies, including Facebook. At every company I've worked for I've heard jokes about African-Americans (overheard, to my face, from managers and ICs alike) and dealt with people assuming I'm a junior engineer at the beginning of every encounter despite the gray hairs lining my chin. At the conclusion of my tech talks and even technical interviews people routinely ask me if I have an engineering background! These things may seem insignificant ("they're just jokes") but we're social creatures want to feel recognized and accepted. That hasn't stopped me from building a career I'm proud of and I don't lose sleep at night. But I'm an outlier in that regard.

The larger subtext of the entire diversity conversation is learning to coexist. It's not about black people, women, the LGBTQ community, or any other single group. It's about a better working environment for everyone indefinitely. Being against that is literally pathological.

Based on the quality of discourse on this site lately, I'm sure many of you will take my words out of context and make broad assumptions about my beliefs. For the sane ones, please reflect on the words I actually wrote.

[sctb]

The first comments are often thoughtless noise because commenters can skip reading or thinking about the article, or typing something more than a one-liner. The thing to do is wait for the thoughtful ones (more of those will appear, but it takes a bit of time) and engage with them.

[kwamenum86]

That's fair and I shouldn't have let that color my opinion of the entire community. But for hot button issues knee jerk reactions do tend to set the tone for conversations, if not dominate them.

[sctb]

Yes, that's really true. I wonder if we might be able to do something about that in software.

[pathseeker]

You already do. If you refresh the page now, the much more nuanced positions and things have substance have risen to the top and crap has been flagged/downmodded away.

[yonaguska]

I'm mixed but to most people I appear white. It's usually only black women for some reason that pick up that I'm mixed. My life experience has led me to take advantage of the luxury of passing and keep it a secret that I'm half black. When you're white, people just tend to see "default", then they look for other identifying attributes about you, like your skills. Otherwise you become the black intelligent guy, not just the intelligent guy.

My younger brother is going into the tech industry but has a much darker complexion than me. I'm not sure what to tell him to be honest.

My older brother is an engineer. He is by all appearances black. His approach was similar to mine but to a greater extreme, he disassociated himself from anything resembling black stereotypes in America down to the very music he listens to, the way he dresses, everything. Unfortunately he takes it a step too far and is quite often jokingly(or not, I can't tell) racist himself. He's finding success in his career but I don't know how much of that is due to the way he presents himself or due to his merit.

I have friends that do the same thing, they have a work face and a home face. I try not to think about it. It's very distracting.

[kwamenum86]

I was lucky enough to grow up around black scientists, engineers, and intellectuals. So I have deep self belief and, to me, emulating behaviors of non-blacks (or other genders, or even athletes) feels natural - I just want to be exceptional and I find inspiration everywhere.

To the extent possible, I've always tried to shape my identity based on what feels right for me instead of what's expected of me, even from my own race. With practice, divorcing yourself from other peoples' opinions of you becomes second nature. When you don't adopt that mindset you're allowing other people to write your story, which some people are fine with but I personally find that intolerable. I can definitely relate to feeling like you have to disown part of your identity but I just can't accept that. It happens in many subtle ways we don't think about. For example, when we sense someone else's self doubt if evokes feeling of self doubt, anger, or sadness in ourselves. In reality, other peoples' flawed opinions don't pay my rent so I try to live in reality and disregard ignorance unless it affects the outcomes I care about.

I chose tech (over politics!) because it seemed like more of a meritocracy and, although I've dealt with some race-related challenges, focusing on doing my best work, creating value, and writing my own story has led to pretty good results.

I do still get distracted wondering whether my story would be different if I weren't black - it's tough.

[krn]

It's interesting, how much this problem is specific to the US. As someone from a small Eastern European state, who hadn't met a single black person during the first 18 years of his life, I had zero negative attitude towards black people when I first met them at the university in the UK. Actually, many of them were like friends.

[Theodores]

I recently learned that I went to school with people of all kinds of colour. When I was at school I was genuinely colour blind.

How did I make this discovery?

At a funeral, meeting some of my dad's friends. One couple said 'you must know Marcus' and then proceeded to describe him by colour. That didn't help. But when they said that he did the posters for the school debating society I remembered who this Marcus character was, and quite clearly. It was his eloquence in the aforementioned debating society that I did remember, not his black skin.

There were other parents-of-contemporaries there who had kids that could not have been white. So I then clocked details I did remember - Asian style eyelids without the crease, darker skin tone etc. Seems as if there was more diversity at the school I went to than I can remember. I had assumed everyone was white, but this was definitely not the case.

We did actually have kids being teased for having ginger hair, I can't remember being the one using the shameful gingerist words but I must have been chuckling away though.

I can remember racist words and how there was no association between the words and the persons who were supposed to be derided by such words. I distinctly remember using a derogatory term for people from the Indian sub-continent and my parents correcting me about that. Beatings were allowed in the 1980's... The context of that was a retail establishment where us kids had a name for it that turned out to be quite racist. We didn't know that, we just thought it was the name of the place. The more backward folks in the older generation had 'taught' us this particular word, we didn't know the connotations.

So, think again, are you sure you didn't go to school with any black kids? You could have been genuinely oblivious.

I also wonder why I was so deluded and what the balance has to be between different shades of skin colour for 'them and us' racism to happen. Had our school been 50% black I am sure I would not have had my naive 'everyone was white' memories, but a small percentage of black folks in a white school would have been memorable too.

[krn]

> So, think again, are you sure you didn't go to school with any black kids? You could have been genuinely oblivious.

Haha, not only I didn't go to school with black kids, but I hadn't seen a single black person on a street until early 2000s in my post-soviet country.

[bloak]

But what does "black" mean in a UK context? It certainly doesn't mean the same as what it means in the US. Or in Australia, for that matter. Different history. Different cultures.

[idontpost]

While it is different, they are still discriminated against and perceived negatively. Most "black" people in the UK are descended from afro-Caribbean slaves. They may or may not be recent immigrants to the UK.

Given how even recent white European immigrants to the UK are treated by the general population (see: Brexit), I would expect afro-Caribbean individuals to not be treated much better, and have, anecdotally, heard as much.

[bloak]

The truth of the statement that most "black" people in the UK are descended from ... rather depends on the applicable definition of "black". In particular, people from the Indian subcontinent are sometimes referred to as "black". (For what it's worth, many people in Britain with Indian ancestry were brought up in Africa so could claim to be "real" Africans...)

I don't think it makes much sense to categorise people by skin colour. An Afro-Caribbean doesn't in general have more in common with an immigrant from Africa than with an immigrant from Syria or Hong Kong.

People with a different skin colour certainly do get discriminated against. However, if you really want to get discriminated against, try dressing in the wrong way and speaking a foreign language or with a foreign accent. In general, people get judged by their clothing and the way they speak far more than by any physical feature.

Perhaps it doesn't make sense to generalise across the UK, either. Afro-Caribbeans are much more common in the London area than elsewhere. Only in Bradford has someone made me feel like a foreigner by speaking to me slowly in Hindi/Urdu and rolling their eyes when I fail to understand. (Quite cool, I thought: I approve.)

[gammateam]

Hah yeah we are talking about a place that has “polish” separated from “white” on their census

The American condition doesnt have a way to relate to that

[lxw]

I am sorry to hear about your experience.

As far as the dialog, it is known that Facebook pays PR firms to improve their image by spreading misleading stories (see Definers Public Affairs), so I think there is reason to believe that some comments here may be disingenuous.

[skh]

We all have biases and those are largely shaped by media and pop culture and to a lesser extent personal experience. The talk of diversity evokes a lot of emotion. I sometimes think the focus ought to be not on race/religion/ethinicity but rather on how to prevent our assumptions from adversely affecting others.

There is a need for diversity training but the way I’ve seen it done is off putting to the people who need it most. All it ends up being is a virtue signaling fest for so called allies of minority groups and the real harm persists - people making false, often times demeaning, assumptions about others that adversely affect them.

I work in academia and have never been outside of academia. My belief about diversity training comes solely from my experiences within academia. Do companies spend time on diversity training? Is it a yearly training like it is in parts of academia? Do you find the way it is done off putting? Helpful?

[kwamenum86]

Lots of tech companies do require diversity/bias training for managers and interviewers. It's often counterproductive. In my experience people either don't take the training seriously or strongly object to being forced to go through it. I'm not sure it'd be effective even if everyone embraced it since shifting attitudes and behaviors takes time and effort even when you're highly motivated to do so.

[Robelius]

I typed up a long message to share an experience, but feel like it would be better in private. Is it alright if I can reach out to you via email?

- From a black male entering the tech industry

[kwamenum86]

Absolutely, here's my email [e-mail]

[pathseeker]

>The larger subtext of the entire diversity conversation is learning to coexist. It's not about black people, women, the LGBTQ community, or any other single group. It's about a better working environment for everyone indefinitely. Being against that is literally pathological.

You claim the site doesn't have thoughtful comments and then you build up a strawman of diversity efforts and then claim being against it is 'literally pathological'. This is the problem.

People with grievances about how diversity programs are ineffective or are causing harm are labeled as 'pathological', etc by people on the left because they think the criticisms are against diversity in the first place. You are making enemies out of people who believe in equal opportunity because they point out flaws and injustices in diversity programs.

I recommend that you reflect on your positions if you want to build bridges. Assuming that everyone who points out flaws in an approach are against the much larger goal is a good way to needlessly divide everyone.

[kwamenum86]

You misunderstand. I'm saying that being against a better working environment for everyone is literally pathological because it's antisocial behavior. I didn't say disagreeing with the way companies approach diversity is pathological.

[repolfx]

But that's a strawman position nobody has. Can you point to anyone who has literally argued "Today I want to stop the workplace becoming better for everyone"? It never happens.

[kwamenum86]

I think you're misinformed. There are plenty of people who are either fine with status quo (which is not totally equitable from my POV) or completely fine with prejudice. Few people articulate it as "I want to stop the workplace from becoming better for everyone" but the outcome is the same. I'm not speculating - I've experienced both groups first hand.

I think an even more subtle problem is people who attack ineffective policies as opposed to focusing on the primary objective, which is coexistence. In other words, people focus on attacking solutions as opposed to helping create better ones. That behavior is pervasive, insidious, counterproductive, and seems to be picking up steam.

[repolfx]

Being fine with the status quo is not the same thing as being "against a better working environment for everyone" and is wildly, insanely far from being "literally pathological" - your words, not mine.

Please, reflect on your position for a moment there. You're saying that anyone who is happy with their workplace and thinks things are OK is engaged in "literally pathological anti-social behaviour". That's the kind of overblown, extremist rhetoric that makes diversity initiatives a toxic topic in the modern workplace - it's a demonisation of anyone who thinks that maybe their firm has bigger things to worry about than a never-ending, apparently unsatisfiable quest for "equity".

In other words, people focus on attacking solutions as opposed to helping create better ones. That behavior is pervasive, insidious, counterproductive, and seems to be picking up steam.

It's actually your behaviour that's counterproductive here. There is never any obligation to propose something better when criticising a proposal.

It might be helpful to the proposer, and if someone can think of a better approach then you'd hope they would propose it. But if something is a bad idea, or represents a bad tradeoff (there are no solutions in life, only tradeoffs), then it's a bad idea and shouldn't happen. This is independent of anything else. Indeed, making the status quo worse is absolutely possible with any change, and something people are right to point out if a proposal might lead to it.

That doesn't make them insidious, or counterproductive.

[kwamenum86]

I think you're taking lots of liberties here so I'll try once more: I think that actively or passively resisting progress toward greater coexistence is antisocial and therefore pathological. My stance is that being fine with inequity (which is the status quo) is passive resistance.

You make some valid points about what constitutes active/passive resistance and your comment made me think. I don't think everyone is obligated to come up with better solutions but I do think if you're going to participate in the dialog, focusing solely on attacking existing solutions is counterproductive and makes me question your motives.

[pathseeker]

>In other words, people focus on attacking solutions as opposed to helping create better ones.

Because many of those policies are actively harmful and are worse than the status quo. You don't need to have a better solution to point out that implementing quotas results in more racism than having no quotas at all.

When it comes to approaches to diversity, many are significantly worse than nothing at all because they embolden divides by highlighting that fact that some people are different and are incapable without special provisions.

>That behavior is pervasive, insidious, counterproductive, and seems to be picking up steam.

They are only counterproductive if you are already convinced reverse discrimination is the answer to discrimination.

[skh]

* You don't need to have a better solution to point out that implementing quotas results in more racism than having no quotas at all.*

The U.S. implemented quotas/affirmative action in the 1960s. Are you suggesting that this caused an increase in racism? Do you think the U.S. would be better off now if it had not implemented those policies? I think you'll have a very hard time adequately supporting the position I quoted above.

[boombust]

the irony of your post is that you don't seem to follow your own advice.

[PeterMikhailov]

I read this thread early this morning when the only comment was "the left is eating itself", got mad, decided HN sucks now, then decided to try understand the point of view of the commenter, I read the rest of their comments, decided my original position was correct.

[gadders]

>>The larger subtext of the entire diversity conversation is learning to coexist. It's not about black people, women, the LGBTQ community, or any other single group. It's about a better working environment for everyone indefinitely. Being against that is literally pathological.

I think that's something everybody can agree with. However, I sometimes think that HR, Code of Conduct policies, etc do more harm than good in ensuring that happens.

[kwamenum86]

Absolutely.

In the ideal world, we all work together to find something that works. In reality, we're prone to change resistance so when we disagree with a new policy (regardless of whether it really has implications for our own lives) we tend to reject the policy, the premise, the authorities, and any groups that support said policy. There's lots of evidence that suggests that's an inherent dynamic of social systems. When policies have implications for social groups things turn explosive quickly, but beyond that I think the reaction we see to diversity conversations is just run of the mill change resistance. I often find it helpful to highlight the inarguable, universal truths in those situations as a starting point for finding a better way forward but...it's never easy.

[darawk]

> That hasn't stopped me from building a career I'm proud of and I don't lose sleep at night. But I'm an outlier in that regard.

Why do you think that?

[kwamenum86]

Based on many conversations over the years. Anecdotal evidence to be sure but quite a lot of it.

[crankylinuxuser]

> The larger subtext of the entire diversity conversation is learning to coexist. It's not about black people, women, the LGBTQ community, or any other single group. It's about a better working environment for everyone indefinitely. Being against that is literally pathological.

About this.... There's something I've noticed is that when one group has rights by default, and another doesnt, fighting for equality or equity feels like to the innate group that rights are taken away.

Its the perception of zero-sum game versus a positive-sum game. For the in-group, having others brought up to your status feels like its reducing yours... But it doesn't.

Whereas rights can be assessed for everyone. The more rights we all have is a positive sum. A rising tide raises all boats.

[fullshark]

It's not about rights, which there is no scarcity of, it's about the fact that there's always some social competition for scarce resources (college admissions, jobs, dating opportunities, grants, cultural conversations, etc) and if one group currently has a significant chunk of those they will feel threatened that their share of those resources is being taken away.

[skh]

...despite the gray hairs lining my chin.

What is interesting to me is that before reading this part I assumed you are a man even though there was no hint before this line that you are. How many people thought kwamenum86 is a man from start of his writing?