Answering for myself / at the level of the individual: yes.
I don't want to work with white colleagues who are biased against non-white people. I have been in this situation at a very small startup. I wasn't the only person to notice or complain about it, so I know it wasn't "in my head". So I left.
But I also don't want to work someplace where white colleagues are overcorrecting for deep-seated cultural biases. Ideally they don't have to correct at all. I've been in that situation as well, at a large company with a extremely woke / "D&I" culture. So I left.
Exit isn't a systemic solution — only an individual one, and only for market participants with options.
It's also not cheap, but the psychological and emotional cost of being judged by group membership -- for me, at least, is greater.
I think it's worth keeping in mind that the kind of pan-social "affirmative action" advocated by diversity consultants is a double-edged sword, and not without its own risks and costs. At best it's a stopgap measure of sorts. (The diversity consultant operates under perverse incentives, and doesn't have anything like a Hippocratic Oath constraining his/her advocacy.)
I've been lucky and have found a few places where that pervasive sense of cultural bias wasn't present. It would be easier to find such places if startups, and engineering teams in particular, would try to hew to traditional standards of professionalism on the job.
> I don't want to work with white colleagues who are biased against non-white people.
I don't want to work with people who are biased against white people. I support equality and I genuinely want to see people treated fairly but I can't help but take offense to the notion that because I'm white I am less or should feel guilty.
Allyship for POC doesn't imply bias against white people. Acknowledging and fighting against systemic racism doesn't imply that all white people should feel universal guilt for their very real privilege.
Raising others up doesn't require pushing anyone down. Well, anyone that isn't in a white hood, anyway.
> Allyship for POC doesn't imply bias against white people.
Sure, in theory. In practice, bias against whites exists, some of it catalyzed by woke ideology. (By woke logic) White-presenting people are really the only ones with standing to speak to such bias in their own lives.
> Well, anyone that isn't in a white hood, anyway.
Ah yes, the IRL downvote: call someone a racist / Nazi / fascist / Klansman.
> "Ah yes, the IRL downvote: call someone a racist / Nazi / fascist / Klansman."
But it does need to be called out when it happens. Otherwise we allow it to continue. Protecting the status quo is not neutral or unbiased when the status quo is marginalising certain groups. And no, white people are really not remotely marginalised in any meaningful way in western countries.
Where did I call anyone a klansman? I'm saying you can bring up the oppressed minority populations without putting anyone else down, with the explicit exception of people who are punished by society for their hateful ideology.
> bias against whites exists
Not in any meaningful way, especially when compared to the experience of POC in America.
> some of it catalyzed by woke ideology.
Sometimes racists lose their jobs. That's not racism against white people.
> White-presenting people are really the only ones with standing to speak to such bias in their own lives.
I'm white. We don't experience meaningful bias. Trying to claim so is just attempting to appropriate victimhood from actual victims, and detracts from anti-racist movements.
Another paragraph before someone angrily hits reply and says "BUT WHITE PEOPLE IN TRAILER PARKS! BUT AFFIRMATIVE ACTION!" I said meaningful bias. I've experienced racial discomfort. Doesn't change the fact that no matter what angle you take, my life would've been harder if I'd been born black.
Couldn’t find the whole thing, but I agree it seems constantly talking about race leads to more racism and not less. Seems so opposed to the civil right movement stance against segregation.
"constantly talking about race leads to more racism not less"
Isn't an effective argument against diversity and inclusion efforts.
Racism is real and POC Americans (to scope the discussion) are experiencing it. Maybe Morgan Freeman has the perspective that pretending it's not real will make it go away, but that doesn't change the fact that black programmers are underrepresented, or that police forces are staffed with avowed racists, or that... Etc.
It's only patronizing if it results in preferential treatment. But I think the experts who work on these programs have found that it is necessary to "over-correct" in order to override unconscious bias.
Obviously, if it is coming across as patronizing, then you are doing it wrong. The point is to try to get to a happy medium. Like shooting for the stars in hopes of getting to the moon.
Exactly. Inevitably some of my co-workers brought up the "points" in this thread too, that it feels patronizing & unfair.
I'm not suggesting anyone be patronizing. I'm simply saying
you should be aware of the fact a co-worker might be feeling a certain way, and then notice & speak up if you see, for example, their idea(s) being misattributed to others.
The idea that being an ally would be patronizing is comparable to people responding to "black lives matter" with "all lives matter". Yes, all lives should matter, but all lives don't matter until black lives matter. If you work somewhere where white people are being systemically held back, you should speak up there as well, but I doubt that is the case.
Not a racist but am torn between ignoring race - wr’re all people stance - and the behaviour described as patronizing. My conclusion is that nobody has a clue how to deal with this mess. We need to have some sort of clear guidelines on what is best tto do in these cases without offending nor patronizing. Im an Eastern European immigrant to the US and in my US education it has been drilled into me that there is no such thing as race, we’re all related and so on while emphasizing on different cultures. I took African American studies and did learn a great deal of injustice at the expense of blacks in America. But it seems I didn’t learn how to behave properly. What am I doing wrong? Should we set clear guidelines or leave them ambiguous?
Seems like a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. If the options are getting ignored, including for promotions; or getting extra attention because you're from an underrepresented group, I think option B is better in the long run, because at least it helps to address the underrepresentation.
Once representation is more equal, I think the "ignore colour" option becomes more feasible. But we're not there yet.
Try asking some POC friends or colleagues! Get their perspective.
Another user mentioned that it feels like kneeling on the ground and using "baby talk." That's not what's being said here. It's simply taking a moment to observe yourself and other colleagues potentially engaging in unconscious (or even conscious - you may have an avowed racist hiding it very well on the team!) bias.
This is being an ally. It's not patronizing. The reality is that systemic racism against POC in America is real. Ignoring that only aids the status quo.
Every POC I know thinks that these kinds of efforts are often, although not always, patronizing. (In some cases even beyond patronizing; I've heard a few people say it's actively hurting their career, because they spend so much time being voluntold into diversity discussions that it cuts into their bandwidth for their real job.)
I agree, and I’m absolutely in favor of good diversity programs. It just seems to me that the attitude of “don’t strive to be race blind, always keep yourself aware” consistently leads to bad programs. By far the most bigoted thing I’ve heard at work was in a diversity seminar, where the instructor (a white man) told me (a Hispanic man) that we must make sure to call on Latinas in meetings because they’re not comfortable speaking up for themselves.
Absolutely. I don't tremendously like the framing of "allyship", but there are lots of good diversity-promoting measures that companies should take - one example, we're working on pushing my current company to do an AfroTech sponsorship.
This came up to my feed elsewhere so I’ll leave it here. I don’t care if particular skin colors are similar or dis-similar from one another, but I naturally don’t value actively agreeing with supremacists.
> East Asians were almost always called white, particularly during the period of first modern contact in the 16th century. And on a number of occasions, even more revealingly, the people were termed “as white as we are”.
(...)
> But by the 17th century, the Chinese and Japanese were “darkening” in published texts, gradually losing their erstwhile whiteness when it became clear they would remain unwilling to participate in European systems of trade, religion, and international relations.
> Calling them white, in other words, was not based on simple perception either and had less to do with pigmentation than their presumed levels of civilisation, culture, literacy, and obedience (particularly if they should become Christianised).
You taking the anthropologic perspective isn't scientifically incorrect - race doesn't actually exist, after all, in any meaningful way. However it is sociologically incorrect to call white people "colored."
BLM has been creeping towards Asia where I am, and some of those activists are absurdly trying to redefine some Asian views of aesthetics as White admirations that the noble White must responsibly educate to eliminate.
To me these ungrounded imaginations are clearly stemming from the idea that some people are objectively not colored and others are colored. I’ve never come across this “POC” term but if it’s not racist I don’t know what racism means by dictionary.
You're right to point out the absurdity of dividing the universe of people into two groups: white and non-white or white and "POC." But humans have evolved to be suspicious of those who aren't in their tribe, who are different. We are naturally xenophobic. We reflexively divide the world into "Them" and "Us." There are cultural cleavages like sexual orientation and religion that divide us, but in the US, skin color continues to be one of the stickiest and most powerful dividing lines. "White" and "POC" are words we use to discuss this powerful force in our culture. White people would still, often subconsciously, divide the world into "Them" and "Us," "whites" and "POC" if we did not acknowledge that it's happening. To understand and respond to the phenomenon, we need words like "POC" to describe it.
Of course, "POC" was first used in a Western cultural context, and it may not translate in a straightforward way to an Asian context. I am sure racism also exists in Asia--xenophobia is a universal human weakness--but it may require different language to accurately conceptualize and the dynamics might be very different. It also might not be nearly as pressing of an issue as it is in the US. I don't know.
But if you've never heard the term "POC" before, you're clearly not familiar with the racial dynamics in the US. I would encourage you to learn more before dismissing a term as racist or judging the BLM movement in the US. I can't speak to the activists in Asia you mention, but I assure you BLM is a very much needed movement in the US.
it seems to me a rather dangerous precedent to argue that one must ally with blm. after all if you are not a social conservative you are perpetuating an immoral status quo.
of course one might work to end qualified immunity for example or to equalize the education and economic gaps without being a Marxist.
Your statement is like claiming there is no scientific basis for family. Two people of the same race are more genetically related than half-siblings born to the same father and mothers of different races. The categories we call "race" are genetic clusters of populations who developed in different regions/environments. It's the level of taxonomy below species and above one's family. Overlap between these clusters does not invalidate them any more than the existence of purple invalidates our ability to describe something as "red" or "blue".
The exact point is that what is called “race” is a sociological sense isn’t based on meaningful generic clusters — saying someone’s (genetic cluster) race has a 1:1 mapping to skin colour is like saying their (genetic cluster) race has a 1:1 mapping to their hair colour.
From my eyes you guys differentiate on skin colors on offensive and use diversity card on defensive to further and further ingrain the notion that “others” has weirdly colored skins.
If all of western world would cut the BS and use something like “white asian non-christian” which is what “yellow” stands for in actuality, I can tolerate those racial elitism a bit better.
One might be tempted to say it’s not about skin tones, but people taught in white/black/yellow system tries to fit surface albedo of actual human beings to those visual wavelength responses out of cognitive dissonance, through pigmenting, cinematographic techniques or other technological means, or by verbally abusing creators, artists, races, cultures so I strongly believe accurate visual representations in the context of pure racism matters if it’s not going to completely entirely permanently disappear by tomorrow morning.
You guys hate it when we don’t look #FFFF00, like for real. That happens and that’s insulting.
Making sure everybody gets a fair chance and get heard, isn't really about color or gender. It's necessary in every human organization, no matter how fancy policies and human rights they claim to subscribe to.
I don't want to work with white colleagues who are biased against non-white people. I have been in this situation at a very small startup. I wasn't the only person to notice or complain about it, so I know it wasn't "in my head". So I left.
But I also don't want to work someplace where white colleagues are overcorrecting for deep-seated cultural biases. Ideally they don't have to correct at all. I've been in that situation as well, at a large company with a extremely woke / "D&I" culture. So I left.
Exit isn't a systemic solution — only an individual one, and only for market participants with options.
It's also not cheap, but the psychological and emotional cost of being judged by group membership -- for me, at least, is greater.
I think it's worth keeping in mind that the kind of pan-social "affirmative action" advocated by diversity consultants is a double-edged sword, and not without its own risks and costs. At best it's a stopgap measure of sorts. (The diversity consultant operates under perverse incentives, and doesn't have anything like a Hippocratic Oath constraining his/her advocacy.)
I've been lucky and have found a few places where that pervasive sense of cultural bias wasn't present. It would be easier to find such places if startups, and engineering teams in particular, would try to hew to traditional standards of professionalism on the job.