I know I'm not the normal, but this doesn't bother me. I believe that in the marketplace of ideas, the best ideas tend to win out, and if hiring "non-white males" is the best idea, then more power to them. Fighting discrimination with discrimination might or might not prove to be an effective tactic, but it certainly doesn't paint a pretty picture.
On the flip side, in America this violates EEOC laws, and is pretty clearly illegal. Someone in a position to hire ought to be aware of this.
Refusal to consider someone's application on matters of race is prima facie discrimination. Calling discrimination what it is might be lazy, but it's also very accurate.
Legally speaking, there are a variety of ways to promote diversity that are, for better or worse, legal. Internal memorandums insisting that diversity is a key company value, for example, is in fact anti-discriminatory, though it might sometimes end with a result that sacrifices the best potential candidate for someone who can add a unique perspective.
That said, suggesting that white people need not apply is not remotely the same thing as promoting diversity, and co-statements that highlight the ills of white people put too fine a point on it.
FWIW, I'm of the opinion that I think a given person should be able to hire whomever they want. If that means that BuzzFeed Canada hires zero white people, then so be it. But that doesn't change that the laws as they are do not generally allow for this (with certain exceptions -- like hiring Chinese people exclusively to staff an authentic Chinese restaurant).
> Internal memorandums insisting that diversity is a key company value, for example, is in fact anti-discriminatory...
I'll disagree here. What counts as diversity is fairly arbitrary. Choosing what counts as diverse is inherently discriminatory. Are veterans underrepresented? Are transpeople? Are people with irrelevant but chronic health issues? Do the age ranges of employees match the regional (neighborhood, city, province, national, international... yes it's impossible to do all at once) demographics?
And because people are diverse and unique, shops can definitely find a diverse group of people that talk, act, and think the same way. Does that still count as diversity?
Fair enough. If Indiana can declare pi to be 3.14, I guess another legal body can declare explicit preferences to be anti-discriminatory. Laws require power, not logic, to be enacted.
I would. Moreover, I would be perfectly happy with them advertising as such, so that I could know that they were assholes, and happily give my money to their competitors.
Instead, the system we get is one in which everyone pretends to be inclusive, and I end up inadvertently giving money to organizations like Chik-Fil-A.
To play devils advocate, if a company were this honest in their recruitment ads it would save a lot of people the trouble of interviewing there to see if they think it's a culture fit. Are you racist too? No? Keep looking!
the Canadian constitution explicitly allows certain discrimination on the basis of race, gender etc. if it is for the purpose of lifting up minority groups.
The Constitution concerns actions taken by the government (or, in some cases, by agents of the government), so it's not relevant here. The analogous rules for private corporations are in provincial Human Rights Codes.
I have a feeling that someone may be getting a talking-to by their lawyers. That said, the full tweet was
"@BuzzFeedCanada would particularly like to hear from you
if you are not white and not male."
which has a subtly different meaning than it would without the word "particularly". It's quite common in Canada for job postings to include words like "we encourage applications from under-represented groups, including women, Aboriginals, visible minorities, and persons with disabilities", because encouraging applications from particular groups does not imply bias in the selection process itself.
"@danspeerin White men are still permitted to pitch, I will read it, I will consider it. I’m just less interested because, ugh, men."
We judge this person because she's spewing her random thoughts on Twitter, but I wonder what happens when a large number of people with this knee jerk "all men are bad" attitude get into positions of power? And how many of them are there already? I can't see that it will help reduce sexist attitudes in the workplace.
[As an aside, as a minority, I find her Tweets extremely racist as well – and hope no one ever makes this sort of racist speech on my behalf or while pretending to be helping me.]
> As an aside, as a minority, I find her Tweets extremely racist as well – and hope no one ever makes this sort of racist speech on my behalf or while pretending to be helping me.
Seriously! I grew up in an actual diverse place. My high school was 98% Hispanic. None of use realized we were systemically oppressed though. Even "darker skinned" Hispanics.
For example, it wasn't until I left my state
for college that I realized there was actually a significant difference between white and Hispanics to some people.. for some reason.
It was bad enough that the same people would ask "ok yeah, but come on what's the difference between Mexican culture and Cuban culture -- the food is the same". These same people were self-proclaimed "liberals". They just grew up in a small liberal all-white town their whole lives.
Growing up, I literally thought my friends and I were all white, because nobody told us we were something else. What I mean to say is, my fellow Cuban friends, my Colombian friends, my Veneuelan, and Puerto Rican friends etc... didn't think we were in a different category than say Italian people, Irish people, or Polish people.
This shit is just weird. It was actually shitty to find out I'm technically part of some arbitrary category that entitles activists to treat me like a handicapped puppy. I'd rather people not consider it at all. It's patronizing because you're suggesting I'm inherently less capable on my own.
I'm not saying there aren't issues that can be solved by affirmative action. I'm saying when you purposefully exclude white males and I can technically still apply for your job, I can't help but feel like you're treating me like an inferior being that needs extra help. You're not letting me compete with a certain class of people because you think they're inherently more capable than I am.
The situation in the article isn't affirmative action anyways, it is exclusionary discrimination that is emotionally harmful to the people who apply too. Affirmative action is about considering diversity when you have a diversity problem, it's not supposed to be a very strong factor.
Ugh. I wish they would just stop asking me about my "race". It's a totally futile effort to get me to codify some sort of needy status. Besides, if you do require it, I'm going to check off White, Hispanic, and Other: High Elf -- just to fuck with you anyways.
> 98% Hispanic sounds anything but diverse. Diverse doesn't mean "not white".
The demographics of a particular High School != The demographics of an entire city.
Do you consider Miami to be a diverse place?
You also missed the larger point: we didn't know we were "not white". For the record, most of our teachers were Irish Americans.'
Maybe it was more like 90% I wasn't striving for accuracy. A few kids were "real whites" now that I think about it. They never really mentioned it. The rest were black or hispanic.
You hit on a very good point that a lot of people miss: the entire concept of "race" is a social construct that can and does change over time and even depending on who you talk to.
Not too long ago, people of Jewish descent weren't considered "white." [0] Neither were Poles or other Slavic people, Roma, Italians, Greeks, most Eastern Europeans, etc. Some people even omitted the Irish. "White" exclusively meant Anglo-Saxon and Northern European western Christian (mostly Protestant, though some Catholics were included) descent. These days, most of these people would be considered "white."
It's not perfect, but there's a bit of a parallel to this in history: during the Roman period, the definition of "Roman" changed dramatically. At first, it was a citizen of the Roman Kingdom who lived within the city. Then it was extended to the Italic tribes after the Social wars, and eventually to the entire Empire (all free-born men, that is) under Emperor Caracalla. To put it another way, a "Roman" in 600BC lived in the city of Rome, spoke Old Latin and practiced the old Roman religion. A "Roman" in 1000 AD may have lived in Constantinople, likely spoke Greek and practiced Christianity. The entire definition of "Roman" completely changed over the course of 1500 or so years.
It's one of the reasons I find "race" to be such a frustrating, silly and dated concept. Considering how much in common we share genetically with one another, classifying each other based on such arbitrary and ever-change definitions makes very little sense to me. I usually write "human" in the Other box. :)
TL;DR what "white" is entirely depends on what people think it means at the time.
I don't think people are reacting to that. Or, I don't think this would've made a stink if that had been couched in an otherwise polite and professional string of tweets.
Most of us are smart and logical. It's fun to believe buzzfeed only hires white-hating feminists, but that requires us to have a strong persecution complex. I think her impolite and unprofessional tweets are in response to the ones she received. I'm not saying this excuse her behavior, but at least we understand is a reaction.
While the first tweet could have been phrased a bit more carefully, I understood what she was trying to do. Saying something along the lines of "we strongly encourage women and minorities to apply" is, IMHO, completely fine.
But everything after that kinda went completely off the rails. It almost looks like someone needs to put down Twitter for a few minutes and take a break.
But everything after that kinda went completely off the rails. It almost looks like someone needs to put down Twitter for a few minutes and take a break.
I agree; her bigotry was showing. BuzzFeed might escape a human rights complaint because the most problematic tweets weren't part of the actual job posting, though.
She can't take back what she said at this point, it's been revealed that she has willful negative biases based on protected classes that she applies to employment. Canada doesn't have a white male exception to these rules. She should be fired.
Discrimination against white males is just as bad as anything other form of discrimination.
This is also the wrong way to end up with a more diverse workforce. The "non-diverse" portion of your workforce, who probably highly support your diversity efforts in general, will slowly sour over not being given equal opportunity and float away. It also always leaves the question "Is she really good? Or did she get the General Manager position because she was female?", which again, is not what you want. You want diverse candidates to win the positions fair and square and thereby command the respect of the rest of the team.
The right way to end up a more diverse workforce is to setup a better funnel to find qualified candidates. This requires work (a lot of it) and then a lot of outreach to get them come interview for positions.
But the actual decision for a positions (and as a corollary, promotions) should be on merit, otherwise you are just as bad as the previous state of affairs.
Not sure why you're getting down voted. This is the right way to handle these matters without alienating a lot of groups and cause polarisation with other issues.
> Discrimination against white males is just
> as bad as anything other form of discrimination.
It isnt in any way comparable, discrimination against white males mostly hurts their(our) feelings, discrimination against other demographics has them paid less, physically and sexually attacked more, put in jail or killed by police more (insert almost infinite list of results of being systematically discriminated against for not being a white male)
> It isnt in any way comparable, discrimination against white males mostly hurts their(our) feelings, discrimination against other demographics has them paid less
Suppose the highest paying job in my profession pays $65k/year. If you hire someone who is not a white male (me, for instance) for that job over a white male who is objectively better at it, how on earth is this not causing them to be paid less?
They just lost the top job (worth $65k) on account of their race, and will have to accept lower paying jobs in the future. They are absolutely being discriminated against and paid less.
You realize that some white guys are explicitly forbidden to apply to a job, they won't get a chance to get employment to make a living and feed their kids. I'm not saying that non-whites don't face the same issues, but how can you honestly say that it only hurts their "feelings"?
You can be pro-discrimination in favor of minorities, but don't hide behind the "it only hurts their feelings" fallacy.
>You want diverse candidates to win the positions fair and square and thereby command the respect of the rest of the team.
A fairly large contingent of the 'promoting diversity' movement do not believe this. They quite literally believe skills and qualifications are secondary to race and gender considerations in the hiring process.
"Skills and qualifications" are often vague and amorphous. Look at tech. We are very bad at detecting who is good and who is not. You can easily weed out completely unqualified candidates and nobody is suggesting you hire them, but hiring isn't a deterministic procedure that selects the candidate with the highest 'qualifications' whatever that even means (would you like an algorithm that blindly selects the highest GPA in CS at the most prestigious school every time?)
The argument that people actually make which is not your ridiculous straw man is that if two candidates seem roughly equally competent (which happens almost every single time hiring occurs), and one is from an underrepresented group, and your workforce lacks in diversity, you should select the one from the underrepresented group.
As it turns out very often "skills and qualifications" is often used as a code word much like "culture fit" for "the two candidates are functionally indistinguishable, but candidate A just 'seems' smarter, you know? Because, well, white men are smarter, you know?"
I'm particularly struck by your thought that privileged groups "will slowly sour over not being given equal opportunity and float away," when the entire point of this move is to help people who _actually_ have not been given opportunities based on their race and gender.
Also see [1] "The reason why I was sourcing out work specifically from WOC is because we have filled out freelance roster until June with white dudes." White males seem to have been given plenty of opportunity.
I believe others should read the parent comment's previous statement before reading the parent comment itself:
>It [Her texts about "pale devils"] alienates far more fragile white guys than the groups she's looking to employ. An unfortunate sacrifice, but necessary none the less.
Ridiculing people who are put off by words like "pale demons" as "fragile", reveals a critical lack of empathy.
For me, it transforms phrases like "unfortunate sacrifice" and the above comment into crocodile tears. A pretense at humanity and, functionally, no different from the white supremacists who defend police brutality against blacks as an "unfortunate but necessary tragedy."
That "white dudes" tic again? It's really weird how you can tell so much about a person who uses that awkward phrase. You hear it, and you know there's an enormous baggage train of smug speech policing and poorly concealed prejudice coming in behind it.
Is "You owe these pale demons nothing" a quote from something, or a pastiche of some style of speech? Maybe US black nationalism or Mugabe-ism? It's not normal English. Google only finds things about Buzzfeed though. I suspect there may be a lot of whoosh happening here.
In this case, the tweets she sends out in seeming righteous fury now seem to be less kneejerk and more intentional: it's raw, and it's coming from her hearts of hearts.
I think she's trying to do more than that. She's standing up to the people telling her to move back to India and calling her various slurs and demeaning terms. The article left that out because it's clickbait inciting rage.
> An unfortunate sacrifice, but necessary none the less.
Whoa. Seriously? You claim to fight against discrimination and you use this kind of language? Can you name an event in history where an "unfortunate but necessary sacrifice" of a particular category of human being ever resulted in a net-good? I can't.
And what do you mean by "fragile", exactly? I'm starting to nervously suspect there's some underlying subtext here.Are "tough" white guys are ok?. They're certainly more sexually attractive. That's been pretty well established.
Full disclosure:
I'm not really the prototypical HNer. I started coding late in life, due to many different reasons. To be (perhaps too) honest, I used to have few interests outside of partying.
In college, I was in a big fraternity. I was the only "minority" in my pledge class. So I know what it's like to be called a spic and a beaner. I know what real discrimination feels like. During this time, I spent a lot of time with white guys who were "not fragile". These guys were sexist as hell. This was in the 2010's and at a very liberal college town of Boulder, Colorado. I have to say, for all the overt sexism I witnessed, I never saw these types of white guys get as much shit for being sexist monsters as the nerdy white guys with the hentai wallpaper/t-shirt/whatever seems to get.
It kinda breaks my heart, I'm not going to lie.
So, point blank, is it just the skinny, fragile, white nerds that are the "pale devil"?
I wonder about some of the folks at Github and at Buzzfeed now. When a vilified person's employers quietly condone vilification by not speaking out against it: how does that make the subject of the hate feel?
More worryingly, the employees who are now given free reign to hate: what will they do with this newfound implicit power?
The intent here is clearly to exclude based on race and gender not to encourage ethnic diversity. The language is no subtle, 'NO WHITE MEN' is simply racism and sexism. This person should be removed from her position and buzzfeed should issue an apology.
The irony is today we got to hear former Khmer Rogue communist on trial masquerading their mass murder as "social justice" [0]
I wonder how far people are willing to go for "diversity".
Branding a group as "pale devils" is a good way to start diminish people into justifiable targets.
This isn't going to go away unless someone steps up and stops it. Unfortunately those who want to stop it are being branded as bigots, and others can only gain (votes, power, etc) from situation like this.
At this point, the title of this submission doesn't reflect what's going on. It's clearly "white men, go die in a ditch! We hate you!". The first tweets weren't that sensational, but it went down hill pretty quickly.
People such as this are part of the problem. They're not helping, just causing a bigger divide. Diversity is great, it should be encouraged, but diversity through exclusion should not.
It really speaks to the viewership of HN that many of these comments are negative, along the theme of 'Discrimination against white males is just as bad as anything other form of discrimination.' This person definitely went overboard, but given the last 300 years of race in North America, discriminating in one set of hires for one company is potentially a great thing. It's amazing that the Canadian constitution literally calls this out in support of it. When you have certain groups of people that you can look at and say 'Ok that person has a much lower chance of success in life than I, just look at them', something is wrong with your country, and people supporting diversity are taking a step in the right direction.
Heres the bit from the Canadian charter of rights
"Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability."
Not considering white males in a field that's already dominated by women, and excusing it because it "promotes diversity" ironically sounds like a hypocritical monoculture.
I'm convinced Twitter ought to be avoided like the plague. It seems to be nothing but a place to get publicly humiliated for an accidental slip up in phrasing or line of thought. People make mistakes, and certain Twitter users do not forgive them.
I'm not a supporter of any group that uses the sjw acronym. I'm just a realistic person who has made mistakes with phrasing in the past.
So I've been looking through this thread and there isn't a single comment that's supportive of @scaachi
Makes me sad. I love reading HN, but I wish it wasn't such an monocultural echo chamber of white males that get all riled up every time a woman says something slightly controversial on twitter.
If you're sad that HN users don't rush to defend something that's indefensible well then I'm not sure what to tell you.
Would you like one of us to pretend this is okay so there's an illusion of a debate that doesn't need to happen?
Hiring is kind of a big deal (it determines people's livelihoods, careers, etc) so people take it seriously. Hiring is not the place for an angry hateful racist (and possibly illegal) rant.
Supportive of what? Her overt racism? This seems like nothing more than a hateful and racist stance.
Look, I actually speak differently on this website than I do in real life. In real life, I use a lot of slang and Spanglish. Im aware of the monoculture you're talking about. But to me, it was always a nerd/geek monoculture, not a white one. I guess now that you and others have forced me to think that it's a homogenous white male culture, I subconsciously think that to.
I can only imagine what this must feel like for @scaachi. She tries to hire writers that are underrepresented, and lots of people who have nothing to do with it start yelling at her. Yeah, she might not have used the most politically language -- but I think that intent is more important than what exactly upset people tweet when the situation escalates.
I think that it is extremely important to hire people from diverse backgrounds, especially when hiring journalists. That's what I believe she was trying to do, and that's something that we should be supportive of.
Look at the front page of mediate.com. It's obviously trying to generate page clicks through sensationalism and outrage. The article on scaachi is the same.
Some of us are fragile so we are willing to eat up anything that hints at discrimination against men.
There is a difference between affirmative action and bald-faced racism/sexism. Giving bonus points to underrepresented applicants is fine. Behaving negatively towards a group of people because of their race/sex is not.
90 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 164 ms ] thread"you owe these pale devils nothing."
https://twitter.com/Scaachi/status/700703145631023105
Screen grab here:
http://imgur.com/m5T09G4
On the flip side, in America this violates EEOC laws, and is pretty clearly illegal. Someone in a position to hire ought to be aware of this.
Intent certainly does color the issue.
Legally speaking, there are a variety of ways to promote diversity that are, for better or worse, legal. Internal memorandums insisting that diversity is a key company value, for example, is in fact anti-discriminatory, though it might sometimes end with a result that sacrifices the best potential candidate for someone who can add a unique perspective.
That said, suggesting that white people need not apply is not remotely the same thing as promoting diversity, and co-statements that highlight the ills of white people put too fine a point on it.
FWIW, I'm of the opinion that I think a given person should be able to hire whomever they want. If that means that BuzzFeed Canada hires zero white people, then so be it. But that doesn't change that the laws as they are do not generally allow for this (with certain exceptions -- like hiring Chinese people exclusively to staff an authentic Chinese restaurant).
I'll disagree here. What counts as diversity is fairly arbitrary. Choosing what counts as diverse is inherently discriminatory. Are veterans underrepresented? Are transpeople? Are people with irrelevant but chronic health issues? Do the age ranges of employees match the regional (neighborhood, city, province, national, international... yes it's impossible to do all at once) demographics?
And because people are diverse and unique, shops can definitely find a diverse group of people that talk, act, and think the same way. Does that still count as diversity?
> Internal memorandums insisting that diversity is a key company value, for example, is *legally considered" anti-discriminatory
This is for BuzzFeed Canada.
That said, while I do not study Canadian law in any capacity, I would wager that this is also illegal in Canada under the Canadian Human Rights Act.
http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/h-6/fulltext.html
Then I don't understand your comment. What's the point of mentioning it's illegal in a different country?
Instead, the system we get is one in which everyone pretends to be inclusive, and I end up inadvertently giving money to organizations like Chik-Fil-A.
The Constitution concerns actions taken by the government (or, in some cases, by agents of the government), so it's not relevant here. The analogous rules for private corporations are in provincial Human Rights Codes.
However, EEOC cites a homogenous workforce of any group might lead to issues.
But this person's just being an asshole.
"@danspeerin White men are still permitted to pitch, I will read it, I will consider it. I’m just less interested because, ugh, men."
We judge this person because she's spewing her random thoughts on Twitter, but I wonder what happens when a large number of people with this knee jerk "all men are bad" attitude get into positions of power? And how many of them are there already? I can't see that it will help reduce sexist attitudes in the workplace.
[As an aside, as a minority, I find her Tweets extremely racist as well – and hope no one ever makes this sort of racist speech on my behalf or while pretending to be helping me.]
Seriously! I grew up in an actual diverse place. My high school was 98% Hispanic. None of use realized we were systemically oppressed though. Even "darker skinned" Hispanics.
For example, it wasn't until I left my state for college that I realized there was actually a significant difference between white and Hispanics to some people.. for some reason.
It was bad enough that the same people would ask "ok yeah, but come on what's the difference between Mexican culture and Cuban culture -- the food is the same". These same people were self-proclaimed "liberals". They just grew up in a small liberal all-white town their whole lives.
Growing up, I literally thought my friends and I were all white, because nobody told us we were something else. What I mean to say is, my fellow Cuban friends, my Colombian friends, my Veneuelan, and Puerto Rican friends etc... didn't think we were in a different category than say Italian people, Irish people, or Polish people.
This shit is just weird. It was actually shitty to find out I'm technically part of some arbitrary category that entitles activists to treat me like a handicapped puppy. I'd rather people not consider it at all. It's patronizing because you're suggesting I'm inherently less capable on my own.
I'm not saying there aren't issues that can be solved by affirmative action. I'm saying when you purposefully exclude white males and I can technically still apply for your job, I can't help but feel like you're treating me like an inferior being that needs extra help. You're not letting me compete with a certain class of people because you think they're inherently more capable than I am.
The situation in the article isn't affirmative action anyways, it is exclusionary discrimination that is emotionally harmful to the people who apply too. Affirmative action is about considering diversity when you have a diversity problem, it's not supposed to be a very strong factor.
Ugh. I wish they would just stop asking me about my "race". It's a totally futile effort to get me to codify some sort of needy status. Besides, if you do require it, I'm going to check off White, Hispanic, and Other: High Elf -- just to fuck with you anyways.
The demographics of a particular High School != The demographics of an entire city. Do you consider Miami to be a diverse place?
You also missed the larger point: we didn't know we were "not white". For the record, most of our teachers were Irish Americans.'
Maybe it was more like 90% I wasn't striving for accuracy. A few kids were "real whites" now that I think about it. They never really mentioned it. The rest were black or hispanic.
Not too long ago, people of Jewish descent weren't considered "white." [0] Neither were Poles or other Slavic people, Roma, Italians, Greeks, most Eastern Europeans, etc. Some people even omitted the Irish. "White" exclusively meant Anglo-Saxon and Northern European western Christian (mostly Protestant, though some Catholics were included) descent. These days, most of these people would be considered "white."
It's not perfect, but there's a bit of a parallel to this in history: during the Roman period, the definition of "Roman" changed dramatically. At first, it was a citizen of the Roman Kingdom who lived within the city. Then it was extended to the Italic tribes after the Social wars, and eventually to the entire Empire (all free-born men, that is) under Emperor Caracalla. To put it another way, a "Roman" in 600BC lived in the city of Rome, spoke Old Latin and practiced the old Roman religion. A "Roman" in 1000 AD may have lived in Constantinople, likely spoke Greek and practiced Christianity. The entire definition of "Roman" completely changed over the course of 1500 or so years.
It's one of the reasons I find "race" to be such a frustrating, silly and dated concept. Considering how much in common we share genetically with one another, classifying each other based on such arbitrary and ever-change definitions makes very little sense to me. I usually write "human" in the Other box. :)
TL;DR what "white" is entirely depends on what people think it means at the time.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_whiteness_in_th...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caracalla
But everything after that kinda went completely off the rails. It almost looks like someone needs to put down Twitter for a few minutes and take a break.
I agree; her bigotry was showing. BuzzFeed might escape a human rights complaint because the most problematic tweets weren't part of the actual job posting, though.
I know they are probably getting a lot of shade on twitter, but the tweets sound like a crank, not someone doing hiring. Completely unprofessional.
This is also the wrong way to end up with a more diverse workforce. The "non-diverse" portion of your workforce, who probably highly support your diversity efforts in general, will slowly sour over not being given equal opportunity and float away. It also always leaves the question "Is she really good? Or did she get the General Manager position because she was female?", which again, is not what you want. You want diverse candidates to win the positions fair and square and thereby command the respect of the rest of the team.
The right way to end up a more diverse workforce is to setup a better funnel to find qualified candidates. This requires work (a lot of it) and then a lot of outreach to get them come interview for positions.
But the actual decision for a positions (and as a corollary, promotions) should be on merit, otherwise you are just as bad as the previous state of affairs.
> It isnt in any way comparable, discrimination against white males mostly hurts their(our) feelings, discrimination against other demographics has them paid less
Suppose the highest paying job in my profession pays $65k/year. If you hire someone who is not a white male (me, for instance) for that job over a white male who is objectively better at it, how on earth is this not causing them to be paid less?
They just lost the top job (worth $65k) on account of their race, and will have to accept lower paying jobs in the future. They are absolutely being discriminated against and paid less.
You can be pro-discrimination in favor of minorities, but don't hide behind the "it only hurts their feelings" fallacy.
>You want diverse candidates to win the positions fair and square and thereby command the respect of the rest of the team.
A fairly large contingent of the 'promoting diversity' movement do not believe this. They quite literally believe skills and qualifications are secondary to race and gender considerations in the hiring process.
The argument that people actually make which is not your ridiculous straw man is that if two candidates seem roughly equally competent (which happens almost every single time hiring occurs), and one is from an underrepresented group, and your workforce lacks in diversity, you should select the one from the underrepresented group.
As it turns out very often "skills and qualifications" is often used as a code word much like "culture fit" for "the two candidates are functionally indistinguishable, but candidate A just 'seems' smarter, you know? Because, well, white men are smarter, you know?"
Also see [1] "The reason why I was sourcing out work specifically from WOC is because we have filled out freelance roster until June with white dudes." White males seem to have been given plenty of opportunity.
[1] https://twitter.com/Scaachi/status/700672318406840320
>It [Her texts about "pale devils"] alienates far more fragile white guys than the groups she's looking to employ. An unfortunate sacrifice, but necessary none the less.
Ridiculing people who are put off by words like "pale demons" as "fragile", reveals a critical lack of empathy.
For me, it transforms phrases like "unfortunate sacrifice" and the above comment into crocodile tears. A pretense at humanity and, functionally, no different from the white supremacists who defend police brutality against blacks as an "unfortunate but necessary tragedy."
Insidious, really.
"1. The reason why I was sourcing out work specifically from WOC is because we have filled out freelance roster until June with white dudes."
"2. I am trying to readjust that balance, which is not illegal. I am not sure who you are going to sue for affirmative action, but good luck."
[1] https://twitter.com/Scaachi/status/700672318406840320
There are decent ways to go around this to empower non-white hiring. This isn't helping anyone, and ends up alienating a lot of people.
What is it you feel is so compelling with siding with one idiot and not the other idiots?
Quite frankly, I can't see how you're a justifying such behaviour without looking within and see what kind of polarisation it causes.
> An unfortunate sacrifice, but necessary none the less.
Whoa. Seriously? You claim to fight against discrimination and you use this kind of language? Can you name an event in history where an "unfortunate but necessary sacrifice" of a particular category of human being ever resulted in a net-good? I can't.
And what do you mean by "fragile", exactly? I'm starting to nervously suspect there's some underlying subtext here.Are "tough" white guys are ok?. They're certainly more sexually attractive. That's been pretty well established.
Full disclosure: I'm not really the prototypical HNer. I started coding late in life, due to many different reasons. To be (perhaps too) honest, I used to have few interests outside of partying.
In college, I was in a big fraternity. I was the only "minority" in my pledge class. So I know what it's like to be called a spic and a beaner. I know what real discrimination feels like. During this time, I spent a lot of time with white guys who were "not fragile". These guys were sexist as hell. This was in the 2010's and at a very liberal college town of Boulder, Colorado. I have to say, for all the overt sexism I witnessed, I never saw these types of white guys get as much shit for being sexist monsters as the nerdy white guys with the hentai wallpaper/t-shirt/whatever seems to get.
It kinda breaks my heart, I'm not going to lie.
So, point blank, is it just the skinny, fragile, white nerds that are the "pale devil"?
More worryingly, the employees who are now given free reign to hate: what will they do with this newfound implicit power?
Seems like a fairly straightforward answer to that question.
Condone and nurture the very activities that less-radical movements of the same nature set out to destroy.
I wonder how far people are willing to go for "diversity". Branding a group as "pale devils" is a good way to start diminish people into justifiable targets.
This isn't going to go away unless someone steps up and stops it. Unfortunately those who want to stop it are being branded as bigots, and others can only gain (votes, power, etc) from situation like this.
0: http://jurist.org/paperchase/2016/02/top-khmer-rogue-says-he...
Heres the bit from the Canadian charter of rights "Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability."
// You don't like it? Our album drops in december.
I'm not a supporter of any group that uses the sjw acronym. I'm just a realistic person who has made mistakes with phrasing in the past.
Makes me sad. I love reading HN, but I wish it wasn't such an monocultural echo chamber of white males that get all riled up every time a woman says something slightly controversial on twitter.
Would you like one of us to pretend this is okay so there's an illusion of a debate that doesn't need to happen?
Hiring is kind of a big deal (it determines people's livelihoods, careers, etc) so people take it seriously. Hiring is not the place for an angry hateful racist (and possibly illegal) rant.
Look, I actually speak differently on this website than I do in real life. In real life, I use a lot of slang and Spanglish. Im aware of the monoculture you're talking about. But to me, it was always a nerd/geek monoculture, not a white one. I guess now that you and others have forced me to think that it's a homogenous white male culture, I subconsciously think that to.
I think that it is extremely important to hire people from diverse backgrounds, especially when hiring journalists. That's what I believe she was trying to do, and that's something that we should be supportive of.
Some of us are fragile so we are willing to eat up anything that hints at discrimination against men.