
Google employee anti-diversity memo causes row - wcummings
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-40845288
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EddieRingle
Honest question: is the goal really to have a 50/50 split of men and women
employed in the field? Because that's the general sense I get when the
existing distribution numbers are cited. If so, why is that the goal?

And why is positive discrimination justified? Why not lift all the fingers off
the scales and see where things end up?

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notacoward
> And why is positive discrimination justified?

Who's suggesting positive discrimination? That would imply quotas or lowered
standards, which are already deprecated approaches to the problem. Outreach
and support are favored precisely because they're not zero-sum, and they're
necessary because there are so many fingers on so many other scales. "Watch
others discriminate and then do nothing" is not a solution.

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anon12345690
That's exactly whats happening - people in the right "diversity" bucket are
being hired while others who are qualified are being passed over.

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notacoward
And how is that worse than before? Qualified women and minorities were being
passed over before. Qualified women and minorities are _still_ being passed
over, despite diversity efforts, unless you want to make the somewhat circular
argument that 81:19 (men:women) reflects qualifications. Is it just bad that
more white men are now being affected?

I contend that qualified people will always be passed over, in every
demographic group. Making that number zero for any group is not a goal. Making
it _proportional_ is. Do you have any evidence that a _higher percentage_ of
qualified men are being passed over than of qualified women? I highly doubt
that you do, because everything I've seen suggests that women are still more
likely than men to be passed over.

There's a word for the attitude that one's own group should be immune to
phenomena that affect others. It's called privilege, and we could do with less
of it.

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Chris2048
It's not worse, it's exactly as bad.

> It's called privilege

You missed an important part: that _only_ ones own group should be immune. If
you believe all groups shouldn't face discrimination, then it is no such
thing.

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notacoward
The "phenomenon that affects others" in my comment was that some qualified
people get passed over for promotions. That's _not_ the same as your
"shouldn't face discrimination" so your response is a non sequitur. It is not
possible to eliminate the phenomenon of qualified people being passed over for
hiring/promotions, for all groups. The decision-making processes involved are
just not that precise or perfect. The only way _one_ group can be immune to
that effect is in the presence of systemic bias that outweighs the
vicissitudes of that imperfect decision making ... and that is indeed
privilege. You're not going to prove otherwise by twisting other people's
words.

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Chris2048
It's not a non sequitur, by "discrimination" I mean unjustified
discrimination. I didn't "twist words", so stop making bad-faith accusations.
You have setup a strawman of your own, deciding that by "face no
discrimination" I must mean an extreme level of literally no negative bias,
even at random or by error.

I disagree that "Making it proportional is [a target]". Hiring should not be
_based_ on sex/race, but that doesn't mean it can't be based, justifiably, on
things that correlate with sex/race. The issue is here is that there is no
direct insight into the factors hiring decisions, other than broad hiring
statistics than do not distinguish between e.g correlation and cause.

