
The Weaponization of Diversity - pdq
https://siliconhillslawyer.com/2020/06/03/the-weaponization-of-diversity/
======
enterabdazer
Razor sharp and refreshingly honest. Touches on cultural issues that restrict
supply side of a diversified candidate pool in "elite" professions,
exploitation of diversity by culturally parasitic groups, and much more.

Blaming racism (an abstract bogeyman that can never be defeated) and focusing
on equalizing outcomes (or meeting a diversity quota) is a problem because it
sabotages the real efforts necessary to improve things that have very little
to do with race: deeply dysfunctional governance, across justice, education,
policing, and in policy-making.

It's easier to say "silent whites are complicit" than it is to ask how we can
lift everyone up without tearing others down.

~~~
75dvtwin
In US, fed vs local state split -- is also making reforms more difficult, but
on the other hand -- it probably prevents monopolization of political opinion
+ economic will. So over all the separation is good.

I would like, however, federal laws to be updated to protect people from
discrimination due to criminal past.

I think a federal law that prevents employers of asking/using criminal past in
hiring decisions -- would go a long way of re-integrating previous offenders
back into society.

Probably there are specific federal charges that should be hidden -- but
majority must not be used for employers, and must not be asked during job
application.

I am a sure if such a law would be in effect, a number of people who resource
to additional criminal activity, after previous conviction -- would drop at
least 10 fold.

These kinds of changes is a must on a road to a more just society.

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BoiledCabbage
The issue with this essay, while it is clear in it's wording (as written by a
lawyer). It's still has it's fundamental flaw. It's argument boils down to
this, which the author spells out

> If the world I was living in had deep, systemic discrimination against
> latinos, surely I was an easy target. And yet here I am.

So many of these articles are a single person who succeeds and as a result
declares racism must not exist. A personal anecdote is always convincing (as
many people know), but anytime an actual rigorous statistical study of this
comes up it's shows that clear systemic racism exists.

And people love to read anecdotes like this, because it's a very easy way to
ease discomfort. The discomfort that shows that deep seated racism exists in
the US, and that our country in a number of areas isn't doing a good job of
living up to its ideals. But in the end it's an anecdote and data shows it's
not the case.

~~~
requin246
> So many of these articles are a single person who succeeds and as a result
> declares racism must not exist.

That is not the evidence the author is submitting. His argument rests on the
fact that Cuban immigrants outperform Mexican immigrants in many metrics,
which thus disproves the racial discrimination hypothesis. He likewise cites
the dramatically different performance of Ghanaian immigrants versus African
Americans. These statistics are not subjective.

He then draws on his own experience in the Latino community and hypothesizes
the disparity of performance in Mexican immigrant communities stems from a
parental culture that encourages short term gains at the cost of long term
reward.

There is more to the article but I’m going to butcher it by summarizing it. It
is well worth reading and thought provoking.

~~~
hasilp89
What I don’t understand about the whole cultural piece is the selection bias.
My understanding is that the Cubans that came here had different
circumstances, different opportunity and different resources (they came
because they were successful).

Otherwise are we just saying that Mexicans are lazy compared to Cubans and
that is just culture? Or African Americans aren’t as hardworking as Ghanaians
and that stereotype is what it is and we should just operate around it?

~~~
requin246
> is that just culture?

Yes, I think that is the author’s point. The values and habits of the Cubans
who fled Cuba and Ghanaians who left Ghana are ones which lend to successful
lives. These values and habits, such as placing importance on higher education
and academic achievement, are partly what culture consists of.

The alternative hypothesis, if one rejects the notion of value and habit
transfer, is to claim that intelligence is genetically transmitted. That opens
a very ugly can of worms and to my (limited) knowledge is unsupported by
scientific evidence.

In either case though, I think it is clear that the Cuban and Ghanaian example
precludes the possibility of racial discrimination.

It seems to me this has deep implications about effective and ineffective
policies to raise the living standards of Mexican immigrants and African
Americans. If we fail to address the root cause (poor cultural practices vs
racial discrimination), the problem won’t get fixed.

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benjohnson
I appreciate this writing - I too had to chose an expedient career over a shot
at billions for exactly the same reasons.

It also gives me guidance as a father on how to help my children succeed just
a bit better than I did.

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badRNG
I think a lot of the papers and essays that are opposed to Affirmative Action
and/or deny the existence of institutional racism seem to share a few
characteristics, down to even the the words used (like being _honest_ and
_decent_.) Examining the tone of the piece:

> But I’m afraid that a segment of the community [people of color] – either
> well-intentioned or not – has chosen to weaponize the issue of diversity in
> a way that is not only hostile and disingenuous, but counterproductive to
> its own cause.

> Recklessly and indiscriminately warmongering over diversity is the business
> world’s equivalent of breaking windows and looting.

While some might characterize the piece as a little tone-deaf, they're the
same sort of arguments that've been made since the introduction of Affirmative
Action. First, a misrepresentation of sociological concepts like
"institutional racism," and the conflation those who discuss its effects or
potential solutions to "weaponizing" diversity or claiming that it is caused
by malicious actors. The author even goes as far as to say:

> There are historical, cultural, and socioeconomic reasons ... that explain
> why a disproportionately small number of people in certain ethnic/minority
> groups are able to achieve the high levels of performance and economic
> success

But the author doesn't seem to even touch on what those are, other than
drilling into the issue being "cultural." The "culture" of people of color has
long been blamed as the cause of inequality since at least the Civil Rights
Movement. Other, rather cryptic references exist for what the _real reason_
for inequality is, right before the author jumps to a different point:

> If we’re _honest_ , we’ll first acknowledge all of the nuances and
> complexities – some of them clearly uncomfortable – about the background
> sources of the problem.

I'm not sure what exactly what that's supposed to mean.

I think articles like this gain momentum due to the "Candice Owens" effect,
and the defensiveness of all people to perceived claims of racism. It is a
fundamental misrepresentation of what diversity advocates actually advocate,
in the name of being "honest" or "decent." It's unfortunate that the author
doesn't engage with actual strong arguments in favor of diverse workforces,
namely the clear, well documented benefits to both businesses and individuals
that a diverse workplace provides, rather than this strawman of someone
"weaponizing diversity."

~~~
TheOperator
I rarely hear opponents of affirmative action deny institutional racism as
much as its proponents. It's proponents would rather eat their own hat than
admit that systemic efforts to favor specific racism groups for employment
(for the noble ends of countervailing other forms of systemic discrimination)
are in themselves a form of institutional racism. This denialism has run so
deep hacks in sociology have gone to the extreme of outright redefining the
word racism to allow for the concept of "non-racist" racial biases in hiring.
This is what I would characterize as "extreme defensiveness".

I don't actually think proponents of affirmative action are without a point
I'm just tired of seeing a group of people in such deep denial of their own
systemic racism seeing everybody else as the deniers and acting above it all
when they're not even as non-racist as the average moderate.

~~~
firethief
I agree with your point but must take issue with your phrasing. Your
conflation of _racial bias_ with _racism_ trivializes racism.

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lookupthere
The author acknowledges every culture has its own upper strata There are
selection mechanisms which can amplify or inhibit the effect of this upper
strata - compare Cubans and Mexicans. For black Americans, that selection
mechanism is racism. In 1921, whatever the black upper class had achieved in
Tulsa Oklahoma was burned to the ground by white supremacists - businesspeople
were ruined by racism. Whatever opportunities the black upper class could have
made of home ownership were dashed by redlining, the creation of suburbs
excluded them from the foundational middle-class wealth building exercise of
the 20th century. Policy created the ghettos at large, with economic pressure
for exploitative landlords which incentivized short term earnings to pay the
rent, including crime. For black Americans, the upper strata have never gotten
a fair break by design of policy (until very very recently). Despite this, a
lot of black Americans carry the exact same ethos that the author acknowledges
- go read Malcolm X. The idea of 'let's lift ourselves up first' is very old
in the black community - the reason it doesn't work is because racist policy
always puts the boot on it.

The author comes close to describing the problem, but fails at the solution.
"Let's do better guys!" doesn't work - even when a man as charismatic as
Malcolm X proposes it. Nowadays, the failure of the black family is used to
argue against government intervention to assist African Americans. But the man
who pioneered the idea that a failure of the black family would lead to chaos,
Daniel Moynihan, actually had genuine policy based ideas on how to rebuild the
black family after years of racist destruction of it:
[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/the-
bla...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/the-black-family-
in-the-age-of-mass-incarceration/403246/) He would agree 100% with the author
and Malcolm X and others who recognize the role of family, but he would put
the blame directly at the feet of white supremacy.

I agree that diversification is being weaponized. The author acknowledged he
was speaking from his limited perspective, and again just as a Latino. One
thing I wish would happen is that we would go back to the language of redress
for past injustice, not diversity. That was the original point of affirmative
action. Every social justice movement has scope creep. We go from "Here are
these African Americans, descendents of enslaved people who have been
plundered and abused for centuries - we owe them redress and opportunities" to
"Diversity is good". From "Black People" (and their very very specific
struggle) to "People of Colour" (and feel-good-ism about diversity). Happens
in the LGBTI movement too. It's gone from people with very specific, very
innate differences which have made them targets of brutal violence... ... to
the LGBTQ+ movement which is about every other teenager feeling quirky for
'experimenting with their sexuality' and 'not using labels' to be
'progressive'. We even replaced the most observably biological group in the
acronym (I - intersex; literally born with mixed chromosomes, genitalia and/or
hormone levels) to the most ideological/political letter we could (Q - queer;
which is literally defined as something subversive and simply 'different' in a
very political sense).

At least as far as black people are concerned, systemic racism is the problem
- it has killed the black upper strata for centuries. It killed the black
family and created the conditions which the author properly describes in his
essay. And, like Moynihan said, it needs to be resolved with policy, but
instead it's being 'resolved' with policing and mass incarceration, which has
exacerbated the problem.

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jdkee
That was a fantastic piece. The author takes great pains to point out the
nuance and complexity behind successful outcomes that clearly belie the
“structural racism” trope, while acknowledging the realities.

