
Rent a Minority - ammaristotle
http://rentaminority.com
======
mankash666
I've stated this multiple times on HN. As a minority, I've not witnessed any
discrimination in my 12+ years in the US/SV. While my experience might be an
anecdote, I still find claims of discrimination based on minority status a
little hard to believe in silicon valley, taking the experience of my friends
and family into consideration.

However, I do find women, regardless of race/religion, to be more subjected to
discrimination and harassment.

Additionally, the response to [1] in the FAQ by the site author is the most
unadulterated form of (reverse) racism that continues it's meteoric rise in
acceptance in the media. Tragic!

[1]: "I AM A STRAIGHT WHITE MAN AND I FEEL EXCLUDED BY THIS. CAN YOU MAKE YOUR
SITE A LITTLE BIT MORE ABOUT ME, ME, ME?"

~~~
analogmemory
Discrimination isn't always blatant. Sometimes it's more ignorant. As a
minority here's some ways I've encountered forms discrimination and racism.

* People ask "What are you" (As my ethnicity isn't super obvious).

* If they don't believe me I'll next get, "No really, where are you from" .

* Been asked if I speak Korean and Spanish (two separate occasions) because they needed a translator (not Korean or Hispanic at all) .

* Been on a few dates where they've said "Normally I'm not attracted to Hispanic men" (Not hispanic!) .

* Went to a bar (that served normal bar food). After sitting down, overheard from a group nearby "Does it smell like rice in here?"

~~~
mnm2
Unfortunately​ I primarily see failings on your side _to be tolerant_:

Isn't it fair that others may mistake your origins and are interested in them
?

Is it good or bad that you "clearly" look like someone from place X from earth
or that people put you origins in the wrong place? Should they surpress their
curiosity? Moving somewhere on earth is so easy today, getting rid of your dna
totally not

The last one isn't nice though and I'd wish I was so carismatic that others
always reacted in a positive way towards me, but they don't. We are all
subject to the judgment of others, may it be positive or negative

~~~
analogmemory
> Unfortunately​ I primarily see failings on your side _to be tolerant_:

Well fuck you too. I used to tolerant to all these micro aggressions (that I
listed above) for at least 20 years. But now they just piss me off.

The color of my skin is not a conversation starter.

I'm not a sideshow freak here to satisfy your ignorant curiosity.

You want to talk about my origins? Ask permission.

How do you do that?

Talk to me like a human. Ask me about my childhood. Ask me what my favorite
authors are. What's a good pizza topping. Get to know me first. I'll share my
origins to anyone who actually shows some love.

------
Mz
[http://rentaminority.com/hire-us/](http://rentaminority.com/hire-us/)

 _So, yes, this is a joke. Obviously. You can stop getting angry now. Or get
angry, but get angry at what Rent-a-Minority is angry about. The site is a
#satire on a type of tokenism that is particularly rife in the tech and media
world._

~~~
aphextron
It's damn funny. But a site full of white people like HN will be way too
uncomfortable to laugh at this.

~~~
Mz
I'm white. I and my two white sons found it hilarious.

Your remark, on the other hand, not so much.

~~~
aphextron
>I'm white. I and my two white sons found it hilarious.

That's good. I'm glad we can all enjoy laughing at minorities together then.

~~~
dang
Please don't do this here.

------
jlg23
Rarely did bring a title such a broad smile to my face. And it turned in
roaring laughter when going through the page.

Absolute brilliant :)

~~~
dmix
I'm sure it will satisfy both sides:

One who see's corporations only disingenuously adopting formal policies to
hire minorities, only doing it in marketing and for public appearance to
appease other white people, rather than offering minorities meaningfully
positions of power.

And the other who see these policies as ineffective and bowing down to special
interests groups without providing any meaningful benefit to the minority
group while simultaneously harming the parent company by hiring people based
on their appearance rather than intrinsic value they provide the company.

Attempting to eliminate biases by force or social pressure is always going to
be fraught with risk and aversion.

------
csours
Some of the stories on the stories page [0] are pretty egregious, but some of
them are just how the brain works.

When you meet or see someone, you automatically try to categorize people. For
now at least, that includes trying to figure out gender and ethnicity. Many of
our parents or grandparent had very distinct prejudices. Also, for better or
for worse, ethnicity still has a huge impact on someone's circumstances.

It was only a couple years ago that someone finally pushed back on the
question "where are you from" to me. Before that, I would never have thought
of it being objectionable. I also think context is important here. There's
nothing wrong with finding out the ethnic ancestry of your friends, but maybe
it's not an appropriate question when you first meet someone.

I'm sad to say that I don't actually know many of my Indian coworkers full
names, simply because they are so different from people I was raised around.

0\. [http://rentaminority.com/stories/](http://rentaminority.com/stories/)

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>someone finally pushed back on the question "where are you from"

As someone who absolutely hates the place I am "from" and pretty much
everything about it this questions always made me uneasy.

~~~
csours
That's understandable. It still helps give context to you as a person. I
understand that may be lost on someone who first meets you, and it may be too
much to explain on initial context.

~~~
Retra
It's better to have no context than misleading context.

------
haxton
Pretty much a blatant rip-off of: [http://livingcivil.com/disturbing-
craigslist-ad-for-renting-...](http://livingcivil.com/disturbing-craigslist-
ad-for-renting-a-nigga/)

------
personjerry
From the FAQ:

>I AM A STRAIGHT WHITE MAN AND I FEEL EXCLUDED BY THIS. CAN YOU MAKE YOUR SITE
A LITTLE BIT MORE ABOUT ME, ME, ME?

> I'm sorry that your feelings are hurt. I have listened to your feedback and,
> in response, am currently working on rentamajority.com. Stay tuned. In the
> meantime, thank you for your interest in maintaining the status quo. I mean,
> 'equality', it's overrated, right?

This part seems uncool to me. It's posturing straight white men as very self-
absorbed, and precluding any concerns or opinions they might have about this,
dismissing them merely for being a straight white man. Which seems quite
hypocritical, right?

~~~
Mz
My read on it is that is it anticipating this kind of response or reaction in
advance and telling you up front "Yeah, no." It is actually pretty common for
white men to come in and derail conversations in a really terrible way and
make it all about their feelings. (Not all white men do this, but it is a
thing and it causes a lot of problems in internet discussions.)

Though I think the way women and POC typically respond is part of the problem.
They often fully cooperate with the derail by all piling on to reply to him
rather than sending the message that "the entire world does not revolve around
you" by refusing to let the entire discussion revolve around that one guy.

------
douche
It's hilarious, and to be honest, I wouldn't be all that surprised if there
was a startup tone-deaf enough to actually form around the concept.

"Booth babes" are still a thing, stupid and sleazy as that is.

~~~
viggity
"booth babes". what is wrong with women with a sex positive attitude profiting
from their hard work?

Perhaps the question is: why are there no booth bros. Well, there are, they're
just not in a booth. They're standing bare chested in front of Abercrombie
tries to get the lady folk through the door.

Sexiness is sexiness, it is human nature to be attracted to the physically
fit, millions of years have literally hardwired our brains to act a certain
way. It is nothing to be ashamed of.

~~~
wcummings
I don't think there is parity with how frequently men and women are
objectified, as you imply. I'm also sure that like most people their job
choice is mostly to do with needing to make money, not their personal
attitudes about sex.

People shouldn't put down women who work as "booth babes". Nothing wrong with
it, everyone needs a job, not everyone is drowning in opportunities, but
criticizing their presence at tech events is legitimate. I can't imagine being
a woman and seeing that in a supposedly professional setting.

------
usuallybaffled
This adversarial discourse doesn't help anyone.

EDIT: Instead of downvoting, why not provide your view of how this is helping
anything?

~~~
CharlesW
> _...why not provide your view of how this is helping anything?_

Because humor is a good mechanism for talking about topics we might not
otherwise talk about, but should be.

By "adversarial discourse", do you mean the site or the HN comments?

~~~
usuallybaffled
The website seems to implicitly say that white men equals bad and any attempt
made by white men to improve the situation must be half-hearted and just a PR
stunt. Thus all the sarcasm. This view is not unique to this website (if they
are even trying to make this claim in some form) but runs through a lot of
these initiatives.

Lately, I have even witnessed people complaining that most donations come from
white men charities and that this is bad (with some people even suggesting
they should refuse those donations to make a point), which seems completely
nonsense.

How far does it have to go for these attempts to raise awareness of a problem
to turn into racism themselves?

~~~
vacri
> _The website seems to implicitly say that white men equals bad_

vs

> _Lately, I have even witnessed people complaining that most donations come
> from white men charities and that this is bad_

So... you complain that the website is generalising, then go on to imply that
a clear outlier is also the general case?

