> That there are about as many black men as white women (or less) in a given tech field is one example of this.
The problem with your line of thinking is you are looking at the outcome as if it was evidence. The unspoken assumption is that all humans are the same, or if not, then you're assuming that "skills" are distributed the same way across all populations.
There's no reason to think this, and there's lots of evidence to the contrary, but it doesn't get any attention because anyone who talks about quickly gets labeled as racist. Which might be true (that scientists and authors who talk about IQ differences across population could be racists), but doesn't make the facts less true.
This is a tire fire of a thread but I'll respond to your concern: the science of heritability, malleability, and measurement of intellect is nowhere near settled, not even close --- we barely understand the populations we've managed to measure. People who attempt to represent the scientific literature as having established a meaningful gap between "races" are misrepresenting the science, and doing so --- intentionally or not --- in the service of a strain of culture that has been persecuting and abusing people for centuries.
If you believe there's a "lot of evidence to the contrary", you should take it up with Turkheimer and Nisbett, both of whom have put more time into studying these issues than any combination of HN commenters have, combined.
Did you even listen to Sam Harris's podcast with Charles Murray?
I've seen this vox article before and I think it's a joke.
EDIT:
To clarify my GP comment, the point is that there are very good reasons to conclude that IQ is not distributed equally across different populations, and so if there are different percentages of developers from X or Y populations it should not be seen as evidence of discrimination because it could very well be the result of IQ distribution.
Also, it should not be necessary to point out since it should have no bearing on the discusion, but I am not white (at least not of European ancestry).
"This Vox article" is a piece Vox provided space for from 3 experts, at least two of whom are major figures in the academic field, prompted by that podcast. You won't have any luck dismissing it as a superficial Vox article. Any attempt to do so will inevitably end up saying more about you than about the piece --- which is the point I am trying to make to you.
Incidentally: Charles Murray is not a major figure in this field. Turkheimer and Nisbett are professors at major research universities both of whom have spent their careers studying these specific scientific questions. Murray is, for lack of a charitable description, a pundit. Obviously, he's well known for _The Bell Curve_, but we tend to forget that his co-author (now deceased) was the scientific authority behind that book.
You might as well have just said "How dare you disagree with my authority, you imbecile!"
But even the vox article does not dispute that IQ is not distributed equally across populations.
> Race differences in average IQ score. People who identify as black or Hispanic in the US and elsewhere on average obtain lower IQ scores than people who identify as white or Asian. That is simply a fact, and stating it plainly offers no support in itself for a biological interpretation of the difference.
The phrasing is funny "identify as black", ok, but they cannot dispute the facts.
Now, given that IQ is distributed in different ways, why, just why, should we interpret this fact: "there are fewer black people in STEM" as evidence of discrimination?
You just quoted three sentences from the middle of the article and ignored thousands of words on either side of your quote explaining why that doesn't mean what you claim there's "lots of evidence" it means. Who are you trying to kid?
If you had cited any authority here, I guess my argument would come closer to the caricature you provided. But you haven't. Instead, you briefly tried to pretend that my authority was a random Vox article, written by a random Vox pundit, which you are now clear that it is not.
The problem with your line of thinking is you are looking at the outcome as if it was evidence. The unspoken assumption is that all humans are the same, or if not, then you're assuming that "skills" are distributed the same way across all populations.
There's no reason to think this, and there's lots of evidence to the contrary, but it doesn't get any attention because anyone who talks about quickly gets labeled as racist. Which might be true (that scientists and authors who talk about IQ differences across population could be racists), but doesn't make the facts less true.