Strange, I had the opposite encounter. I realized the only thing keeping me from doing things was myself. There are definitely real barriers (hiring quotas, affirmative action, etc.) but without artificial constraints the only thing stopping you is you. You might feel a little uncomfortable but that's something easily overcome - and almost like a superpower when you realize you can overcome an external locus of control.
Since you are referring to affirmative action and hiring quotas as “real barriers” I would guess that you haven’t really been in a situation where you the first/only person of your gender or race (etc) to do something. In that case (since you haven’t lacked representation) I’m not sure how well you can speak to its importance. But please correct me if im wrong.
This is actually how it played out for me once I recognized it. I'm of the mindset now that I can jump in and do things. And I think you hit on one of the most important lessons that came out of it for me - the only thing stopping you is you.
With that said, some form of representation helped me greatly with it. It doesn't need to be an exact match, but for me it needed to be enough to make me break my assumptions and see whatever weird walls I had put up in my thinking.
I would tread carefully when saying any kind of discomfort is “easily overcome”. We are human beings after all and it’s a pretty generalized statement.
Being a white male but simply being unique in coming from a poor community in a poor city was enough for me to inflict a lot of unnecessary pain on myself through undergrad by seeing myself as different from the majority of elites in my program.
"without artificial constraints the only thing stopping you is you."
To be a plumber, yes.
To be a Doctor, kind of.
To be anything really competitive, not really, no.
There is a reason startup and regular CEO's are way over-represented from upper middle class families, and not ultra poor classes.
If you don't grow up playing Golf (expensive), it's highly unlikely you're going to the PGA.
For the poor kids to even fathom they could do something, they need to be exposed to the concept in a material way, on the whole. Obviously it's not always the case but representation 'is a thing'. And of course it can be way overstated in importance in many cases.
most of us here have our own drive, but I’ve come to appreciate that other people are inspired by seemingly superficial things
It clicked for me when I let my publicist go wild and she got me on listicles of BIPOC founders, before, we just had lots of quotes and interviews. Only people already interested in the project on its own merits were following along. After, there were lots of people that are interested in the representation in that kind of niche who otherwise just wouldn't know how to find that representation. Or just wouldn't be able to tell by founder names alone.
and of course we got the amplified engagement from people arguing about “why does race matter” in the LinkedIn comments. so shoutout to the useful idiots, publicists expect that to exist and calculate it.
This seems similar to adding an addictive drug to food. It will certainly appeal to a lot of people, but does it add value? Getting more consumers of your product should not be the end goal if we want a healthy, high trust society. Developing a good product should be.
> Only people already interested in the project on its own merits were following along
the rest of us want revenue. there is no build it and they will come, its appealing to people's sentiments, and the people have to know its there at all.
how did you get that interpretation from any of this?
regardless, a for-profit company should not use its runway on ideals as it won't last very long, it has to build and find ways to be known about beyond its small community. that's what this is about.
That doesnt mean be unethical, it means dont try to move the overton window or “use your platform”, other organizations exist specifically to do this and they are not called for profits
That reads like a very condescending and cynical response.
People enjoy representation, imho, because it helps them see that they are not alone, that the deck isn’t stacked against them, and so on. It also helps in removing prejudice against certain groups of people.
Do they have to consider separation of humans by characteristics to be important in order to get you that position where they feel alone with other humans? Bluntly, if a male says I can't be inspired by females isn't that because they're sexist?
It seems extraordinarily damaging to society to say to people, as many seem to 'here are the people you're allowed to be inspired by: they're superficially similar to you', at opposed to saying 'Payne-Gaposhkin asked the same question as you, see you're alike as people' (despite maybe being of different sex, race, nationality, era, class, wealth, etc.).
> Bluntly, if a male says I can't be inspired by females isn't that because they're sexist?
Not necessarily. It could be, but I wouldn't attribute it to malice as much as I'd attribute it to difficulty in relating to the person.
> Do they have to consider separation of humans by characteristics to be important in order to get you that position where they feel alone with other humans?
Your error in this is that you assume the behaviour is conscious and deliberate. Our brains do many calculations before we are even aware of them. I recommend Gladwell's book "Blink" on the topic [1].
Humans are by all means social beings, and we use heuristics and mental shortcuts to simplify our world, leading to fast and unconscious decisions often to our own detriment. We construct in and out groups before we are aware them, and said groups affect our decisions. This is why people growing in mixed communities are far less likely to be or exhibit racist behaviour.
I am expressing this only as a testament to our innate fallibility, this isn't targeted towards any specific group of people because there are all sorts of communities that are isolated and have very few interactions with others.
I experienced awe and inspiration when I realized that I was sitting at the same benches, and studying at the same place as Heisenberg when he came up with QM. But it was only when I stopped and thought about it, when I thought about the place I was sitting and the history behind it.
Sometimes all we have is superficial information, and our brains try to make the most of it. It's in our nature after all, we are all fallible humans, so why not help alleviate it and enable people to become their best selves?
It sounds like you agree that it's racism, or whatever, when we demand that inspirational figures have a specific characteristic but feel lack of acceptance of people as people is initially subconscious and so is excusable even when being consciously acted on?
I don't think it's racism or any -ism of that kind any more than it is difficulty relating automatically.
I am fairly certain that this is something that can be trained, but the degree to which I can relate with a man with ABC properties (except gender) will almost always be less than the degree I relate to a woman with ABC properties as gender is also included.
These decisions are always made rapidly, unconsciously, and when we have very little information about a person other than what we can immediately observe.
Changing the image that we have about people with other properties alleviates this.
Feeling uncomfortable is not what is a barrier. A barrier is an executive sexually harassing you to the point of suicide with no recourse. See: the blizzard fiasco. The riot fiasco. The Google fiasco. The Uber fiasco. Etc…
Strange, I had the opposite encounter. I realized the only thing keeping me from doing things was myself. There are definitely real barriers (hiring quotas, affirmative action, etc.) but without artificial constraints the only thing stopping you is you. You might feel a little uncomfortable but that's something easily overcome - and almost like a superpower when you realize you can overcome an external locus of control.