Maybe the question is why the leftists are so influential that for-profit companies are willing to comply with their ideology. Isn't the best way to increase the representation of minorities is to increase the funnel? Better schools, better teachers, more rigorous curriculum for all instead of for the elite students, a whole new culture that values curiosity and geekiness in general, and eventually a larger number of people who are willing to toil for years to study STEM? But oh no, by merely asking such questions I'm a far right, a racist, and of course, a fascist (I can be wrong, of course, but I should be free to ask questions and propose alternative solutions).
My theory? CRT in workplace is popular because it's effective at suppressing questions and at making it easy for organizations to avoid working on hard problems.
From my view it’s the right that is making education more arduous, especially for teachers at every step of the process. I haven’t seen anyone on the left try to censor teachers or cut their funding. “Girls who code” was huge at my inner city high school. Funded by the left. Democrat politicians fought constantly to make the schools better while republicans campaigned on vouchers that would mean poor students are stuck in schools with less funding while rich ones get a cheaper private education. I think you’re falling for the trap of only ingesting the “outrage” news and letting the normal stuff pass you by(maybe I'm just projecting because i fall for that all the time unfortunately).
> more rigorous curriculum for all instead of for the elite students
This is called common core and was implemented with widespread bipartisan support. Really we all agree on most things.
That’s not to say there aren’t problems with the left. You just seem to have misunderstood them. For example, charter schools seem to be a good solution that combines choice with not leaving out those unable to pay. Yet both sides seem adamantly against them for their own reasons.
> by merely asking such questions I'm a far right, a racist, and of course, a fascist
Now we're really getting into speculation territory, but my hunch is that you've gotten these negative reactions because the people you are talking to/arguing with believe they are already supporting these initiatives and therefore that your complaints are in bad faith.
I really wish that education is a bipartisan issue. It's really not about left or right. What I was criticizing is not any specific policy but that the elites, whatever parties they belong to, use morality to block legitimate discussion of tough problems. It just so happens that the left love to put people into racists and fascists group, or so when I am being subject to exposure bias.
> vouchers that would mean poor students are stuck in schools with less funding while rich ones get a cheaper private education.
This is the discussion I wish we have more. That is, someone says that voucher is all about giving freedom and forcing teachers to teach better, but in reality it may work just the opposite. And we should really discuss its pros and cons without attacking each other's motives.
> You just seem to have misunderstood them
Maybe so, as I'm subject to exposure bias. I just can list equal number of examples that show how the left pushed their agenda too. Let's start with Gebru. When LeCun said that bias in model was the result of bias in data, Gebru attacked him for being a bigot. When Gebru was fired from Google, how many media spent even a single paragraph to discuss the quality of her paper, which was the root of the whole debacle, while being busy attacking Google for being racist or misogynist? Or search Allison Collins. When she was criticized for her policy, she said "“Many Asian believe they benefit from the ‘model minority’ BS. In fact many Asian Americans actively promote these myths. They use white supremacist thinking to assimilate and get ahead". When school boards lower their academic standards, they cite racism (again, they maybe right, but it's wrong to attack anyone who questions their conclusion). When students performed worse in maths, multiple school boards claimed that maths are racists or there are racisms in maths curriculum. When people were talking about bringing manufacturing back to the US, a pundit said along the line that it was poor white people wishing to bring back their power. When people asked why some Asians get ahead in the us, multiple Opinions and anchors argued that it's because Asians are closer to white. When people are talking about students' reading and maths proficiency were trending downwards, how many articles immediately claimed that the issue was racism? Of if we go back, how many people would call you a racist if you questioned Warren's claim that she was a native American?
So, yes, I'm not happy with what I saw, but I saw the aforementioned examples and more from WaPo, from NYT, from The Atlantic, from Reuters, from MSNBC, from school boards, and from politicians. So, I don't know what kind of misunderstanding I can avoid.
A couple thoughts here. First, politics is inherently divisive. Just like facebook figured out that divisiveness drives engagement and so have politicians. The craziest voices end up most amplified as everyone who opposes them loudly shouts about how crazy the other side is. Just like I don't believe there is widespread support for book banning on the right I don't see the support for SF style school boards. If you want to know what dems actaully support just listen to a biden speech on education or better yet read the platform here https://democrats.org/where-we-stand/party-platform/providin.... You'll notice that the main focus regarding race is funding for bussing programs and other methods of integrating schools, and that the focus is on income more than race. The republicans decided not to publish a platform in 2022 for whatever reason but they gave us this to explain themselves https://ballotpedia.org/The_Republican_Party_Platform,_2020. I will say that recent laws in Florida have been concerning, but obviously the same is true for SF, and I blame presidential posturing more than ideology for the Florida stuff.
I realize it can be difficult to separate the rhetoric from the actual bills and laws being passed, but it is extremely important to do so, and to call out troublesome ones no matter where they come from. I think taking pundits with a grain of salt is about as much as we can do as individuals, but it sure would be nice to figure out a way to better inform people(on both sides) of facts, because more and more I just see people parroting their talking points past each other instead of steelmanning. Because if we forget about the pundits we end up with stuff like common core. Common sense rules that can make everyone better off aren't what pundits are selling, their incentives aren't properly aligned unfortunately.
Oh, that’s easy. Because you wind up with a better, more productive company when you put forth the considerable effort necessary to increase diversity. It’s winning in the marketplace because it’s better.
You’re 100% right about the funnel, but here’s the thing: junior positions are part of the funnel. About ten years ago I realized that I was screwing up massively by interviewing for current skill level instead of potential skill level. Sure, at a certain point you can’t just look for potential; I’m not gonna hire a senior engineer because they might reach senior levels at some point. But I’m sure thinking about my junior to middle levels differently.
And this benefits everyone. Too many FAANGs get obsessed with existing criteria and leetcoding and won’t even look at someone from a small shop, regardless of skin color or gender. Their loss, my gain.
Absolutely anything you can do to increase your pool of potential qualified employees is good. Making up theories which give you an excuse to keep the same small pool hurts your company. Again, my gain.
Further, cultural diversity helps me get my job done because different viewpoints are useful! It’s amusing: the same people who will insist that cancel culture is bad because we have to invite all the viewpoints will also explain that trying to increase diversity in the workplace is terrible. It’s almost like there’s something else going on there.
> you wind up with a better, more productive company when you put forth the considerable effort necessary to increase diversity
Diversity, as everything else, has a sweet spot. Too little and too much are equally bad. Of course nobody knows where the sweet spot is, but merely increasing diversity is not a guarantee for improvement. I mean, you can hire someone who hates your gut and doesn't speak your language. This will definitely increase the diversity, but you probably not going to like it.
> will also explain that trying to increase diversity in the workplace is terrible. It’s almost like there’s something else going on there.
I think most of those folks just despise hypocrisy. "Being anti-racist by being racist" makes me cringe.
If you're making a diversity hire to get alternative viewpoints, you're doing it for your own benefit and being honest, I don't think anybody will have problem with that. It's the virtue signaling that makes it despicable.
There's also argument to be made that if you're allowing diversity hires, you might have to allow "cohesion" hires. Justifying one but not the other seems disingenuous.
Sure, you could obviously have a poorly functioning diverse workplace. Likewise, you could obviously have a poorly functioning lily-white all-male workplace.
The idea that diversity advocates are solely focused on diversity for its own sake is incorrect. There are two factors that typically play into it: one is practical (see my comment) and the other is moral (the belief that it’s inherently better if someone raised in a non-majority culture has an equal chance to succeed).
“Virtue signaling” is a tremendously non-useful term because it is always, always applied inconsistently. The dude I’m responding to used the phrase “CRT.” That ensures that we all know that he’s virtuous and recognizes the evil of leftist thought, but you’re not calling him a virtue signaler.
Don’t assume people who disagree with you are hypocrites. Maybe we’re just misinformed. “Virtue signaling” ends discussion and promotes division, and we really don’t need more of that in this world.
I did not imply you're a hypocrite. I only tried to explain the cancel culture / diversity paradox. Both cancel culture and DEI are incredibly hypocritical "holier than thou" contests.
> belief that it’s inherently better if someone raised in a non-majority culture has an equal chance to succeed
I think it's safe to say that equality of opportunity ship has long sailed. Far left is all about equality of outcome now.
But let's focus on equality of opportunity. It's an incredibly complex problem to solve. Take affirmative action for example: based on dose and implementation it could either help, or it could backfire. But any criticism of it will get you labelled as bigot or racist. "We're helping disenfranchised minorities here, how dare you criticize us?"
Once you believe you have the moral high ground, criticism is no longer acceptable.
I'm not labelling the other guy as virtue signaler because he seems capable of self-doubt and rational thought.
I believe that you didn't mean to label me as a hypocrite, but if you think that my expression of virtue is designed to signal that I'm a good person rather than being a sincere expression of what I believe -- you're saying I'm a hypocrite. If you don't want to do that, don't accuse me of virtue signaling.
> Because you wind up with a better, more productive company when you put forth the considerable effort necessary to increase diversity. It’s winning in the marketplace because it’s better.
What evidence do you have to support the claim that DIE-focused companies outcompete merit-focused companies?
You made a pretty bold claim about the inherent value of diversity; if you cannot support it with evidence, the failure isn’t with me.
Efforts to increase diversity this late in the pipeline come at the cost of other priorities, including (and perhaps especially) merit, and are, almost without exception, advanced through patently discriminatory practices.
> … people who will insist that cancel culture is bad because we have to invite all the viewpoints …
Are we to understand that, given your espoused commitment to viewpoint diversity, that you also oppose cancel culture on this basis?
Either you also agree that “cancel culture is bad”, or you don’t actually believe viewpoint diversity is valuable, and yours is just an ethics-of-convenience argument.
> Oh, that’s easy. Because you wind up with a better, more productive company when you put forth the considerable effort necessary to increase diversity. It’s winning in the marketplace because it’s better.
It would help if you cited your sources here, but I do remember myself seeing some studies on this.
One in particular was about how venture capital firms did better when they hired for diversity and had diverse people in top roles [1]. The study mentioned that venture capitalism has very particular homogenous in-group culture, which diversity hiring helped firms break out of. In fact many articles seem to push this idea that diversity hiring leads to more perspectives on issues and more out-of-the-box thinking, leading to greater success.
While this makes sense, this is very different from the rational pushed by the top-level comment of this thread, which says that diversity hiring is to make up for discrimination at the beginning of the funnel. Because if the goal is just to broaden perspectives by tweaking their hiring process, companies can do this without looking at race or gender. There are metrics that can specifically optimize for this. There's no reason why race/gender needs to be specifically considered in order to end up with more diversity of thought.
It's not left or right ideologies but CEO and their desire to be in good standing in social media. During early 2010s, there was whole barrage of books and editorial on income gap, gender gap and biases. News channels regularly picked up authors and circulated them on and on. Talk shows need someone to talk with and what could be better than these topics to energize audience to argue? This built-up a lot of resentment of being exploited and left behind in "diverse" group over short span of years which eventually exploded into me-too movement. During those days, a CEO will go out and post on Twitter how they cared about diversity and going all-in by tying the diversity targets with bonuses. Then if the next CEO doesn't do the same then they obviously looked upon as anti-diversity/racists. So, this whole thing cascaded into all big tech CEOs lining up to setup artificial diversity targets and that's where we are now. No one really cared that pipeline to funnel diversity in tech was broken at the start.
It's also probably why these initiatives focus on skin color and gender rather than things like economic advantage: You can walk into an office and see that it's mostly asian men, you cant walk in and see that it made sure that people who didn't have elite educations got an opportunity.
One strategy of the rule book of toxic middle management about how to keep your underlings from eating you alive is to treat them differently. One group will notice they get treated unfairly and instead of holding management responsible will develop frustration at the group that gets preference. A conflict ensures that you can leverage to your benefit.
Sadly it is rare that people will hold management responsible in such cases.
I have heard more republican outcry in response to Biden's student loan forgiveness
> A recent analysis by the Census Bureau said Black and Hispanic women could benefit the most from the one-time cancellation policy, as both groups hold a disproportionate share of education debt relative to their peers.
You're missing the obvious answer, it's a zero sum game. If a company pays top of market, they can absolutely find enough qualified candidates any way they wish to subdivide them (by race/gender/background etc).
The rest of the companies won't be able to however, and now they look bad so they either have to (possibly) lower their standards or have bad PR.
Yes, you absolutely should fix the funding gap in schools. 100%. I was really liking your comment until I got to the self-pitying complaints about being called a racist.
The alt-right likes to call progressives "cucks". There are tumblerinas who call conservatives "fascists". That's what HN calls "free speech" - if you want to cry about it, try Facebook
My theory? CRT in workplace is popular because it's effective at suppressing questions and at making it easy for organizations to avoid working on hard problems.