There will be no diversity regarding introverts, shy, disabled, fat, ugly or other types of people.
Ugly and socially-unskilled people are not protected/victim groups even though their lives are harder.
My current hypothesis is that the main reason that a group gets that status is that they have an emotionally compelling victim-story (although I think there's some randomness due to political movements).
Under this hypothesis, the struggles of the ugly and socially-unskilled may be less emotionally compelling because they are less likable and so we have less empathy for them.
Disclaimer: All of this is just descriptive speculation. I don't very well understand the relative struggles of different groups and don't endorse poor treatment of anyone. And I'd love for anyone to show flaws in my hypothesis or present a better one.
Also, appearance and social skills are gradients which don't fit neatly into groups, and many people who might widely be considered to sit at the ugly/unskilled end of the spectrum have absolutely no desire to identify as such.
No, instead you get barbs about "creepiness" or "weirdness". Our society generally treats introverts poorly outside of very specific niches.
So perhaps such discrimination has existed, but too few have worked to add it to the common knowledge of our society. For example, maybe ugly people get significantly lower pay and longer prison sentences (all else being equal), but no one has spent the time researching such data? Should laws against sexual harassment end up being considered, to some extent, laws against the unattractive and socially awkward since the same interaction may or may not be considered harassment? Maybe treatment of socially awkward children (which can get very brutal and lead to suicide) hasn't been considered an issue of a group because no one has yet made the emotional argument it should be discrimination of a group.
>and many people who might widely be considered to sit at the ugly/unskilled end of the spectrum have absolutely no desire to identify as such.
There is a lot of history of who was considered black and who wasn't that might be of note.
But social awkwardness isn't something which was only decriminalised 14 years ago in the US and still illegal in 72 countries. Influential religious leaders do not deliver sermons on the duty of ugly people to subordinate themselves to their partners. Beautiful, socially adept people don't hold tiki-torch-lit rallies to venerate people that lead the fight to keep ugly or socially awkward people as property.
Maybe nobody influential is making the emotional argument that kids bullied for their individual awkwardnesses should be protected as a group because nobody influential is making the emotional argument for discriminating against socially awkward children as a group...
Protected discrimination classes haven't emerged as a consequence of extensive research to find hints of systematic discrimination, they've arisen as a response to obvious, organised and usually very open attempts to encourage and enforce systematic discrimination. If you're inclined to make the mistake of assuming that discrimination against protected classes is historic or the result of statistical fishing expeditions, it's probably because - whatever other mistreatment or misfortunes you might have suffered in your life - you're not in a group that is subject to organised and systematic attempts to suppress it.
Why is the metric about who is making the argument, instead of what is actually happening?
Also, many influential people make arguments such as 'kids being kids' that open tolerate bullying. Especially people directly involved in the school system that should be protecting these kids. There is no one in the national spotlight for it because it isn't outrageous enough for our society to put it in the national spotlight.
>Influential religious leaders do not deliver sermons on the duty of ugly people to subordinate themselves to their partners.
Writers at major news organizations, who have audiences that would make most pastors jealous, have written such things. Especially if we talk about people who openly support discrimination against short men. And the attack on men's sexuality is pretty brutal as well, yet openly tolerated (just look at how often virgin is equated to someones who hates women and wants to enslave/kill them).
> they've arisen as a response to obvious, organised and usually very open attempts to encourage and enforce systematic discrimination
And there are still groups who have experienced such who haven't yet been made into a protected class. For an example I think we can both agree on, sexual orientation hasn't yet been made (federal level in the US at least) into a protected class.
Also, this doesn't explain why the majorities are also protected. Race is a protected class, not just being a minority. (Age is a weird one where being old is protected but being young isn't, despite massive historic discrimination against young people, namely the forcing of young men to die in wars on behalf of old people.)
The ends up being the reason they should be considered for protective group status ends up being the same reason they would not pass any such consideration.
As an example, a lot of effort goes into a good interview process. When you work hard to minimize unconscious bias in interviews, you're making the interview process and criteria fit the actual job better. Bad interview processes select for people just like the interviewer, good interview processes select for the actual job and don't filter on tangential stuff.
I understand the cynicism, but the actual work people are putting in is much more nuanced than you'd expect from reading twitter or hn or the news.
There's a reason that diversity appeals to companies, and it's not 100% morality. It's because diversity is an indicator that companies are doing better with HR.
Fwiw, I'm actually someone working on this problem, and the changes we implemented improved the chances for every group you listed. That was not an accident, people who care about team performance worry about homogenous groups: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-boss-doesnt-want-your-resum...
A positive sum game can still result in losers. Imagine two players, both starting with 2 and 2 and ended up with -2 and 10. Not a zero sum game, but there is still a loser. Even if it makes things better on average, it can still be worse for select individuals.
One example, as tech work places become more diverse, socially awkward people end up facing more trouble due to having to interact with a more diverse cast of individuals which involves an increasing scope of understanding of social interactions. If their own disadvantages are given no consideration, they end up worse off, and this can be even worse since their social awkwardness leads to a vastly smaller social support network to help them.
People wonder where he's finding all these great people, but the reality is he was able to connect with introverts, and drilling down into people's capabilities beyond surface impressions.
See[1] for a list of the protected classes
One would assume a hiring manager would have a familiarity with the laws around hiring. Especially since many states (and maybe the US?) are required to post information about those sorts of laws in a visible place in places of employment.