Comment by mike22223333 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mike22223333 | Hacker News Reader

I'm probably a person with not so great social skills. I'm a person of color.

I do not need SJW's to defend me. Please do not destroy our culture.

All of a sudden this movement to add "diversity" and other crap is just not right. I agree there is some casual racism/racism for the sake of racism in the community, but I am personally not even bothered and it has never affected me (I ignored them and they stopped and some of them now are my close friends). When I joined the industry, I felt a bit unwelcome, but just in a months no problem was ever there. I saw that people had a different culture then me, so I just over few months I adapted the same culture subconsciously.

The maintainers should always value merit over "diversity" or "women in tech" agendas and other stupid similar things. We're not a playground for your political agendas.

My personal contributions have been blocked several times, but it never bothered me. I did what I loved, and my contributions were committed after trying for a few times.

Instead of wondering why my commits weren't merged and blaming on xenophobia/racism/fascism/blameism/bla bla bla , I decided to look at the patterns of commits that were successfully accepted.

Every community has a different culture so if you cannot adopt what everyone is following, maybe this industry is not right for you.

>I do not need SJW's to defend me. Please do not destroy our culture.

All the SJW issues are like that, a group of people who feel they need to defend someone else. Like these people have solved all their own problems and can move on to "helping" everyone else.

I'm not going to get too fired up about it. But... I really cringe when I read "We're trying to change the predominately white face of programming". But, they aren't saying they'll do that by promoting people of color, or by opening a new distro that designed to be contributed more by people focused on social justice.

IDK... At some point I wonder why the color of my skin is so important to the people "trying to help".

edit: LOL shy downvotes. Because you can't tell me my skin color or physical features are important to my work - but you can't say that's not what this is all about either. Hackernews is becoming more and more like reddit :(

The problem is this entire ideology is paradox.

Improving inclusivity through exclusivity filters.

Being accepting of everyone by closely monitoring all parameters of all individuals to determine if they should be accepted.

I'm white. I decided long ago that everyone needs to treat everyone fairly. Part of that is basing promotions/etc on merit, but part of that is understanding that people are different and have different strengths and weaknesses, some of which are because of the culture they come from.

This applies equally to whites and people of color, rich and poor, nationalities, and more. I have yet to find a culture that didn't have both problems and benefits when you generalize about them.

I've also yet to have that generalization be actually useful when evaluating an individual.

But I have to ask: If I stop someone from discriminating against you, with or without your knowledge, is that really "destroying your culture"? If I'm in a meeting and stop someone from ruling out a potential candidate because of skin color, did I harm their culture?

I can't see how that's possible.

I could see how "culture" changes over generations as economic status changes. But I'm certainly not going to refrain from helping someone because I think there's a chance it'll change the culture of their grandchildren.

That said, I've been in situations where I could "help" someone avoid some racial prejudice and was asked not to by that person. As they wished, I did nothing. I didn't like it, and I still wish I could have helped them, but I felt I had to honor their wishes first. (The person I'm thinking about eventually quit from stress and moved out of state.)

> If I'm in a meeting and stop someone from ruling out a potential candidate because of skin color, did I harm their culture?

How could you possibly know the candidate is being ruled out for skin color?

Well the most obvious way is if they are dumb enough to actually say so.

But even without that, it's possible to recognize weasel words that people are using to rule them out that have more to do with skin color, nationality, or anything other than skill and personality. And even personality can be iffy, depending on what they decide isn't acceptable.

I wonder if the 'No Code Of Conduct' concept would actually be better in many cases. I am curious if this has been tried on any larger communities.

https://github.com/domgetter/NCoC

"Every community has a different culture so if you cannot adopt what everyone is following, maybe this industry is not right for you."

When I was growing up, being a nerd or a geek or, in fact, any kind of intellectual was regarded as a bad thing. I found some outright harassment, a considerable amount of belittling, and a whole lot of lack of interest. (The 57th time you are asked if you play football or basketball, you say "no", and someone immediately looses all interest, you may be forgiven for wondering if it's you.) Thinking about it, I don't remember ever seeing the inside of the restrooms in my jr. high or high school.

I learned to keep myself to myself. I learned to avoid talking about my interests to anyone; they didn't understand and didn't care to, and I'm not a good communicator. I never had any serious abuse, but I learned to pity those who couldn't put a mask on when necessary.

Fortunately, I picked the right time and have had a career making roughly twice the median household income. (And I've made some poor choices there; I could have done much better.) (There weren't many darkies where I grew up, but I sometimes wonder how many of the wetbacks who went to even worse schools than I did can say something similar.)

Now, the situation is reversed. Not playing video games will get you looked at funny. Being a geek or nerd is a good thing. It's certainly the easiest way to make money. But one thing I've also learned is that every social group puts barriers up to keep out people who are not different in the right way.

So here I sit, a professional programmer and a tolerably good one, and I find the defense, not of the right to be a jackass, but of the act of being a jackass troubling. I don't necessarily think the added layers of a code of conduct are a good thing. On the other hand, your last paragraph is spectacularly unappealing. If you can't not be a jackass in public, maybe this industry isn't for you.

Why on earth did you put racial slurs in your post? That's the kind of thing we ban people for on HN. Please don't do that again.

I apologize to those I have offended.

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