Tech Journalism Is Less Diverse Than Tech | Hacker News Reader

Tech Journalism Is Less Diverse Than Tech

oonwoye.com

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Having had a significant other that worked in journalism, this makes sense to me. Journalism has become a profession which is much easier to follow if you have an "elite" background. It can be a prestigious job, but with a low salary for decades. To break into it you often have to earn your stripes and work your way up. In "elite" journalism--major newspapers and outlets--this often includes very low paying or non-paying internships in some of the most expensive cities in the country. It's a lot easier to do this if you have parents that can pay your rent or max out their non-taxable gifts to you each year.

To even get these internships it helps to go to one of the top 5 J-school graduate programs, which are expensive ($30k+ tuition/year) and in high cost of living cities (except Mizzou). Due to the racial wealth gap in the US--which was caused by systemic racism--this means that upper-class White people are going to be the ones that can best outlast this system and end up making it as a journalist.

There's also an extreme supply-demand mismatch in journalism (as there is in acting, music, and similar fields), meaning that many persons in the field take a lot of their "income" from the profession via non-monetary sources: https://jakeseliger.com/2019/11/19/have-journalists-and-acad...

>Due to the racial wealth gap in the US--which was caused by systemic racism

I did some searching and couldn't find any articles about racial wealth gaps in other countries. Is there any evidence to suggest that the racial wealth gap is uniquely an American problem?

>this means that upper-class White people are going to be the ones that can best outlast this system and end up making it as a journalist.

This is not true. There is certainly an over representation of a group within journalism / media, but it is most certainly not people of a "waspy" disposition who are the ones vastly over represented to an absurd degree.

Note that linked study [0] uses too high white percentages for Facebook.

> As of 2020, the percentage of white employees at Facebook is 63.2%.

It links to this [1] document where if you click on "whites" in the "US ethnicity" section, there is indeed a 63.2% percentage. But that number corresponds to the green curve which concerns people in leadership roles. The number for all facebook employees (including the technical engineers, etc) is the blue one, which only has 41%. In the image, facebook would thus be closer to the other tech companies and further away from the journalists.

It's also interesting to note that the percentage of nonhispanic whites in the US population is 60.1% [2], so they are actually underrepresented in big tech companies (and overrepresented in tech journalism). Didn't know that!

[0]: https://tech-journalism-diversity-report.github.io/code/

[1]: https://diversity.fb.com/read-report/

[2]: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219

To add to that, that's counting Jews as white. When you don't, two very unfortunate things happen: first non Jewish whites are now the most underrepresented category, and two you end up sounding like Charlie Chaplin with a mustache.

I find in particularly hilarious that white men are most definitely bad, but Jews are definitely not bad and definitely not white. However Jews and Arabs can be interchangeably considered white, Arab or Jewish, or Asian depending on what story you’re trying to tell. An Indian can be counted as just generically brown or “of color” if they’re participating in the correct political narratives, but most certainly become Asian the moment they start to consider getting in on some of that affirmative action.

Isn’t it wonderful that ethnicity has once again become such a terribly important factor when it comes to passing judgements about people...

> ...but Jews are... definitely not white

To be fair, I don't think this is a common view anymore, least of all in polite society. "White" was extended from indicating strictly WASP settlers (excluding even the Irish) to Europeans in general as early as the late-19th to early-20th c. - and then further extended to include Middle-Eastern folks and the like sometime later. It's definitely weird though how these ethnical and even overtly race-based characterizations are used in the U.S.

I think AmericanChopper meant that in the sense that when someone complains about whites, they don't have Jews in mind.

How could you tell that they don't, though? And does it really matter, since they probably don't have Polish or $RANDOM_WHITE_SUBGROUP folks in mind either, but this doesn't make Polish folks non-white.

Because the kind of people that complain about whites don't like the kind of people that complain about jews.

Well, to accept the “tech is racist” narrative you would need to do the mental gymnastics required to believe that Jews, South Asians and East Asians are all white. Similar to the mental contortions that Harvard uses to justify its racist admissions policies.

Most Jews in America are Ashkenazi and are essentially German, Polish, Ukranian for them most part.

i.e. 'Zuckerberg' 'Sandberg' 'Goldman'.

They are genetically not different from other Europeans other than for some possibly some minor specific linkage way back. That wing of the diaspora has been in Europe for at least 1000 years, originating in the area from Netherlands down to Frankfurt and spreading Eastward towards Russia.

Even many Sephardi jews, from the Med (i.e. Spain, Greece, Turkey), are more European than they are Middle Eastern at least genetically.

So they are a sub-group of whites. they have distinct culture and also some distinct genetic make up (look for Ashkenazi Jewish Genetic Panel)

If this sub group has more privilege, don't we want equity for other sub groups?

Not necessarily, as historic rates of Jewish interfaith marriage were until recently extremely low. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interfaith_marriage_in_Judaism:

Interfaith marriage in Judaism was historically looked upon with very strong disfavour by Jewish leaders, and it remains a controversial issue among them today. [..] In the early 19th century, in some less modernised regions of the world, exogamy was extremely rare—less than 0.1% of the Jews of Algeria, for example, practiced exogamy. In the early 20th century, even in most Germanic regions of central Europe there were still only a mere 5% of Jews marrying non-Jews.

To underscore how very disfavored mixed marriages were, Bernard S. Bachrach's Early Medieval Jewish Policy in Western Europe states (speaking about the 6th century, but it is unclear how wide-ranging this policy was):

According to Jewish custom a woman who willingly and openly went to live with a non-Jew was considered dead by her family and by the Jewish community. Legally it was the duty of the community to stone her to death if she could be found.

The point here is to show the silly consequences of categorizing people by "race", not to argue about the minutiæ of how to properly do race discrimination.

So I think that's a fair point, at the same time I don't think 'race' is quite a silly thing, just not a hugely important thing.

If race is silly, then is BLM a silly concept?

We could say the same thing about 'silly culture' or 'silly language' or 'silly attitudes' or 'silly politics' ... so that we can just all focus on the truly important things like our 'iPhones'.

At very least it's history, and interesting on that level, more controversially, it's part of our identities at least in a broad sense.

I find this [1] basically fascinating.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_on_Jews

It has been fixed. Thanks for pointing it out.

Thanks for the fix!

There are many examples of races/sexes/etc being over-represented or under-represented in certain contexts in the US. Unfortunately the fact doesn't get much discussion.

Example: Asians are 37% of software developers and 18% of surgeons[1] despite being 5.4% of the US population[2].

1) https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm 2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...

I remember a photo of a Gamergate group as compared to all of the HuffPo journalists together. The latter was nothing but white women, as compared to the actually varied racial and gender composition of the former. Physician, heal thyself, I guess.

Modern journalism is about using outrage to drive revenue. GamerGate faced (on a smaller scale) the same situation BLM faces today. If the audience is more outraged/enthused at a group being moral crusaders then they'll push that angle. If casting them as dangerous criminals stands to generate more ad money and user engagement they'll do that instead.

Gamergate was an astroturf harassment operation. It was a prototype for so much of the politics we see today. Mentioning it as if BLM were in any way comparable is a dire insult to BLM.

Who was astroturfing for what purpose?

Discussions about the relative morality of informal self-associating groups quickly becomes a No True Scotsman contest. "The real Gamergaters only cared about TFYC and the GameJournoPros cabal and the ones who harassed women were just opportunistic sexists" and "Only peaceful protesters count as BLM supporters and the ones looting small businesses are opportunistic criminals."

Granted it's reasonably obvious a greater percentage of BLM supporters have pure intentions compared to the percentage of Gamergate supporters who did, but it's my position that an overall value judgment on informal groups is not useful. The bad actors don't affect the validity of the message. When someone argues that the riots are a good reason to dismiss the calls to end systemic police racism it's just an ad hominem fallacy writ large.

> If the audience is more outraged/enthused at a group being moral crusaders then they'll push that angle.

Well, yes. News companies are mostly reflections of their audiences, and if they weren't, they wouldn't exist. This is mostly a problem with the people, unless you want to try "top-down" media companies like China et al.

That said, drawing an equivalence between the recent BLM protests and "Gamergate" is... a bit much. Gamergate is/was a toxic hell-hole of a movement in my opinion. Just a thin veil over a mass harassment campaign. But here's a series of video essays which gives the whole thing some nuance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y8XgGhXkTQ

I don't think you understood that user's post. It's not an equivalency between BLM and Gamergate, it's about the behavior of businesses that seek to make money, and how those businesses' actions in both cases have been similar.

Exactly. You can do the legwork and come up with numbers that say "86 percent of this movement's members appear to have pure intentions" and feel good about it but ultimately it doesn't make a difference. Informal groups cannot be judged as a whole because they don't control their members. Media will always portray them in the most profitable way and it's our responsibility to make a value judgment on their central message and to hold bad actors individually responsible for their actions without bias one way or the other.

You may be thinking of this much-lampooned tweet with a photo from a Huffington Post editors’ meeting:

https://twitter.com/lheron/status/733758898855940098

It looks even worse at a few years’ remove.

I'd invite everyone to take a look at the picture in above link, but I don't think it's "nothing but white women" as the grandparent comment suggests.

Maybe it's not this picture, but just want to make sure the criticism is on the right thing.

it's pretty white....

I guess one of them is asian? Maybe there's a very white latina as well? Can't tell.

". @lheron

@HuffingtonPost I'm a suburban Harvard-educated white guy named White and that room makes me look like Shaft"

we should be promoting equality of opportunity not equality of outcome - i dont understand how this chart with %of white people makes any sense at all - did you do multivariate analysis to see what factors are a concause for someone to be hired?

I think he is promoting that. This article is written in response to the steady drumbeat of "diversity in tech" hit pieces in the tech media over the last few years. Its just pointing out the hypocrisy of the tech media on this issue.

the problem with this framing of equality is that you forget some outcomes ARE opportunities. opportunities compound, throughout lifetimes.

affirmative action hiring is "two wrongs make a right" type thinking. it's not ideal. doesn't mean its better than the alternative, which is "oh let's just fix every injustice in society". won't see that in our lifetime, won't see that in 100 lifetimes.

what if equality of opportunity STARTS with mildly rebalancing equality of outcome?

> what if equality of opportunity STARTS with mildly rebalancing equality of outcome?

What if it doesn't? Then you're sowing aninmosity by unjustly favoring some people over others, spend billions of dollars, throw back humanity's progress by not chosing the best person for the job etc, all for nothing.

Before you start, you better be damn sure that you're 100% right. The recent examples with the gender pay gap all but vanishing when you calculate it scientifically do not bode well for these kinds of ideologies even getting the fundamental data right - hard to believe they'll get the therapy right if they fail on that stage already.

The pay gap might largely vanish when you control for different factors, but that doesn't mean there's no gap or no issue. That just means it's driven by gaps in those other factors. If you pressure different people to make different career choices, for example, you can't just then control for those choices and say it's all good and everything's fair.

And if you remove all agency from people, they can't make any choices, everything they do is considered a choice they were pressured into.

The gap vanished as a "gender gap". The "if you work less hours you will get less money" gap isn't quite the same.

Equality of opportunity is really close to equality of outcome. If two groups are offered the same opportunity, but one is pressured to take it and the other is pressured to take something else, the opportunity is the same but the fact that the outcomes are different speaks to something else going on, like the pressures in my example. Given the history we have, inequal outcomes can pretty frequently be directly tied to issues that still don't provide the kinds of agency we want. I think of it as equal opportunity being a lever, while equal outcome is a measurement.

For example, suppose you find some data about outcomes in different groups with covariate X. Maybe there's an outcome gap between groups which goes away when you account for X. That doesn't mean the disparity in outcomes is fair. It just punts that question to a new question of whether the disparity in X is fair. And so on.

This is a vast assumption, and one that often produces inequalities more than it reduces it. In reality, people's preferences often do vary between groups even without discrimination or inequalities of opportunity. E.g. over 90% of pediatricians are women, and there's no evidence that this is due to discrimination against men. The representation of women in technology is actually highest in countries with less opportunities for women, and lowest in countries with the greatest equality between men and women. Efforts to force an equal outcome in the context of unequal preferences does not reduce inequalities of opportunity, it produces inequalities.

I would say the same about the case that you’re making. It’s a vast assumption that produces more inequality than it reduces. It’s a question of nature versus nurture. Our preferences are a function of our expectations and the expectations of us. I agree that the underrepresentation of men in pediatrics, for example, is a function of preferences. But I think those preferences are functions of nurture more than nature. If men were the primary caregivers for children, I expect the representation would be flipped.

Taking today’s society and culture as a given, yeah I agree with you. But I think that’s a problem with the prevalent culture.

If these disparities are attributable to culture, we'd expect different cultures to produce different outcomes. This is not the case. Women make up the majority of pediatricians in all societies that give men and women equal opportunity to become doctors. Men outnumber women at least 2:1 in all countries. And what variability does exist is actually inversely related to equality: women are more likely to be in STEM in patriarchal countries, and less likely to go into STEM in egalitarian countries.

> If these disparities are attributable to culture, we'd expect different cultures to produce different outcomes. This is not the case.

This isn't good evidence. We don't have cultures where birth control was invented hundreds of years ago and then they evolved independently. Or where a knowledge economy mattered more than raw strength for any reasonable time. Biology mattered so much more across cultures for most of history, so the fact that they all have patterns like this isn't really evidence that it must not be culture.

I think missed the crucial part of the previous comment: when birth control was invented and countries became more egalitarian, the disparities between men and women in many professions increased. Societies where women still aren't permitted good accesses to reproductive control see higher rates of women in STEM. Had birth control been invented earlier, current trends indicate that disparities of women in STEM would be even greater.

Sorry but "18% other" just doesn't seem fair to write. Come on, an article about diversity that just groups ~1/5 into "other"...

Tech human resources, legal, and recruiting are overwhelmingly white women, to wit no one cares. Truck drivers are 94% men, no one complains about that. The business and political community is hyperfocused on software engineering jobs for two reasons. Corporations want political support for H1-B. And, in some cases, STEM workers have high importance in influencing the political world as we saw with Facebook in the 2016 elections. Therefore, the political world is hyper-focused on those specific jobs to hire people that they think are sympathetic to their political parties, usually along race and gender lines.

Completely agree, though i'll also add that journalists want a cudgel to beat tech with for a variety of reasons, and diversity is the favored cudgel du jour to beat everyone with.

nurses, teachers, HR and many more professions are overwhelmingly female dominated, yet nobody is complaining about that, is it? why does gender and race matter when what it takes is skills, competence, intelligence? why is it so hard to understand that univariate analysis is nonsense?

> nurses, teachers, HR and many more professions are overwhelmingly female dominated, yet nobody is complaining about that, is it?

When is the last time you read a nursing magazine, or did a web search for information about increasing the numbers of male nurses?

People do complain about these things.

The difference is for some sectors this topic appears frequently on the mainstream media while what you suggest requires checking dedicated specialists publications or active intention of search. That is precisely the problem, what determines the difference in which sectors’ diversity problems deserve most public attention and why.

The issue of the gender ratio in nursing does appear in the mainstream media too.

I'm sure there is an odd piece here and there. But certainly not covered as frequently and as prominently as tech. To give context, US has almost exactly the same number of software engineers and nurses (~4 million).

Evidence for this? Tech overall is in the news more than nursing, but there are many stories about male nurses in the mainstream media every year.

> People do complain about these things.

But how do they complain? Compared to the tech situation, where you don't dare think it might be anything but sexism and oppression.

Here's an article in the Guardian about the topic.

https://www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/2017/mar/01/w...

Some choice excerpts:

“Nursing is all about the empathy and caring that people show, but those traits are not exclusively female [..]”

Let's see, "Tech is all about logic, but those traits are not exclusively male".

“Men might find it harder to put into words their caring and compassionate qualities, but can demonstrate them more easily.”

-> "Women find it harder to express their technical chops, but they can demonstrate them more easily"

"When I was a ward manager, or sister, I did get some people saying: “Shouldn’t you be a brother?” But, actually, no one has ever commented on the fact that I’m a matron and a man."

-> Tech language is sexist and must be changed.

"Davies questions whether it is the work itself that doesn’t attract men, or whether other factors are to blame"

-> If you even dare to suggest that something other than horrible sexism is to blame for the imbalance in tech, no matter the overwhelming evidence, you are censured or fired.

Actually, the discussion around nurses/teachers being overly female and how it impacts the salaries in the field is widely discussed in sociology and feminist theory. The idea that professions dedicated to "care" (healthcare, childcare, or even human ressources which demand "people skills") are overwhelmingly female and underrated is a staple of a lot of conversations around gender, workforce and income gaps between men and women.

edit : corrected a typo

It's important not to forget there's alot of self-selection going on too.

The idea that those professions are lower-paid because they are mostly female is pretty strange. It would require a vast and secret conspiracy. The scandal would dwarf the secret Silicon Valley agreement (involving Apple, Google, Adobe, Intel) by many orders of magnitude.

You can make a reasonable argument that the causation goes the other way, with men giving higher priority to money when choosing a career. This makes sense, because a male's career has a huge impact on dating success.

I would bet that male nurses do pretty well with dating.

> It would require a vast and secret conspiracy.

This conspiracy theory has been given a name, which is widely use in feminist circles: the Patriarchy.

It used to be routine to openly pay women less than men merely because they were women. No vast conspiracy was required then, so why would it be now?

Things have changed in the last few decades. Every company would just hire women to save money if it was so simple.

The reality is that there are many factors that determine how much you are individually paid. Two people of the same gender, role and title can have vastly different compensation because of negotiations.

> Not only did competition not end discrimination, there was enough discrimination that the act of not discriminating provided a significant competitive advantage for Townsend-Greenspan. And this is in finance, which is known for being cutthroat. And not just any part of finance, but one where it's PhD economists hiring other PhD economists. This is one of the industries where the people doing the hiring are the most likely to be familiar with both the theoretical models and the empirical research showing that discrimination opens up market opportunities by suppressing wages of some groups. But even that wasn't enough to equalize wages between men and women when Greenspan took over Townsend-Greenspan in 1958 and it still wasn't enough when Greenspan left to become chairman of the Fed in 1987. That's the thing about discrimination. When it's part of a deep-seated belief, it's hard for people to tell that they're discriminating.

> In tech, some people are concerned that increasing diversity will "lower the bar", but in sports, which has a more competitive hiring market than tech, we saw the opposite, increasing diversity raised the level instead of lowering it because it means hiring people on their qualifications instead of on what they look like. I don't disagree with people who say that it would be absurd for tech companies to leave money on the table by not hiring qualified minorities. But this is exactly what we saw in the sports we looked at, where that's even more absurd due to the relative ease of quantifying performance. And yet, for decades, teams left huge amounts of money on the table by favoring white players (and, in the case of hockey, non-French Canadian players) who were, quite simply, less qualified than their peers. The world is an absurd place.

https://danluu.com/tech-discrimination/

"diversity raised the level instead of lowering it because it means hiring people on their qualifications instead of on what they look like"

It would be absolutely wonderful if everything was a meritocracy like this, and it's what most people ask for.

Unfortunately in the tech industries and modern media, "diversity" initiatives are the exact opposite and only want people based on what they look like.

Why didn't every company in every industry hire women to save money 50 years ago? You seem to be begging the question at issue by simply assuming that sexism doesn't still exist now.

There weren't that many qualified. Education and career pipelines were different, training was different, expectations were different. Are you saying nothing has changed in 50 years?

Sexism exists (and perhaps it would be more productive if you stopped only believing in binary extremes) but it's not a widespread conspiracy. Did you skip the line about the same gender/title/role still being paid differently?

It's clearly illegal now, so that would be a good reason to keep it on the down low. I'm not saying there is a conspiracy, just that one might be useful here.

Hypercapitalism would make it unprofitable to not hire women if they consistently ask for lower wages the same way it is unprofitable to not hire chinese labor. People are just fungible resources, the cheaper the better.

Lack of male teachers was discussed ever since I was a kid. Just because you don't care about that topic does not mean it does not exists. The guy teachers were supposed to be role models for boys.

> (other jobs...) to wit no one cares

> The business and political community is hyperfocused on software engineering jobs for two reasons. Corporations want political support for H1-B. And, in some cases, STEM workers have high importance in influencing the political world

Are you saying that this is manufactured, a "liberal agenda", or something else?

Diversity fosters an environment with less marginalization and discrimination.

I could be wrong, but I think women in tech want more women in tech, and candidates from diverse backgrounds want more diversity.

>"Diversity fosters an environment with less marginalization and discrimination."

I'm not too sure about that. I think the likelihood of discrimination is probably the same when you have a "diverse" group compared to a relatively homogenous group. What matters is whether there are jerks in either group.

I've been on teams where I was the only white guy and everyone else was Indian and we all got along great, and I've been on teams with lots of different "identities" represented and people did not get along.

Why do you think diversity is just as likely to breed discrimination than an homogenous group? People not getting along on a personal level is definitely different than marginalization/discrimination patterns.

If the team is more diverse, someone is more likely to point out when discrimination/prejudice is involved, as there is a higher chance someone will be sensible to the specific type of discrimination involved. Nobody can have a universal perspective on things, and someone from a different background might percieve something you will be unaware of.

Most common marginalization/discrimination patterns can't be addressed by simply saying "there's a discrimination happening here!"

For example, one of the canonical inclusion problems for women is that many people perceive their aggressive behavior more negatively. Hiring more women won't help, because women are equally susceptible to the bias. And calling it out on the spot won't help, because how can you know when other people are improperly forming negative opinions?

In my opinion is a very strange that HR is overwhelmingly female. It seems to me that many companies consider HR to be just administrative bureaucracy. Yet talent development and organizational psychology have been pioneered by male researchers and psychologists.

Is that not just because women were not really involved in the field back then?

As recently as during the Spanish flu female nurses were an oddity.

HR are administrative bureaucracy. They are neither expected nor trained to do anything with organizational psychology. Nor have power to change organization.

They do know some psychology, but more of tactical "how to calm this person right now".

Also, software is seen as a great and growing middle class job now. No one wants to be left out. Truckers, not so much.

I really think it's this. Tech jobs are seen as the remaining 'good' jobs while automation and technology eats away at everything. So it is I imagine reasonable that the public at large wants the share of these economic opportunities to be diverse, like the population that the tech companies themselves serve.

> Corporations want political support for H1-B.

There's one problem with this theory. H1-Bs overwhelmingly go to Indians. I don't think there's anyone campaigning for increasing the participation of Indians or Asians in general in tech.

Sure but it’s not like there cannot be both more female truck drivers AND tech leaders. As tech is one of the wealthiest and critical industries in our society currently, it is natural the spotlight is fixed here.

That said, the focus should be on equality of opportunity, and not outcome. So, yes, we should encourage more women to study and do well in tech but force-fitting jobs is unfair and creates bad incentives.

> As tech is one of the wealthiest and critical industries in our society currently, it is natural the spotlight is fixed here.

Which is essentially "we want to be equal when it comes to the good things and unequal when it comes to the bad things". I'm sure there are plenty of people who want to be equal to professionals who work 70 hour weeks when pay day comes around, but they don't want to be equal when it's time to work.

> I'm sure there are plenty of people who want to be equal to professionals who work 70 hour weeks when pay day comes around, but they don't want to be equal when it's time to work.

Are you saying that the likelihood of slacking off is higher for certain groups than others? I doubt what you say is 100% proven or even probable but that said the likelihood of this happening is equal across all groups

> Are you saying that the likelihood of slacking off is higher for certain groups than others?

No, and I have no idea how you can misread my comment to mean that. What I'm saying is that most people don't want to work 70 hours a week. But most people would very much like the pay that you get from working 70 hours a week. If you allow them to choose both sides individually, I'm pretty sure they'd choose the low input and high output.

Ok, right, my mistake. My point was about improving diversity through equal opportunities. Not sure how that applies to what I said. It is a different issue altogether no?

> Truck drivers are 94% men, no one complains about that.

Used to work at Uber Freight. There were definitely conversations around safety for women drivers or a lack thereof. Just wanted to point out that this statement is a little presumptuous especially if the author is not involved in the industry. Just because you're not exposed to it doesn't mean there aren't complaints. There's a documentary called Big Rig and it showcases the lives of truck drivers, some of them are women. They go into depth about the dangers of being on the road as a women, go watch it, you'll quickly realize some people do care.

How is that related to the balance of men vs women and racial demographics in the trucking industry? Aren't the men also facing many dangers in that profession?

It's expected that men work in more dangerous professions, they're after all, bigger and stronger than women.

Yes, men and women are different, and choose to do different things as well (on average). That's why a 50/50 ratio in every industry is a nonsensical goal.

May I suggest a follow-up article with the title 'Journalism is politically less diverse than its audience' in which a rallying cry is heard to shake up the market? To do anything else would be rather hypocritical given the great drive for diversity in everything and anything.

Maybe I'm getting more conservative and irritable in my old age, but I've really gotten saturated and tired of diversity, diversity, diversity -- "we should reflect who our customers are", etc. As if that's the durable standard and goal of our society. I just don't buy it.

Here's what I'm for.

I'm for removing barriers to anyone being able to be interested, educated, and encouraged to do the things they want to do. And we should work to make it easier for people to be identified as having skills and talent in whatever field they choose.

Then let the chips fall where they may. This push for equality of outcome + diversity is political bullshit of the moment. Every field and industry and job will reflect the demographics of who is interested in doing that job, the pipeline of people who seek to become educated and qualified for it, and the proportions of who succeeds at showing their skills. You will not escape that truth -- and trying to do so will cause more frustration and political backlash than working within that truth.

Fashionable as it may be to latch on to a message right now, I don't think the majority of people buy the idea that diversity in itself means that any selective field ought to equal the proportions of the groups you choose to divide general society into. People can simply see that it's not true as an outcome. And that movement will lose.

To many people who are deeply committed to this divisive "pro-diversity" movement, comments like yours are "hate on women and minorities; racism, sexism" etc. This is exactly the kind of comment they'll screenshot and say "Orange site bad!" on Twitter. It's quite sad.

Hot topic, but your comment has some good points I'll try to add my experience to.

> I'm for removing barriers to anyone being able to be interested, educated, and encouraged to do the things they want to do. And we should work to make it easier for people to be identified as having skills and talent in whatever field they choose.

From my POV, as a white male, this relates to a misconception of what many "diversity" programs actually aim for: pushing underprivileged and disadvantaged people into positions from where they have better chances to even come in contact with their true interests and talents. The same goes for role modelling, which is not to be underestimated in the context of "do the things they want to do". If you are black or female, but 90% of an "industry" (whatever that is, just take a group of people representing the part of society which does $thing) is white and male, could you see yourself in this industry? I know this is an extremely controversial question, especially in discussions between white males. But from what I learned from underrepresented people during the years is that role models and identification plays a HUGE part in "making a free choice".

> Every field and industry and job will reflect the demographics of who is interested in doing that job, the pipeline of people who seek to become educated and qualified for it, and the proportions of who succeeds at showing their skills.

I would not follow this as straight as you have. The demographics in tech (and other fields, of course) could also show that once a majority is settled (here: white male), they tend to attract and recruit people who are like-minded and similar to themselves.

Example US: "Among chief executives of S.&P. 1500 firms, for each woman, there are four men named John, Robert, William or James", https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/upshot/fewer-women-run-bi...

Example DE: "The surnames Thomas and Andreas make up a share of 7%, more than the total shares of women", https://www.manager-magazin.de/politik/artikel/weniger-fraue...

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I know what you mean, and for a long time I was in the same boat, looking for barriers like money and availability of time that might block minorities from entering higher education and the higher workforce. But the problems are of structural nature and they can only be solved by acknowledging that the main barriers are not forms, interest and intelligence, but identification, perspective and connections.

How did other industries that were once historically male dominated overcome this 'identification problem' atleast in terms of gender if not race? (Professions like biologists, psychologists, forensic scientist, vet for example all of which are around 75%+ female today, except for biologist which is bit more even)

And why haven't we seen the same pattern in tech?

Good question, and since I am not a sociologist, I can only guess. One thing in advance, and as a reaction to the received downvotes: my usage of the word "identification" has nothing to do with "identity politics" that are raging in the US and elsewhere. In German, saying "to identify with someone" is more meant as "seeing myself becoming the person that I can identify with" or "I could see myself in this persons position". Like a 1:1 connection.

> How did other industries that were once historically male dominated overcome [...] in terms of gender if not race?

Based on what I wrote above, I have shortened the quote. And my guess would be the advancement of female integration into higher education, participation and choice of profession. Keep in mind that women were not allowed to vote until some time in the 20th century. With a lot of steps, women and daughters gained more empowerment. All in all, men and women have more aligned chances in today's workforce (details debatable), but the changes need to be done first. And they were not gently handed over by people (men) who were in advanced positions before.

> And why haven't we seen the same pattern in tech?

The tech industry is pretty young compared to the other fields of study you mentioned. I guess social changes will also ingest the tech industry, because they follow a progressive cycle that repeats every x years. Of course there might be more to it, if you take into account how many aspects of human life are affected by technology today (and how fast these changes arrived..).

What would your opinion be on that matter, answering your own questions?

> What would your opinion be on that matter, answering your own questions?

I'm honestly perplexed. Maybe I should study what those fields did, if they made any conscious efforts to address diversity mismatch (compared to demographics of the general population) . Or if some other barriers came down that allowed male dominance to reduce in these fields(in some cases to be replaced by female dominance).

> But from what I learned from underrepresented people during the years is that role models and identification plays a HUGE part in "making a free choice".

How about teaching kids to pick role models regardless of their gender or color?

> How about teaching kids to pick role models regardless of their gender or color?

How would you do that? What is a role model in your opinion? Can you teach children to ignore their sex and color? Can you teach children to ignore external influences like media and advertisements? And what about parents? Can they be taught to shield their children from their own biases?

How would you do that? What is a role model in your opinion? Can you teach children to ignore their sex and color? Can you teach children to ignore external influences like media and advertisements?

By your definition, isn't the main characteristic of a role model, that they didn't need a role model of matching genitalia and skin pigmentation and dietary preference themselves? Otherwise how could anyone be the first?

So yeah, choosing a role model without regard to those things is perfectly possible, and not long ago was considered completely normal.

> By your definition, isn't the main characteristic of a role model, that they didn't need a role model of matching genitalia and skin pigmentation and dietary preference themselves?

No, for me a role model is someone that I can relate to, leading me to imagine myself being in their position in some time in the future.

Do you mean that "role model" stands for a person who "has made it"? Then we differ here.

> Otherwise how could anyone be the first?

You have hit the nail on the head. That is the exact problem: what needs to be done to empower people to be "the first of their kind"?

> So yeah, choosing a role model without regard to those things is perfectly possible, and not long ago was considered completely normal.

This made me curious: did you have a role model yourself? Where do you take "not long ago was considered completely normal" from?

This made me curious: did you have a role model yourself?

I'm BAME and Welsh and my role model was Scotty, who was white and Scottish. I consider myself to be completely normal. A million white kids idolise black sportsmen and musicians. It's completely normal, or it was.

It's only in the last few years that it's been race, race, race. From my perspective things have taken a huge step backwards. Take it from me, this "role model" stuff is harmful to the very people who you claim to want to help.

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Replying here as I am "posting too fast" (code for upsetting the moderators)

Yes, I believe that teaching people in general and children in particular that their skin pigmentation is their defining characteristic harms progress. I believe that teaching people that unless they have a matching role model they can't do something harms progress. I believe that hiring people to make up quotas harms progress. Things are worse now than they were 10 or 20 years ago in terms of race relations.

Thank you for sharing your experience! I see "race" as a problematic variable as well. That's why I like to talk about origin, as in "what did the parents do?", "do the kids have access to careers outside of what their family showed them?".

When you say "taken a huge step backwards", do you mean the discussion actively harms progress? Or that you do not support the way it is discussed?

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adding to your edit:

> A million white kids idolise black sportsmen and musicians. It's completely normal, or it was.

If I see correctly, the choice of "identification variables" is what you primarily criticize (here: race). We don't differ here.

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adding to your second edit..:

> Yes, I believe that teaching people in general..

I'll take this with me, thank you!

Pretty sure children naturally ignore sex and color. They have to be taught to care about them.

+1, and that is why the question "And what about parents?" might play an even bigger role than others.

I disagree with your being downvoted. But I also disagree with your points.

Because "role models" and "acknowledging barriers... identification, perspective, and connections" are codewords and a shield (and highly subjective and limitless ones at that) for making others adopt inappropriate solutions to a much earlier problem. Maybe not you personally, but that's where it inevitably leads.

It leads to people wanting to take the easiest path and just change the outcome by force at the last step. Rather than making the harder, longer lasting (and responsible) change to the pipeline and environment that produces people interested in whatever jobs or careers we're talking about.

I don't have a white male name. And yet I don't find your quoted stats surprising or offensive (or outrage-worthy), given the proportions of who have made up the pipeline of people skilled and interested in working at those levels of employment in the decades up to now.

It's up to [whatever demographic group you happen to feel like it's appropriate to segment people into] to train their kids, encourage them to pursue fields of interest, and the rest of society to make sure that barriers don't exist to their advancement.

It's not for you to decide on your own to adjust the percentage of some group until you're satisfied, and perhaps someday decide, because you saw enough inspirational "role model" stories, that we've achieved enough.

As an intellectual honesty check, I ask you to answer the question Justice O'Connor asked when she was deciding the last case about this. "When does it end?" All your steps and corrections to the rules and outcomes -- when does it end? Or did you already lose interest after putting in some temporary band-aid rules and assuming it fixed everything? And just for the group you were interested in? Or everyone?

Thank you for your reply! To my surprise, you say you disagree but are very close to what I wrote before.

> for making people adopt inappropriate solutions to a much earlier problem

I don't see where we are disagreeing here, because..

> Rather than making the harder, longer lasting (and responsible) change to the pipeline and environment that produces kids interested in whatever jobs or careers we're talking about.

is exactly what my post was about. The point of entry, which must be discussed is NOT "how to enter CS and produce more female engineers" but "how can I get kids from underprivileged families to even consider taking their chance in CS".

> It leads to people wanting to take the easiest path and just change the outcome by force at the last step.

Sorry if this argument could be taken from my previous post. This is of course in no way what I'm rooting for. On the contrary: do you know what I don't like in the current system? That only privileged people have a the chance to "inherit" a freedom of experimentation where they can try themselves without the risk to e.g. go into debt. This privilege should be granted to every one at a young age and then we are where you - we both - would like to see children and teenagers. We are on exactly the same page here: the problem that kids face today are unfair chances in finding their talents and getting on board of the respective educational and professional tracks.

What they do with it is their thing to solve. I'm not arguing about anything related to "equality of outcome", whatever that is. Sounds like the attempt to produce a 50/50 graduation ratio, which in no way helps anybody.

> And yet I don't find your quoted stats surprising or offensive

They were not meant to be, it's just a good statistical observation to see that there are inter-generational patterns.

> It's up to [...] to train their kids, encourage them to pursue fields of interest, and the rest of society to make sure that barriers don't exist to their advancement

My point as well! And what my addition to this is that not every parent has the possibilities to do so. And these kids must be supported through programs and given what their parents could not give them: perspective. Example from Germany: there is a group called "Arbeiterkind" which support children from "Arbeiterfamilien" (worker families) to be the first generation of their family to enter university and finish their studies. From what I learned is that most of these kids would never consider trying higher education, because the environment in which they are raised discourages them to delay earning a living (by going to university for 3-5 years). They need someone to teach them about their better chances and possibilities of financial support (BAföG, student loans).

In this context TheOtherHobbes' post is very related.

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> It's not for you to decide on your own to adjust the percentage of some group until you're satisfied, and perhaps someday decide, because you saw enough inspirational "role model" stories, that we've achieved enough.

That's why I hate discussing this topic on US-heavy tech sites. Where did I say any of this?

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To add to your edit:

> "When does it end?" All your steps and corrections to the rules and outcomes -- when does it end?

I don't know. As a white male from Germany, I have no idea how much changes underprivileged groups need. That is where I'm advocating listening to them. My experiences lead me to the conclusion that encouraging and empowering children and teens in experimenting with their interests is what might lead to the best "results".

> As a white male from Germany, I have no idea how much changes underprivileged groups need. That is where I'm advocating listening to them.

If you ask people to a) declare whether they are underprivileged and then b) declare how many advantages they need to become equal, you're really just incentivizing everyone to loudly claim that they have it the absolute worst and need the most help.

And then you'll need somebody to decide whose complaints are true and whose are fake, aka you'll need somebody to feel truth and rule accordingly.

> you're really just incentivizing everyone to loudly claim that they have it the absolute worst and need the most help

I understand where you are coming from. What this argument highlights is that there are black sheep everywhere. Should this be the reason to toss support for the rest out of the window? In fact your argument can be applied to every social program, and it is. And to the surprise of every one, it is mostly brought up by privileged people (politicians, lobbyists, employers) who e.g. like to cut social spending.

> And then you'll need somebody to decide whose complaints are true and whose are fake, aka you'll need somebody to feel truth and rule accordingly.

Does this not already exist in other parts of social security programs? Or taking loans? What is the difference, what is new?

> What this argument highlights is that there are black sheep everywhere.

No, the point is that you turn everyone into a black sheep. If you make taxes factually optional by simplifying the form to "do you have income tax to pay, if so, how much?" with no checks and control, you're creating an incentive to lie, and people will lie.

The same happens when you put "subjective feeling of how much money you deserve" on the list of criteria of how much money to pay that person.

> Does this not already exist in other parts of social security programs? Or taking loans? What is the difference, what is new?

It does not. Means tested social security programs are individual. You make less than X, you're eligible for rent support. Grievance studies are not, it's "you're gender x, ethnicity y or subculture z, you get extra bonuses, don't need to reach the same scores for qualifications etc". It's not individual, it's based on some arbitrary group identity.

What you throw out of the window with that line of thinking is the fundamental possibility that innate interests (for gender) and culture (for some minority groups) have anything to do with success. The idea that you just need to pretend that somebody is X to make them value X and put an emphasis on X for their children is completely backwards.

> No, the point is that you turn everyone into a black sheep

What do you mean? I wrote "there are black sheep everywhere" as in "yes, it happens that there will be people who will try to exploit the system". That does not justify not striving to support those who would benefit from it, which most probably are the bigger group.

> If you make taxes factually optional by simplifying the form [...] people will lie.

As the people who understand how to game the system already do?

> how much money to pay that person.

Money is not the only thing people can be provided with. Supporting children from underprivileged groups can also mean supporting single mothers with child care, providing more accessible health care or providing mentors and tutoring.

> Means tested social security programs are individual. You make less than X, you're eligible for rent support

> It's not individual, it's based on some arbitrary group identity

You contradict yourself here. Your first example based on income is also grouping of individuals, exactly what you criticize in the second part. To add to your point: one could even say that the income base lines for eligibility in social programs can be seen as arbitrary as well. Do you think the Mindestlohn is based on an objective, most fair judgement of what people need? It's already an absurd system when you just look at the regional differences of cost of living throughout Germany.

Ignore the trigger words ("gender x, ethnicity y or subculture z") and you'll see that we don't diverge much. The point I'm trying to make is not to find out, how $skincolor_x can be pushed to represent a greater share of graduates. It is to find out how we can lift everyone to have the same chances at the beginning, taking structural and unconscious factors into account.

Incentives. When you give people an instrument to achieve success by making claims, they will make claims to become successful. When you make that official policy, you will create lots of "black sheep" (that is: people abusing the system) because abusing that system will be easy ("claim to be underprivileged") and profitable ("get more money, work less").

> Your first example based on income is also grouping of individuals, exactly what you criticize in the second part.

No, not on some kind of identity. There is no "makes less than X" group, anyone can be a part of that group and anyone in that group can stop being a part of it. That's not true for gender, ethnicity, political convictions etc.

> It is to find out how we can lift everyone to have the same chances at the beginning, taking structural and unconscious factors into account.

Take everyone's children away from their parents, make the state raise them. If you want to exclude the parents' culture and values and the peer group of children from having influence on their future, that's the way. It's not a particularly nice thing, and I doubt that many people want it though.

> One could even say that the income base lines for eligibility in social programs can be seen as arbitrary as well.

Absolutely, they are. But they are the same for all, gender and ethnicity don't play a role. The SJW-alternative is having different laws for different people "to right a historic wrong". Which is pretty much incompatible with anything that wants to call itself democracy.

Thanks for the quick reply! I'm really in the same boat as you, as I do not want to create a system where an "identity police" can create eligibility by the length of noses.

> When you make that official policy [...] abusing that system will be easy

Are you not seeing that this exists already? There are people claiming to be unemployed, receiving unemployment money, and work without registering their income. That's where I wish people would differentiate more. These problems you listed already exist and must be solved either way! But should we therefore not make attempts to get more talented people into the right careers?

> Take everyone's children away from their parents [...] exclude the parents' culture and values and the peer group of children from having influence on their future, that's the way

Why? Why eliminate their environment, instead of - as I proposed - enriching it by providing additional access to opportunities?

> But they are the same for all

They are not, that's the point! Only because you can measure income does not make this barrier objective. It was set by humans, who were biased in their decision (hence why the committee which negotiates the Mindestlohn is composed of multiple interest groups). Again, I am not advocating that using lengths of noses is comparable, but stating that "gender and ethnicity don't play a role" is plain wrong. They do not play a role at the time you ask for it, yes, absolutely. But they do play a role in the negotiation phase and in the overall structure of social programs.

You're right, abuse always exists, and I doubt that we'll ever get rid of it completely. It's important not to create additional incentive for abuse. I don't believe it's a giant number that is abusing the current system, though I do believe it's too many, because people in general don't like abuse and the abuse damages support for the system. However, if we added incentive and made the abuse easier, we'd create more abuse.

That's the plan for accelerationists: increase abuse until the population withdraws support for the abused system, or the system crashes by itself.

> Why? Why eliminate their environment, instead of - as I proposed - enriching it by providing additional access to opportunities?

Do you suggest the same additional access for everyone? Otherwise you're assuming that there's an invisible hand holding somebody down and doing so without merit. What if that invisible hand is their parent not making them go to school? What if that invisible hand is their parents giving them all the opportunities they could wish for and the majority of the group then deciding to go into certain jobs and not others because they are truly free to decide since they lack the economic pressure? That seems to be the reason why you see much more "traditional" gender roles in choosing careers in Scandinavian Countries than in e.g. India. Economic pressure is relieved, people do what they want. Why would we want to interfere with them doing what they want?

> Only because you can measure income does not make this barrier objective.

The point is that they are the same for all identities. It does not matter whether you're a woman, a man, transsexual/transgender, whether your ancestors fought the Roman invasion in a German forest, stayed in Bavaria after Napoleon's wars, or recently immigrated from Turkey.

> But they do play a role in the negotiation phase and in the overall structure of social programs.

No, they don't. You will of course see different groups vary in success in modern societies, and therefore make use of social programs at different rates. But eligibility for said programs does generally not depend on ethnicity or gender. It's specifically outlawed to make them so, with the exception of women, which I believe was very much valid in 1950 but is anachronistic in 2020.

I'm not particularly feminist, but it seems obvious to me that "interested in doing a job" is a combination of nature and nurture.

And it's almost unimaginably hard to create genuine equality of opportunity and freedom of choice when there are parental and social expectations and pressures being applied in all directions - often unconsciously. (And not necessarily exclusively for the benefit of men, either.)

There's also the more basic problem of class economics and culture. How do you define "talent." How are you going to find out if kids have talent? When are you going to test for it? What do you do if you find it?

So it's fine to say you're for "removing barriers", but to do that you need to understand just how huge those barriers are. I don't think feminism necessarily helps with that, and I think Identity Politics is a poor distraction from genuine equality of opportunity.

But it's also a really, really hard problem, and it won't be solved without a lot of other changes - which would likely make absolutely everyone on all sides extremely uncomfortable.

That's fine, and I agree with many of your points.

But if the problems really are as deep rooted in parenting and social expectations, then really people's attempts to change the outcome at the last step of a long process are the most simplistic and easily reached for, but ultimately misguided.

That's all reasonably understood by most people. You can talk to a random person on the street and they will recognize that where and when you're born along with the family support and connections you had can make a massive difference in what you become.

Unfortunately the diversity movement doesn't really tackle any of this because it would require real effort over decades while asking hard questions about culture and family life. It's much easier to just point into skin-color/race/gender ratios and push for regressive segregation and discrimination instead, but all that does it make everything worse.

> Unfortunately the diversity movement doesn't really tackle any of this because it would require real effort over decades

Even assuming the effect you describe was true, its self evidently not for the reason you describe, as the “diversity movement”, as you call it, has exerted real effort over decades.

> It's much easier to just point into skin-color/race/gender ratios and push for regressive segregation

The only thing the “diversity movement” pushes for is the opposite of segregation.

You realize we're talking about the modern "diversity" movement, not civil rights? Where's the effort? What has changed in the culture and pipeline that causes the continuing imbalance? Why is the focus only on the hiring and specific industries? Why have other minorities done fine since the beginning?

This movement is the epitome of good intentions paving the road to hell. It's been stretched to the extreme. It calls for hiring people based on nothing more than race/skin color. That's racial discrimination. It calls for things like "black-only" spaces. That's racial segregation. These policies are very public and direct at this point, and impossible to ignore.

Yet the defense seems to come from people who are either ignorant or willingly complicit and would rather just say the "right" things instead of focus on the change, just like this article points out regarding media.

Thinking about this with an engineering mindset, how can you know that you are offering equal opportunities of you don't measure the outcomes? What can you measure that shows men are as likely to be given a tech job as women, if not the outcomes of men and women working there? For do you know you've made it as easy for a black student to be a great software developer as it is for a white student, if you don't look at great software developers and measure how many are black or white?

How do you know if the measurements you're taking at the end of the process are valid to interpret, if you don't know the inputs?

I'm not willing to trust the one (or act on it in a way that distorts what could be an otherwise fair/unbiased process) without knowing the other.

My problem with this approach is that people are too willing to stop halfway and claim that the outcome looks biased, without seeing what the inputs were. And cause (or seek to cause) massive change to people's lives based on that.

I absolutely agree, you need to try to measure boy side of the equation, not only the outcomes.

There is no way of knowing. Certainly looking at outcomes is a bad way of measuring this, because it presupposes equal interests and desire.

Sure, measuring only outcomes is not reliable. But measuring only inputs is also unreliable.

The problem is that the outcome is an aggregation of a lifelong process, not just the recruiting process. Trying to control the outcome is impossible, because for example there may be cultural reasons (parenting, marketing and advertising, etc...) that may result in only a fraction of a gender being interested in a field. But still we can still aim to offer equal opportunities in a bottom up manner to any candidate.

Can it be said that boys and girls have equal opportunity access to IT if girls get taught by parents or teachers or culture at large that computers are for boys? I would argue that it isn't.

So I agree with you in that simply forcing companies to hire more women is not a solution to the problem. But that does not mean that there isn't a problem, or that we can consider education, marketing and advertising, and other cultural reasons as unchangeable.

This is in fact exactly what people mean when they talk about systemic or structural inequality - there is no single point where things are going wrong, it is a whole host of different aspects of our society that together shape outcomes in a bad way.

But as we've seen with gay acceptance, change is absolutely possible, even on deeply divisive topics. And sure, it will take a long time to change the whole culture, and some people will feel deeply, sincerely, disturbed by the changes (like religious fundamentalists are feeling about gay marriage), and inequality will linger. But we do have the power to change.

Note: I'm not arguing equal outcomes in tech employment are as important as equal marriage. I'm just giving a relatively recent example of a massive cultural shift. Probably a more spent example would be the initial push for women's access to the workforce at all, but I believe that feels to distant to us.

If more dotcoms has diversity of ideas, I suspect one of the outcomes is that they'd have employees saying that what the dotcom is doing -- secretly spying on people, and perhaps also directly manipulating them against their interests -- is, if not currently technically illegal, unconscionable.

I think it's interesting to consider that current dotcom interviewing processes arguably select for homogeneous conformism, and willingness to train for, and submit to, hazing rituals. Get some diversity of ideas in there, and, pretty soon, someone might say, "Hey, wait a minute, guys, do we even hear what we're talking about doing to people? How are we not the baddies?"

"diversity of ideas" doesn't really mean that for most companies as a company and any group for that matter desires cohesion, peace and efficiency. What all company's want is to be successful.

Real diversity of ideas means more conflict and less harmoniously working arrangements.

But there are benefits:

The theory is that diversity of whatever kind brings creativity which is a benefit to the company especially if used in creative positions or upper management. Unions and collaborative worker action also suffer from the workers being, well, less unified, which an organisation may like.

Diversity is divisive to groups unless there is a larger shared communalist identity.

Wouldn't more diversity mean there would likely be more and different objections to take their pick from?

Given the military industrial complex I think you would be diappointed to find that they are moral paragons compared to the type of people who feel no qualms designing weapon systems which use depleted uranium bullets when they already have overkill margins over adversaries without spraying posion willy nilly. More diverse could mean people with fewer qualms about what you consider wrong.

Plus there is a long history of ruling elite hiring "exotic" foreign bodyguards as they would be more likely to care just about the money as opposed to the politics so long as you don't violate their known taboos.

> I'm for removing barriers to anyone being able to be interested, educated, and encouraged to do the things they want to do.

How do you see that happening? What if the barriers stopping them is the hangover from 100s of years of systematic bias (like generational wealth not existing for many black people)? What if it's overcoming the subconcious biases that people have about how people in a field should look, talk, and act?

This exactly. Barriers will be removed once society makes real steps towards correcting hundreds (or thousands) of years of systemic racism that has impoverished families of color. Those barriers are not going anywhere anytime soon unfortunately.

Tell me, how is admitting a student to university because of his/her race, or mandating having a female board member, going to decrease the mortgage rate offered to a black family in Cleveland?

The problem with your approach (where it inevitably goes) is that it can justify doing anything and seeks to make people distort their lives, no matter how unrelated or poorly-correlated it is. There's no limit.

Go out there and help fix the mortgage rates. Go and address the concrete, specific problems. Don't go and create symbols for people to follow -- they rarely work the way you think they do.

It feels like you're saying just make things fair, and the we won't need symbolic acts of equality. Which I agree with.

But I have no idea what concrete actions you're imagining might get us there. We are a long way from eliminating overt bigotry, let alone subconcious. And even if we did, children born today still have to deal with the after effects like generational wealth and equal access to good education.

If you can't think of any concrete actions to remedy existing daily barriers, and can only get behind symbols that might vaguely get us there, then we're all going to be in for a bad time.

That's exactly why people try to find shortcuts instead of solving the underlying problem. Nothing will change because of those shortcuts.

In some fields, it can actually matter to "reflect who our customers are". I saw a study that looked at medical clinics that took walk in patients, typically people who did not have a regular doctor elsewhere. It was random which doctor at the clinic would see a given patient.

What they found was that patients were significantly more likely to follow the doctor's advice if the doctor was the same race as the patient.

>What they found was that patients were significantly more likely to follow the doctor's advice if the doctor was the same race as the patient.

I heard that story/podcast too, and it may surprise you to know that I am totally on board with its findings. I am totally not surprised by that situation, and I know there are legitimate reasons.

But here's where I'll probably get roasted alive for believing: I think whoever needs to be treated by a doctor of the same appearance and race, is not going to be as successful as others who can put aside their emotions and be treated/learn from/emulate people who don't just look like them. Why do you read books, visit HN, discuss and learn from people who don't look like you (or you cannot even see)?

The amount of potential benefit in this world is far greater than your own race.

It's part of the growing up process to be able to extract information, sort out what's right or wrong, choose leaders, administer society regardless of what the person you're dealing with looks like. Suspicion, mistrust, need for "role modeling", etc. You've got to learn to leave that behind to make progress.

Elect someone to represent you because they look like you, have lived the exact same life? Ok. But I think it will also hold you back that you can only ever be represented by such someone.

In my view, the attitude you're pointing out will never help someone get out of their bias in the long run. It may temporarily help, but generally only reinforces it.

I'm not really seeing the problem. It's not like it's the doctor's job to brainwash patients. If patients do not trust their doctor then they can just visit a different one.

"Diversity" has unfortunately become an Orwellian word for me. I find it unsettling that people are essentially being treated like collectibles and corporations strive to own every different color/gender. You could have a group of people with the same color and gender yet vastly different personalities, ideas, culture, etc. But HR will take one look at them and assume they are inherently similar. As if only adding in some other colors and genders could bring the desired level of uniqueness. The high level of focus on skin color and gender strikes me as extremely racist and sexist, despite attempting to be the opposite.

This is important information and an interesting point, but I'm not surprised that it's less highlighted. Tech companies are some of the most powerful entities in the world. They pay their employees extremely high salaries, make billions of dollars and control how basically everybody goes about their life, from using the internet to interacting socially.

Tech journalism...is none of those things. Oh sure they have power in that they can critique the companies and expose their issues. But their influence is not on the same level as tech companies' influence. Their journalists are not getting paid high salaries. They're not controlling our daily lives.

Journalism as a whole? Diversity is definitely a hot topic there. Tech journalism? Ehh.

Of course we should care about diversity throughout society. But that's not how it works. We care about diversity when there is power, either an intense amount of it or an intense lack of it. We care about the diversity of Ivy League schools and the diversity of prisons. We don't care about the diversity of baristas. Therefore we don't care about it in tech journalism.

The point is that we care about stuff that journalism says we should care about.

In this particular case, it's not about white people's representation, it's Asian. Asian people are highly represented in tech, and they are not in journalism. That's the qualifying issue. So understanding why that disparity exists is the key, it has little to do with 'diversity policies' or anything like that.

I'm hardly surprised they don't practice what they preach. The majority of journalistic outlets have rapidly descended into yellow journalism, lies, doxxing and slanderous allegations.

Journalism is a race to the bottom in quality, and journalists absolutely don't put the effort in anymore. Hitting the streets and risking their lives to get that one big story just isn't a thing anymore, now they get all their information from Twitter and engage in some pretty egregious conduct against ideological opponents.

ABC News covered up allegations against Epstein. NPR falsely accused innocent assault victims of being "right-wing extremists", then refused to retract it. New York Times thinks doxxing controversial people is okay. All of them vehemently support censorship, and some even call for the prosecution of their own sources.

These institutions don't need to be saved or reformed, they need to be burnt to the ground.

ABC News covered up allegations against Epstein

And NBC covered for Weinstein, see Ronan Farrow' book.

interesting, one assumed that journalism per se is diverse than other fields.

Journalism is one of the fields where it's mandatory to speak, act, and even think according to specific cultural practices, which is always going to lead to diversity problems.

Reminds me of the latest ‘You are not so smart’ episode: https://overcast.fm/+Cuhug5Y3E

It makes complete sense for journalists to write things which are widely agreed upon in their group. The audience for journalists is always first and foremost their colleagues.

I do worry about overstating the degree of orthodoxy, though. Journalists regularly write things which aren't widely agreed on or report the news in unconventional ways; they may be reclassified as "writer" or "blogger" or "political commentator", but in most cases they won't get shunned or anything.

One reason could be that journalism typically requires a college education and then doesn't pay that well. Many media internships are also unpaid. That means you need some source of "runway" in the form of previous savings or family wealth to get started and build your career.

On the other hand tech is one of those industries where someone from say even a journalism degree can get a job after a short bootcamp (and there are many free ones if you are a woman or minority)

I think the article is right to raise the point about diversity in tech media. However, posting it here and some of the comments just feels like whataboutism.

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