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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

I don't think it's a conspiracy theory, but it reads like one. Obama ran as a populist and won Iowa by almost 10 points in 2008, Wisconsin by 14 points, Michigan by almost 17 points, etc. With nearly 60 Senate votes, he was able to permanently expand the social safety net through Obamacare. And how did Wall Street respond? They rebranded themselves as the good guys for their George W. Bush views on immigration, and helped pain Democrats' blue wall voters in the midwest as "deplorables" for not having progressive views on immigration, sexuality, etc. The Democratic Party happily joined them in blowing off one of its own legs, and the resulting party is one that owes its slim electoral majority to Arizona, the home of Barry Goldwater and Regan suburbs in Atlanta and can't do anything.

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This doesn't hold up given that in 2012, Wisconsin was only +7.5, Iowa was +6, and Michigan was +10, an across the board drop of 5-8 points in those states over 4 years for the same guy when, by all accounts as in incumbent, he should have done better.

This line of conspiracy only works if you pretend that Democrats are the only people with agency, and that there wasn't active and successful work in the Republican arena to appeal to voters "racial anxieties". The party was actively being racist, but apparently saying that is unacceptable.

> Regan suburbs in Atlanta

Cobb county is majority minority as of the 2020 census. It was 75% white in 2000, probably like 80 or 85 for Reagan. Dems appeal among actual working class people (read: usually minorities who don't own quarter million dollar trucks) remains extremely strong.

> Dems appeal among actual working class people (read: usually minorities who don't own quarter million dollar trucks) remains extremely strong.

The latest NYT/Siena poll suggests exactly otherwise for the coming midterms. Dems carry the white college-educated vote by a substantial margin and lose all working-class groups (non-college-degree, lower income) to Reps.

The message is that the Democratic Party as of now caters to those who are financially well enough off that social ("woke") issues matter more than economic issues.

the poll you're referencing (https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/us0722-crosstabs-nyt0...) doesn't check income anywhere.

Dems fail to win the non-college white vote, but carry the non-college educated vote for other ethnic groups, which is the same way its always been.

College education is not only a strong proxy for income, but an even better proxy for working class status than income. The guy who redid my bathroom probably makes more than some of my lawyer friends doing government work. But he still removes and replaces toilets for a living and they don't and that's a form of privilege in and of itself.

And the current poll does not reflect the "way it's always been." Democrats were competitive for white voters with just a college degree as recently as 2008: https://www.npr.org/2016/09/13/493763493/charts-see-how-quic.... In 2016 they lost that group by almost 30 points.

They've replaced those folks with a coalition of Silicon Valley engineers and Wall Streets bankers who used to vote Republican, and racial minorities. Good for fund raising, but results in a party that cannot effectively advocate for the working class.

> And the current poll does not reflect the "way it's always been." Democrats were competitive for white voters with just a college degree as recently as 2008: https://www.npr.org/2016/09/13/493763493/charts-see-how-quic.... In 2016 they lost that group by almost 30 points.

In a parallel thread about Obama's performance in 2012, you said

> The recovery from the 2008 recession was very slow, and the unemployment rate for most of 2012 was over 8%. George H.W. Bush lost reelection with an unemployment rate that was less than that.

Can you explain to me how it is that the economic recovery anxiety affected precisely one group of people, white voters without a college degree, and why their support continued bottoming out in Obama's second term even post-recovery?

Like my thesis here is "The Republicans, as early as 2009, adopted a strategy to appeal to the racial anxieties of less-educated white voters, which pulled support from those groups to republicans".

Yours appears to be "Until around 2013, support among only less-educated white voters dropped due to economic recovery concerns, but all other groups were unconcerned with the economy, and, just as the economy began to improve, the dem party decided to switch strategies specifically to not appeal to those voters".

Like for all the weird bad pundit takes that exist, I don't even think this take exists on the spectrum. Pretty much everyone agrees that there was concerted effort by Republicans to stoke racial anxiety and appeal to white voters. Like, that was the entire way Trump got his initial boost onto the scene (Obama's birth certificate nonsense). Why are you pretending that's not the case?

> College education is not only a strong proxy for income, but an even better proxy for working class status than income.

What does "working class" mean here? Like, if you're going to say that working class isn't income-driven but perception driven, ok sure, but then the existence of concepts like "driving while black" suggest that the US's class system also includes race, which means that policies that help minorities are class based! You can't have it both ways.

And keep in mind that the whole income v. education thing is highly impacted by race (https://nces.ed.gov/programs/raceindicators/indicator_rfd.as...). A white voter who didn't complete high school has the same income, on average, as a black voter who has completed some college, and for all races except whites, the difference between no high school and a BA is more than 2x, but for white people it's only around 1.86x. That is, correlation between income and education is significantly weaker for white people than for any other race.

> Pretty much everyone agrees that there was concerted effort by Republicans to stoke racial anxiety and appeal to white voters.

Everyone does not agree on that. The period leading to Obama's second term coincides with a period during which white Democrats got significantly more liberal, to the point where they had moved to the left of Black Democrats on race issues: https://www.vox.com/2019/3/22/18259865/great-awokening-white.... Part of that was redefining "racism" to mean things other than personal prejudice. Positions that working class Democrats had previously embraced, such as Bernie Sanders' opposition to immigration, became "racist" under the new definitions.

But minorities themselves largely do not accept these theories, and most do not hear the "dog whistles" that white liberals claim to hear: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/opinion/biden-latino-vote... ("We began by asking eligible voters how 'convincing' they found a dog-whistle message lifted from Republican talking points. Among other elements, the message condemned 'illegal immigration from places overrun with drugs and criminal gangs' and called for 'fully funding the police, so our communities are not threatened by people who refuse to follow our laws.' Almost three out of five white respondents judged the message convincing. More surprising, exactly the same percentage of African-Americans agreed, as did an even higher percentage of Latinos.").

Democrats during that period also rediscovered policies regarding racial preferences in education and hiring that remain wildly unpopular among minorities themselves, not to mention working class white people: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/05/08/america...

> Why are you pretending that's not the case?

Because it's self-serving nonsense. Your theory is that folks in Iowa soured on Obama because Republicans pointed out that he was Black, and not because he appointed a former Goldman Sachs executive to Treasury and doubled down on globalization after having run as a populist.

It's also an attitude that is terribly counterproductive for Democrats (but great for Republicans). America is far less "racist" than my native Bangladesh. But some degree of "racism" is inevitable in any society. It's inevitable that working class people are going to have less racially progressive views than elites who learned elaborate social-science theories in college. If it becomes politically acceptable to hold that against them, then that becomes a powerful club for elites to use against the working class. Which is what's happened.

> A white voter who didn't complete high school has the same income, on average, as a black voter who has completed some college

That's an interesting social science fact, but you can't build a politics for a working class party around that. The 90% white county where my wife's family is from has a median household income lower than the median for Black households nationally. Folks in that county do not care if you tell them that 2/3s of white people are richer than them, but only 1/2 of Black people. And they correctly perceive that policies that focus on redistributing opportunities based on race--policies that accord more preferences to affluent immigrants from Africa than first generation college students from the Oregon coast--are contrary to their personal interests.

> Everyone does not agree on that. The period leading to Obama's second term coincides with a period during which white Democrats got significantly more liberal, to the point where they had moved to the left of Black Democrats on race issues:

This is based on a single question, and shows that most of the shift happened post 2012. Which would make this a perfect example of Simpson's paradox: the right-most democrats left the party, making the average (white) democrat move left.

> Your theory is that folks in Iowa soured on Obama because Republicans pointed out that he was Black, and not because he appointed a former Goldman Sachs executive to Treasury and doubled down on globalization after having run as a populist.

Yes, because it makes sense that less educated white voters who in many cases supported the ACA but didn't support Obamacare, and who support abortion pre-viability but not in the second trimester, have well defined, cogent opinons about a member of the cabinet who I, someone who cares enough to argue about this stuff, can't even name.

> That's an interesting social science fact, but you can't build a politics for a working class party around that.

This begs the question.

> This doesn't hold up given that in 2012, Wisconsin was only +7.5, Iowa was +6, and Michigan was +10, an across the board drop of 5-8 points in those states over 4 years for the same guy when, by all accounts as in incumbent, he should have done better.

The recovery from the 2008 recession was very slow, and the unemployment rate for most of 2012 was over 8%. George H.W. Bush lost reelection with an unemployment rate that was less than that.

> Dems appeal among actual working class people (read: usually minorities who don't own quarter million dollar trucks) remains extremely strong.

White non-college graduates made up 43% of the electorate in 2018. Non-whites made up only 24%.

Restructuring the Democratic Party around graduate-school level race theory was an excellent way to destroy its ability to advocate for the working class. At best, working class white people don't get the rhetoric. At worst, they correctly perceive that it's not in their interest to support Democratic policies that redistribute opportunities along racial lines: https://www.forbes.com/sites/evangerstmann/2021/06/12/yet-an.... Such policies deliberately avoid redistribution across class lines. I.e. if you spend political capital fighting to redistribute funds amongst small businesses based on race, you have less political capital to spend redistributing from big businesses to small businesses.

Democrats have already lost working class people. They're 11 points behind among non-college graduates overall according to recent New York Times polling: https://theliberalpatriot.substack.com/p/working-class-and-h.... Currently, what's keeping them afloat is a supermajority among minorities. But that's eroding as well, as working class Hispanics start trending the same way as other working class people. Biden won just 55% of non-college Hispanics in 2020. In the latest NYT poll, the parties are tied among non-college Hispanics in terms of which party they want to control Congress in 2022. Democrats' long-term hope long term is that Hispanics vote the way Black people do, rather than the way Italians and Irish did. (The latter were key Democratic constituencies until they went for the GOP under Reagan.) The math on that isn't looking good.

Democrats cannot be the party of racial gerrymandering and critical race theory and also the party of the working class. That's not mathematically possible.

> Restructuring the Democratic Party around graduate-school level race theory was an excellent way to destroy its ability to advocate for the working class. At best, working class white people don't get the rhetoric.

> At worst, they correctly perceive that it's not in their interest to support Democratic policies that redistribute opportunities along racial lines

This is only a correct perception if they decide to make it a fight. There is nothing that implicitly prevents a big tent dem party from both advocating for working class and minority beneficial policies. It's only zero sum because people like you claim it's zero sum and create the perception that it is so. Don't do that, and push back against others that do that, and the problem goes away.

>Such policies deliberately avoid redistribution across class lines.

No they don't (I mean even ignoring the extent that redistribution along racial lines usually correlates with class lines pretty well), there isn't anything that prevents you from doing both. It only costs political capital when you make it a fight. If everyone in the dem party were like me, doing both wouldn't cost any political capital!

If you believe that such policies are bad, say that. If you think such policies are good, support them! Don't do this half-hearted thing where you just claim the policies are electorally untenable. That's self-fulfilling because saying it's zero sum drives the perception that it is so.

> It's only zero sum because people like you claim it's zero sum and create the perception that it is so

It is by definition zero sum. There are a fixed number of college acceptance spots at prestigious colleges each year and by the nature of prestige it must stay so for the colleges to continue being prestigious. There are (roughly) a fixed number of jobs in prestigious fields. There are a fixed number of C level positions in Fortune 500 companies. When you deliberately reallocate these spots on the basis of skin color instead of merit, you doom the nation to eventual failure as it's outcompeted by nations like China. Science does not care about your skin color, it only cares that you're right.

You might notice that current Democratic policies only advocate for raising income taxes, and not substantially raising LT capital gains taxes. Not only that, but you can still deduct huge amounts for real estate ownership and business ownership.

No one was talking about allocating headcount.

> Science does not care about your skin color, it only cares that you're right.

This begs the question.

> You might notice that current Democratic policies only advocate for raising income taxes.

Sanders and Warren both advocate for wealth taxes, and have higher support among the college educated cadre of the dem party!

You brought up "minority beneficial policies" in the context of the current left wing segment of the Democratic party. That means DEI programs and affirmative action to favor minorities, because that's what's being pushed by the left right now. Those policies do affect headcount and college admissions and are zero sum.

I'm sure as an engineer at Google you would know that recruiters at your company will regularly favor racial minorities by prioritizing their resumes and promotions. Unsurprisingly, it was found that they were systemically underpaying men [1] and discriminating against Asian applicants [2].

[1] https://www.npr.org/2019/03/05/700288695/google-pay-study-fi...

[2] https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/google-sett...

> You brought up "minority beneficial policies" in the context of the current left wing segment of the Democratic party.

Correct.

> That means DEI programs

Let me know where in the democratic party platform it says that colleges should use race based affirmative action policies. We were discussing a particular minority aware funding program. You decided to bring up headcount, something no one else was discussing.

> I'm sure as an engineer at Google you would know that recruiters at your company will regularly favor racial minorities by prioritizing their resumes

Sure, yes, this is fine.

> and promotions.

Interesting bit of made up nonsense there though.

> Unsurprisingly, it was found that they were systemically underpaying men [1] and discriminating against Asian applicants [2].

You should really read those links better. Your first showed that a particular crosstab of engineers (that I belonged to, in fact!) were being systemically underpaid (by, if I recall, something like .25%). Your second link notes that Google settled both against Asian applicants, and against female applicants and employees. So, Google was, per your own source, systematically underpaying women (by a larger margin over a larger period) and their internal study failed to recognize that, and instead gave me a small bonus.

> Sure, yes, this is fine.

Most minorities themselves don't think it's fine: https://www.vox.com/2019/5/9/18538216/diversity-workplace-pe.... Hispanics oppose the practice 69-27, and Black people oppose it 54-37.

To put that into context, Hispanics are more unified in opposing taking race into account in hiring than they are in supporting Joe Biden. White liberals are imposing this practice upon them.

Your link and what I said I support aren't the same thing. I'm going to ask you to ensure that you're responding to the strongest interpretation of what I'm saying (and maybe reconsider your priors if "DEI" to you means "explicitly favor applicants based on race"). I really don't like having to deal with motte and bailey, even if it's unintentional.

Google doesn't consider race or ethnicity (or gender or..) during the hiring or promotion process. Prioritizing someone's resume (e.g. giving them an interview first) because they're underrepresented is vastly different than hiring or promoting someone less qualified.

> where in the democratic party platform it says that colleges should use race based affirmative action policies

Well, the CA Democratic Party's official position is that you should have supported Prop 16, which would have unbanned race based affirmative action (racism) [1].

> Sure, yes, this is fine.

It is not fine. Myself and many others reject this sort of practice. California voters rejected Prop 16 by a 15 pt margin. It is illegal under federal discrimination laws to discriminate on the basis of race or sex. It is racism, plain and simple. Just because you are (I presume) white and liberal and you aren't affected by such policies does not make them legal or moral. Pretending you are morally superior by discriminating against minorities through affirmative action is just as bad as white supremacy.

This sort of "it's fine" attitude is why Trump got elected. And before you accuse me of being a white cis-male, I'm not white.

> You should really read those links better

> Interesting bit of made up nonsense there though.

I quote from the article: "Managers had dipped into the discretionary funds more often for women engineers, creating a pay gap for men in the same job category". This is literally the sort of DEI affirmative action sexism I was mentioning. You also coincidentally ignore the fact that Asians were discriminated against because women being underpaid fits your political narrative better. One of these things is a direct result of Google's internal policy to discriminate against "overrepresented" minorities like Asians and one of these things is not.

[1] https://cadem.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/State-Propositi...

> "Managers had dipped into the discretionary funds more often for women engineers, creating a pay gap for men in the same job category".

Right, so you lied when you said that they were prioritizing promoting women, which is false, and is completely unrelated to what you quoted in the article.

>You also coincidentally ignore the fact that Asians were discriminated against

No I didn't. I literally mentioned them. Me pointing out that you did entirely ignore the discrimination against women (because it does in fact completely invalidate the point you were going for) isn't ignoring Asians. Like I keep saying, its not zero sum. I am capable of believing that it is possible to dsciriminate against multiple groups.

> Just because you are (I presume) white and liberal and you aren't affected by such policies does not make them legal or moral.

I'm confused, so please explain it to me:

If I'm white, and these policies favor nonwhite people over white ones, how could I be unaffected?

> Right, so you lied when you said that they were prioritizing promoting women, which is false, and is completely unrelated to what you quoted in the article.

Promotion or bonus, do the details really matter? In either case, Google's internal DEI initiatives caused managers either directly or indirectly to favor women. You can't just set diversity KPIs and expect managers to respect anti-discrimination law. Incentives matter.

> completely invalidate the point you were going for

That Asians are systemically discriminated against by affirmative action? That affirmative action is wrong and racist/sexist? That Google systemically discriminates against Asians through its DEI initiatives?

> I am capable of believing that it is possible to dsciriminate against multiple groups

Correct, it is possible for women to have been discriminated against by sexist managers and for another set of managers to have discriminated against men and Asians through DEI programs. One of these things is a program promoted by Google and one is not.

> its not zero sum

So why don't you give up your job to a female person of color then? Headcount is zero sum. If you favor specific minorities, other people get less spots. That's zero sum by definition.

> these policies favor nonwhite people over white ones

That's where you've got it wrong. Affirmative action doesn't favor nonwhites over whites, it favors specific nonwhites (mainly blacks and latinos) over Asians. If you look at the stats before and after the University of California system banned affirmative action, the proportion of whites stayed about the same [1]. That's what I mean by "you aren't affected by such policies". When you implement affirmative action, it's Asians taking the hit for your moral grandstanding. As a white person, you have no right to come and lecture us minorities about "diversity" and "equity" and "inclusion" when your own policies are racist.

[1] https://www.dailycal.org/2018/02/02/prop-209-affirmative-act...

For most of my life, I didn't live in the bay area. I lived in a place where Asians are less than 5% of the population, which is like most of the US. Disfavoring Asians in such a place is ineffective, as there aren't enough to have an appreciable effect. Are you claiming affirmative action doesn't exist in such areas?

There's a bunch of other nonsense in your post (like suggesting $400 and $30,000 are equivalent, or the completely made up claim that managers were being encouraged to pay women more), but like this feels extra egregious.

> Disfavoring Asians in such a place is ineffective, as there aren't enough to have an appreciable effect. Are you claiming affirmative action doesn't exist in such areas?

Please read my comment again and try to comment in good faith. I never mentioned anything about affirmative action not existing. You'll notice also that California is aggressively trying to implement affirmative action to disadvantage Asians despite Asians being only 15% of the population in CA.

Are you claiming that affirmative action doesn't disadvantage Asians? Because that is demonstrably false, as evidenced by SFFA vs Harvard, the data out of the UC system before and after Prop 209, and comparing the racial makeup schools of similar caliber that do and do not utilize affirmative action.

> like suggesting $400 and $30,000 are equivalent

I never mentioned any numbers in my post. Please don't lie.

> the completely made up claim that managers were being encouraged to pay women more

It is a fact that Google managers used internal discretionary funds to pay women more. It is also a fact that Google managers have diversity KPIs they are encouraged to meet as part of their performance: "At Google, we measure the progress against these [DEI] goals with various metrics across hiring, progression, retention, and inclusion" [1]. I will let you come to your own conclusion as to how the latter could lead to the former.

[1] https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/intl/en-gb/future-of-marketi...

> I will let you come to your own conclusion as to how the latter could lead to the former.

Given that I know the size of these discretionary funds, I can practically guarantee it didn't. For context, my manager recently stretched his discretion to the limit for a coworker, and was able to bend their salary by around half a percent. A few hundred dollars isn't going to retain anyone at a FAANG.

> Please read my comment again and try to comment in good faith. I never mentioned anything about affirmative action not existing.

No, but you did say it doesn't disfavor whites, it disfavors Asians. I'm asking who it disfavors when there aren't any Asians.

> I can practically guarantee it didn't

If that was the case, then Google would not have been sued by the Department of Labor. Don't presume to understand what a manager is capable of doing when you are a mere engineer IC. The fact that you believe the discretionary limit is a few hundred dollars indicates you don't know what you're talking about. Top performers routinely get discretionary refreshers of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of RSUs (on top of their regular annual refreshers). A few hundred dollars is probably less than your team gets for a single social event. If retaining a woman would boost the manager's diversity KPIs, it's easy to see how the diversity KPIs would cause discriminatory retention bonuses.

> I'm asking who it disfavors when there aren't any Asians.

Do you not realize that the <5% of Asians in your city are still applying to jobs and colleges across the country? Even if locally there are few Asians, they are still discriminated against by affirmative action. If I'm an Asian in bumfuck nowhere Kentucky and I apply to Harvard, I still get screwed by affirmative action equally as much as the Asian applying from California.

The situation you're talking about where there are no Asians competing for a spot doesn't exist for jobs and schools with any level of selectivity.

> If that was the case, then Google would not have been sued by the Department of Labor.

Correct, Google was not sued by the DoL for overpaying women.

> Top performers routinely get discretionary refreshers of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of RSUs (on top of their regular annual refreshers).

Well aware ;)

> The fact that you believe the discretionary limit is a few hundred dollars indicates you don't know what you're talking about.

So what you don't appear to realize is that in the situation where Google found themselves to be overpaying women, this applied specifically to L4 SWEs, and only in regards to base salary. The difference was found to be around $400.

Just to be really, really clear here: your average L4's manager is probably an L6. There's significant restrictions on what such a manager can do with their discretionary comp, and 500-1000$ in base salary really is the upper limit for what they can do. Anything larger would require escalation to a director or a VP, and even there, the amount you can move a base salary is relatively limited.

I realize this makes the entire narrative you're pushing here fall apart, but that's the reason I think it's so important to make this clear to you. From someone who actually has knowlege of the circumstances, you're pushing a sexist conspiracy theory. Don't do that.

> Do you not realize that the <5% of Asians in your city are still applying to jobs and colleges across the country?

You're missing my point. You've claimed that white people are unaffected by AA. There's a university in Bumfuck. It has practically no Asian applicants, because the population is low. Are you claiming, categorically that every school like Bumfuck U is unable to engage in affirmative action because the don't have an Asian population to discriminate against? And if not, what group does their policy harm?

> around $400

Wrong, because they paid out 9.7 million to 10k employees [1] which is more than $400. And it was not base salary, but discretionary funds. That information is straight from Google's public statement. And it was not only L4s; Google only cited L4s as being a particularly large contributor. Google also has an incentive to understate what the real damages were, since it has to pay out for discrepancies. Don't forget, Google was sued for pay fixing in a cartel with other tech companies. Please get your facts right instead of lying.

> Correct, Google was not sued by the DoL

They were sued by the DoL for underpaying women and for hiring bias against Asians. I mixed up the two cases there - but that doesn't change the conclusion.

Look, there are two groups in the DoL lawsuit: women and Asians. Women being underpaid/underhired is explained by sexism by managers. That's obviously illegal. Asians being underhired, on the other hand, is easily explained by Google's internal policy towards DEI and their DEI KPIs. That lines up with men being underpaid due to DEI policies. I might've mixed up the male underpayment survey and the lawsuit, but it doesn't change the conclusion that diversity KPIs can lead to managers illegally biasing decisions to boost their KPIs.

You literally stated yourself that it's possible for multiple instances of bias to occur at the same time. This is an obvious example of that happening.

> I realize this makes the entire narrative you're pushing here fall apart

The facts are: Google was sued for underhiring Asians. Google also found that men were underpaid due to use of discretionary funds. Google also sets diversity KPIs for their managers to meet, which affect managers' compensation. As you have stated in your comments, Google prioritizes resumes of "underrepresented" minorities. Do you really not see how these practices cause discrimination against Asians in hiring?

> every school like Bumfuck U is unable to engage in affirmative action

In these schools, affirmative action is generally not used because the school is not sufficiently selective for its use to have any impact on student demographics. My local community college accepts everyone. So yes, in practice, Bumfuck U does not use affirmative action.

I don't get why you feel the need to bring up Bumfuck U when whether a white person is affected by affirmative action for some school no one cares about doesn't matter at all. The largest damage done by affirmative action is being done at the most prestigious firms and schools. That is where it matters, and that's where white people are not disadvantaged by affirmative action's use but Asians are. Do you care if you're rejected from McDonald's because of your race? Probably not. But you do care if you're rejected from Google (as the DoL stated Asians were) or Harvard because of your race.

Do you disagree with the statement that 1) Asians competing for spots at prestigious firms and colleges are discriminated against by affirmative action and 2) white people competing for spots at prestigious firms and colleges are NOT discriminated against by affirmative action? Because that's what the statistics (SFFA v Harvard, UC system before/after Prop 209, etc.) show. And if you don't disagree with that, then you must come to the natural conclusion that affirmative action is racist against Asians and as a white person you are advocating for a policy that does not materially affect you but severely affects Asians.

As a side note, your patronizing tone and attitude towards this are not conducive towards reasonable conversation. Acting morally superior because you can advocate for a policy that doesn't harm you but gives you nice optics is textbook white privilege. Please check your privilege.

[1] https://www.blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/...

> Wrong, because they paid out 9.7 million to 10k employees [1] which is more than $400.

And 49% of those funds were paid out to a much smaller group of unrelated people, if you read to the next line.

> And it was not base salary, but discretionary funds. That information is straight from Google's public statement.

Yes, discretionary funds to adjust base salary.

> And it was not only L4s; Google only cited L4s as being a particularly large contributor. Google also has an incentive to understate what the real damages were, since it has to pay out for discrepancies.

Which has absolutely nothing to do with your claim that Google's DEI policies were causing managers to pay women to prevent them from leaving. I'm not the one getting confused here. Get your argument straight and stop bringing up unrelated distractions. I'll reiterate: as someone who was employed by Google in 2018 and affected by this policy, I was given a $400 raise, as were other affected swes I discussed with. It was $400. You're denial of this isn't factual. It's driven by a narrative that simply isn't there.

> Do you really not see how these practices cause discrimination against Asians in hiring?

No, I have absolutely no clue how Google underpaying men has anything to do with discriminating against Asians.

> Asians being underhired, on the other hand, is easily explained by Google's internal policy towards DEI and their DEI KPIs.

Ok so now you've changed your argument yet again.

> That lines up with men being underpaid due to DEI policies.

But contradicts women being underhired, and of course if you know anything about Google's hiring you'd know that (especially back in 2017) hiring decisions were made before a manager even knew anything about an applicant, so individual managers diversity KPI's couldn't affect the underhiring of applicants.

> You literally stated yourself that it's possible for multiple instances of bias to occur at the same time. This is an obvious example of that happening.

Sure, but the the whole conspiracy part is how this is related to diversity KPIs. In one instance you're saying that the diversity KPIs somehow resulted in women being paid more en masse (even though they were being paid less!) and in the other case they resulted in Asian men getting hired less even though it also led to women being hired less. You'd expect the impact to be like, somewhat similar in both cases, but you're arguing it had opposite effects.

> I don't get why you feel the need to bring up Bumfuck U when whether a white person is affected by affirmative action for some school no one cares about doesn't matter at all. The largest damage done by affirmative action is being done at the most prestigious firms and schools. That is where it matters, and that's where white people are not disadvantaged by affirmative action's use but Asians are. Do you care if you're rejected from McDonald's because of your race? Probably not. But you do care if you're rejected from Google (as the DoL stated Asians were) or Harvard because of your race.

It's pretty privileged (and weird!) to categorically reject the idea that people "in the middle" can lose out to even worse people from AA. Isn't that the entire way AA causes harm: by replacing some middling people from one group with ostensibly worse people from another group?

Like, do you think that someone who doesn't get into their stretch school is unaffected just because they're stretch is a state university and not Harvard? But here you're saying that actually harm only matters when it affects Asians. Maybe that's not what you mean, but it makes me question your motives.

> And if you don't disagree with that, then you must come to the natural conclusion that affirmative action is racist against Asians and as a white person you are advocating for a policy that does not materially affect you but severely affects Asians.

There are lots of policies that I advocate for against or that don't materially affect me (or even are directly adverse for me, including the one we're discussing!). We live in a society, and I try to support policies that will be good for society, not just ones that will be directly beneficial to me.

> Ok so now you've changed your argument yet again.

Like I said, you are arguing in bad faith and quibbling over an honest mistake when I explained to you exactly why you're wrong. I've presented the evidence and you refuse to acknowledge it, so there's no more to discuss.

> Like, do you think that someone who doesn't get into their stretch school is unaffected just because they're stretch is a state university and not Harvard

Even if the scenario you're proposing existed (the acceptance rate at these state schools is well over 50%), affirmative action still wouldn't affect white people. Whites, for example, are admitted to Harvard at around the same rate that they are to the University of Washington Tacoma [1] [2] or to SUNY Stony Brook [3]. So regardless of whether you're talking about some random state school or Harvard, and regardless of whether affirmative action is allowed (as it is at Harvard and Stony Brook) or not allowed (UW), white people are admitted at around the same rate. In fact, in some state schools in the deep South, whites make up over 60% of admitted students, despite affirmative action being allowed there. That is by definition, unaffected by affirmative action.

> We live in a society, and I try to support policies that will be good for society, not just ones that will be directly beneficial to me

Affirmative action is bad for society. It is racist and reduces the competitiveness of the nation as a whole. It violates the Civil Rights Act and will hopefully be illegal come the next SCOTUS session. It makes some white liberals such as yourself feel better about yourselves, that's it.

The fact that you believe you know what's "good for society" and no one else (especially not minorities! [4]) is exactly the sort of white supremacy that progressives nowadays embody.

[1] https://studentdata.washington.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/...

[2] https://blog.collegevine.com/harvard-university-diversity-st...

[3] https://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/irpe/fact_book/data_and_r...

[4] https://www.vox.com/2019/5/9/18538216/diversity-workplace-pe...

> Even if the scenario you're proposing existed (the acceptance rate at these state schools is well over 50%), affirmative action still wouldn't affect white people. Whites, for example, are admitted to Harvard at around the same rate that they are to the University of Washington Tacoma [1] [2] or to SUNY Stony Brook [3].

You've cherrypicked examples. Look at UNC Chapel Hill or Georgia Tech or Duke or Tulane or Emory (granted not all are State schools). These schools have acceptance rates of less than 25%, and some lower than 10% and, and relatively small Asian populations, with white populations as high as 65% and in some cases more Black than Asian students. You're claiming that none of them engage in race-aware, holistic admissions processes, despite contrary statements on all of their undergraduate admissions websites?

> In fact, in some state schools in the deep South, whites make up over 60% of admitted students, despite affirmative action being allowed there. That is by definition, unaffected by affirmative action.

Wait what? Are you claiming that being overrepresented compared to the baseline population is evidence that a group is unaffected by affirmative action? If so than Asian students, who are overrepresented compared to population percentages at every school you've mentioned, are unaffected by affirmative action.

> The fact that you believe you know what's "good for society"

I'm confused, are you saying I should support policies I think are bad for society, or are you saying that it is white supremacy for me to have opinions that differ from yours?

> You've cherrypicked examples. Look at UNC Chapel Hill or Georgia Tech or Duke (acceptance rates of 25% or less, small Asian populations.

I see higher white populations at those schools than the ones I cited, which would support my point that affirmative action does not disadvantage whites, since all 3 schools you mentioned use affirmative action yet they have higher white populations than schools which do not use affirmative action.

> You're claiming that none of them engage in race-aware, holistic admissions processes, despite contrary statements on all of their undergraduate admissions websites?

I made no such claim. In fact, the stats you've shown would further prove my point that whites are not disadvantaged by affirmative action, and that Asians are.

> Are you claiming that being overrepresented compared to the baseline population is evidence that a group is unaffected by affirmative action

When did I say overrepresented? I merely said the percentage of whites is the same between schools which do and do not use affirmative action, in both schools which are prestigious and those which are not. You cannot say the same is true for Asians.

> are unaffected by affirmative action

Except the evidence is overwhelming that Asians have to have higher SAT scores, stronger extracurriculars, and stronger profiles to be admitted compared to both whites and other minorities. Not only that, but Asians who received identical personality scores as whites/blacks from alumni interviewers were rated lower by Harvard admissions staff, in order to disadvantage Asians. See: SFFA vs. Harvard. Try to read from a source that isn't liberal this time around.

Your claim that all races must have equal representation to their proportion of the population ignores the impact of culture on outcomes. Why do black people dominate athletics? Maybe ask yourself if the NBA should have affirmative action.

> You literally just claimed to know what's good for society

No, I claimed affirmative action was illegal under the Civil Rights Act and racist. The difference here is that you are a white person, who is not affected by affirmative action, mandating that minorities, who are negatively affected by affirmative action, adhere to it. And you dismiss minorities' opinions as invalid and dismiss the fact that a majority of minorities say they don't want race to be taken into account in the workplace (see the Vox link in my previous comment). THAT is white supremacy: believing your own opinions about minorities, as a white person, while ignoring those same minorities telling you they don't want what you're preaching.

> I merely said the percentage of whites is the same between schools which do and do not use affirmative action, in both schools which are prestigious and those which are not.

But this isn't true. Berkley is 25% white, Harvard is ~40% white, Tulane is 61% white. If what you said were true, all three would have similar white populations.

Let me try and clarify this for you one last time. Not all schools get them same population of applicants, so you would not expect all schools to get the same population of attendees. National target schools, and schools in areas with large Asian populations, may have relatively large Asian populations. But other schools, including relatively selective ones, in areas with smaller Asian populations, will not have many Asian applicants.

If such a school wants to engage in Affirmative action programs, it cannot do so by discriminating against Asian applicants, because it does not have an excess number of Asian applicants to discriminate against.

You have claimed previously that such a thing cannot happen, and that even if it did that it "doesn't matter at all". What I have shown are highly selective schools with applicant pools that have a relatively small number of Asians, and I previously demonstrated that such schools engage in affirmative action programs. This demonstrates that such schools disfavor white students when favoring minority applicants.

> Except the evidence is overwhelming that Asians have to have higher SAT scores, stronger extracurriculars, and stronger profiles to be admitted compared to both whites and other minorities.

Right, now apply the exact same argument to white applicants in comparison to other minorities in regard to the schools I mentioned like Tulane, Emory, Chapel Hill, etc. You would expect white students to be overrepresented compared to the baseline population (much as Asian students are in schools that they target), but they aren't, while Hispanic and Black students often are overrepresented.

So can you explain to me how precisely the same behavior is harmful racism against Asians when done by Berkeley or Harvard, but somehow doesn't happen, or if it does it "doesn't matter" when it's at Tulane or Emory and impacts white students?

I'll also mention that twice now you've accused me of white supremacy based solely on your assumption that I am white, and your further belief that a white person, I cannot be harmed by affirmative action policies. In reality, it appears that your actual belief is that affirmative action that harms white people "doesn't matter", and that because it "doesn't matter" a White person cannot be harmed by it.

> Your claim that all races must have equal representation to their proportion of the population ignores the impact of culture on outcomes.

I, uhh, I didn't make this claim.

> No, I claimed affirmative action was illegal under the Civil Rights Act and racist.

So when you said "Affirmative action is bad for society.", you didn't mean that ending affirmative action would be good for society? What's the option I'm missing?

> And you dismiss minorities' opinions as invalid and dismiss the fact that a majority of minorities say they don't want race to be taken into account in the workplace (see the Vox link in my previous comment).

I remain confused, I side with the majority on responses to the vox link. While I didn't explicitly state it here[0], my response there should make it clear that I also don't believe that companies should consider race when making hiring or promotion decisions. Like, I'm already on record saying the opposite of wat you think I'm saying. I've never said anything that implies otherwise, so I don't know why you're claiming that I disagree with minorities about this thing when I don't.

Like, it's also not a good idea to treat minorities as a monolith. While you clearly oppose Affirmative Action, 80% of Hispanic adults and 70% of Black adults do support them[1], so claiming that I am ignoring minorities simply because I disagree with you is to disregard, well, quite literally the majority of nonwhite Americans, who also disagree with you.

And that's fine! Minorities aren't monolithic and you're perfectly free to disagree with anyone you like, but please refrain from accusing me of white supremacy simply because I disagree with you, it's rude.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32186694

[1]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/352832/americans-confidence-rac...

> because it does not have an excess number of Asian applicants to discriminate against

Wrong, because Asians overindex relative to their proportion of the population in higher education institutions which don't use affirmative action. That's a statistical fact. Even if you have only 5% Asian applicants, Asians could still represent a plurality of the qualified applicant pool that should be admitted.

> This demonstrates that such schools disfavor white students when favoring minority applicants

You cannot show that whites are disfavored when the percentage of whites at these schools is equal to or higher than schools which do not use affirmative action. That is basic science 101: you cannot show an effect exists when your stats show the opposite.

> while Hispanic and Black students often are overrepresented

Easily explained by the fact that those schools use affirmative action. Show me a school that doesn't use it with blacks overrepresented.

> done by Berkeley

Berkeley is banned from using affirmative action or considering race in admissions in any way. Please get your facts straight instead of lying.

> at Tulane or Emory and impacts white students

Your own stats show it doesn't impact white students at those schools.

> [1]

California, the most liberal state in the nation, rejected affirmative action by a 15 point margin at the ballot box. I have to question the legitimacy of your polling data here if it claims 62% support AA.

> please refrain from accusing me of white supremacy simply because I disagree with you

I accuse you of white supremacy because you are a white supremacist. You enforce views which discriminate against Asians and which do not discriminate against whites, and you do so with a tone of moral superiority. That is white supremacy.

> Wrong, because Asians overindex relative to their proportion of the population in higher education institutions which don't use affirmative action.

Asian applicants also overindex relative to their portion of the population at higher institutions that do use affirmative action. This doesn't tell you anything!

And Asian applicants overindex more significantly at Chapel Hill than at Berkeley, relative to the state and local population, which is important, because both schools are mandated to accept around 80-90% in state students.

(And of course it's actually not clear that Asians overindex at UC Berkeley. The bay area is ~30% Asian, which is similar to Berkeley's demographics)

> You cannot show that whites are disfavored when the percentage of whites at these schools is equal to or higher than schools which do not use affirmative action. That is basic science 101: you cannot show an effect exists when your stats show the opposite.

Yes, you can, because as you yourself just said, the important thing is the acceptances relative to the candidate pool, and the candidate pool at these schools doesn't have a large number of Asians. You're (wrongly) relying on the base rate fallacy, which leads to an unsound and invalid conclusion.

And this makes sense, in areas where Asian students make up the plurality of qualified applicants, the schools will discriminate against them. But in areas where white students make up not just the plurality, but the majority of qualified applicants, schools will instead discriminate against white students. In all cases the goal is to reduce the most populous group and increase the least populous ones.

> Your own stats show it doesn't impact white students at those schools.

Only if you continue to commit the base rate fallacy.

> Berkeley is banned from using affirmative action or considering race in admissions in any way. Please get your facts straight instead of lying.

Yes, now, but you keep complaining about how it used to!

> California, the most liberal state in the nation, rejected affirmative action by a 15 point margin at the ballot box. I have to question the legitimacy of your polling data here if it claims 62% support AA.

Compare to recent measures in Colorado and Washington, which were basically 50/50. Politics is more complicated

> You enforce views which discriminate against Asians and which do not discriminate against whites

Again, this is simply untrue. White students are affected by such policies. As I've now demonstrated three or four times.

> and you do so with a tone of moral superiority.

Moral superiority meaning, what, exactly? That I disagree with you about a particular ethical question?

> There are a fixed number of college acceptance spots at prestigious colleges each year and by the nature of prestige it must stay so for the colleges to continue being prestigious.

This is exactly why affirmative action will be overturned in the next Supreme Court session later this year.

The argument that Justice Ginsburg and others made in support of it is that you aren’t taking anything away from other people by making a special exception for an arbitrary group of people.

But you are. Seats are limited and coveted by all. It’s literally against the civil rights act and should be abolished.

"My strategy would work if voters all adopted my values and worldview" isn't a sensible political strategy. It's utopianism. Politics is about putting together a coalition with the voters you have, not daydreaming about what you could do if you had the voters you want.

And the utopianism harms the very minorities you claim to advocate for. My parents, immigrants from Bangladesh, don't vote straight-ticket Democrat because they think you can achieve racial harmony. They do it because they think Obamacare is a good idea. You're not going to convince them that Bangladeshis have common cause with other minorities, or that police are bad, or that same-sex marriage is great, or that anyone should ever "celebrate their abortion." They will go along with those things, but they're voting for a political party to achieve tangible results, not bring about the Rapture.

It would be interesting to ask your parents if their experience with the personality cult of Mujib led them to vote that way here.

My mom is from a wealthy family and mainly votes democrat because she views Republicans as the party of religious “common people” and democrats as the party of the educated elite. She agrees with Trump about a lot of things, but hates him because “he talks like an uneducated person.”

My dad dad is more of a traditional Carter Democrat. He likes big government and Obamacare and rule by law expert administrators. He dislikes Republicans for their Nixon/Reagan/Bush era foreign policy (especially Nixon’s support of Pakistan against Bangladesh). He’s slowly coming to terms with the fact that although he hates Trump, he agrees with Trump on a bunch of things (pro-Russia, anti-accepting Afghan refugees, etc.)

This is one of the best socio-political analyses I've seen on Hacker News. Thank you for writing it.

Your analysis leaves one big question mark: the Republican Party offers them even less. Why would they vote for them..?

On economic issues, republicans support industries like oil production that undergirds good working class jobs. Republicans also tend to support small businesses, which is a realistic aspiration for working class people who might hope to own their own contracting or catering business some day. Republicans also have opposed Democratic efforts to implement racial preferences, which working class people correctly understand place them at the bottom of the hierarchy.

Working class people also tend to align with republicans in terms of values. Part of that is ideology (the Bible versus Judith Butler). But part of it is more pragmatic. For example, less than half of people without a college degree think that “changing gender roles has made it easier for women to lead satisfying lives.” https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/10/18/wide-pa.... Is that because these folks haven’t read Judith Butler? Or because Leave it to Beaver sounds pretty great in comparison to the jobs (not careers) available to them? For most people, raising a family is going to be the most fulfilling thing they ever do. Is it surprising that those folks gravitate to a party that dignifies that, instead of the one that exalts careerism and a diversity of lifestyles?

This is an interesting take. If it’s correct, the GOP is making no attempt to capitalize on it because they’re idiots when it comes to tapping in to how Americans feel (Trump was a rare exception). The GOP don't get it, haven’t gotten it, and I suspect never will get it. So I’m doubtful this will translate into enough votes by itself to turn elections.

Cobb county is not becoming blue because of demographics. As another poster pointed out it’s likely the college educated younger people like myself.

It can be both.

(If you overlay the precinct-level results from https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/cobbcounty.org.if-us-west... on a demographic map, it becomes apparent that the more educated parts of Cobb are redder than the less educated parts. This correlates basically perfectly with the less white vs. whiter parts).

I'm from Smyrna originally and lived there for the majority of my life. East Cobb (although it is purpleish, not just red, and that is due to college education) is redder than Smyrna/Marietta, despite being much more educated.

I’m from East Cobb and live here currently. There’s been a big change from 2000, starting in 2016. 2020 highlighted the shift.[1] I don’t think it’s race related if I look at the demographic changes in the past few censuses.

East Cobb has always been more conservative and they have a senior population who’s not changing views.

[1] https://www.11alive.com/amp/article/news/politics/elections/...

> Dems appeal among actual working class people (read: usually minorities who don't own quarter million dollar trucks) remains extremely strong.

This is a perfect example of why I cannot call myself a democrat anymore. Can you not see how an unemployed white person in the rust belt who lost his job because the factory he worked at was moved to China because of NAFTA may interpret this as extremely dismissive? Why should he vote for someone who claims that he isn't a "real" working class person?

I'm confused, are you saying this jobless rust belt person owns a quarter million dollar 18-wheeler?

I'm certainly not saying that white people can't be working class. That'd be silly. What I am saying is that often, we pretend that very affluent rural whites are "working class" to the deficit of urban (and often minority) working class people.

Edit:

I'm really having a hard time understanding how you've turned my statement which was functionally "nonwhite people can also be working class" into "white people cannot be working class". So I'm going to disengage.

> I'm confused, are you saying this jobless rust belt person owns a quarter million dollar 18-wheeler?

No, I'm not, and I think you know that I'm not. I grew up around people like this - rich kids who would put exhaust stacks on their lifted F350s - so I know what you mean. My point is that the dem response to the hollowing out of the american working class (obligatory bill clinton approved NAFTA mention) seems to be "should've gone to college lol". Like it or not, white people are the majority in america, so it seems extremely counterproductive to only consider the needs of the "real" (read: not white) working class people instead of the entire group.

No, you said “actual working class people” are “usually minorities.” That’s both wildly inaccurate and dismissive of working class white people.

> Obama ran as a populist

Not from the US and I like Obama and wouldn't have minded a third term. He had his flaws, some of them severe and stupid, but it at least had a solid direction and successes despite a lot of sabotage towards his reform attempts.

But when I suggested that his "change"-campaign is basically the definition of populist massaging some otherwise quite smart people were shocked. Perhaps insecurity about my support, but it cannot get much more populist than that to be honest.

The scary part is that the word got redefined for political purposes lately. Also, populism isn't always negative. Most "corrected" definitions today say it is authoritarian but it is also often the exact opposite.

People are remembering Obama for the way he governed, as a polished socially liberal globalist—the guy who sued Catholic nuns to force them to pay for contraception, when there was a government program that would have paid for it—instead of the populist campaign he ran.

In 2008, he railed against big banks and elites. He called for bailing out GM. Here talked about the need to stop illegal immigration: https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4656370/user-clip-sen-barack-....

On social issues, he signaled that he was solidly within the Midwestern mainstream. He emphasized his Kansas roots. He opposed same-sex but supported civil unions. He distanced himself from the radicalism of his former pastor Jeremiah Wright. He was not out at the forefront of anything, and didn’t attack the social values of the Midwesterners he was courting.

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