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Comment by dariusj18 | Hacker News Reader

The token hire strip would be funny if it wasn't an actual reflection of the strip and it's lack of diversity (and the obvious reticence of the creator to consider diversity as important). What would have been a smarter and less controversial move would be to subtly introduce people of color over time, then add a strip about a diversity hire, with the other characters visibly getting ticked off.

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There are like 5 main (human) characters. 1 is Indian and 1 is female. Your argument is a strawman.

It is an understandable situation, but there are more people in the comic than the main characters. There are often consultants, designers, dates, and other characters introduced all the time. I'm not someone who believes you need to shoehorn in diversity, it's just something to consider in this day and age. When introducing a new primary, secondary or background character, why wouldn't they be X? If the answer is, "because they contemporaneously are more likely to be Y", sometimes that's because of systematic problems that don't self correct without active social awareness.

I had forgotten about Asok, of course race and ethnicity get even more charged when you get into Indian culture and American corporate culture.

Maybe his workplace is not diverse and he wants to reflect that. My workplace is not diverse.

And I also don’t believe in the importance of diversity, there’s nothing wrong with that. That doesn’t mean I’m against diversity nor that I don’t enjoy it.

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