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Comment by netheril96 | Hacker News Reader

> despite it having no effect on your life.

How could it have no effect on our lives? It has effect when you compete against a diversity hire, it has effect when you have to work with a diversity hire, it has effect when your manager has to decide who to lay off when your coworker is a diversity hire.

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What is a "diversity hire"? Anyone that's a minority? Or perhaps someone that _you_ believe wouldn't have been hired if they weren't a minority? Let's give you the benefit of the doubt and say it's the latter.

How would you know if a colleague of yours is a "diversity hire" without making assumptions? How do you know that you're just not as good? Because you don't think their work is high quality? Maybe you're a bad judge because your work isn't high quality. Or maybe you only see part of their work? Or maybe your pre-judgement has already doomed you to biased analysis of anything they do.

Or maybe if you're worrying about this you're just not very good.

if you're losing out to a "diversity hire", you weren't that good.

Your logic can rationalize any kind of unfair treatment in the world and therefore an invalid argument. After all, there alway are some people who are just so good that an unfair system cannot deny them.

Companies don't write magical blank cheques to someone who ticks off the right boxes without having them do any actual work. They are hired with the expectation of delivering value to the company by performing real work adequate to their qualifications. The term "diversity hire" is meaningless and frankly derogatory without evaluating actual individual performance. Companies have pipelines to handle underperforming employees and there are no signs any of them are being spared due to ticking off the right boxes despite that right-wing conspiratory trolls allege.

Of all of the minorities in the world, even of the subset that may compete with you on for a position, you just CAN'T fathom that some of them may be better than you? That in even competition, this person, who just happens to be a (gender, racial, sexual orientation, ability, religous) minority is better than you at the position you're chose to apply for?

Framing your competition as diversity hires (and contemplating the outsized concern that they have on your life) says more about than you think. You're the bottom of the barrel at what you do. "Diversity hires" don't compete at a high level.

I for one know that if my competition wins, whether they are a minority or not, they do it on skill. I've elevated myself out of the concerns of competing with diversity hires, because I'm great at what I do. Level up.

Tell me more about how Asian Americans have to have better grades than Whites, Blacks and Latinos to get into the same school because they are somehow worse.

Because amongst similarly qualified candidates we are THEN allowed to differentiate. It's the same reason you may pursue extracurricular and then put them on your college resume. Differentiation.

Where's your crocodile tears for Vietnamese kid from south central (where the Vietnamese in America are on the lower end of the economic scale) who is admitted to Harvard instead of a Chinese, Korean, Japanese, or Indian kid from a well to do family? Lets segment Asian Americans and see how you feel.

When opportunity is equally earned, we can then look to representation. Your argument is just an attempt to claim all spoils.

I don’t understand your case about Vietnamese being admitted to Harvard at all, or how I would have tears let alone crocodile tears. Your words make no sense.

I guess english is not your primary language, because it's plain english.

It is illegal to do what Harvard is doing in hiring decisions. It may even be illegal for Harvard to do what it is doing, given how the supreme court decides to rule. Affirmative Action doesn't exist in employment.

Affirmative action definitely exists in hiring. There are racial and gender quotas.

Such a quota would be very loudly illegal.

Why would it be illegal to have two separate but otherwise identical simultaneous job postings, one only covering the protected group and one only covering the unprotected group? Like, 10 males and 10 females, or 10 whites and 10 non-whites, or 10 elders and 10 youngsters, as long as they are employed without such seggregation after hiring.

I'd guess that Asians with lower grades are less likely to apply. You'd get a distribution that looks like that even with completely random acceptance

And I forgot to say this: all of your words here are ad hominem attacks. You have a condescending attitude implying that somehow if one fails to win, they don’t have the right to complain about the unfair system. An absurd notion, given that they are impacted the most.

There’s a difference between failing to win, and asserting that others cheated. Calling others “diversity hires” implies that others have cheated. You don’t get to claim the high ground there.

It is not cheating if the act is in accordance with the rules of the game. What I am against is the rule itself. Never have I named names or suggested that ALL hires of a certain race are diversity hires. You have to put words in my mouth because you know you cannot refute my argument without purposefully misconstruing my words first.

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