All jokes aside, some white people grow up dirt poor in predominantly black neighborhoods and identify more with black Anerican culture then their own skin color.
Do they get better access to schools, scholarships, government jobs, funding for small businesses? Etc...
What about the black kid who grew up in the suburbs with a stable family and all whote friends. Should their access to the same programs be cut because they're less likely to need it.
Categorization will never go away as long as people are incentivized to promote their identity as a 'protected class'.
It has gotten to the point where everybody except white males falls under one or more protected classes.
I'm not claiming inequality is an issue that should continue to be addressed. I'm creating government mandated classes of people based on their race/ethnicity and throwing money at the problem isn't the solution. It replaces implicit descriminatiom with explicit descrimination.
The problem is that white kid could dress up in a suit and tie, go into an interview, and be totally free of racial judgment (also dropping any obvious mannerisms). A black man can do that, including dropping any mannerisms, but they will still be black.
I don't know how many poor white people you know, but this isn't true. You can't undue the effects of poverty by putting on a suit and tie.
I grew up as a poor white kid in a multicultural neighborhood and I've spent the last 20 years trying to fit into middle class white society. It is a constant struggle. I've had to work harder than every one of my peers to get to where I'm at. When I hear upper middle class white women and minorities whining about how hard it is for them my blood boils.
Your parents read to you, paid for you to go to college, talked like middle class people do about middle class things, taught you how to manage money, a growth mindset, encouraged you, teachers expected you to be something when you grew up and treated you appropriately. Poor white kids, like poor black kids don't get any of this. Putting on a suit and tie doesn't improve your vocabulary or make you think about yourself like an equal. It doesn't teach you how to write a good resume or cover letter. It doesn't put internships or solid educational credentials on that resume.
This is not true, if the person doing the interview is also black. Or are you saying a black interviewer would also be racist against another black person in a suit and a tie? The fact is that race is matter of in-group, out-group thinking, and mentioning it exacerbates the problem because we are persisting the group-think. It's true the problem won't go away if we ignore it, but we should identify behavior and hunt down people who are racist, regardless of their race, and without mentioning their race so as to not keep persisting the grouping problem.
Under most circumstances you're right and that's sad.
So what's the alternative? Systematically killing off all the old white guys who still cling to their anachronistic perceptions? Their children are still going to inherit their wealth and the 1% will continue to be the 1%.
Hand the power over to militant feminists who happen to be as -- if not more -- biased based on race and/or gender? IMHO, that's just trading one class of terrible people for another.
Tech is a the perfect place to foster a diverse working environment. I wish there were more people from varied backgrounds rather then 50/50 white/asian males in development and mostly white women and men in design.
But I don't know how to rewind the clock 10-15 years and teach inner city kids that all of their idols are frauds and that being a computer is the path to being a real success in life.
The kids I knew from the inner city who were into computers and tech didn't start in college. They got deeply involved in tech in their teens partly to stay out of trouble and fell in love with learning and creating things.
My own path wasn't much different except I grew up in thr suburbs and had more resources. I had my own bad influences to get away from and I didn't need to go to school to be taught what I was happy to learn on my own.
Yes I agree with you. And I'm not a fan of affirmative action. I'm just seeing a stunning number of people in this thread who are in denial that race is even an issue at all, or who think the best course of action is to stop talking about it.
A problem to be sure. But I'm not convinced of the ubiquitousness of the problem - that folks really suffer much from 'reverse discrimination'. Or that folks do much to promote their identity as a protected class. Most of us just muddle on.
And I'm not ready to resist every attempt to re-level the playing field as 'explicit dicrimination'. Is the alternative to do nothing, and hope it all works out?
First, there is no such thing as 'reverse descrimination'. Descrimination is descrimination, no matter who it is aimed at. Assuming that only specific classes of people can be subjected to negative prejudice based on superficial characteristics such as race/gender/creed is dismissive and a clear sign of ignorance.
Second, I'm all for leveling the playing field when it comes to education and building community. By which I mean, multicultural communities not 'stick with your own, fuck the other guys' communities.
I went to school at one such community and it deeply saddened me when I left because the same degree of diversity can't be found anywhere else. Ironically, the military (ie USMC) is probably the closest I've found to a true, 'not just for the photo op', diverse community that doesn't explicitly try hard to be. The difference there is, everybody is American first and individuals have the courage to stand up for each other in the face of injustice.
All jokes aside, some white people grow up dirt poor in predominantly black neighborhoods and identify more with black Anerican culture then their own skin color.
Do they get better access to schools, scholarships, government jobs, funding for small businesses? Etc...
What about the black kid who grew up in the suburbs with a stable family and all whote friends. Should their access to the same programs be cut because they're less likely to need it.
Categorization will never go away as long as people are incentivized to promote their identity as a 'protected class'.
It has gotten to the point where everybody except white males falls under one or more protected classes.
I'm not claiming inequality is an issue that should continue to be addressed. I'm creating government mandated classes of people based on their race/ethnicity and throwing money at the problem isn't the solution. It replaces implicit descriminatiom with explicit descrimination.