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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  2270 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Dirty War Over Diversity Inside Google

- Nobody in the United States is oppressing Laplanders.

- Nobody in the United States is oppressing Ukrainians.

- Nobody in the United States is oppressing Russians.

I legit grew up a white minority in an environment where the Chicanos were the dominant ethnicity and had been for 400 years. The principle beef was between the Chicanos and the Native Americans, who together accounted for more than 65% of the population. Restaurants I couldn't eat at because I was white. Stores I couldn't shop at because I was white. You're sitting there with your entire family for 45 minutes and nobody brings you a menu... because you're white.

And that was useful to experience. It was novel. And I thought I understood the impacts of racism until I moved in next to a charming black gentleman with a Ph. D from USC who taught at Cal Arts who had to sell his Ferrari because he got sick of getting pulled over every day. I thought I understood the impacts of racism until I had not one but two LAPD cops apologize for pulling me over because "they didn't realize I was white."

As a white dude, I can look at you, white dude, and not only give no fucks about whether or not you're Ukrainian. I can look at you, white dude, and know your experience. More than that, you can know mine: yeah, I can throw out a couple anecdotes about the junkyard that said "we don't serve your kind and never will" but they're anomalies, not the dominant narrative.

- Women will always be women.

- Blacks will always be blacks.

- Armenians will always be Armenians.

- Hispanics will always be Hispanics.

and you can't synthesize diversity out of a bunch of white backgrounds because they seriously don't fucking matter compared to the experience of minorities.

I want you to imagine 8bit, sitting there all half-Arab half-African, in the middle of white-as-fuck UC Boulder, reading this:

    So when we talk about the value of a 'diverse' workplace, are we judging solely based on melanin content and facial features? Or is diversity of opinion something that is also valuable? How about diversity of background? I would argue that a rich white kid has more in common with a rich black kid than with a poor white kid.

That's because you're willfully naive and ignorant on the subject. Wealth changes. Opinion changes. Race does not. "Diversity of background?" You gonna call the Amish a diversity hire?

I'm not going to call Damore a nazi. But I'm also not going to crawl so far up my own ass that people who think black people suck should count as "diverse" because somehow opinion should count as much as fuckin' race.





throwaway12  ·  2260 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Opinion should count more than race. Diversity serves purpose, and opinion-based-diversity will get a lot more done than race-based diversity.

throwaway12  ·  2260 days ago  ·  link  ·  
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