GitHub Director of engineering openly encourages racism

https://twitter.com/EricaJoy/status/1344654006245703681

by sanguy • 6 years ago

25 24 6 years ago

sanguy3• 6 years ago

The whole BLM movement is important but racial and gender discrimination flows both ways, and what Erica puts forward is exactly that - Discrimination based on gender and color.

We really need to move past having gender/color/religion/sexual preference matter in how people are accepted and treated in society, and the workplace. These things should not, and truly do not matter.

What she is suggesting does not move us forward. It just encourages an escalation of the tension already present which doesn't end well for anyone.

I hope 2021 we figure out how to stop the hate and move forward to focus on problems that should unite us and not divide us.

mytailorisrich2• 6 years ago

We really need to move past having gender/color/religion/sexual preference matter in how people are accepted and treated in society, and the workplace. These things should not, and truly do not matter.

Absolutely.

Her 'proposal' is very plainly unacceptable and indeed illegal in Europe (not sure in the US)

pelasaco7• 6 years ago

I'm not sure that's illegal in Europe unless it's driven by native Europeans.

core-questions3• 6 years ago

hope 2021 we figure out how to stop the hate

Influential people have spent the last ten years actively working on ways to remove the small progress towards a more colourblind world that was made in the 90s and 00s. Engendering hate and race-based conflict through rhetoric has been their modus operandi, and the rise in violence, protesting, and division is the direct result.

I don't think anyone important is going to push for a unification effort that offers White people a way to be part of the fold without having to hate ourselves, which is not something any self-respecting person should accept. White people who push anti-White rhetoric are detestable and nobody really likes them, on either side; they are merely apparatchiks and useful idiots that sow division and damage their own legacy.

raxxorrax• 6 years ago

They have nurtured a victim mentality and had nobody honest in their lives to call them out on the stuff they try to peddle. A serious step backwards.

sanguy3• 6 years ago

EDIT -- Appears she is no longer with Github although her personal page https://www.ericabaker.com still indicates she is the director of engineering.

pelasaco7• 6 years ago

So she works for Microsoft. Kind of inline with https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54449164

core-questions3• 6 years ago

This is amazing.

As usual, White men continue to be the one group that you can name, insult, actively organize against, and so forth. Rhetorical devices like "racism" that can be used to describe all other racial-based discrimination somehow magically don't apply when White people are the target; in fact, White people only exist as a group when we are targeted. In all other contexts, we are now just a 'social construct', as our emergent group identity is publicly deconstructed to prevent us from having any identity at all.

White people have contributed more to the academic commons and to free/open source software than anyone else in the world; we have had an instrumental position in bringing the light of computing to the masses. Doesn't matter, though! Historical injustices not caused by any of the individuals writing software today will be used to judge us, even if we're not American, even if our ancestors never owned slaves, even if our ancestors were slaves themselves; none of that matters when pure tactical context denial is used to establish us as the group to defeat.

All of your problems will go away, Erica Joy, when White people can no longer start businesses or develop things. The world will be wonderful when, like crabs in a bucket, everyone has been pulled down to the lowest level possible. Can't wait.

Of course, there's no reason to look at the facts: that Ms. Joy herself is an incredibly privileged individual (director of engineering for one of the most prestigious operations going). Her career progression was no doubt aided by the fact that every organization with an HR department is committed to finding as many BIPOC and women as possible to diversify, while dealing with the fact that it's a very small pool of candidates.

Get this: I've never even had the opportunity to interview someone like this, despite doing a lot of hiring; turns out that it's just not that common to find them, especially outside of America. Were I a small business, unable to pay the big salaries that big orgs do, I probably wouldn't have a chance at this small and coveted pool of talent; I'd probably be stuck hiring White (and Asian / Middle Eastern) men, because that's who applies for tech jobs around here. It is not my fault nor my obligation to do anything to increase the number of people who are qualified for a job, especially considering that the vast majority of good hires I have made have been people who are in no small part self-taught using the vast amounts of free information out there....

Anyway:

2021 white people challenge:

if a product, service, or company is built by people who publicly espouse anti-white positions, you don’t use your platform (social, newsletters, blogs, etc) to champion it, promote it, or help it gain traction (yes, even if it’s a portfolio company, VCs).

pelasaco7• 6 years ago

Let's see how many open source developers are going to move their repositories out of Github because of that (and maybe be called racist for that).

The answer: 0.

EDIT: You are still able to cancel silently your Github subscription as I did now.

dekhn3• 6 years ago

Why are you penalizing Github? She doesn't even work there any more.

core-questions3• 6 years ago

I can't cancel, of course, because I'm locked in for any number of reasons corporate and personal. Of course, that's the exact reason why Microsoft saw Github as such a valuable thing to acquire.

shiado• 6 years ago

How can somebody post that and keep their job? Is that how far gone American culture is?

pelasaco7• 6 years ago

What options have Microsoft now? Fire her and be accused of racism?

haunter• 6 years ago

wtf I never knew there is a Chrome extension like this https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/diversity-plug-ext...

jstarfish• 6 years ago

"Boycott products made by all-white teams/orgs." (paraphrased)

What does this solve, exactly?

But it's cute that she thinks she has a leg to stand on, what with her employer being so heavily "diverse." Github looks really progressive, for sure-- they have a remote, multinational workforce.

It's a shame that workforce isn't paid evenly. One's value should not diminish based on what geopolitical borders they happen to reside within.

"We're providing opportunities to ___." No, you're outsourcing to southeast Asians and homeless Europeans and paying them less than others to do the same job. I hear the same nonsense pitched to interns to get them to work for free. It's exploitation. If an employee provides consistent remote labor to a company, their pay should not be adjusted to their coordinates or "inexperience."

It's almost like they think some people are worth less than others and should be exploited based on arbitrary features.

If you're going to proselytize about making the world a more equitable place through reverse racism, try not to stand on a soapbox literally built from exploitation of a foreign workforce.

stevenalowe• 6 years ago

Just wondering who gets to define “white”? SMH

GitHub Director of engineering openly encourages racism

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