The Other Side of Diversity

https://medium.com/@ericajoy/the-other-side-of-diversity-1bb3de2f053e

by rouma7 • 12 years ago

704 430 12 years ago

0x03• 12 years ago

If you are going to have your body text width wider than the viewport, it would be great if you also don't disable pinch-to-zoom and swipe horizontally to scroll. :)

MobileSafari, iOS8

anigbrowl7• 12 years ago

Author is not running medium.com. Writing a blog post about this would be more appropriate.

0x03• 12 years ago

It was just a friendly heads-up that the article was basically unreadable because whole words were getting cut off each line.

I don't see why it matters who runs medium in this case.

peterfirefly3• 12 years ago

No, but she is using a theme she made herself (she links to it on her web site).

pnutjam• 12 years ago

This article is unreadable. I enjoy light font on dark backgrounds, but the busy background insures that parts of the page are impossible to read.

mturmon• 12 years ago

Oakland definitely has its advantages. Its long working-class and radical history has left an impression on the city.

nailer2• 12 years ago

San Francisco has a lot more human foeces on the streets than Oakland does.

peterfirefly3• 12 years ago

f(a)eces?

omonra3• 12 years ago

I think this is an interesting read.

I personally can relate. I'm a white guy but an immigrant from Europe. Most of my friends are immigrants from the same region and I'm most comfortable around 'my people'.

But that doesn't mean that I have expectations that I will be surrounded by 'my people' at work. That's how I structure my life outside of work - to be around people that I have a lot in common with.

But work is work - the only commonality I expect is to be surrounded by people who are capable and know what they are doing.

dcole29296• 12 years ago

That's part of the problem though. You are European yes but at the end of the day you are still white and to some not so insignificant part of the population that fact means more than everything else that may set you apart.

Obviously I can't read the author's mind but my interpretation was not that she was bothered by not having other black women around her so much as she was by the consequences of that lack of diversity. She felt left out and passed over at times. She felt like she had to constantly defend her opinions, her self.

I don't think diversity in the work place is something that is an absolute must but I think in cases where that lack creates a hostile work place for some employees there is absolutely an issue. If you're co-workers are making racist comments/assumptions about you and your manager's solution is to ship you off to another office, there is absolutely a problem.

omonra3• 12 years ago

Yes - I agree with you on how she felt.

While I'm 100% in agreement that there is no room at work for racist comments (it appears that there was one issue out of 12 years), I'm not sure it's other (ie not black, not women, etc) people's responsibility to attract more people like her to the job.

We should certainly have a level playing field for people to have opportunity to study and get the jobs - but if she wants more black women in tech (something I completely understand on personal level), perhaps she should make an effort towards it. How is it my problem?

seivan• 12 years ago

Wow, way to downplay his problem.

"You're white, so you can't have problems".

cgio• 12 years ago

I am white, grew up in an affluent environment that provided for studies abroad etc. After 8 years of work, I had the "that's a cute accent" transliterated to you cannot be promoted. I did get promoted eventually, but having to go through what others do to go 2 levels above me and not letting it go through. White means nothing.

As a humorous side-note. Yesterday was the Melbourne cup, a landmark race in Australia. All night, news were referring to the minimal Australian horses participation and a local big retailer Harvey from Harvey Norman) went as far as saying that there should be an Australian race (as in racing) with some of New Zealand, and a Rest of the world/barbarian race. When people honestly have issues with immigrant horses...

facepalm3• 12 years ago

Yeah, us whites all stick together, we are all the best buddies. I have so many friends that Firefox crashes when I open Facebook.

monochr3• 12 years ago

" You are European yes but at the end of the day you are still white and to some not so insignificant part of the population that fact means more than everything else that may set you apart."

This is why everyone thinks Americans are idiots. "You're white" is an idiotic thing to say to a European. I am blond, blue eyed and 1.88m tall. So was my grandfather. That didn't stop Germans from killing him in a concentration camp for being subhuman.

But tell me more about my white privilege when depleted uranium from your weapons of medium destruction have made my fathers ancestral village uninhabitable unless you really like leukemia.

Kronopath• 12 years ago

It's really nice to hear such a personal, candid take on the need for diversity. It's a refreshing change from the politically-charged generalities you often see written by your typical white male twentysomething in the tech industry when they write about diversity. Sharing these kinds of concrete, lifelong experiences really drives home the point of why it's necessary: it's not diversity for its own sake, it's for the sake of not alienating people like our author here, people who undoubtedly have a lot to contribute.

potatolicious2• 12 years ago

Indeed. I dislike the narrative that diversity is somehow desirable because it results in [better products|more productivity|better team cohesion], among many other cited reasons.

These may be true, but it misses the point: personal dignity is a worthwhile goal in and of itself.

I get that spinning it as a "this is scientifically better and has capitalistic/rationalistic superior outcomes" may be necessary to appeal to the self-described rationalists in our industry for whom "because people feel like shit in this environment" doesn't even register. But it does feel wrong.

JoshTriplett• 12 years ago

Seems a lot like the difference between "Free Software" and "Open Source": does the target audience care about this on principle for its own sake, or do you have to spin it as producing a better product?

Mangalor14• 12 years ago

These may be true, but it misses the point: personal dignity is a worthwhile goal in and of itself.

As a black engineer, seeing this maxim put into words really felt like lifting a weight off my shoulders. It's like, why should we have to "sell" ourselves to the majority in order to maintain a job? It's 2014, not 1914, we should be included regardless.

nailer2• 12 years ago

Do white male twenty somethings generally write about diversity? Every one I've seen who's expressed an opinion asides from 'my opinions don't matter' gets routinely slaughtered regardless of their views.

rodgerd• 12 years ago

I can't imagine why people might feel that the opinions of white men might be well respresented already.

peteretep• 12 years ago

I think it feels genuine, uneditorialized, and a statement of facts, rather than an article trying to further an agenda.

AlexandrB2• 12 years ago

The article has a pretty clear agenda:

I don’t need to change to fit within my industry. My industry needs to change to make everyone feel included and accepted.

Moreover, articles that "don't try to further an agenda" are often furthering and normalizing the status-quo.

coffeemug5• 12 years ago

I know this: I am not my job. I am not my industry or its stereotypes. I am a black woman who happens to work in the tech industry.

Just be a person. If you're a techie, a black woman, a white man, a gay man, etc. you have to start asking "what does it mean to be a techie, a black woman, a white man, a gay man, ...?" Regardless of the label you pick, you'll end up denying your own feelings and impulses to fit in with the category you choose to associate with. Some categories are more comfortable than others, but the more comfortable the category, the more people expect from you, and the more of yourself you ultimately have to deny. You are who you are, and you feel what you feel. Your own truth ought to be enough.

jiaaro• 12 years ago

Easy to say for us straight, white men.

We've all been in situations that are uncomfortable, that's not news. But imagine a time when you suddenly realized you were the only white person in the room, or the only man in the room. That feeling of, "wait... am I not supposed to be here?"

I agree that we ought not to even notice, and I especially agree that we (all humans) shouldn't care. But in real life people do notice, and it's hard not to after someone points it out to you :/

Dewie• 12 years ago

Easy to say for us straight, white men.

Coffeemug is that? Sorry but I couldn't find any racial/sex/sexuality info on his(?) profile.

imanaccount2473• 12 years ago

It is easy to say for me too, and I am neither white nor a man. It is easy to say because it is simple reality.

mahyarm3• 12 years ago

Statistically, there's a pretty good chance he would be asian instead.

It's something like %60 white (which can be as varied as middle eastern, russian, western european immigrant or american, all very different) and %30 asian. Then it's about %4 black and %4 latino.

In the usa, the numbers are around %64 white people, %13 black, %15 hispanic and %5 asian. Most tech companies match the % of whites as the rest of the USA, it's the asian, black and latino numbers that do not match. Blacks and latinos would have to triple and the asians would have to be divided by 7.5 to match the us numbers.

pXMzR2A• 12 years ago

Just be a person.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness_%28race%29_in_...

Also you just argued she has not been a person thus far and that her problems were her fault. Congrats on that.

coffeemug5• 12 years ago

I didn't argue that at all -- that's a very uncharitable interpretation of what I said. Better wording might have been "accept yourself as a person, not as a [INSERT_LABEL_HERE]".

anigbrowl7• 12 years ago

This would be great advice if we didn't live in a world where many people are in the habit of projecting their subconscious assumptions onto others. One minute you're a complex unique individual treading your own distinctive path through the world and thinking your highly individual thoughts, next minute you're trying to deal with some clown who not only insists on expressing an asinine opinion about you but demands that you furnish a response of some sort.

jameshart• 12 years ago

The problem is, you're asking her to choose: techie, black woman, white man or gay man. She's spent a career trying to pass for a 'techie' in a world where everybody wants to assume she's a 'black woman'. In a world where being a 'techie' means wearing t-shirts and jeans, playing FPS's, going out for beers, and basically being a white guy. So yes - she could be a 'techie' - but that means she doesn't get to be a black woman.

Diversity doesn't mean 'we let anybody wear a polo shirt and come along to our beer socials'.

sanderjd2• 12 years ago

I think you may have misunderstood the parent. The suggestion is to not choose a label.

XJOKOLAT• 12 years ago

Powerful and honest piece. Thanks for writing it.

whatyoumean• 12 years ago

Black engineer here. Fresh out of college, I worked as a developer for one year and couldn't take it. Interesting work, competent teammates, but that constant feeling of unbelongingness and "sticking out like a sore thumb" -- I couldn't take it. So I went back to (grad) school. I kept telling friends and family going back to school was a "good career move". I honestly just wanted to restore my sanity.

Thank you so much for writing this, it reflects my experiences perfectly. I can only imagine how additionally difficult it must be for women.

kylewpppd• 12 years ago

I wonder how much of the "sticking out" is self-imposed. At times, I have felt the same way as you and the author have expressed. At others, I think I am making it up. It's stressful to feel like every move is scrutinized because of something I have no control over.

I am tired of the "sticking out" feeling, real or imaginary. So, I started a Meetup group for black engineers. Sometimes, it's really nice to just relax and feel comfortable. No worries about someone attributing my behavior to being black, or judging all black people by something that I've said or done.

Right now, I am hoping to rally folks to come to Philadelphia in 2 weeks for a black hackathon. It's a great way to network and teach. Check out http://www.mbkhack.com/ for more info. If you're in NYC and interested, we will have a pre-meeting before we go. The link is in my profile.

coffeemug5• 12 years ago

White engineer (and startup founder) here. Could you explain what it feels like/what you think causes it in a little bit more detail? I care very deeply about diversity and making everyone feel included in our company, but it's hard to do without having a deep understanding of why people who don't feel included feel that way.

What exactly do people do? Do you feel they make assumptions about what you're like? Or is it that you feel you can't be yourself because if you act the way you feel is natural and still get your work done, people mistakingly perceive you as unprofessional?

For people who are in a position to change work environments and make them more inclusive, what can we do? What changes do you think we could make to accept people from different backgrounds? (I mean actually accept, not just have a friendly slogan that makes everyone self-satisfied, but doesn't actually accomplish anything)

EDIT: the OP mentions obviously sexist/racist comments that border on sexual harassment. Obviously you have to instill the culture of diversity by firing people who do that the moment you overhear them. But what else can we do that might be a little more subtle/less obvious?

dominotw• 12 years ago

At least you were not an only Indian on the team who had to bear the stigma of a 'job stealing immigrant'.

I honestly wonder if people in this day and age care about the color of your skin. Isn't that from like the 60's?

sopooneo• 12 years ago

I sometimes go to new jobs and hear comments so egregious that at first I laugh because I think they are doing a bit and mocking how bad some other people are. Then it turns out to be in earnest. It's staggering. It's like the took the over-the-top videos from diversity training, and even further exaggerated the behavior from the "don't" section.

As a white male I've never had to deal with bigotry with teeth against me, but I like to think I have enough empathy to at least understand it could be tough to feel different. And frankly, I would assume that many of us in tech might have had some awkward teenage years that could help with that mental exercise. But actually, when I see blatantly offensive stuff, I bet it is due to a lack of imagination on the part of the offender. They truly can not believe that what they are doing would make someone feel bad, that it would make them feel bad if the situation were reversed.

Mangalor14• 12 years ago

If you're asking whether racism still exists based on skin color - yes it most certainly does.

yardie• 12 years ago

I honestly wonder if people in this day and age care about the color of your skin.

Yes, some people do. We have a cosmopolitan city of 8mm+ who make it a public policy of stopping and frisking black and hispanic males. Let's not even get started on the US president being 1/2 black and the overt and covert racism that ensued following his election.

emotionalcode• 12 years ago

Woman here. My college had a 4:1 male:female ratio. I got used to it, I suppose, but, I'm only honestly beginning to understand the difficulties I encountered. If an idea cropped up in my head that made me feel as though I had it rough for being female, I squashed it immediately. The last thing I ever would be willing to do was blame something I could not control. I didn't really see the depression I had, as something connected.

I hopped from computer engineering, to electrical engineering, to get a bachelors in Art. I worked cross discipline between Art and CS, to publish academically. I got my masters in CS. I was accepted as a PhD student in CS, but at that point, I was so isolated that I essentially collapsed from stress, overvaluing my work, and undervaluing my health.

I work as a software developer now, in the interim of 'not really knowing what to do with my life', being that I've seen so many facets of where I can go, what I can do, and once again, haven't got the faintest clue aside from a small amount of intuition to guide me in what to do. That, and an obsession with everything related to technology, and enough technical/logical/mathematical books to build a house with.

I don't know so much if it's that my surroundings changed that tempered my feelings, introspections, and feelings of isolation, or the experiences I've been through. I'd say it's easy, but it isn't. I'd say it's hard, but it isn't. I just sort of imagine everyone in life goes through something similar once in a while, even if on the surface, it looks totally different.

vargas84• 12 years ago

I'm a Mexican single father studying CSE in Ohio. I have can honestly say that I have never experienced any substantial form of racism but fatherhood as an undergraduate certainly brings a certain degree of isolation. I'm not complaining - I've been dealt a sweet hand - but it is a fact.

I just wanted to thank you for writing this, your last couple of sentences really resonated with me. If more people understood that everyone has something to deal with, the world would be a better place.

Retric• 12 years ago

I have been the odd man out on some teams and been part of the collective for others. The third option of diverse teams seems more inclusive on the surface.

EX: Current team has 2 black females one from the US the other from Africa, 2 Indian females from India, 1 Indian male from India, 2 white males born in the US, 2 Asian males one born in the US another born outside. Team lead is american born Asian. We are managed by a black female, who's boss is a white female, who's boss is a black male.

However, in my experience rather than have more people fit in you end up with everyone feeling like they don't fit in for a long period of time.

PS: Ok, there is the default 'can speak English clearly' group. But culture goes beyond language.

wavefunction• 12 years ago

Great post but you can use whose instead of who's

"who's" is a contraction of "who is" while "whose" shows possession. Not trying to be a language pedant but my parents are both English instructors and I can't help it!

zenciadam• 12 years ago

A lot of it has to do with two generations of well meaning social engineering in our schools and workplaces to constantly acknowledge and celebrate diversity. But doing this entails never forgetting and never really feeling truly comfortable.

Every time there's a team member from some under-represented group, there is a tendency to think of it as living in some kind of "diverse workplace" stock photo instead of just getting stuff done.

nine_k• 12 years ago

This is indeed sad. "Including" different people by constantly paying attention to their differences does not look productive to me.

See, e.g. green-eyed developers (a smaller minority in the world than many others) aren't celebrated; nobody cares what the color of your eyes is. If you paid attention to it, you'd get blank stares from colleagues: "what?"

When this begins to apply to people of different ethnic origins, we will have achieved equality.

rayiner• 12 years ago

Social engineering doesn't create the discomfort, it's intrinsic.

I grew up in northern Virginia in the early 1990's. The town, which is quite cosmopolitan today, was almost totally white and rather conservative at the time. The "social engineering" and relative liberalism of northern Virginia wouldn't arrive for several years yet. I distinctly remember one day in first or second grade being asked to draw a picture of my family. I didn't color in the faces because I didn't want to use the brown crayon for that when everyone else was using the cream-colored crayon. Nobody told me that brown was bad or anything silly like that--it was just obvious even as a small child that looking different than the people around you was significant.

nether• 12 years ago

I feel similarly I think as an asian mechanical engineer among a group of whites. On my first day, I was subjected to an excruciating conversation with one of them telling me about how he saw a movie "about asians." Yeah, I watched a tv show about whites too. Portlandia. Ugh I'm not a race. I'm a rock climber, long distance cyclist who likes to cook indian food, and read Tolstoy in a messy room. I drive a pickup truck that get shitty mileage but I can sleep in the back.

jgroszko• 12 years ago

This is probably the most genuine perspective I've read around women and black people in tech. It is refreshing to read actual experiences and views without general vagaries. I can only hope that as a white male twentysomething I'm not contributing to these hostile environments.

As a gay man her self-actualization at the end reminded me of my own coming out in high school and college. It sucks that some people have such a hard time coming to a place of self confidence like this, and I suspect some people who never experience this otherness never have the identity crisis that leads to it. It's certainly a diffult but interesting and ultimately rewarding experience having to think critically about your own identity.

mrottenkolber3• 12 years ago

It sucks that some people have such a hard time coming to a place of self confidence like this

This. I never fit in anywhere, not because of color, gender or anything substantial really. I am just crazy stubborn and have a weird set of interests and world views. It never was a problem for me because I didn't even consider adapting. It was always an active and conscious choice to choose my own persona freely.

I think the world would be a better place if everyone had a self-confidence boost. In our big organized world everybody feels so small and tends to treat himself poorly, which leads to them treating others poorly who then again feel smaller.

nemothekid2• 12 years ago

He’d say things like “Did you get that bruise from your boyfriend beating you?” or “I bet your parents abused you as a child.”

Really don't know what to say about this quote. I can understand not being able to fit in to a homogenous culture, but this guy is just an asshole.

sunir2• 12 years ago

The reason this perpetuates is because there is no way to win. Crush this person on legal grounds (good luck if your HR department defends the company and not you) no one will trust you again on your team. Let it ride to go along and get along, you may suffer the reputation of taking it and also have these attacks used to undermine you on the corporate ladder.

Brutal and disgusting.

Shivetya• 12 years ago

the sadder part, I have seen minority managers pick on other minorities and make comments that would never fly if from a non-minority. as one friend told me, who is going to believe him, let alone care.

nemothekid2• 12 years ago

This shouldn't be about winning some battle. It's not illegal to be an asshole - I can walk into your workplace and say "sunir's spouse is a complete idiot and shouldn't be allowed to reproduce." Likely though, I wouldn't be working there much longer. Simply put the guy is toxic and it makes me sick that it was swept under the rug. It further confuses that this happened at Google as I'd never imagined their culture tolerating a toxic work environment. Even worse if it was swept under the rug because she was a black woman.

imanaccount2473• 12 years ago

good luck if your HR department defends the company and not you

What do you mean "if"? That is what HR is for, defending the company. They do not exist for your benefit.

spydum3• 12 years ago

Worst is the incompetent manager who failed to address it. Very likely both the manager and offensive employee still are there. People don't realize that their resistance to rock the boat prolong the suffering of others who will come along later.

incision2• 12 years ago

"I can understand not being able to fit in to a homogenous culture, but this guy is just an asshole."

Clearly.

Problem is, in my experience...

1.) No one wants to get involved.

2.) It's easier to be accommodating of assholes when they're directing their behavior at someone who isn't "one of you" on some level or another.

3.) It's easier to be accommodating of an asshole who also happens to be a "great engineer", "would do anything for a friend" or has their childish nonsense rationalized as "lacking people skills".

I'd wager someone, likely many people in that situation knew exactly what was going on yet did nothing for one or more of the above reasons.

As a group we just need to recognize that those people among us, our friends and coworkers who are shitty to the loner on the team or rude to the cleaning lady, but wonderful to their peers - they're assholes and deserve to be held to account for it.

Mangalor14• 12 years ago

This is where HR should be available to act as a third party, but sadly that's not the real function of HR in most companies.

neolefty• 12 years ago

I agree, and I wonder in practical terms what I could do. I agree that it's everyone's responsibility. Here are the options I see:

1. Talk to the asshole. Fits well with the ideal "take care of it yourself" ethic, but in most cases, I don't think this will go well. Fights, defensiveness, turf, escalation, etc. Works well when asshole is not actually an ass, just ignorant.

2. Talk to HR. Seems snitchy, but it can have real results, since HR often has levers to pull here.

3. Talk to a manager (theirs or yours). Ditto.

My experience is that when you're in an organization, as much as I'd like to "take care of it myself" by talking directly to the culprit, usually talking to superiors / HR is the way to go.

That requires that the HR & management can handle it of course. In most cases I've seen, they know what to do. In a few, they didn't -- and that was indicative of a company that was doomed.

smm2000• 12 years ago

I am from Russia and at every party somebody will ask me if I drink Vodka or if I drink Vodka for breakfast or some other bullshit. When it's cold outside, somebody will say that I should not feel cold because I am from Russia like it gives some kind of immunity to cold. People do not understand that some jokes are not funny if repeated 50 times.

I do not feel oppressed or not belonging though.

megablast2• 12 years ago

Hardly the same thing. As an aussie I get asked if I used to ride a Kangaroo to school. This is not the same thing at all.

diziet• 12 years ago

I've heard these exact jokes time and time again. I know I should be bothered by them but like you, I do not feel oppressed, just annoyed.

forgottenpass• 12 years ago

People do not understand that some jokes are not funny if repeated 50 times.

The proper response to these jokes is "I've never heard that one before."

diversewhat2• 12 years ago

I work as a consultant and am at a different company more or less every week, as a result i've made a couple of observations.

As a temp/contractor, its hard to get to know people in an organisation when they know you'll only be there for a week, you might have lunch with the team one or two days, but for the most part, you'll spend a lot of your time on your own.

In larger companies (I primarily work in IT environments) that are more diverse (in Australia anyway), ethnic groups stick together and speak in their native tongues. I've sat and watched a group of Indian guys/girls chat in hindi in a circle over lunch, a bunch of Chinese guys sit and chat in Mandarin while a table full of Japanese people do the same a few meters away and the two white guys (who I don't know/haven't been introduced to) sit and don't talk. What's more, no-one interacted with anyone else at all outside of their little groups.

I personally find that really bizarre and I wish i could change it somehow but as i'm not even involved with the organisation other than as a contractor, its quite removed from my role.

seanmcdirmid6• 12 years ago

Strange: when I visited our office in Bangalore, I saw most people talking in English at lunch since India has so many languages and you aren't likely interacting with someone from your part of India (most Indians don't speak Hindi).

diversewhat2• 12 years ago

Might just be a cultural thing in Australia. Really not sure. That being said, in smaller office environments, the opposite is true i've found, everyone is very accepting and quite diverse both in gender and race without any cliques forming.

redbaron32• 12 years ago

It is a good personal account. I do not know where and how the parameters will change for the next generation, or indeed for the author.

lerno• 12 years ago

I wonder what's really best / possible. Most teams / companies start up homogeneous to some extent. Also, there is plenty of conflicts possible even in a homogeneous team - it's just more clear that assholes are assholes and not just begaving like that because they're racists, homophobes etc.

On the other hand, they often go hand in hand, it's just that the racist will direct his aggressions against someone looking different from themselves if possible (but they're happy to select a random victim if they can't find one)

peterwwillis• 12 years ago

First of all, thank you to this person who wrote this, this story needs to be told more often.

"I know this: I am not my job. I am not my industry or its stereotypes. I am a black woman who happens to work in the tech industry. I don’t need to change to fit within my industry. My industry needs to change to make everyone feel included and accepted."

Two things i'd say about these points:

1. You don't need to change to fit within your industry, but you do need to be proactive about protecting yourself, your rights, your individuality, etc. You can not expect anyone else to fight for you. Of course your company and its employees should treat your fairly and with respect, but you should never just expect it: you should demand it. And that applies to everyone.

2. No industry will ever make everyone feel included and accepted. Even when there's a perfect racial/gender harmony, or hell, even if it was just all white males! There's still plenty of people left over who feel like they're not being included or accepted. Our industry should work to foster tolerance, acceptance, equality and respect for all people, but they're never going to make everyone feel like they fit in.

pessimizer2• 12 years ago

You don't need to change to fit within your industry, but you do need to be proactive about protecting yourself, your rights, your individuality, etc. You can not expect anyone else to fight for you. Of course your company and its employees should treat your fairly and with respect, but you should never just expect it: you should demand it

I'm not sure that you're appreciating the amount of energy that takes, year after year, and the level of hypervigilance and anxiety that entails, for an indefinite duration. That's largely what the blog is talking about, to me.

All of that energy expended just because of what you are. This is before you tackle the problem that everyone has to go through - asserting who you are.

cyphunk4• 12 years ago

White male engineer here. The isolation described by the author is felt by many, myself included. Obviously the issue is not a problem with my race or sex but one still closely tied to a lack of diversity in these environments. I don't see how any company can claim to be building any component of our future when its environment can scarcely represent some semblance of actual society. The IT industry has a serious "bro problem". A problem felt perhaps most vividly by the minority groups in this industry but also felt, though in a manner that may be harder to describe and even harder to justify, by many of the majority group. I doubt anyone here would want to live in a city that is 80% white male, much less have it build our future societies.

sliverstorm3• 12 years ago

What is interesting to me is the author describes feeling most at home when surrounded not by diversity, but by those like her. That's the same reason these companies wind up so homogenous in the first place.

I can't help but wonder if, assuming this is what makes everybody most comfortable (being surrounded by people like them, rather than being surrounded by diversity), the quest for diversity might simply result in cultural balkanization within companies as cultural/racial/gender/social groups coalesce (thanks to that preference)

That very thing already happens at my employer, with regards to age. The company has a diverse selection of age, and the result is fairly strong social siloing by age.

cyphunk4• 12 years ago

I understand your point. But I don't think the author was arguing just for a different form of homeogeny. But regardless, even if that were the case one has to put themselves in the authors shoes. [Statement A] Having lived in environments where I was the minority I then find it refreshing to be in the majority at times. When I then discuss the issues I find with the homeogenic environment I find myself in you could read Statement A as being an indication I want a different form of homeogeny or as a valid critique of the environment I'm discussing.

Regardless of the authors own desires the situation of the demographic bias that is clearly indisputable in the IT industry warrants her statements be considered on the grounds of the words without subjecting hidden intent. And those words are criticism of this IT homeogeny.

I also agree that your question of cultural balkanisation is interesting. But I don't think the IT industry in particular ever has to worry about this except when it comes to the balkanisation it already creates by dejecting minorities of race and sex, but also in dejecting members of the majority that simply find this environment offers too little culturally to bother with.

imanaccount2473• 12 years ago

This is exactly it. She keeps saying diversity, but what she describes feeling comfortable with is a homogenous environment, just of people she identifies with. She didn't like Oakland because it was diverse, she liked the black part of Oakland because it was full of black people.

dasmithii• 12 years ago

When reading this post, I almost expected the writer to turn things around and make a realization of this sort. No hard feelings on my part though - just a sense of anticipation at work.

snoman• 12 years ago

White male engineer here as well, that also identifies with what the OP is saying. When a number of people from all differentiating groups all identify in the same, or similar ways, I don't see how people can continue to call it an issue of diversity.

It appears to me that some people are just not good at making friends (myself included), and it doesn't surprise me that the IT industry has an abundance of people with that difficulty.

stcredzero21• 12 years ago

Obviously the issue is not a problem with my race or sex but one still closely tied to a lack of diversity in these environments.

I don't think that the problem is so much of a lack of diversity, as it is a lack of awareness of group dynamics. It's far too simpleminded to just wish that diversity will solve our social problems. It could help, but it could just as well create a situation that makes things worse.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/lt/the_robbers_cave_experiment/

The same unconscious behaviors that make power so seductive and corrupting are the same unconscious processes that causes us to "outgroup" people who are different. Resisting such group psychology is at about the same level of difficulty as overcoming our cravings for sugar.

I could liken our current culture's level of (in)competence with group psychology with the culture's general level of cluelessness when first confronted with distilled alcohols or when dealing with trespassing laws after the advent of airplanes. After 1000's of years where levels of individual power and affluence were constrained by geography and group membership, we have been thrown with exponentially increasing velocity into an era where personal mobility and communications power are creating opportunities for people of different groups to interact. We've gone from mostly stratified to our current highly dynamic state of society in just a few hundred years. Yet we're still largely using "mental furnishings" from our jingoistic and stratified past -- to the point where a lot of dialogue concerning issues of ethnicity, culture, gender, and minority status consists of hostility, distrust, and more typical "mindless jingoism" produced by those same group psychologies.

What's more, I'm not entirely sure that the culture as a whole is capable of dealing with the kind of meta-level thinking it would take to become competently aware of our own group psychology.

AnimalMuppet4• 12 years ago

This may reflect something I experienced. I grew up in Salt Lake City. I'm not Mormon. In high school, I felt very isolated. I felt like all the social activities centered on the Mormon church, and that I was an outsider because of that.

Twenty or thirty years later, I started to realize: Maybe it was just because I was a nerd. I was small, short, socially awkward, geeky - the usual. It didn't take people rejecting me for me to feel like an outcast.

But the article said there were also racist and sexist jokes. That's an additional source of feeling isolated that the white males (me included) don't have to put up with - and which nobody should have to put up with, ever.

lotharbot2• 12 years ago

it probably wasn't just because you were a nerd. Utah is incredibly isolating to many non-Mormons.

rimantas4• 12 years ago

Please, tell, what jokes are acceptable? That's a very serious question. You cannot joke about gender or race, ok, fair enough. The I guess you cannot joke about nationality as well. Same goes for physical traits or occupation. Same goes for the marital status. Well I guess better not to joke about the humans at all. What's left? Animals? Better not, PETA may be all over you. Let's play it safely and joke about rocks.

And before you are outraged how dare I compare such serious problems as racism and sexism with some trivialities ask yourself: isn't it racist or sexist not to compare them? You say black person has more right to be offended by the joke about black people than some poor white bachelor by the joke about bachelors?

Sadly it seems that the concept of joke is being lost. You can hardly convince anyone that it is possible to tell all kinds of not PC jokes without being racist, sexist, homophobic. Heck the joke itself may be the joke ridiculing racism, sexism, etc. Alas, the finer points will be lost for sure.

We are losing personal responsibility and personal ethics. It's being replaced by pattern recognition and very crude pattern recognition, mostly with stupid regexp matching single words and not being able to see the context at all. _if (match_found) then self.offended = true_

FiatLuxDave• 12 years ago

I'm a Non-mormon nerd who grew up in SLC, too. I felt the same way, with kids asking me which ward I attended, etc. I've wondered how much of it was from group differences and how much was from personality differences. It may be telling that none of my friends were Mormon (except for one whose parents were Jack-Mormon). There was definitely a sense of exclusion when I lived there, at least on the part of the kids.

Living in Florida now, where LDS are a small minority who are perceived as wholesome, friendly, peaceful, quaint, and somewhat like a more modern version of the Amish. People laugh when I tell them I was beaten up by groups of Mormon children. Being a minority of any type is tough.

BTW, if you lived in the Aves, or attended Horizons or EQUIP in the '80s, I might have known you. There couldn't have been more than a few hundred non-Mormon nerds in the valley, I think.

rimantas4• 12 years ago

  > I don't see how any company can claim to be building any
  > component of our future when its environment can scarcely
  > represent some semblance of actual society.

And I don't see how that's relevant at all. It's the same as saying that "I don't see how agriculture can feed our society when farmers can scarcely represent some semblance of actual society".

As long as you are actively seeking diversity you won't have diversity. The true diversity comes when it no longer matters.

TheMagicHorsey• 12 years ago

Do Indians have similar negative experiences working in predominantly white IT teams? I have many Indian friends that work in all-white teams, in middle America, as well as in the Bay Area. Are they keeping their complaints bottled up, or do they have a fundamentally different experience?

brandonmenc• 12 years ago

Indians don't have the baggage of having been slaves, then poor and disenfranchised, in this country. They're judged by whites in a completely different way because of it.

dragonwriter• 12 years ago

Also important, they judge and approach the white-dominated general society differently because of it.

treehau5• 12 years ago

But they do have that baggage from their own country. The feeling of disenfranchisement is universal, and it doesn't matter where it comes from.

rimantas4• 12 years ago

Sorry, how many former slaves are now in IT?

boynamedsue• 12 years ago

I don't think Indians, for the most part, feel a need to fit in at work.

The Black experience in America is different. Being brought to America under the auspice of slavery has created a perverse assimilation issue for American Black folks.

Indians have come to the US for work, education, better lives, etc. That sets a wholly different tone.

guelo• 12 years ago

On the Oakland thing, I wish white people were still afraid of coming here. It was the best kept secret in the bay area for a long time.

seanflyon4• 12 years ago

Could you unpack your thinking a bit more? I assume that as a minority you like having a place where you are the majority?

rconti• 12 years ago

jmorphy88• 12 years ago

I wish [racial group x] were still afraid of coming here. It was the best kept secret in the bay area for a long time.

Solve for x.

xienze• 12 years ago

Nah it's cool because OP was talking about white people.

pcunite• 12 years ago

In the eighties my parents moved to an all-black neighborhood in an apartment complex. I felt like such an outsider and scared. I got into fights (full on punching). I was between 6-7 years old and actually wanted to be black because they did not have to get a tan like I did!

But I was starting to build a dislike for them. Thankfully my mom set me straight. She let me know that when groups of the same people get together they have trouble with someone who is different. We were the minority. My mom never allowed me to be racist. I thank her so much for that.

A world with all women in charge would be abusing men. A world with all purple people in charge would be abusing whites. A world with 50% on one side and 50% on the other ... would be a world in constant conflict. Humanity is not (as you might have been told) "basically good".

The source of racism, anger, war ... is people.

q845712• 12 years ago

i believe there's goodness in everybody- part of the challenge is structuring your own words+actions in a way that affords them a response that contains some measure of kindness or compassion. This is what the author of the post was doing by prioritizing getting along with her team; of course another part of the challenge is allowing others to be what they will be without being a doormat or adding to your own suffering. Super great that OP was able to recognize and commit to her own happiness.

I mean we all fail, again and again, but that doesn't mean most of us don't want to be "basically good", or are incapable of being "basically good" at each moment.

AnimalMuppet4• 12 years ago

How about I split the difference?

"All people have good in them." OK. I can accept that as a true statement.

"The source of racism, anger, war ... is people." Also true. One might even say "All people have bad/evil in them."

"Basically good"? I can't go that far. I mean, do you watch the news much? There's a fair number of "not basically good" people.

Worse: I am not immune to being one of the "not basically good" people.

seanmcdirmid6• 12 years ago

As a white male, I have my own related experience to share: I'm the only foreigner on my team that is otherwise completely Chinese (in China, so that makes sense); my whole lab has maybe a handful of foreigners, who, even though not homogeneous in the least, are at least bound together by our foreign-ness.

We generally feel a lack of belonging; some of us try to fit in and are successful at it, but some of us just live with it. Our management team really does try to help out, but there is also some pressure to participate in lab-wide activities that leads to tension (e.g. no, I don't really want to sing, dance at the gala this year). While working, side conversations are often in Chinese (I speak Chinese better than most of us, but still not enough to participate very well), and there are all sorts of comical culture shock experiences even after being here for 7 years. And really, what can be expected when the workplace is 90%+ one way? I think our lab handles it as best as it can.

Here is the twist: there is no pressure to assimilate because well, I could never be Chinese. But back in the states (or even Europe), I don't feel like I really fit in either despite matching the ethnic and gender standard. There is not much to match me to my colleagues, and there is a lot of pressure to assimilate since at first glance, I should be able to.

kaitai4• 12 years ago

I think this is really interesting: a lack of pressure to assimilate or conform because you never could belong anyway. Do you think this affects your ability to move forward in the company, if that's something you want?

Even though you don't feel you fit in in the US, do you ever feel relief at just not getting attention for being different?

seanmcdirmid6• 12 years ago

I only care about my research and not climbing the ladder. My hope is that my research will be great enough that I won't have to conform to climb the ladder, but that is a gamble.

Even though you don't feel you fit in in the US, do you ever feel relief at just not getting attention for being different?

I've never really had that feeling before; I never get into the situation where I feel like I'm with "my own people."

jnem• 12 years ago

I can relate. I'm one of three non-Chinese employees in a Chinese-owned company in California. Like your office, my coworkers converse predominantly in Chinese. I take no offense to this whatsoever, and in fact have begun taking Mandarin courses so I can better understand my coworkers.

I'll admit there is a small part of me that gets slightly irritated every time we go through a hiring cycle and everyone who shows up for the interviews is Mandarin speaking Chinese-- because it cant be that only Chinese people are applying for these jobs; the odds don't favor it.

That said, I love my job, I get along with everyone at work, and actually feel like its a great opportunity to learn about another culture up close without having to travel across the world like the parent poster.

I guess the point is anyone (white, black, asian, etc.) can be culturally isolated in any country or company. Some people have an easier time assimilating, and other still don't ever feel the need to assimilate.

It makes me wonder if there is something unique about "white" culture that causes "others" to feel more isolated than when the reverse scenario is true. I've never worked for a man, and have never worked for a white guy, yet I'm a white guy myself. Beyond the slight irritation i mentioned above about hiring, its never bother me a bit.

mc32• 12 years ago

I'll admit there is a small part of me that gets slightly irritated every time we go through a hiring cycle and everyone who shows up for the interviews is Mandarin speaking Chinese

It depends, some of those firms offer comparatively low salaries to Americans and can positively exploit their own people (same ethnicity as company founders).

So at least for some companies with HQs in CN or TW, it's not surprising that you'd see few Americans --of those you see some are resurrecting their careers --so they'll take the cut.

yummyfajitas9• 12 years ago

Conversely, you may simply feel "isolated" all the time and not realize it.

The author of this article describes a sense of collectivism when she moved to Oakland. For whatever reason, she views black people as more "like her" than others and enjoys the resulting tribalist feelings. Take that away and she feels something is missing.

I too am the odd man out - obvious foreigner in India. I do not get to enjoy feelings of tribalism. But I don't feel different than in the us - stick me in a room full of lower middle class Americans and I'm still not enjoying any particular sense of belonging. They aren't "my people", they are just people. I never get to enjoy these positive feelings of tribalism.

mahyarm3• 12 years ago

But with this case, you have a large linguistic barrier that goes both ways. The experience is only partially simulated compared the article author's experience, because she did not have any linguistic barriers.

I experienced the 1st generation chinese/russian linguistic barrier myself too. I think the big reason why is because there is an engineer shortage, or science grad student 'shortage', so many candidates are going to come from their social networks, which are probably mostly russian or chinese. They themselves don't feel comfortable with the external language and culture, so they associate with people they feel more comfortable speaking with and it self perpetuates. It only goes away when their children are born in the next generation, or they are isolated enough that they are forced to integrate.

earless13• 12 years ago

I am a black (Haitian and Dominican decent) 26-year-old male DevOps Engineer living in Atlanta and I can totally understand where she is coming from. I always try to not think much of it, but somehow there is definitely this feeling that I don't belong. I could never put my finger on exactly what it is because I do get along great with my co-workers and have never seen my race as a hindrance. I just feel like there is no room for the real me, so all my co-workers get is the side of me I want them to see which is the EDM loving, Linux ninja that I'm expected to be.

It is feels even worse when I go to a tech conference like the upcoming AWS re:Invent because I'm usually the only black guy around, but I still participate as much as possible and even placed in last year’s hackathon.

I hope I don't come off as whiny because I still very much love what I do and would not trade it for the world. I have met and worked with some awesome people over the years and have learned so much. Sorry for the mini-rant, I just wanted to give some of my perspective on the matter

pnathan2• 12 years ago

Quite honestly, if you don't mind sharing, what's the delta between the real you and the expected you?

(Also, how would you characterize 'expected you' as being different from a 'professional you' that we all live with the pressure of in the work world?)

earless13• 12 years ago

I am not even sure how to properly describe it. My friends who know the real me know that I am more of an in your face kind of person, not in a bad or menacing way but in a way that may make some co-workers uncomfortable.

I like to have spirited debates with friends, which from the outside might look like arguing or some sort of confrontation. When dealing with co-workers or people that I am not very close with I do my best to tone down my personality.

I am not a small guy and certain people I've come across have even confided in me that they were for some reason intimidated by me when they first meet me. I don't think that would be the case if I were not black. not really sure what that's about

Even little things like the type of music I am willing to admit I enjoy are different between peer groups.

not sure if that answers your question but that kind of sums it up

sysk• 12 years ago

I'm a 20-something white male and feel exactly the same. Maybe it's just a personality trait? Do you think it's possible that the feeling you don't belong is not related to your skin colour? I'm asking genuinely, not rhetorically.

spydum3• 12 years ago

what can we do to help? If the answer is hiring more diverse employees for the sake of their ethnicity/cultural backgrounds, we need to accept that it involves a compromise. You no longer are opting to choose based on cost/performance of the employee. are we seriously okay with this? Isn't that demoralizing to the new hire? Now every moment, they are wondering if they got hired because of who their parents are, versus whether they earned it or not.

Perhaps the real problem is not the corporate culture not catering to the employees, but the employees needing to mature a bit and learn to be comfortable with themselves regardless of social pressures. You will not always fit in culturally with your coworkers. That is just life. If you prioritize this in your own life, that is great and good for you! That is your choice about who you choose to work for (and where).

However, in the article, as I stated elsewhere, the poor management and lack of HR follow up is horrendously unacceptable. Nobody should tolerate harassment at any level.

owenmarshall5• 12 years ago

You no longer are opting to choose based on cost/performance of the employee. are we seriously okay with this? Isn't that demoralizing to the new hire? Now every moment, they are wondering if they got hired because of who their parents are, versus whether they earned it or not.

If you're a white male who is honest with himself, you'll understand that being a white male carries with it a set of privileges.

Just consider: a white child is significantly more likely to go to a school with experienced teachers than a black child, more likely to take honors classes in high school, more likely to get into a good university, and when they graduate, are more likely to get job offers based on nothing more than their white male name[1].

Let's not fool ourselves: humans are not the coldly rational actors we like to think. Ignore the fact that I've already got a leg up on networking because my (white male) peers work the jobs I want to work. When it's time for me to go in for an interview for a software engineering position the odds are overwhelmingly high that every person who interviews me, from the team interview up to senior management, will look a lot like me. That goes a long way in me getting the job - our monkey brains are pretty well wired to look at someone that looks like ourself and think "yeah, he's a competent, trustworthy individual!"

So yeah, I don't think anyone's actually hired in the cold cost/benefit analysis you talk about. There's lots of chances for significant bias to creep in. In reality, if people were hired solely based on the criteria you talk about, and race/gender/... were not considered, I bet we'd see more diverse workforces than we have now.

If someone can figure out how to set up a blinded interview that would be interesting.

[1] http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873.pdf

kofejnik• 12 years ago

As a white Eastern European male in a US university, I had a privilege of paying out-of-state tuition out of my pocket (which was about 8x the in-state amount), while being denied most forms of aid and not allowed to work. And I had to take classes about how privileged I am! Didn't feel very privileged. Could it be that the concept is flawed?

anigbrowl7• 12 years ago

cost/performance of the employee

I wonder how good people really are at measuring the latter. In some jobs such as sales, you can get a pretty good approximation - although it's still hard to measure which sales persons build lasting accounts vs. which ones overpromise and then dump the cost of unmet expectations onto technical support or account maintenance people. (Edit: obviously you can measure it in a lot of repetitive type jobs like facotry works etc., but that doesn't seem appropriate for this context.)

It's even trickier in environments like technology. Twitter's a huge company, but how do you measure the productivity of their employees? The stock price is down on what it IPOed for, user acquisition growth has slowed and the firm has never made a profit, so should we conclude that the average Twitter employee has negative productivity? Obviously not, that would be a highly misleading generalization - but it's no more foolish than some of the generalizations I've seen offered to justify executive compensation or equity allocation at some companies.

Economically we'd like to maximize the return on capital invested in hiring someone, but if we don't have a way to measure that objectively then 'performance' can end up as just a bullshit story to rationalize essentially arbitrary management hiring decisions of the staff who fall within 1 or 2 standard deviations of the norm (excluding the infrequent brilliant or burnout employees).

seanflyon4• 12 years ago

You no longer are opting to choose based on cost/performance of the employee

If performance is actually better with a diverse team then preferring diversity in the hiring process is based on cost/benefit.

whether they earned it or not

Businesses don't care if you "earned it" they care about cost/performance. My parents are both quite intelligent and up until high school I learned more from them than I did from school. If I had less awesome parents I would have a significantly harder time finding a job. It's not fair, but it does not demoralize me.

spydum3• 12 years ago

So I cannot say I have personally reviewed the studies on diversity improving outcomes, but I have a suspicion that it applies only when all other things are equal (as in talent/skills/performance were all as equivalent as they could be vs the non diverse comparison). My point is there is hardly ever a scenario where you are presented with >1 candidates which have equivalent skills and some happen to be diverse.

Someone else made the point though, that we probably suck as determining level of skill/performance anyways? I can personally attest to that, and maybe based solely on that fact, hiring for diversity might be a winning strategy, I simply don't know. I know I am terrible at judging others skill/performance during an interview, and am striving to improve it.

crazy1van• 12 years ago

You no longer are opting to choose based on cost/performance of the employee. are we seriously okay with this?

I think this is a fair question. If diversity is weighted non-zero for hiring, it means some other factor's weight in the hiring decision was reduced. Maybe that's a completely fine trade-off, but it does exist.

InclinedPlane2• 12 years ago

This rests on the assumption that hiring and interviewing is meritocratic. It's not, it's a hugely flawed system. And in the valley there is a HUGE preference towards "fit". So much so that some companies even prioritize "fit" as a primary hiring criterion.

That is a major part of the problem. The solution isn't to start prioritizing "diversity" when hiring folks, the solution is to avoid hiring just within your narrow comfort zone of people who are like you. And that includes people with different life experiences, educational backgrounds, etc. as well as people with different cultural backgrounds and ethnicities. Mostly that's just a matter of becoming a better, less biased, more objective interviewer.

Another factor is acceptance and prejudice. Keep your own prejudices in check and police other folks. When you see or hear of instances of people being insensitive or of excluding someone based on their cultural or other differences, act on it, and help fix it. If you want women to be part of your team, then maybe don't consider having a meeting at a strip club. You'd think that sort of thing is a no brainer, but especially in the SV world full of man children who have discovered there are no rules other than the ones they impose on themselves, it can be a bit of a problem.

yummyfajitas9• 12 years ago

Suppose we adopt a more meritocratic system - base hiring decisions mostly on code tests, github accounts, and similar things that are almost entirely based on performance.

(I mostly do this already. When I do a 1 hour interview, I have a ladder of 4 standard questions I ask, followed 1 question about a topic on the person's resume that I understand well. Just to see if they really know what they claim to know.)

Would you be happy with such a process? Note that most SJWs (at least, the pro-female SJWs, who rarely discuss race) tend to oppose this sort of process on the grounds that it will result in fewer women.

aperrien• 12 years ago

You can help by attempting to break your coworkers of bad habits. There's enough to joke at about the nature of code and system administration that they don't need to joke about ethnicity and sexism, too.

gaius• 12 years ago

It does matter how many blacks, whites, women, men, gays or straights you hire, if they are all 20-something graduates of the same 10 CS programmes, you have not achieved any meaningful sort of diversity.

sarciszewski2• 12 years ago

Thanks for writing this. I'm sorry you had to go through all that and will try (despite cognitive biases being hard to self-correct) to never contribute to anyone experiencing the same sort of behavior.

And that's really all I can offer without risking dishonesty.

incision2• 12 years ago

"I feel like there isn’t anyone who can identify with my story, so I don’t tell it."

I absolutely identify.

I've experienced a lot of this, but I'm a man as well as forthright and according to some - intimidating.

Thing is, I expect those things carry their own challenges - being rejected outright rather than given the opportunity to suck it up.

wyager2• 12 years ago

I don’t need to change to fit within my industry. My industry needs to change to make everyone feel included and accepted

Well hold on a second. I don't agree that, when someone feels bad about something, it's everyone else's fault/responsibility. I and many others have felt excluded and/or different at times; the ideal response is to address those feelings yourself, not to blame other people.

3minus1• 12 years ago

It's not just her; there are many other minorities that can relate. It's not just her feelings; she's also talking about harassment and being denied opportunities.When you tell someone to keep their complaints to themselves you are actively perpetuating/enforcing the status quo. I don't know if that was your intent but you should be aware of how you come across.

wyager2• 12 years ago

When you tell someone to keep their complaints to themselves

I'm not telling anyone this. I'm saying that feeling excluded is, in this case, a personal problem, not an everyone else problem, particularly when the author admits that the only reason she feels excluded is because her co-workers don't conform to her preferred racial and social characteristics. I (and I think most people) have been in the minority before; the important thing is to accept that not everyone else behaves exactly as you do. Trying to impose your preferences on everyone else is not the fair approach.

facepalm3• 12 years ago

I sense a problem in that she actually "belongs" to a minority - meaning how can she expect not to be a minority at work? Or at least, why blame the workplace? If it bothers her, maybe the only option really is to move to a place with different demographics?

Edit: thanks for the downvote. My question is serious. Since she is part of a minority, even in a perfectly diverse workplace she will still be in the minority. Hence the diversity movement won't fix her problem. (Just looked it up: "Blacks and African Americans" are 13.5% of the US population. So in a SCRUM team of "normal" diversity she will be the only Black woman. According to Wikipedia, a SCRUM development team consists of 3-9 individuals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28software_development%...).

sarciszewski2• 12 years ago

I don't have enough karma to downvote, but I can wager a guess as to why the person who clicked that arrow did so:

Your post, as it is worded, can be misconstrued to sound like otherism. "You'll always be different, minority!" And you prefaced it with "I sense a problem in that..." so it can be read as blaming her for what race and gender she was born as.

Or I'm totally off-base. But since the person(s) who downvoted didn't comment, I guess we'll never know.

facepalm3• 12 years ago

Thanks - that is of course not at all what I meant. I actually checked her article to see which word she used (which is minority) because I am not sure what is correct in the US. I meant minority strictly in a mathematical sense.

shkkmo2• 12 years ago

The author isn't asking for a place where she isn't a minority. The author is asking for a place were there isn't additional pressure on her to conform because she is a minority in a cliquish or racist work environment.

"After The Home Depot, I took a position at a lottery/parimutuel company. I returned to being the only black woman, but the team there wasn’t very close knit so everybody did their own thing, did their job, and went home."

Most of the places she has worked/lived as a minority have been cliquish and/or racist. It makes sense that to avoid that she's been happy in places where she is not a minority.

However, the problem that needs to be fixed is not the existence of minorities, the problem is the culture around how we treat those minorities. The kind of culture that leads to her being transferred to protect her overtly racist co-worker. The kind of culture that does this: "I remember asking if we could do other outings that didn’t include beer and getting voted down." The kind of culture where she is "mistaken for an administrative assistant more than once. I have been asked if I was physical security (despite security wearing very distinctive uniforms)."

I suspect you were down voted because you assumed that "The other side of diversity" was saying that more diversity was needed. The article is clearly about how more than just diversity is needed.

"I don’t need to change to fit within my industry. My industry needs to change to make everyone feel included and accepted."

stcredzero21• 12 years ago

What my moving to the Bay Area has solidified for me, is that we as a culture do not know how to deal with group psychology.

Really, it's no wonder, because the mechanisms of group cohesion and ingroup/outgroup distinction have probably been with us even longer than language has. Furthermore, practically every form of human organization uses those mechanisms for group solidarity. As a result, we are as ill equipped to deal with the consequences of group psychology as ancient greek philosophers were at dealing with aerodynamics. Because no human culture yet has the proper "mental furnishings" to effectively deal with such phenomena, the best that most people currently manage is to point out examples of everyone else's groupthink while being largely blind to our own.

The way that group membership and identification distorts thought is essentially "bought into" by our language and our culture, to the point that even our attempts at dispassionate academic examinations of the phenomenon are colored by the same phenomena.

http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/social-psyc...

I would like to thank EricaJoy for writing about such experiences so clearly.

sosuke4• 12 years ago

Just read through the thread again and I really enjoyed your comments. I just wanted to say they were well thought out and you've given me the impression you know your stuff, or are knowledgable enough to form an opinion. I am neither when it comes to psychology, but I love to read anyhow. Thanks for all the various psychology links and new reading. This was a long winded compliment, in case I lost my point along the way.

stcredzero21• 12 years ago

At this point, I just know what I don't know. I just rediscovered this page:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/5me/scholarship_how_to_do_it_efficie...

Really, I'm just embarking on studies around such psychology. I'm beginning to think that ingroup/outgroup psychology and society's general ineffectiveness at dealing with it is a foundational problem I was meant to work on.

tomp2• 12 years ago

I really enjoyed your comments.

Me too!

drdeadringer• 12 years ago

The theme I kept picking up on was one of loneliness and/or isolation, born of whatever pickings of reasons.

It makes me wonder if there are any 'universal ice breakers' to help solve such situations, which I sometimes see in film once every blue moon or so.

[I know I watch too many movies, but one can hope for some translation to reality]

Pxtl• 12 years ago

So the obvious question for us white-guys running the team is "what the heck am I doing wrong?"

I mean, if there's a complaint - I should tackle that. If I hear something, I should say something. But half the posts here are discussing nebulous feelings of "unbelonging", and I have zero idea what to do about that. So now I'm wondering what I might be doing that's creating that feeling of "unbelonging" among my team.

mjmahone17• 12 years ago

Frankly, the person this article is most relevant to is not white guys with power. And that's a good thing. For everyone who has been in a similar situation to the author, this sort of experience hopefully can help them figure out what they want, what they value, and where they belong.

But there are some clear things you shouldn't do, just from the text:

  - Group outings that exclude specific individuals, because of personal preference, religion, race, etc. If that means someone doesn't drink, make sure drinking isn't the only way to socialize.
  - Avoid people because their otherness makes you uncomfortable. This frankly just sucks, and there's not really anything the other person can do about it.
  -  Conversely, treat people as fragile. You may not understand someone, and that's OK. It doesn't mean they'll be offended because you give them challenging tasks, it doesn't mean they should be held back from "dangerous" situations.

The list goes on, but the other thing you can do, is actually listen to your reports. Ask them what they want in life. Ask them what their goals are, how their family is, what they feel best doing, when they feel most stressed out. And work to actually resolve what you can, with their help (i.e. don't just fire someone because they're avoiding someone else. That would likely be overkill, and scare the crap out of the person you were trying to "protect").

nnethercote• 12 years ago

Just wondering about it is a small but positive first step.

The next step: seek out more knowledge. Do a bunch of reading about privilege, and racism, and sexism, and unconscious bias, and micro-aggressions, and lots of other things. There are many resources on the web for this that you can seek out, but if you want a place to start, http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Feminism_101 is one I've found useful. (If starting with a resource that's seemingly just about feminism feels too narrow, don't worry; you'll soon learn about "intersectionality" -- there's stuff about it on that very page I've linked -- and the ideas get much broader.) Follow the links, read some more, follow the links, read some more.

You'll quickly see that, like all topics of interest, this one has some jargon that will sound strange at first. You'll get used to it soon enough and realize that it's useful; that these strange-sounding terms have specific meanings that encapsulate concepts helpfully.

Engage your mind critically with what you read, including articles like this, and the subsequent comment threads. Empathize; put yourself in the shoes of the author as best you can. Think about which responses are reasonable, and which are unreasonable.

Do this for long enough and you'll start to see patterns. You'll start to realize that certain behaviours which seem benign at first are actually problematic. You'll start to get a feeling for what might be causing the "unbelonging". I won't give you examples because (a) you can find plenty if you do some reading, and (b) it's often more effective to work them out yourself than by having them given to you.

Talking with members of minorities can also be extremely helpful, but it's probably better to do some reading first. You'll likely get more out of any such discussion once you have a decent foundation of understanding.

All this is doable, but it'll take some time and effort and thought. Good luck.

e402• 12 years ago

It's funny, as I was reading it I kept thinking "I can't believe she'd feel that way if she lived here, in Oakland." It was a nice surprise to find out that she liked it when she got here.

I've lived and worked in Oakland for the last 13 years. Some of the people I work with, when we moved from Berkeley to Oakland, were afraid to be in Oakland. Of course, I didn't find this out until many years later, but it was shocking nonetheless.

When I travel to other places, like SC/NC, I (as a white male) feel alone and isolated. I just don't subscribe to the culture there anymore (I'm from KY). It feels foreign, sterile and separated. I really don't like being there, other than visiting with family.

jusben13695• 12 years ago

I too have lived in both places. What culture in SC/NC do you no longer subscribe to?

e402• 12 years ago

Guns, racial separation, extreme anti-liberalism and, to some degree. It's also a place that fosters people being proudly ignorant. Anywhere that Fox News and Rush Limbaugh are so popular just freaks me out.

A quick story:

I was visiting in 1999 because my step mother was ill. She was at the hospital at Duke. Everywhere I went in the hospital the cleaning and cooking staff was black and everyone else was white. At least in the area I was in. I was hanging out in a lounge area once and there was a group of older guys. One was telling a joke and used the N-word several times. A few feet away there was a black guy cleaning the floor. It seemed like a skit in some comedy show. I looked around and no one gave a shit but me.

Everywhere I went in the hospital, when I would encounter black people, they would never look me in the eye. Always their eyes were down and they called me "sir." I was like 34 and no one had ever addressed me like that. And, living in the Bay Area, I had never witnessed people of color being so deferential. It was shocking.

GeneralMayhem7• 12 years ago

Yet another white, male engineer here. I agree with the "what am I supposed to do about it" responses. I don't think I'm doing anything exclusionary (my team does have a lot of non-whites, mostly Indian and Chinese). The guy she uses as the main example - the teammate who made the domestic abuse "jokes" - clearly should be out on his ass with a lawsuit. I think we can all agree with that. But what exactly do you want the other 99% of us who just happen to have been born into the majority to do?

One theme from the article that bothered me:

diversity lightning struck: I was a black woman reporting to another black woman in a technical role. Moreover, our team was predominantly black.

This sounds like she's most comfortable working only with black people - in which case, the pleas for all-inclusive diversity sound a bit hollow...

soamv• 12 years ago

You started with asking what you can do to help, then went on to discount her experience as an outlier despite her clearly saying it wasn't, and then finished more or less by implying that _she's_ racist.

So if you're asking what you should do, the answer is: the exact opposite of whatever you're doing now.

sosuke4• 12 years ago

It isn't cool to point the racism finger anywhere, but how would you describe that? If I was to say that I was uncomfortable working in a group of opposite gendered difference raced folks who were already a clique before I joined in, then said it was hard to fake being a part of that group and how much stress that put on me, and how the industry needs to change to include everyone, diversity. In the same story I talk about how great it was when I joined a same raced same gendered group and how that was diversity, would you not say I had a warped sense of what diversity means?

There is no definition for a diverse group, but her one sample isn't diverse. Google searched "Picture of Diverse People" http://m.c.lnkd.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/p/7/005/056/19e/34082f9.jp...

stcredzero21• 12 years ago

So if you're asking what you should do, the answer is: the exact opposite of whatever you're doing now.

Reversed stupidity isn't intelligence. If mistakes are being made because of clueless action, then having them "do the opposite" is still going result in clueless actions. The proper antidote is honest and open communication.

The key takeaway is that her environments didn't foster this communication. I doubt that the majority of the environments she was in had enough capacity for self-awareness and introspection to make such a thing easy and apparent. I would also posit, that the very mechanical pattern-matching way we currently implement "political correctness" is counterproductive in this way. I wonder if the fear around issues of race and group inclusiveness didn't drive the HR response she described.

Political correctness shouldn't be about enforcing superficial behavior. It should be about the epistemic health of a group. It should be about how well a group can discover and absorb cultural issues is isn't yet aware of.

bulius• 12 years ago

This sounds like she's most comfortable working only with black people - in which case, the pleas for all-inclusive diversity sound a bit hollow...

Maybe! But your level of comfort around people who are like you doesn't dictate your ability to be inclusive. It just shows how important diversity is to help us understand why we may be uncomfortable in these scenarios and how to address it.

GeneralMayhem7• 12 years ago

True, but mostly what I meant was that it's funny that she refers to a room full of black people as a utopia of diversity, when it's really just that she happens to be in the majority there.

sosuke4• 12 years ago

I had a fairly similar feeling.

I've been giving it some thought about why, at least personally, I like to connect with my team, play games together, send jokes, look at new tech toys. I realized that, for myself at least, my work group is my only social circle and I have no other personal bonds or social groups.

I've only been in one group like that. All of my other more diverse groups, all of which I've loved, I have enjoyed a great work relationship, but nothing in common other than the work. The more diverse a group, the more the focus is on just work, no water cooler talk, no goofing off.

If I was faced with a work group I have nothing in common with, the work would be my focus, and I would itch the social scratch outside of work, without my co-workers. Changing yourself to fit into a group is something I figured people just grew out of after leaving high school.

The asshole, I agree with you, but that was just the one. The rest of the story I felt was her own projection, in a microcosm we've all dealt with that in the past. As others have said, an HR department is there to diffuse a situation for the company, not help you. She wanted to please everyone else, I've known plenty of people like that, I'm sure everyone has, they do everything they can, and still feel guilty about it.

Being passed up for a promotion is more likely about scratching the back of someone they know than trying to slight her. I know others who have experienced similar things, because the bosses wanted kickbacks from friends of the contractors, or could get a $1000 referral fee. The reasons people are jerks can also be not because of you, your race, your gender, but because they are acting selfishly. I've personally experienced similar situations being passed up and I imagine it was because they knew the people at the company they contracted in. The in house developers yell "we can do it!" but the money changing hands is too good to pass up.

By the time she mentions NY or the Bay Area she doesn't have a sense of self at all, only the mask. No one else seems to be the oppressor, if I was the odd white male out in a team of a different race and gender I wouldn't try to wear their suits, it wouldn't work in the same way I've seen people try to fit into groups that they just weren't them, but they were discovering who they were.

There is a lot of hardship, depression, self deprecation, and terrible treatment she endured. I'm glad she shared her story, there are other who feel the same about who they are, not just because of race or gender. I'm glad she is taking action in defining who she is as a person, and how she wants to influence people who meet her.

However saying the industry needs to change isn't accurate, it is akin to asking for cliques to not exist, for like minded people to not congregate. She changed herself to fit in, she is now defining who she is, the solution is not to ask others to change to make everyone feel included and accepted. She felt changed, so now she wants to change the industry, which includes the rest of the non-asshole workers.

I've been in very diverse groups, very homogeneous groups, I spent a year in a group as the only male. The real trick is to do as she is doing now, focus on making a you that you like, then cultivate that pride and energy, until being yourself isn't work, but just like putting on shoes.

stcredzero21• 12 years ago

However saying the industry needs to change isn't accurate, it is akin to asking for cliques to not exist, for like minded people to not congregate.

I would ask for cliques to be self aware of the cognitive distortions group affiliation instincts produce. This could only enhance the problem solving ability of the group as a whole. I would suggest that like minded people congregate, but do so with an awareness of how group psychology operates.

Actually, it's not just industry that needs to change, but humanity as a whole. We can't keep going around unaware of group psychology and the emotional and irrational distortions it produces. We might as well start with industry, particularly the startups. It's exactly this sort of self-awareness that they're supposed to be good at.

dang2• 12 years ago

This sounds like she's most comfortable working only with black people - in which case, the pleas for all-inclusive diversity sound a bit hollow...

Let's apply the Principle of Charity here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity). The words you quoted don't say that, and it's easy to find plausible ways of reading them that don't mean that. Indeed, when you say that something "sounds like" X, it's you who are adding X, not the author. Choosing that interpretation in order to dismiss it seems unnecessary, and likely to polarize the responses. (I mention the latter because of how unpolarized and thoughtful the thread has been—edit: or had been.)

sosuke4• 12 years ago

That is really cool, I've never heard of the Principle of Charity, I usually said it was just assuming the best of people. I like that quite a bit.

khalstvedt• 12 years ago

I now have a (widely-recognized) name for this concept. My profuse thanks.

nickonline• 12 years ago

I came to a similar conclusion to GeneralMayhem.

She talks about not fitting in until she reaches Oakland and the issue of racism.

A huge portion of the article is talking about her not wanting to do an activity that the rest of the team does (e.g. video gaming or drinking beer) I do not feel as though these activities are specifically 'white male engineer' activities. If the team was predominantly black, and these activities still being participated in would she have still felt pressured to attend? I assume she would.

GeneralMayhem7• 12 years ago

I may have phrased it a little stronger than I meant to, but I stand by the crux of what I said, which is that a room full of black people isn't diversity any more than a room full of white people is.

mvc• 12 years ago

predominantly != only

x0x09• 12 years ago

Black is pretty clearly what she means, given her mention of Oakland.

   I’ve lived several places in the Bay Area: San Jose, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, 
   San Bruno. All places I didn’t feel like I didn’t belong. I walked around 
   and saw scant few other black women.

The peninsula and south bay are very diverse with the exception of black people. eg san mateo county is 63% white (notably less than the fraction of the US as a whole), 25% asian, and 25% latino. [1] Santa Clara is similar [2].

Also, from her article, the sole time she mentions being happy at work is this:

   our team was predominantly black. I could relate to my teammates without 
   having to conform. I didn’t have to be anything different than who I was and 
   I flourished there. I was mostly happy at work [...]

Simply put, she wishes to be around black people and work with black people. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but I don't see how you didn't see that in her writing.

[1] http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06081.html

[2] http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06085.html

saraid2166• 12 years ago

But what exactly do you want the other 99% of us who just happen to have been born into the majority to do?

Make an effort to include every member of your team in your activities. It's Burkeian "omission of good" rather than "commission of evil". Let's assume that you're perfectly non-exclusionary. Fine. What are you doing to be inclusionary?

You know what stuck out to me? This line:

I remember asking if we could do other outings that didn’t include beer and getting voted down.

I know that feel, and I'm neither black nor female.

x0x09• 12 years ago

Are these work sponsored outings or small non-work sponsored groups of people hanging out? Work-sponsored should attempt to round-robin enough to be maximally inclusive. Non-work sponsored gatherings are what they are -- I used to do Thursday night drinks at a bar near with coworkers; anyone was welcome but we weren't going to go get bubble tea instead just because someone didn't drink.

stcredzero21• 12 years ago

The guy she uses as the main example - the teammate who made the domestic abuse "jokes" - clearly should be out on his ass with a lawsuit. I think we can all agree with that. But what exactly do you want the other 99% of us who just happen to have been born into the majority to do?

Create an atmosphere where people can talk about things that make them uncomfortable. Granted, much of the language and distorted dogma around race and gender issues has made this difficult. It's anti-intellectual claptrap to label things like objectification and stereotyping as things that are like "sin." Those are epiphenomena of human social information processing. They are things to be aware of, not things to shame people with.

The good news in that, is that the same things one does to foster honest and direct communication around technical issues are the same things one does to foster honest and direct communication around social issues. The bad news in this, is that to accomplish that, you are going to have to get past a lot of the BS and recrimination that acts as a barrier. (For the record, I think the way "political correctness" is currently implemented doesn't help on the whole.)

This sounds like she's most comfortable working only with black people - in which case, the pleas for all-inclusive diversity sound a bit hollow...

I don't think it's that she only wants to hang out with black people. It's that she wishes she felt as comfortable around tech coworkers as she does in predominantly black settings. Is it possible that she's doing things that exacerbate her feelings? Sure. Again, that's something to be cured with honest and direct communication.

If we all rationally applied what we now know about group psychology, we should anticipate many of the events and situations she described happening. Also, if the entire group of coworkers were anticipating and applying such knowledge, I would posit things would go differently. Unfortunately, the fear and social coercion around the current version of "political correctness" work against this and instead produce an atmosphere of fear and tiptoeing around hair-triggers for fear of being tarred with labels synonymous with villainy. Could you imagine such an atmosphere around implementing continuous integration, or effective testing, or coding practices?

Instead, encountering different cultures/sub-cultures should be considered an instance of encountering "known unknowns." One should go into the situation with a stance of discovery. That is what "cultural sensitivity" should really mean, not this tiptoeing/gotcha game BS that we play.

EDIT: A series of questions for 3rd party readers: Is your workplace about "open and honest motivated problem solving" in the social dimension? Or is it more like "tiptoeing around gotchas?" Or is it a combination of the two concerning different social issues? What does it mean?

GeneralMayhem7• 12 years ago

Create an atmosphere where people can talk about things that make them uncomfortable.

Okay, great, but what does that mean? If something I do is making someone I work with uncomfortable, I'm open to hearing it, but it would hardly help the situation to go around asking if people feel comfortable. Maybe if I were a manager, I could bring up such concerns in a one-on-one meeting, but if they seem reasonably happy but privately feel excluded, how am I supposed to know?

kamaal• 12 years ago

>But what exactly do you want the other 99% of us who just happen to have been born into the majority to do?

Just be normal. Is that really so difficult to be?

All people ever want is to work around normal people. I'm not sure why that is a impossible expectation to have. People's skin color, ethnicity, religion, language, nationality, religion or whatever is the person's private business. Just being fair to their performance on the job can solve all the issues.

>This sounds like she's most comfortable working only with black people

If you treat people badly over and over, over years. And then you consider your birth right to screw their careers and life. And all the person at the other end wants to protect themselves from this, I don't see what's so wrong with it.

What should she do otherwise? If all your efforts to succeed with just efforts fail, Its perfectly fine to act in your best interest.

GeneralMayhem7• 12 years ago

All people ever want is to work around normal people.

That's not the impression I got from the post. She clearly feels that the established "normal" (setting aside the obvious asshole outliers) isn't making her feel welcome. Just being the only black woman is apparently enough to do that, because of her fear that there might be a problem, even if it hasn't materialized. The easy response is to tell her that she needs to get over it and stop inventing problems where nobody is actually out to get her, but there are enough stories like hers that there's probably more to it.

VLM• 12 years ago

"Just be normal. Is that really so difficult to be?"

No, she doesn't like extroverts, and saying that is socially unacceptable, so she's going all "black vs white" instead.

Look at the comments along the lines of

"everybody did their own thing, did their job, and went home." (I love that kind of working environment, its unfortunately rare to have a professional working environment)

"I remember asking if we could do other outings that didn’t include beer and getting voted down." (despite not being a black woman, I feel exactly the same way as she does WRT this topic, so I suspect her and I would get along great, other than the whole we're both apparently introverts so getting along great would mean sitting silently, very happily, with each other)

There is an anecdotal aspect to her argument. As a white dude I've met and worked with a lot of really weird white dudes over the decades, and thats apparently ok. She met ONE weird white dude, ONE!, and that's a big problem solely because she's a black woman. I'm not impressed. I'm not saying weirdos are good or correct or shouldn't be punished, but I am saying that trying to portray weirdos as as "a black women problem" is extremely inaccurate. They are a PITA for us all, or there exist PITA weirdos that affect every ethnic or social group. And to be honest, management and HR are utterly ineffective at weeding out weirdos regardless if the people offended are white dudes or black women, which is fairness, in a way.

I'd argue that dealing with weirdos is an adult social skill. So a long time ago I sat next to a guy with a severe temper problem who would scream at me occasionally, usually just nonsense although sometimes I admit I'd provoke him a bit. Well, it was not exactly paradise, but I'm a big boy so its "OK". It did freak out people who weren't as tough as I was, which I found amusing (You're the one who's freaked out while I'm the one sitting next to him?) The ideal social interaction system might be all candy and balloons and girl scout songs all the time but adults can and should handle something a bit worse, a bit more realistic. Toughen up, basically. She is apparently under the mistaken impression that no weirdos ever bug white dudes magically because we're the oppressor, and that is quite inaccurate.

shaurz2• 12 years ago

The majority of people are normal, by definition. Ask a statistician.

pistle2• 12 years ago

Pretty sure she described enjoying a situation where she was still in a minority, so your assumption is wrong which would mean your conclusion is unsupported by your claims.

I'd say it's more interesting that when you are in the majority and similar to those with power, you don't deal with certain bullshit and it's easier to relax and get shit done.

That sounds a bit like all the other white engineers that aren't really focused on cultural sensitivities because they are (can be) focused on other things.

golgappi• 12 years ago

There is a problem in the author's views, but its not what you pointed out.

On one hand the author feels she loses her cultural identity by trying to mingle with a while group. On the other she advocates diversity. And yes, she also feels comfortable when working in a predominantly black team.

I think the solution that she forgets to mention is having people of all groups equally represented (most or less) in any field. With that happening, I can see how nobody would feel like an outsider, and get to preserve their cultural prefernces and tastes, along with mingling with other cultures and races.

It doesn't have to be a black team, a white team and a brown team. All that is needed is people of all races in the workplace with diverse teams. That will balance things out.

As for "What can you do as a white person other than not being a racist and voicing your prejudices openly" .. I don't think there's much you can do. I guess those of you in recruiting positions can encourage people from all backgrounds to come up. Not saying give special treatment to minorities, but generally try to keep bias away from recruitment procedures. Same applies to promotions, relocations and the like.

smtddr• 12 years ago

[American-born-Nigerian male, in tech, in SF]

First, once again HN has impressed me with its overall positive reception of this article.

Anyways, that East Bay comment rings so very true for me. So many times people ask me "Do you feel safe in East Bay? You're in Pittsburg? Aren't you scared?" This was extremely common with my at&t coworkers in San Ramon, California. I've been there for like 10 years; nothing has ever happened. Not even minor. Eventually, I started to take note of the people who were asking me those questions and I realized why they might be uncomfortable with East Bay. They probably had no experience with it and only heard things word of mouth from their circle of coworkers & friends.... which usually don't have a minority in 'em. One evening one of them, a lady, even admitted to me that: "You know, you're the only black person most of us really know."

There are a bunch of examples of generalizing a whole area as dangerous when only really specific sections are of concern. Usually because the people doing the generalizing have no direct experience with the place, or maybe just one bad experience from one time they were there... or they just keep hearing stuff on the news that loves reporting negative stuff.

Mexico, Oakland, Africa, ...etc...

As for the workplace-vibe thing, I suspect being a first gen American-Nigerian gives me a different perspective than an African-American. I don't think I'm in the same situation or feel the same things as the author, but I do understand what she's saying.

ams61102• 12 years ago

I think a big part of the problem is this idea that we need to seek a sense of community, family, belonging-ness, whatever you want to call it... at work.

That has never been my mode. Work is work. I don't do the after work bar scene, the weekend team-builders, golf outings, etc. It's all senseless especially for engineering types. Keep work cleanly compartmentalized. Your community should be outside of work.

wldcordeiro2• 12 years ago

With this title I was expecting an article by someone who is white in a mostly non-white work environment.

wldcordeiro2• 12 years ago

I work in a rather diverse but small development team, we consist of:

1 Bangladeshi woman

2 Brazilian men (myself and another)

1 Chinese woman

1 White man

The Chinese lady and the white guy are our mobile team and the rest of us work as web developers. We all get along really well and I don't think there's much in/out grouping in our team. Still it's good to see the side of those that haven't been as fortunate in team distribution.

Quick note: The other Brazilian and I are definitely on the more fair skinned side but I wouldn't say either of identify as white.

mklim• 12 years ago

It kind of pains me to consider this, especially since it's one of the reasons I got involved with software development in the first place—but I wonder how much these issues are caused by the field's close ties to geek/gamer culture.

I know I love being able to work with people that caustically say "Make it so" when they deploy to master. I love being able to chat about the latest videogames with my coworkers over lunch. I love being able to swap scifi/fantasy novel recommendations and stumble upon test user models named things like "Zaphod." It brightens my day to see references like that, and having so much common ground to talk about with my coworkers is quite frankly a new and exciting experience after having to deal with being the odd person out through most of my time growing up.

But I also can imagine that being forced to deal with what is essentially a foreign culture 24/7 would be really alienating and probably a little frustrating for your average person. No common interests, all these weird references littered through the code and the jokes people make over coffee that you don't get because you never played that one videogame that came out in the 80s. And women tend to be into geek/gamer culture less often than men are, so you would see gender discrimination arise out of that, however unintentional. I read a study recently that found that female undergraduates are less likely to say that they would be interested in computer science as a career if asked about it in a room decorated with Star Trek posters vs a room decorated with generic nature posters (http://depts.washington.edu/sibl/Publications/Cheryan,%20Pla...).

I don't have any kinds of solutions about this. Like I said, that's one of the things I really love about my field. But I think it might be contributing.

GFK_of_xmaspast• 12 years ago

Personally as someone who gets all the references, it's tiresome as fuck.

beatpanda2• 12 years ago

Don't listen to her, 100% of the East Bay is extremely dangerous, full of people literally waiting in the shadows to murder you and take all of your valuables.

steveeq13• 12 years ago

Straw man.

beatpanda2• 12 years ago

No, I'm really just trying to keep the HN crowd on the western half of the Bay.

BECAUSE IT'S DANGEROUS! SO DANGEROUS! IT'S FOR YOUR OWN GOOD!

Mangalor14• 12 years ago

can't tell if you're joking.

ThePantySnacher• 12 years ago

You're not incubated properly given the environment from which you have came from. There for lacking many many years of experience.

It has nothing to do with your race, sex or age. Its simple, this environment does not provide the diversity in science and arts for this unique artisan career choice.

If you're not that type of person, with hunger, passion and some cleverness...then your out of luck, you're not an engineer, nor a scientist and you'll have to except only being a code jockey.

Coming to HN and complaining about how wonderful you are and how racists the industry is will not do you any good in the real world, If you lack the skill set. Its necessary to understand most of the successful here have been working on these types of problems since we were 5, with nothing other then the motive of "how does this thing work" and "can I make it do this instead".

My advice, take a scientific approach since it is the field you're in and prove yourself first. Have the idea, figure it out, prove it works, then show them it works.

pistle2• 12 years ago

Your grammar is poor. Your message and logic is more important and worse.

I am so glad I'm not dealing with you on my team. If you would be so kind as to place a link to your CV, it will do us both a favour.

theothermkn• 12 years ago

You felt free to personally attack the author of the article in an unsubstantiated manner, so I feel free to personally attack you, but with substantiation.

You're not incubated properly given the environment from which you have came from.

This diagnosis is striking in its offensiveness, unfoundedness, entitlement, ignorance, and blatant racism and sexism. You sir, are a steaming pile of vile racist shit. How dare you invalidate someone's being, in the first place. In the second place, how dare you do so with the veiled "from which you have came from." You mean, because she's black. At least have the courage to come out and say it, you coward.

There for lacking many many years of experience.

In addition to lacking the barest iota of sophistication, you also lack a spellchecker. I prefer my racist reading material to at least be properly spelled and grammatically correct. Perhaps you lack experience at reading and writing.

It has nothing to do with your race, sex or age. Its simple, this environment does not provide the diversity in science and arts for this unique artisan career choice.

This word salad is difficult to parse. By "this environment," are you referring to the "tech industry" or to the author's childhood and young adult environment? I'm actually not sure which is the more repulsive, nor how either meaning can be reconciled with this having "nothing to do with ..race, sex[,] or age." For future reference, you ignorant piece of shit, diversity has everything to do with race, sex, and age, among a wide array of other categories.

If you're not that type of person, with hunger, passion and some cleverness...then your out of luck, you're not an engineer, nor a scientist and you'll have to except only being a code jockey.

A similar statement could be made, more correctly, about the kind of engagement with the life of the mind that lets people see the mechanisms of discrimination and inequality in society. If one puts no effort into it, if one relies instead on whatever makes one most comfortable and most smug in their own status quo, one ends up like you, the moral equivalent of a code monkey, unable to articulate anything but the dreariest of racial cliches about meritocracy.

Coming to HN and complaining about how wonderful you are and how racists the industry is will not do you any good in the real world, If you lack the skill set. Its necessary to understand most of the successful here have been working on these types of problems since we were 5, with nothing other then the motive of "how does this thing work" and "can I make it do this instead".

You are probably too stupid to see that you have provided an uncharitable interpretation of the article. I would love to hear--I take that back; I would be loathe to hear--you defend your interpretation that the author described herself as one-sidedly wonderful in an article where she details that she went to therapy. You also presumed to tell her that she "lack[ed] the skill set." Oh. My. Fucking. God. Fuck. Off. You. Racist. Asshole. You have literally no idea about the author's skill level, engagement, desire to make things work, and so on. Additionally, your analysis depends upon outright calling her a liar with regard to her assessment of her work environment. Have you fucked off, yet? Because you really, really need to. (After replacing your vile comment with an apology for your racist screed.)

My advice, take a scientific approach since it is the field you're in and prove yourself first. Have the idea, figure it out, prove it works, then show them it works.

You want a colon after "My advice," not a comma. Jesus. Your advice. Holy shit. You are just precious. Bless your little heart.

You and your kind are the problem. You have no place in modern society. Your retrograde attitudes and toxic privileged naivete are precisely the things to which the author pointed to in her amazing and honest piece, and from which you could so fruitfully learn if you weren't, as I suspect, a wholly irredeemable racist asshole.

I cannot speak for HN as a whole, but you are not welcome, as far as I am concerned. Please delete your 15-minute-old account and go back to lurking, you vile bigot.

pluma4• 12 years ago

Almost every person I'd consider very good at and passionate about their job is different. I presume your judgement of her "passion" is based on her not fitting in with the team's culture -- that's silly. How you dress, what music you listen to or even what you like to do outside the job has nothing to do with how good you are.

It's even worse than that: although I think it's easier to tell whether someone is passionate about technology if they are obsessed with technology outside their job, that doesn't mean that is a necessary or even sufficient trait.

This may sound disappointing, but even being a geek is not a requirement for being excellent at what you do, not even in tech.

droopybuns2• 12 years ago

white, suburban early 40's here. I felt the appeal of punk rock in my teens and have never looked back. As a part of the majority stereoptype, I still don't feel like I fit in.

Am I wrong to think that this is actually part of the human condition? Could it be that we confuse racial tension for the fact that we all kind of long to belong but at the same time sit in judgement of everyone else?

Mangalor14• 12 years ago

Black, late 20's here. It's different. There have been times when I've felt excluded for reasons completely not having to do with my race. Surely there are some shared themes with every other person, but the first time you see an instance of someone treating you worse just because of the color of your skin it makes you want to punch straight through a wall.

droopybuns2• 12 years ago

I appreciate your perspective. Your reaction is understandable.

My general feeling on working with my teams is one of social dread. I just don't feel like I have a lot in common with people in general. I think popular culture is pretty carcinogenic- so when people engage in small talk about the local sports teams or whatever thing happened on must-see-tv last night, I get anxious.

mbubb6• 12 years ago

I spent much of August and September job searching in NYC - looking at small startup and post-startup, tech-driven companies. looked at hundreds of "The Team"; "About Us" or "Leadership" pages on corporate sites and it is striking how much of a monoculture tech is...

I don't think anyone really 'fits' but that is another discussion.

On a personal level it is impossible not to empathize with the author. Not sympathize as I am closer to the model (though a bit long in the tooth). I've even had jobs where I was in a subordinate position in a black owned business (I parked cars in a black theatre at my university). I would never use that to say I understood. What the author describes is profound and frightening.

We are so split. It is hard to see how to begin to fix it.

And though I would never question her experience and feelings about this - I don't think this is true:

"My industry needs to change to make everyone feel included and accepted."

At the moment this is typically more of a 'PR' goal than an actual business goal. A wishful image rather than a real strategic initiative. I do not think that there is a real capitalist driver behind this statement.

Or maybe there is and I just don't see it.

no_future• 12 years ago

I've said this before, but I have absolutely no sympathy for people who think that there is something wrong with the fact that everyone in their workplace is not exactly the same as them(the author explicitly points out several times how she was the only black/female person in her workplace as if it was some kind of travesty). To me this only shows that they are the ones mainly causing the problem, not the imagined institutionalized racism/sexism that they rant about. A bunch of different people from different backgrounds working together and doing great things is what America is all about, and one of the things that makes it a great country. For these people the fact that they and their colleagues share a common interest in whatever they are working on(or I would hope so), is not enough, and they are too immature and entitled to get over the fact that there exist people different from them. There are people who come to this country and speak almost no english - think how they must feel - but you don't hear them complain about it. If you want to see more women/minorities in the workplace, by remaining in it you are being the change, which is a positive thing, but instead these people quit and then go whine on their blog while painting themselves as some kind of hero for quitting. If you are this much of an entitled, sniveling ingrate then I don't see how you could make any kind of positive contribution to your industry, so good riddance I say.

Ironic, considering "Diversity" is about celebrating differences, and not pointing them out as if they were a negative thing.

I'm not saying that prejudices are nonexistent, but I don't think they are as prominent as these people make them out to be.

_pmf_2• 12 years ago

I see the article as an indication of a person who does not know what she wants out of life and is therefore continually disappointed. I've seen this happen to single, non-children white males, too (not excluding myself), at least to some extent.

mbubb6• 12 years ago

I wish those regrettable sensitivity videos that I have sat through too many times dealt with this:

" I immediately did not fit in, because I didn’t look the part. My coworkers walked on eggshells in my presence, so I did my best to make them feel comfortable around me so that I would be included. I laughed at their terribly racist and sexist jokes, I co-opted their negative attitudes, I began to dress as they did, I brushed it off when they made passes at me. I did everything I could to make them feel like I was one of them, even though I clearly was not."

Well written.

noobermin2• 12 years ago

A lot of comments have already been posted here, so it's most likely the case that this won't be seen, but I feel like sharing.

One of my problems about complaints for "diversity" is that for many people, it's usually "why isn't _my_ kind represented so I can hang out with them instead of X group?" Whites are happy to be with whites, blacks seems to be content mixing with blacks, latinos with latinos, asians with asians, etc. People only seem to complain when they are the only asian or the only black kid around, and they feel left out. Sure, that's normal to feel, but I don't see how having isolated equivalence classes makes any set of people "diverse" or any happier, save the people feel at home with their baramin.

May be for me, I'm just so interested in other cultures and people that I (try to) make friends with all races and (more importantly) individuals. Or may be it's because I don't have a "kind" to mix with as elaborated below. In any case, the version of diversity that I want accepting and being friends with someone even when that person isn't like you. It means giving a chance to those who aren't like you, and may be finding common bonds that you both could share. It means being interested and respecting others viewpoints, while not necessarily changing your own. Hell, this covers not just race relations, but sexual orientation, gender, a host of other things, right?

I'm a pacific islander and an "enrichment fellow" at some physics graduate program somewhere. Yes, that's code for a diversity/affirmative action fellowship, I suppose. I am a minority, but something that makes my experience different from others is that I didn't grow up with "my kind" because not many of "my kind" exist (probably around 100,000 in the world in order of magnitude). I grew up in Long Beach, CA surrounded by people of different backgrounds and races (mostly white, I guess), and went to a Catholic private school. In fact, I moved back to Palau [1] and hated it at first because I didn't fit in.

It's probably because of this background that makes me really not understand the concept of race and especially identifying with it. Identifying with a culture or subculture makes some sense to me--I have bits of Palau and bits of US culture in my personality because I lived in both places--and that is as far as it matters to me, how much that affects your personality. I do in general find cultures interesting as anyone would, but in evaluating a person, I really only care about personality.

[1] "Moved back to"? I like to think of it as my parents moved back and 8 year old me came along, I had never been in Palau before.

mbubb6• 12 years ago

Beautifully written and gut wrenching. I hate the fact that I have no idea what to do to help you if you were my coworker. I am not talking about obvious things like horrible jokes and unwelcome advances. How to make day to day life easier? How to do away with the ‘eggshells’?

runewell• 12 years ago

I grew up in rural Kentucky. People were polite to me but there was always this strange distance I would encounter when interacting with people, a distance that my friends never seemed to receive. I always chalked it up to my personality. I became a bit of an introvert, took on a passion for computer science, and moved to Silicon Valley after graduation. I fit in splendidly and for the first time in my life I felt like I was part of a real community. It was at this point that I started getting asked "Are you white or Asian?" by many people. It was a completely innocent question but it surprised me so much that I mentioned it in a conversation with my old friends and to my amazement they all wanted to know the answer as well. It blew my mind. Here I was, a 22 year old white guy from rural Kentucky, who just found out he was Asian. No one bothered to tell me growing up, it made me feel both incredibly stupid and somewhat perplexed. Pieces of my past started falling into place all of a sudden. All the strange looks I used to get on the field as a little redneck kid topping tobacco during the summer. The old white farmers at the local BP station asking me questions about the world as if I held some sort of mystic wisdom. My ex-girlfriend who would constantly mention how much she liked Asian guys before we started dating. All of these things and more just hit me like a bag of bricks and I laughed my ass off for a good 10 minutes. My grandmother was Japanese and my mom was half but as a child I was a blonde white kid so as I got older and my hair darkened it never occurred to me that I was anything else. Now that I'm older I kind of like it. My differences, although superficial, make me feel closer to my late mother and grandmother who were both wonderful people.

beachstartup• 12 years ago

i'm fully asian with a white last name. when people meet me for the first time after communicating with me electronically they're always a little surprised. although, in my case i can see them kind of experiencing a little cognitive dissonance, which is fun.

stcredzero21• 12 years ago

One of my professors though I was Hungarian. Turns out, my Korean Catholic name is also a perfectly good Hungarian one, if you don't see the middle one spelled out.

prawn2• 12 years ago

I got a laugh out of your story - thanks!

It reminded me of a story on Reddit recently about a couple who adopted an Asian baby and then raised him diligently and positively introducing him to Chinese culture, language classes, special efforts with food and communities, etc so he didn't lose that part of his background. At around 18 years of age after almost two decades of efforts along these lines, the father discovers the kid is actually Korean and can't bring himself to tell his oblivious son or wife!

stcredzero21• 12 years ago

Korean here. Really, there's rather little difference between a Han Chinese person and a Korean. People can tell...sort of...at least some of the time...ish. By the time you get to that point, you're really splitting hairs. Which isn't to say that people didn't try and think it was somehow very important in the past when "racial purity" was enshrined in traditional Korean society.

Reminds me of a friend's anecdote about people in Scotland in the 60's talking about differences in accents resulting from being from a town 9 miles away.

pcrh• 12 years ago

A similar phenomenon sometimes occurs with Europeans who have an epicanthic fold, e.g. Sami or Hungarians whose ancestry includes people from the Golden Horde. Locally, they are unremarkable but if they move to an area with many people of Asian descent they are often considered "Chinese".

AndrewKemendo3• 12 years ago

Oh man that is almost exactly my story too, except in rural/suburban Texas and being mulatto. The part about "mystic wisdom" is spot on as people always thought I had special insight into "urban" culture.

khattam• 12 years ago

"I don’t need to change to fit within my industry. My industry needs to change to make everyone feel included and accepted."

Erm... so I guess basketball should change to include short Thai guys too? Or maybe Thai guys should stick to martial arts and weight lifting?

Mangalor14• 12 years ago

Kind of in bad taste to answer one story of racism with more racism. Also, making a work environment more inclusive for minorities should not be as hard as playing Peter Dinklage against Yao Ming.

whycat• 12 years ago

White, male here. I moved to the US 3 years ago.

I worked at a rather "diverse" company.

3 White Males (2 of them foreigners from Europe, including myself)

1 White Female

2 Black Males

2 Black Females

2 Hispanic Males

1 Asian Female

Diverse, not because we had some HR person make sure we can write a cute blog post for HackerNews on how great our "diverse workspace" is., but because it just came into place like that.

We all shared the same office space. I never felt uncomfortable and neither did anybody else (not that i know of). We all got along very well. Coming from Germany, i got thrown a Nazi joke a few times. I know how it was ment and how to take it.

Or as a fan of old school hip-hop, i found myself at concerts with a 80% black crowd. Did I, in that moment, realize that i am "the white kid"? Yep. But guess what: I don't care. I don't go on HackerNews and cry about it.

Overall: if everybody could stop being so sensetive. Grow up. People are different. Some people aren't nice. Learn to deal with it.

I did what I thought I had to do to survive in the environment. I once again donned the uniform to fit in. Jeans, “unisex” t-shirt, Timbuk2 messenger bag. I stayed late playing multiplayer Battlefield, I quickly learned a bunch of classic rock songs so I could play Rock Band and Guitar Hero with the team, I don’t like beer so I went out to beer taverns and drank water.

The only person that is making you uncomfortable are you yourself. Really, wear what you like, play whatever you like, listen to the music you like.

In the case of the guy with the domestic abuse "jokes": that is a total different thing. That's not being racist or sexist, it is just being an asshole and legal steps against that guy should be taken.

rimantas4• 12 years ago

  > Overall: if everybody could stop being so sensetive. Grow
  > up. People are different. Some people aren't nice. Learn
  > to deal with it.

I doubt it is possible in US (and starts spreading elsewhere). You cannot learn to deal with it when you are thought the opposite from the early days.

bitroliest• 12 years ago

This is very similar to my experience.

I'm from a south american country so I get the "do you feel safe?" and the "what was like to grow up in poverty?" - not to mention the 'la raza' type of comments.

These stereotypes are annoying but it's whatever, you shrug it off and find something to make fun of the people saying those things - 'Do you go through withdraws if you don't eat your frosted flakes every morning?'

Do I feel like I belong in a group of people from my country? Well, maybe? If I know them and I'm friends with them. If I do, it sure as hell isn't because they're from my country but because they're good people. My primary group of friends is all WASP (white anglo-saxon protestant), and I don't feel like an outcast.

Overall: if everybody could stop being so sensetive. Grow up. People are different. Some people aren't nice. Learn to deal with it.

YEP. That's it. The world will be a better place once people stop hating other people based on their physical characteristics and start hating them unconditionally.

pluma4• 12 years ago

Humour is often used to find a common ground. Humans are very uncomfortable if they don't know what another person finds appropriate or not. Faking it isn't the best way to respond to that because it gives the other person false data. I'm not going to defend the "bruises" guy because I have no idea what the context was (though I doubt the context makes it any better), but if you desperately try to fit in, that's a problem.

Of course there's no point in blaming the victim. Most teams don't have an inherently inclusive culture. Maintaining your differences when you join an otherwise homogeneous group is hard and most of us (probably women even more so than men, because culture and testosterone) were raised in a way that makes us think trying to give up our identity in order to fit in is the right thing to do because it reduces the potential for conflicts.

Ideally teams should be inclusive. That is difficult, because it goes against much of human nature (othering and tribalism used to be a good evolutionary strategy). Sometimes getting it right can be impossible. But it's worth trying.

There's two sides to this issue and both are difficult to fix. But we need to understand that they both contribute to the problem. This problem is deeply ingrained in our culture and in our natural psyche. It won't go away just because we tell people to stop doing it.

codygman7• 12 years ago

Overall: if everybody could stop being so sensetive. Grow up. People are different. Some people aren't nice. Learn to deal with it.

So we should just let not-nice people get away with their bad behaviour, going on endlessly, unchecked?

stop being so sensetive [sic]

So people are just supposed to ignore what they feel? So people should compromise who they are so they aren't labelled "too sensitive"?

ylem• 12 years ago

I have to start by saying that I’m incredibly impressed not only by the article, but by the level and tone of the discussion here. I am a vegetarian, agnostic, non drinking, black physicist. Like many of you, I grew up reading fantasy and science fiction. I loved playing video games (I started with the C-64 and also wrote some of my own) growing up. Like most of you, I was also advanced in math and despite growing up in a college town, felt isolated, but it could have been much worse! Like some of you, I also took my first graduate courses in physics and math at 18. Unlike some of you, I’ve also experienced racism (police stops, being asked if I’m in the right neighborhood, etc.).

At least for a number of physicists, mathematicians, and other technical folks, I would say that I’m fortunate to share a certain sense of humor and certain bit of “geek” culture. One of my coworkers recently threw a halloween party and there were a number of crypto-costumes. One of my friends/coworkers (who incidentally grew up on a farm) was a gnome of the resistance who was wearing an armband which represented 1 Ohm. My point is that within any culture, there are shared jokes, references, etc. that someone not from that culture wouldn’t get. I think that is part of the difficulty that the OP faced. My impression (which could be wrong) is that while she was extremely willing to explore the culture at her workplace, it was never really hers. Rather, it was an imperfect mask that she put on to try to get along with her coworkers.

Also, as a black woman, I think that some people probably feel comfortable saying some things that they would not feel comfortable saying to me as a black man (I have another friend who is a female black physicist and she has encountered far more overtly racist statements from people than I ever have). Some people have asked what they can do as part of the majority culture to make minorities feel more welcome. One thing I would suggest is shutting down outright hostile individuals hard. There are some people who are just ignorant. For example, when I was traveling once through a small area in Mexico, a young girl told me she never had seen hair like mine and wanted to feel it. I thought this was rather innocent (though probably wouldn’t make sense in a workplace setting.) and let her. I was fortunate to briefly study abroad in Japan (Hikone) when I was middle school and a number of people (adults and children) had strange ideas about blacks in the US, but it was easy to talk (well outside of the language barrier :-p), but I think there is a clear dividing line beyond someone who is just curious, or misinformed, as compared to someone who is creating a hostile work environment (such individuals should be fired). If one looks at the social networks in the US, there are a number of people in the majority culture who have had little if any significant social interaction with a number of minorities, so there is naturally a great deal of ignorance and confusion. As minorities, I think we can expect this--but on the same hand, I can understand how some people feel tired or awkward explaining things over and over again to clear up misconceptions. Perhaps the easiest way to understand a bit of the feeling is to spend some time in a place where you are not in the majority. For example, some white friends who have lived in Japan for extended periods of time have felt a degree of isolation there. Some other posters have mentioned their experiences as being part of the minority and the isolation that has resulted from that. One other thing that people in the majority could do to help would be to actively challenge their subconscious. For example, there is the halo effect in which people transfer one positive attribute (beauty) into others (ex. intelligence). Looking at a number of the talks on Altman’s startup school, a number of early founders hire their friends. Then, in some cases, they hire friends like them. In some sense this is natural. But due to network effects, (a number of people in the majority may have few if any minorities in their network) this can result in minorities having few opportunities to enter these startups at an early stage. If applications come in from outside of the network, consider them. Also, while it’s great to socialize with your coworkers and feel that they’re someone that you would like to socialize with, I think that it’s important to make room for people whose social activities are different. This also becomes important when it’s time to make promotions, give raises, etc. Also, critical information shouldn’t only be available at social gatherings. It’s not easy, but I think it will make it easier to include people from different backgrounds. Though at the workplace, people should definitely be able and willing to work well with their teammates.

I think it’s also important to establish a culture in which differences are accepted. For example, I’m a nondrinker--I don’t push others not to drink, but also don’t like others to try to push me to drink (the same goes for religion and diet). I think that managers and early employees can set a tone that it’s ok for people to do their own thing and still be accepted. It seems like the people at the workplaces that she was at did try to include her in activities that they found enjoyable, it’s just that these were not activities which she truly enjoyed. This can be a challenge--I think for a number of us, there is an increasing overlap between our work and social lives. We spend long hours with our coworkers. We go to parties at each other’s homes, we do activities like hiking, gaming, happy hours etc. together. In these contexts, we inevitably talk shop and talk business. If someone doesn’t attend these activities, then they will miss out on this. On the one hand, merit can still be recognized, but on the other hand, some people could be left out of the loop. I will say that a number of people at my workplace try to organize family friendly activities outside activities, but depending on the size of the company and the relative ages of people, it’s easy to see how young parents could be left out given their time commitments.

Some people have remarked on her statement of feeling at home in Oakland because there were more black people there, or on teams that were more diverse. For those of you who have lived for extended periods outside of your home country, have you ever missed something from back home. Perhaps the sound of your native tongue (for a number of blacks, the dialect that is spoken at home can be different from that spoken at work)? A particular dish? A certain set of shared assumptions based on common experiences? I think that this part of what she feels.

For her though, I would suggest that she try to assimilate less. If you’re a unicorn, own it. I think trying new activities is great. But, putting up with racist and sexist jokes is ridiculous. I think that she would have been happier if she made it clear that she was fun and easy to get along with and willing to do activities like gaming with people and to be social. But, she should draw the line at dealing with some types of behavior. I don’t know what her job and life situation were like at the company where she had to deal with the truly racist guy who was creating a hostile environment, but if HR wouldn’t get involved, then she should have moved up the command chain or left. There are some environments that simply aren’t worth being in (I realize that not everyone has the luxury to make such choices).

I will say that my current workplace gets a lot right. People like working there and for the most part my coworkers play well with others. They are smart, but I think that is part of the hiring decision--you might be able to afford a small number of people who can only work alone, but at least for us, you really need to be able to work with other people. Also, a lot of individuals make efforts to have social activities where they try to include other people (instead of just small cliques). It’s not required, but it’s nice--especially since we have a large international population who doesn’t have family in the area--even most of us who are domestic are transplants from other states and cities.

I really hope things work out for this young woman!

_pmf_2• 12 years ago

I would say that I’m fortunate to share a certain sense of humor and certain bit of “geek” culture.

I think this is a key point. The author of the article tries to fit in while at the same time not enjoying or even actively disliking the activities, which makes the whole exercise a bit dubious.

eitally5• 12 years ago

But if you consider she probably felt, whether intentionally or subconsciously, that this was a necessary evil in order for her to succeed professionally, it becomes much more logical.

Mimu3• 12 years ago

Your "hair anecdote" is funny, the exact same thing happened to me when I was in Cameroon. I'm white, two kids approached me after looking at me like they never saw a white man before (which might have been the case) and then asked the guy with me (local) if they could touch my hair.

That was unexpected but funny ahah.

natar• 12 years ago

Don't take this too personal please but I think this is exactly how privilege works: For you it was funny because it happened to you once when you were on holidays. Now imagine this happened to you over and over, hundreds of times, since you were little in all sorts of contexts, at school, uni, work, on the street, at parties, friends, colleagues, people you don't even now. I think it gets less funny pretty fast.

The point of the OPs anecdote was that if a child who really sees an Afro for the first time does this it's okay. But grown-ups (who even if they only have contact to other white people are able to read up on those things) should know better.

stcredzero21• 12 years ago

I'm white, two kids approached me after looking at me like they never saw a white man before (which might have been the case) and then asked the guy with me (local) if they could touch my hair.

Golda Meir talks about a situation just like this while visiting Africa. Children ask to touch her hair. Furthermore, the kids ask her where she's from, and she replies Jerusalem, and they refuse to believe it's a real city outside of myth.

grondilu2• 12 years ago

Unlike some of you, I’ve also experienced racism (police stops,

How do you know when police stops you because of racism and not regular police work?

DanBC2• 12 years ago

When you get stopped six times more than any of your white friends even though you are not a criminal or engaging in any criminal behaviour.

http://bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18410300

British Transport Police officers were found to be 31 times more likely to search black people than white people in 2010-2011. Black people were 28 times as likely to be stopped by West Midlands Police and 21 times as likely by the Greater Manchester force.

stcredzero21• 12 years ago

I think it’s also important to establish a culture in which differences are accepted.

One thing that has solidified for me reading through the post and the comments here, is that we have been focusing on symptoms instead of underlying dynamics. My idea is that the feeling that, "It's not safe to be yourself" is not a symptom of racism, but rather that racism is an overt symptom of toxic group dynamics that create the sense, "It's not safe to be yourself."

Human beings have finely tuned machinery for negotiating social situations and the "it's not safe" sense seems to be one of these mechanisms. Often, there are subtle (and not so subtle) things happening within a group dynamic that signal that it's implicitly ok to haze/denigrate/vilify members of outgroups. The original post illustrates some of these. Overt toxic racism is one signal of this. "Ironic jokes" can be another. People volunteering stories of the stupidity of members of opposing political groups can be another. The real pathology is the underlying acceptability and utility of aggrandizing yourself through the stereotypical denigration of others.

I don't think a focus on matching overt patterns of behavior and verbal utterances really get to the heart of this matter. It's really the group dynamic that send the message, "It's alright to throw certain kinds of people under the bus." I think this is very significant. For one thing, it brings to mind the idea that creating this sort of atmosphere is counter productive to preventing it.

But, putting up with racist and sexist jokes is ridiculous. I think that she would have been happier if she made it clear that she was fun and easy to get along with and willing to do activities like gaming with people and to be social. But, she should draw the line at dealing with some types of behavior.

No disagreement. However, I think this also gets to heart of the matter. "Political Correctness" that just stops at the mechanical sanctioning after pattern matching certain kinds of speech is no more than an intervention in an extreme case. It's like throwing sandbags on top of a broken levy or putting more oil in your engine when the light comes on. There is another underlying dynamic at work. Putting up with racist and sexist jokes is ridiculous. However, so is only treating such symptoms. Both building community through finding ways to bond and becoming more aware as a culture of group dynamics and the psychology of "otherness" is what we need going forward. (In the context of the op's described HR intervention, the action was a band-aid that not only ignored a deeper underlying issue, but even put the false remedy on the wrong party.)

j45• 12 years ago

Diversity is real and lasting if it exists from the top of any organization or society, to the bottom. In that order.

Attempting to seed diversity from the front lines upward almost always slows, and fails. Where you have diverse front line bankers and their managers,diversity seems to dissapear as you go up the org chart. Often, this means to imply some diversity is actually diversification to interface with consumers, but not truly create lasting, diverse progress.

When I hear diversity, I ask myself to measure it by its highest presence and practice in management. If it's missing, a culture and practice of diversity is missing. Going for curry for lunch with the Indian guy isn't it.

To beliefs that see diversity difficulties from two cultures tiptoeing around each other: no one exclusively owns kindness, professionalism, goodness or the practice of being any of these things. We deny ourselves and others the dignity of humanity and being treated humanely when we do not take a minute to learn someone's story and humanize them, instead feeding division.

When not focused on inclusiveness, diversity quickly becomes division.

Reading so many stories about the symptoms and experiences of "diversity", or lack thereof reinforced my beliefs:

1) Don't be an overt badge or token. If anything, be a lot of badges so your diversity is just one of them. Use it for good and encourage your white friends to use their white privilege for good.

2) It's a reality to deal with any -ism. Age, "race" , gender, religion. People do not fight over these things as much as fighting over interpretations of these things. Some will always look for the easiest thing they can find to marginalize others with. Take it as a sign you are doing something right, if the narrow minded folks are threatened by you.

3) Not choosing the family you were born into, or the color of your skin, nor choosing your gender before you were born is a pretty small minded way to practice bias. Ignorants will be dumbfounded when you say you didn't pick the family you were born into, when they mistreat you just for that.

4) If I end up in a room where I get half the respect as anyone, and I have to be twice as good to get equal respect, four times as good to be special, and eight times as good to be extraordinary....

5) Do I give up when challenged to be 8 times better, or walk away with the ability to drink from a firehouse when others can't breathe? Would such a talent help, or hurt building the life of my dreams and using it to be on a path of service and compassion towards all of humanity?

The above could lead to some people feeling disconnected and disillusioned from their citizenship in their community, humanity. It's never fazed me too much because I did have a diverse group of friends who took a minute to turn this strangers so easy to marginalize, into a person and in some cases a friend.

A side effect of pursuing extremely positive self growth is all the haters (who are self-haters first) become a servant to your achieving more than your potential. It also can fuel jealousy because most often haters are busy doing nothing themselves near the 8x you're capable of, thanks to them.

Nindho.

ExpiredLink• 12 years ago

Reminds me of the Oprah Winfrey story some time ago. She tried to buy a luxury handbag in a shop in Switzerland (Winfrey is hardly known in Europe, BTW). The shop assistant treated her badly and Winfrey interpreted it as racist. It turned out that shop assistants there treat all customers badly 'irrespective of the person'.

codygman7• 12 years ago

"I go into a store and say to the woman, 'Excuse me, may I see that bag over your head?' and she says to me 'No, it's too expensive.'"

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/09/world/oprah-winfrey-racism-swi...

borplk• 12 years ago

I don't mean to discount or take away from the difficulties that the author is addressing but as a migrant I can't help but to laugh a bit at some of the complaints I hear here and there about 'sticking out' and 'isolation'.

You stick out at work? I stick out everywhere I go.

If you feel out of place and isolated try moving to a completely different country on your own and try living there for a few years. That's when you realise how much you belonged and you didn't even realise.

known• 12 years ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Putnam#Diversity_and_...

ownagefool2• 12 years ago

I’m not saying Racism and Sexism isn’t a terrible and real thing. They both exist and are terrible.

However, I just want to highlight that many of the people you feel have an easy time fitting in, because they’re white and male, don’t.

They feel just like you, but there isn’t a single obvious issue they can point at blame. They raise the same issues with HR, they get stonewalled just like you.

This is often just an issue of group dynamics where there are the strong personalities and weak. If you misappropriate that as something else, you won’t find any sympathy within the group.

That said, if you really are being passed up because you’re black of female, there is a problem with that and it should be sorted out.

However, I often get passed up for jobs I can do better than the guy who landed it. I’ve never assumed that it’s because I’m Scottish working in London even though it probably occasionally is for that reason.

pluma4• 12 years ago

I think the problem is that it's hard to tell which particular facet is at play here. In all likelihood her problems are at least heavily influenced by her race and gender, even if those factors are neither the base nor the entirety of it.

Non-white, non-men start out from a severely disadvantaged position in our society in general and in the industry in particular. I presume this simply serves as a magnifier when it comes to the problem others (namely white men) would experience in the same situations. Plus the gender/race card is obvious for both sides (i.e. she is more likely to blame negative experiences with other people on it, but they may also be more likely to explain her behaviour with it). Consider her reservations about acting in a way that might affirm stereotypes, for example.

The entire situation is so messy and taboo-laden from the get-go that it's difficult to assess what's really going on here and what the chain of events was for each individual situation, but it's empirically obvious that there is a very real problem and race/gender is a major factor.

EDIT: Also remember that "race" can be a misleading term. It's often about culture and cultural biases about other cultures -- ethnicity just tends to be a handy shibboleth. As an anecdotal example: in Germany (and likely other parts of the EU too) you are often at a serious career disadvantage if you have a Polish or Eastern European accent, even if you are very good at what you do, especially if you also happen to be female (though the exact stereotypes you face might again depend on your age). It doesn't even have to be a national thing, you might also face negative stereotypes if you have a regional accent (think Eastern in Germany or Southern in the US).

tomiko_nakamura• 12 years ago

I wonder how long they've been looking for a background image distracting enough ...

ck2• 12 years ago

One of the better articles I have ever read linked on HN

bane• 12 years ago

This is a great and brave article. I'm a white male. As a young child I grew up in a poorer city apartment complex and most of the time, of all the children there I'd be 1 or 2 of 30 or 40 kids who was white or a native English speaker. I can't say I was ever a "minority" there, because everybody was a minority there. Looking back, I'm amazed that we were ever able to organize any games to play because so few of us all spoke the same language.

Perhaps due to this, I always felt most comfortable in that kind of ultra-diverse environment. When I was older my family moved to a very rural, very white area, and I never quite got comfortable with it. These days, when I visit one of the ultra-diverse North-East American cities, D.C., Philly, NYC, or even London, I can almost feel my inner self relaxing. Even though my take on it is different, in that sense I understand the author's feelings about Oakland, you feel most relaxed in the environment you grew up in.

Still, diversity is quite hard. In my professional life I've tried to adopt a policy that's a little different than many diversity programs. Many programs want you to be "diversity-blind", meaning you strive to have a mix of people from different backgrounds, but then you ignore that difference. I fundamentally disagree with this. I think you should strive for diverse backgrounds, but then recognize and celebrate people's differences. Respect them for who they are and where they come from.

I know that this is difficult to do sometimes for a couple reasons:

a) some people may be doing what the author was doing and desperately trying to fit in, recognizing that they are different runs counter to their effort

b) we come into this with lots of our own perceived biases and stereotypes which can color the way we're trying to recognize people's differences

I think that a) is the biggest problem we need to overcome as a society. Of course there's a measure of "fitting" in to any group dynamic that an individual has to do, but when the balance swings too far in the group's favor, that individual loses their own uniqueness and their own identity and like the article discusses, it's ultimately stressful and damaging to that person.

b) is also a problem, and despite growing up in a pluralistic childhood environment, I still have my own biases and stereotypes that I bring into a relationship with anybody. For example, though I grew up in an immigrant heavy neighborhood, I never met and know somebody from South Asia (India, Pakistan, etc.) until I was well into high school. I have a personally broken model about people from these places that I'm working to improve.

Still, I think the effort of overcoming these kinds of biases makes us better people in the end, and makes a better environment for our co-workers and friends. We can recognize people for who they are and what they can bring to the table both as an individual, and as a representative of the group and culture they feel they're naturally part of.

Some anecdotes I chew on that have stuck with me:

- An old coworker, white, male, grew up in a military town and hung around with the self-described hip-hop crowd, his wife is East Asian, feels like he's understanding and sympathetic on diversity. I overheard him telling a black coworker that he feels that there's really no more racism in the U.S. and that any perceived racism is brought onto people by themselves. My black co-worker tolled him that just the day before he and his brother were driving around town, at the speed limit (he's a careful driver) and were pulled over and searched for drugs with no probable cause. He called it "driving while black".

- My wife is Korean, at a company she used to work at, she started coming under aggressive sexism and racism from a new CTO. She fought back against it (and became deeply, deeply depressed through the battle until she quit the job). At one point, with HR present, the CTO said "I'm surprised you're this upset about things, I thought Asian women were more demure and subservient."

- Another old co-worker, black, pointed out to my work group one day that he's immensely proud of hip-hop and other black music and culture because of the oversized impact it's had on American culture. His statement has caused me to reevaluate and rethink and see many culturely American things through this lens.

rapidally2• 12 years ago

There were three black women at my last workplace. One of them had a positive attitude and everyone treated her wonderfully. She seemed happy, and her and I were good friends. The other two complained constantly, and would whisper to the other black woman (who relayed it to me) that race 'kept her down'. Those two weren't happy, and if they were excluded it was due to their attitude more than anything.

powertower2• 12 years ago

The other side to this is that - she feels much more comfortable in a non-diverse environment where people look like her, talk like her, are her gender and color, had similar upbringings, etc.

...And there is nothing wrong with that. It's perfectly normal.

Diversity on the other hand, whenever I read about it, see statistics about it, etc, seems to always produce conflict.

shaurz2• 12 years ago

This is why multiculturalism will never work. People are most comfortable living and working with similar people who look and think in similar ways. It's human nature and no amount of diversity brainwashing can overcome it. Clearly she rightly feels like an outsider in the white male group and even would if every white man made the maximum effort to be "inclusive". And the white men naturally felt uncomfortable with a black women in the group. In the current political climate it's not possible for people to admit their true feelings on the matter without being instantly labelled an "ist" (racist, sexist, etc.) but we can only go on denying human nature for so long...

AndrewKemendo3• 12 years ago

The result was that I avoided the one place in the Bay Area I could go and feel not so different. It never dawned on me that the people who were telling me not to go there were the people who might go there and feel uncomfortable.

Oh man, this is exactly what happened to us when we moved to D.C. Everyone we knew said "Oh, you don't want to live in Prince Georges County, it's bad there." When we realized the people who said that look very different than the PG county demographic, it became clear what their reservation was.

This article really hit home to me as well though because as a mixed race guy I never really fit in anywhere, but can kind of blend in no matter where I go - a double edged sword. As bad as it sounds, my father (black) was the one who self assimilated into white culture from birth (he was adopted) such that I grew up just assuming we were white, especially given that my mother is white.

When I look back on it, that was a huge benefit in some cases where I feel comfortable in the (largely white) networks of power and elitism, but also makes me feel like it kind of cedes the game.

At the end of the day though, I don't identify as any race or culture other than "American" and with that approach I almost never have issues assimilating.

stevenmays2• 12 years ago

Mixed (half black, half white) engineer here. Who cares if you're the only person of a certain race on a team? Why is this significant?

People really need to stop being so sensitive. I try to work with the best teams to advance my own skillset. I could care less the race of my teammates or if my feelings are coddled.

In the article the author states she had a boyfriend in Oakland, and she was scared to visit him... in a predominately black area. I think this author brings her own fears about being included and being different with her. You cannot let any of this stop you from doing what you want to do and being who you are.

Edit: Getting downvotes for not fitting the narrative of I'm a non-included minority in tech please give me my diversity.

dopamean• 12 years ago

I think this author brings her own fears about being included and being different with her.

I think that was sort of the point and she addressed it.

Who cares if you're the only person of a certain race on a team? Why is this significant?

I spend a lot of time with my coworkers. It is important that we can relate to each other and perhaps even more importantly that we feel like we can relate to each other.

Being paranoid about being an outsider isn't some crazy way of thinking. People perceived to be outsiders are frequently ostracized and we all know it.

stevenmays2• 12 years ago

Being paranoid about being an outsider isn't some crazy way of thinking. People perceived to be outsiders are frequently ostracized and we all know it.

I think this is a self fulfilling prophecy. When you bring that fear with you into each interaction, and mold yourself to fit some group dynamic no one wins. And you're less likely to be included or FEEL included because you're scared and have modified your behavior to fit the group dynamic.

Anyway, I have zero issues being a minority in tech. I have an awesome and interesting career, and I enjoy my coworkers.

codygman7• 12 years ago

Being half white, you are more privileged than someone who isn't but not nearly as privileged as a white male such as myself. Also, I'm sure you already know about colorism.

I could care less the race of my teammates or if my feelings are coddled.

I'm willing to bet a non-zero number of your teammates care about your race.

tuxidomasx• 12 years ago

Wow, so many insightful comments here. I'm a black engineer and can relate to a lot of what was said in the article. However, I learned early on not to compromise myself to try to fit in. Instead, I knew the importance embracing one's cultural community and always sought out like-minded and like-cultured groups with which to associate, as was suggested by Woodson in the "Mis-Education of the Negro."

Upon entering the workforce, it was much harder to find that sense of community, so I started a black social network in my spare time so that I could still have that exposure. During the day, the only other black person I saw at my job for 6 years was the janitor. And I had a better relationship with him than the people I actually worked with...

My perspective is that it's much more enjoyable and easier to thrive in a culturally homogeneous environment. And that it's challenging to be a token member of a culturally diverse environment.

A decade of being a minority in technology has crystallized my opinion on the matter; I don't believe that taking a homogeneous group and tossing in a few minorities is the best way to embrace diversity.

Instead, I am a proponent of encouraging the creation of a diverse set of culturally homogeneous groups. And yes, I realize that what I'm suggesting is basically segregation. The difference is subtle, but all the issues Erica lists in her article can be addressed by this shift in diversity strategy.

To paraphrase: As a black person, I would rather be part of a mostly-black team/company than be one of the few black faces in a mostly-non-black team/company.

RenegadeofFunk• 12 years ago

Black software engineer here. Pretty much disagree with all of this. Here's my take:

http://righteousruminations.blogspot.com/2014/11/another-sid...

The Other Side of Diversity

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