[qdog]

Yeah, I dunno if these people hung out on the Care Bears irc channel or what, but every 'open' forum and most of the closed ones had tons of racism/sexism/whateverism. Just look at twitter nowadays to see how awful some posters can be.

I've worked with a very small handful of black people over my career, several indians, a fair number of asians and a few hispanics.

The demographics in my experience were all pretty abyssmal, without some sort of policy in place, the actual bias that ends up hiring only other white males was never going to end. I would say it's probably still strong, as a recent place I worked was incredibly white and male.

My understanding is that hiring becomes much more fair if you are able to remove all racial/sexual details from a hiring process (at least, if resumes are shown without those details you get expected results, but with those details a bias appears).

That said, I think a lot of these people are upset by DEI precisely because it is resulting in more diversity. If you are biased against the people who DEI helps get hired, you are obviously going to think they are poor hires, because you always thought "those people" tend to be poor hires. Assuming OP is actually a black man, I think he needs to realize that many, if not most, people who make assumptions about him based on DEI or the like, are always looking for an excuse for their own biases.

[lliamander]

> That said, I think a lot of these people are upset by DEI precisely because it is resulting in more diversity.

You are exemplifying a fallacy known as asymmetric insight, whereby you assume to know more about someone else's "real" intentions than they do. While at some level we do have to have a mental model of other people's motivations, the temptation is strong to pathologize those we disagree with rather than take their ideas seriously.

So tell me, did you come to your conclusion based on sincere effort to actually understand the mindset of those opposed to DEI, or are you using it as an excuse to avoid thinking about their actual arguments?

[qdog]

I certainly haven't conducted a scientific study, this isn't my field.

I am, however, a white male who checks most of the 'tech dude' boxes, and I don't usually have to guess what people are thinking about this. I just have to be around at the right time for people to make their opinions known. So my evidence is anecdotal, but no, I don't have to wonder if people have racial bias, they will tell you if you let them. I have also observed a manager who's religion made women subservient, and no woman he ever managed was promoted. Bias or just probability? One of those women is now a very successful director of engineering. (She left his team and was promoted elsewhere)

While I can't speak to all DEI programs, the intent at most places I've been is to interview a wider range of people. That might show slight favor to interviewing, but the bar for hiring does not change. This is not just a problem in tech, the relatively recent NFL head coach issue of teams deciding to hire a coach and then interviewing a black coach after that "for compliance" with no intent of actually considering them is a huge problem.

If you work at a place that truly only hires people to check a box and doesn't care about that person's success or the impact around them, sure, move on.