[yypark]

I think the disconnect comes from having a minority group strongly over-represented, and the disagreement over what causes representation differences. It's the inconvenient factor that doesn't get discussed a lot. Benefactors see diversity initiatives purely as eliminating discrimination on the part of privileged groups, whereas detractors see it as unfairly lobbing claims of wrongdoing on white men, calling for soft quotas - which in this case, imply fewer Asian males in tech.

I wrote more about this here - about over-represented minorities, and self selection: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8088263

Fundamentally, people disagree to WHY certain groups are over-represented - is it mostly discrimination, mostly cultural, mostly self-selection? Discrimination is bad, but how bad - or not - are cultural factors and self-selection? Asians are strongly over-represented - but no one says this is because admissions officers prefer them - there is strong evidence to the contrary - and most agree it is a combination of selective immigration policy and cultural factors on the part of frequently college-educated, first-generation parents. However efforts to take race into account in college admissions no doubt will tend to work against members of this still minority group (in fact - only 5% in the US).

Finally, the attacking white males is basically a motte-and-bailey tactic [1] in which something very obviously wrong, and not defended by a majority of any group e.g. racial discrimination, is then used, strawman-like, to strike down countervailing discussion as "derailing" (no one is saying racism is good). Do white men need to make counter-adjustments in order to correct for previous sins (or sins by others in the same group - see sexual harassment by another unrelated man in the same industry)?

Is that fair to those white men to take steps - perhaps even extending privileges to other groups at their own cost, or is it fair because the discriminated-against groups have experienced injustice? This is the fundamental disagreement in the social justice debate. What makes sense on an individual level can look wrong on a collective level, and vice versa. It just depends on your sense of fairness. The voices on the collective side of this debate are the strongest in Silicon Valley, but a greater amounts of people - and Americans overall - frequently disagree on what needs to be done to address racial disparities e.g. affirmative action or no affirmative action.

[1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/07/social-justice-and-word...