Everyone has to discuss diversity at work because there are laws prohibiting discrimination, that's a good thing. Not everyone has to discuss politics at work.
> Everyone has to discuss diversity at work because there are laws prohibiting discrimination
Sorry, but this is misleading. Most such companies are actively complying with antidiscrimination laws. These diversity discussions/initiatives at work are almost always unrelated to those laws. It's not a case of "Hey, we suddenly realized we're not complying with laws, so let's launch these initiatives." Most such discussions don't have any content about the law or legal aspects because they are not about laws prohibiting discrimination.
What are the initiatives about then, if not the laws and/or prohibiting discrimination? Do these companies agree with your claim, are you getting that from HR and/or company lawyers, or is this an opinion?
I've never been to a diversity training program that did not talk about the laws, and I've been to many. You are suggesting that companies are wasting their money for no reason, and consciously running training programs that are unnecessary? Why would "most" companies do that?
> Most such companies are actively complying with antidiscrimination laws.
Complying with US discrimination law means that companies are providing "reasonable accomodations" for people in historically discriminated categories, and for anyone who might file a complaint in the future. Educating the employees about acceptable behavior is a pretty obvious way to avoid getting sued.
> It's not a case of "Hey, we suddenly realized we're not complying with laws, so let's launch these initiatives."
The risk of running into both PR & legal trouble over diversity complaints has risen over time, due to increasing levels of education, increasing exposure to cases of discrimination and abuse, and generally increasing awareness of diversity issues.
I am speaking specifically to diversity initiatives visible to all employees, as opposed to those that are specific to managers or HR.
The law doesn't require us to banish the phrase "master/slave" from our lexicon, yet it is part of our diversity initiative.
The law doesn't require us to banish the words "whitelist/blacklist" from our lexicon, yet it is part of our diversity initiative.
The law requires we do not discriminate based on a protected category (gender, race, etc). We have always been compliant. However, the law does not require us to hold special recruiting events for underrepresented folks when we are already compliant, but yet that is a major part of my company's diversity initiative.[1]
There are pay disparity laws. We were fully compliant before they became the law. They are not part of the diversity initiative and usually not discussed.
The law doesn't prohibit us from saying "Merry Christmas!" but our diversity initiative addresses this.
The list goes on and on.
Note: I am not saying I'm against such initiatives. Merely noting that at least for my company (and jurisdiction), these initiatives are not about what the law requires. We have always had employee expectations training for all employees, and it already covered things required by law, long before the company dove into these initiatives.
It may be that your company's diversity initiative is about legal compliance, but for many company's, it is a lot more than that (by a lot, I mean the majority of the initiative is not required by law).
> The risk of running into both PR & legal trouble
There's a world of a difference between PR trouble and legal trouble. Your comment originally was about the legal side, and so is my response. I do believe that most diversity initiatives are about PR, and not about the law, which was why I responded.
[1] These are invite-only, and so it's not open to all groups - just the ones we picked.
> these initiatives are not about what the law requires.
Except they are. Your word list is an exceedingly literal straw-man interpretation of a law that is purposefully vague, and doesn’t prescribe which words you can use. You can’t assume that specific policies of a company aren’t there for legal reasons just because the law doesn’t state the exact same policy in the exact same words.
The spirit and the letter of the law, as I already pointed out, requires that employers take “reasonable” actions toward making all employees feel welcome. Society and business have collectively decided that certain words can or do make some people feel unwelcome. Because of that fact, and because companies don’t want their management sued for neglect, we have interpretations of what it means to be compliant that are predictive and speculative. That really does not mean that the initiatives are not about the law, in fact exactly the opposite. Asking people not to use certain words counts as one of those “reasonable” actions, and gives the company a paper trail of attempting to be compliant.
They aren't. In fact, the discussions I've seen at companies in the bay area go far beyond the minimum requirements of the law. They aren't about preventing discrimination, they're about actively increasing diversity (in some areas, but not all).
Protecting the company makes them sound like a defensive measure, when they seem equally an offensive measure to get ahead of the competition: "use our product, or come work for us, and feel good about yourself!"
Your whole argument is predicated on "The law is vague. Society has decided such phrases make people unwelcome, and thus companies can be penalized for it."
Unfortunately, the only way to know is to test it in the courts. We differ as to where society currently stands on such matters, and it is certainly not clear that were this to go to court, rulings will be made to penalize companies utilizing the lexicon in the manner that it has always been utilized. And of course, my company never said "We should stop using these words because we are interpreting the law this way (or we think society interprets the law this way)." The notion that there may be a lawsuit was not even mentioned with regards to these phrases.
Your argument is "law is intentionally vague, and society believes X". I agree on the former, and not the latter. Unfortunately, anyone can make any statement when it comes to vague laws, which is why having precedence in a court is important.
You've also not addressed the other examples in my comment. My company, which is compliant with the law on hiring based discrimination, is not going to get sued if they decide not to hold special recruiting events for people of certain protected classes. Your earlier comment asked whether "I am getting it from HR and/or company lawyers", and in this particular case, the answer is definitely "Yes". The need to hold such events has been widely discussed in the company, and it has been made clear that this is a proactive initiative, and not required at all of us. Much of the criticism about this particular part of the initiative within the company is very much about "this is not required by law". There is no way HR is going to claim it is.
Furthermore, I just noticed in your earlier reply:
> You are suggesting that companies are wasting their money for no reason, and consciously running training programs that are unnecessary? Why would "most" companies do that?
I suggested no such thing. Companies do a lot of things that are not required by law. I didn't say all such things are a waste and are "for no reason".
> Your whole argument is predicated on "The law is vague. Society has decided such phrases make people unwelcome, and thus companies can be penalized for it."
No, my argument is predicated on my experience and discussions with company HR and lawyers at multiple companies. It sounds like your experience differs, and that's fine. My explanation for why the words you chose aren't specifically listed in the law is because the law is intentionally vague, and not prescriptive about which words you can use. The law is stating a goal, and companies are interpreting how to achieve that goal, because they have no other choice.
> Your argument is "law is intentionally vague, and society believes X". I agree on the former, and not the latter.
I feel like this is getting unnecessarily argumentative, and I'm guilty of escalating it. But I did not say, and didn't intend to mean that all of society agrees. However, it's sort of a fact and not a debatable point whether certain groups of people and businesses have decided that some words are sensitive. That's exactly why it's showing up in diversity programs.
> I didn't say all such things are a waste and are "for no reason".
Okay, I apologize for mis-interpreting. You have said multiple times that it is "not about the law" and you haven't offered an alternative explanation. If the reason has nothing to do with the law, then what is it, and why are companies saying it has to do with the law? What is the goal behind the proactive initiatives?
> You've also not addressed the other examples in my comment. My company, which is compliant with the law on hiring based discrimination, is not going to get sued if they decide not to hold special recruiting events for people of certain protected classes.
I tried to address this. Attitudes are changing over time. Being compliant yesterday doesn't necessarily mean you're compliant today, even if the law doesn't change wording. Growing awareness means that what's "reasonable" is a moving target. Also, we were talking about diversity training, and not affirmative action nor only hiring discrimination laws. Your company might get sued in the future if it doesn't take reasonable actions along the way to prevent people from feeling marginalized or ostracized, even though it believes it's in line with the law today. That has already happened at other companies, and one reason companies are trying to be proactive.
> You have said multiple times that it is "not about the law" and you haven't offered an alternative explanation.
In addition to what the parent says about PR, there are some actual good reasons:
1. Some companies are starting to understand and believe that having a diverse team is a competitive advantage when it comes to designing and marketing products intended for a diverse audience.
2. Some companies are starting to believe that it's just the right thing to do to try to increase diversity in their ranks, to attempt to combat systemic sexism and racism that historically has kept certain groups on the sidelines for some roles.
Whether you agree with these things or not, companies are increasingly believing in them, and that's at least a part of why they go far beyond what the law requires when it comes to anti-discrimination. I find it unlikely that a company would lose a court case for not pushing to hire more diverse candidates, or not having implicit-bias training, or not removing terms like master/slave or whitelist/blacklist from their internal lexicon. It does not seem like companies are doing this because they are afraid of running afoul of the law.
Hey I do agree with those things, I agree there are some actual good reasons and I agree there are PR reasons, I'm not arguing that. I guess I am miscommunicating, being misleading in a way I don't understand, or my style is grating some people.
I will just add that I agree that pushing to hire more diverse candidates isn't likely to cause a law suit for most companies. It might for a large company that is lopsided and clearly discriminating, but it'd take evidence which is hard to get. That's really outside the scope of what I thought we were talking about, though, because pushing to hire diversity isn't something that requires all employees to actively participate in the process.
The other two, avoiding implicit bias training and not removing sensitive words, in combination those could cause problems - and I know of companies where they have caused problems. If people actually use words that make multiple employees feel uncomfortable, and the company management has a record of complaints and no record of action to resolve the complaints, there is real liability there in today's world.
By and large I think there's probably a lot more agreement here under the surface than it looks like. My mistake might be failing to clarify that I'm not saying legal reasons are the only reasons. There are other reasons, I'm just saying the legal reasons are usually there, and are important. This is probably getting less true over time, where legal reasons were what it took to get some companies to actually do something, and today growing awareness means that companies are more likely to think it's the right thing to do, more likely to agree with the law, and more willing to begin taking action without any specific legal concern. I guess maybe it's quite a good sign that people here are disagreeing with me because it means things have been going the right direction, compared to my work experience over the last couple of decades.
> You have said multiple times that it is "not about the law" and you haven't offered an alternative explanation. If the reason has nothing to do with the law, then what is it, and why are companies saying it has to do with the law? What is the goal behind the proactive initiatives?
I'm confused with the question, given that you yourself gave the answer:
> The risk of running into both PR & legal trouble
You yourself stated a reason other than legal.
But even without PR, I'm surprised you're asking. Do you not believe they can be pushing these initiatives because they actually care about diversity? Or because they view it to be a competitive advantage over other companies? Or because they believe diversity will lead to better company performance? The last is one of the main stated goals in my company. I don't know if they themselves believe it, but it's clear that many, many people do.
> I tried to address this. Attitudes are changing over time. Being compliant yesterday doesn't necessarily mean you're compliant today, even if the law doesn't change wording.
I really, really do not see any group winning a court case against a company because they did not have special hiring events for people of their group. Perhaps in the future, but not any time soon. I do not for a second believe my company did this because they were concerned about the law.
If the company's normal recruitment practices is discriminatory towards a certain group, I can understand. That's not the case here. Moreover, even if it were, having such events would not protect them. You can't wipe discrimination in one part of the company by compensating in another. If your job application page has stuff that discriminates against, say, African Americans, then having special recruiting events for them will not alter the fact that you are discriminating.
> Also, we were talking about diversity training, and not affirmative action nor only hiring discrimination laws.
The thread is about discussions of diversity in the workplace, and were not limiting it to training.
I don't think fears about PR & legal ramifications are so easily separable. PR problems can and do become legal problems very quickly.
Sure, I do think companies care about diversity, and are interested in the competitive advantages. But the only mandatory meetings on diversity I've ever had were about communicating policy that is attempting to adhere to the law, even if in a proactive sense. The goal of the law is to care about diversity and is founded on a belief that a diverse society has a competitive advantage, so I don't necessarily see a hard line between complying with the law and actually caring about diversity.
> I really, really do not see any group winning a court case against a company because they did not have special hiring events for people of their group.
I don't see that either, and it's not something I claimed. We weren't talking about affirmative action, you're moving the goal post. We were talking about widespread mandatory diversity programs.
I think I know what you mean, and me too. But... mandatory diversity training at work is typically very bland, sticks to communicating what the rules are, and is very apolitical compared to forums, employee banter, or stuff you find on the news or Facebook or YouTube. Having been through a bunch of them at several companies, I wouldn't put them in the same camp as 'politics' at all.
Are you implying they're not connected, that discrimination and diversity are unrelated? Your wording makes it sound like some kind of political debate trap you're setting. FWIW, I'm uninterested in arguing here why and whether there should be such laws, or justifying efforts to prevent discrimination. The existence of these laws is a fact, and you're free to study the history and legal precedents for why they exist. Here's a generic but decent starting point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination
Why? Isn't making people aware of laws how you abide by them? The risk of not educating people and being caught ignoring abuses is fairly serious. Broadly speaking, some of the laws we're talking about are laws that specifically require making employees aware of their existence.
I think they are talking about meetings at work which do not focus on the law or workplace etiquette, but serve to raise awareness of for diversity/minority/social justice issues outside the workplace.
Where is that happening? And are you sure we're not actually talking about people who misunderstand the purpose and legal requirements of diversity training programs?
As far as I can tell, this is the first comment in the thread to suggest we're talking about widespread mandatory "social justice" meetings that are political in nature and unrelated to the workplace's legal obligations. That's not what I got from @daok's comment or anything in between, and there are widespread mandatory diversity training programs in the U.S. that explain all the comments above, from my perspective.
I've never seen that (mandatory meetings unrelated to work) myself, across employment at 2 multinational corporations, several mid-sized companies, and a handful of startups. The mandatory diversity training programs in most companies are there to meet the legal obligations of discrimination law, whether they tell you that or not. Usually they tell you that.
I have had department meetings at my workplace in California in the wake of the BLM movement, which also happens to be a multinational with 10s of thousands of employees. Groups of 20 or so employees were put together and encouraged to share stories of how social and racial injustice has impacted their personal lives and ideas for what can be done.
I have a peer who had similar meetings at their firm and the VP of Diversity and Inclusion went as far as to say attendance at such meetings would be tracked on an individual and ongoing basis.
I feel that in general, my company has a very traditional and apolitical work culture, so my imagination runs rampant with what things must be like at FB, Google, & social service sector workplaces.
I think just the fact that companies are increasingly hiring executives that head diversity/inclusion departments (mine does as well) shows that they're aiming for a lot more than just compliance with anti-discrimination laws.
Oddly, companies are actively and deliberately discriminating against race and gender in tech companies in the name of diversity and inclusion. It boggles my mind that none of them have been sued yet for these practices.
I think he's referring to the incident where Google decided to throw out all applications from caucasian and asian men back around the beginning of 2018. They were directed to “purge entirely any applications by non-diverse employees from the hiring pipeline". Non-diverse meaning caucasian or asian men. They had a diversity problem so they decided to "solve" it in the most racist way possible. They also had another program to assign interviewers based on race and gender to match the applicant. Rather than trying to increase their hiring pool to cover some of the implicit bias they just decided to double down on the racism.
I should have been more clear. Like someone else mentioned, these diversity (and inclusion) discussions are not related to discrimination laws and equal opportunity. They are always related to increasing diversity in the company by hiring more underrepresented people (previously this just meant women in eng but now it's been expanded to POC). In order to achieve this, companies are actively discriminating against non-minorities, which some may call positive discrimination. Regardless, it's discrimination nonetheless and it's very common yet somehow nobody cares.
I don't think you're looking at it from the right perspective, or have the right base assumptions in place.
The thesis here is that current hiring practices are biased (often implicitly and unintentionally) against women and POC. Since removing implicit bias is exceedingly difficult, actively requiring hiring managers to hire more people from underrepresented groups is a way to put your thumb on the scale in order to equalize them.
I can understand how you'd see that as discrimination against white men, and if you squint at it in just the right way, it really seems like it is, but what it's really doing is attempting to reduce an unfair advantage that white men have. No, it's not perfect, and I'm sure occasionally a white male does legitimately get discriminated against. But that's a small price to pay to lift a ton of other people out of the status quo of discrimination they're usually stuck in.
The fact is that women simply represent a small percentage of the overall workforce in engineering. The only way you can get parity in representation is to get parity in the underlying workforce. The only way to do that is to encourage women to pursue a career in this industry, but that's not something you can change overnight and I doubt companies care enough to invest in something that may pay off in 20 years.
I'm all for doing things that aren't discriminatory and removing unconscious biases in interviews, job descriptions, and whatever, but that will not move the needle. It's a supply issue.
Discrimination is discrimination, no matter how you want to dress it up, and it's never OK.
I'll add that some of my best colleagues have been women. I much rather not work in a sausage fest, but I also don't want to work in a world where active discrimination is supported.
> Discrimination is discrimination, no matter how you want to dress it up, and it's never OK.
Let’s agree on this 100% and then ask the question: how do we get rid of discrimination? If we have some implicit social bias that is causing a measurable difference in outcome for women, how can we get rid of the bias? If we take it on face value as truth that all discrimination is bad, the no discrimination at all is the ideal. I assume we both agree on that completely. In the mean time, before we’re able to fully eliminate all discrimination, which is better: negative discrimination against women resulting in the outcome of fewer women working and lower pay, or that plus an offset positive discrimination that boost the outcome for women so that there are more in the workforce and the pay is closer to equal?
We can try to push outcomes to be closer to equitable, but the most important question there, I think, is: will the affirmative action actually help remove the original implicit bias against women?
> The fact is that women simply represent a small percentage of the overall workforce in engineering.
That has changed over time, and is different depending on where you live. It went up from 0 a century ago to an average of something like 35% in the 70s, and has declined since then to like 20%. In some countries, the balance is closer to 50% and in a few places, its over 50% - spots in India for example. Isn’t that alone evidence indicating things have not settled, that we can’t rest on some notion that the workforce balance today represents the natural state of things? That we are obligated to ask why, and make sure men aren’t accidentally contributing to the discrepancy? (Especially given that in the past there is a documented history of that happening.)
> The only way to do that is to encourage women to pursue a career in this industry
What if the reason women are choosing not to pursue engineering is because there are still biases, and they know it? Then how would you encourage them?
> Discrimination is discrimination, no matter how you want to dress it up
What if the job you’re talking about being offered to a woman is subsidized and would not have been offered to a man either way? Is that still discrimination?
> these diversity (and inclusion) discussions are not related to discrimination laws and equal opportunity.
FWIW, that's a claim that doesn't quite match my experience at work, nor of talking to some of the people who implement these programs. Though to be clear, we were talking about widespread mandatory company-wide meetings, not any old discussion on inclusion that happens to occur while at work. We may need to get more specific about which programs we're talking about, they're certainly not identical everywhere. It also doesn't seem to add up when I read our current laws, which are changing over time to emphasize.
> In order to achieve this, companies are activity discriminating against non-minorities, which some may call positive discrimination.
The historical term for this is affirmative action (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action), and the idea is to temporarily increase benefits for a disadvantaged group, not to intentionally decrease benefits for the advantaged group. Calling it discrimination, therefore, is a framing that isn't always true, and is somewhat political. It's not always true because things aren't always zero sum. If I choose to give someone a dollar, you don't lose a dollar.
If there really are a fixed number of jobs at a company that is 80/20 men, and the company decides 30% must go to women, then technically yes, that is a form of discrimination. But - just hypothetically - is it a negative discrimination if the reason that the company is 80/20 men in the first place is because it previously discriminated against women, and would have been 50/50 without several decades of history of unspoken discrimination?
It's important to also think about a few things- One, that unlike social prejudices, affirmative action is not intended to be permanent. It's intended to help boost people who've been unfairly and systematically disadvantaged, while they're disadvantaged, and only until things even out. After that, the boost should go away by design. Two, that some of those disadvantages in history have been really extreme, and the kind of discrimination you might imagine you feel when your company tries to hire more women isn't the same order of magnitude of what women and black people as a whole have gone through.
> Regardless, it's discrimination nonetheless and it's very common yet somehow nobody cares.
Is all discrimination bad always? I'm very discriminating about my partners. I'm not sure that nobody cares, I think some people are in favor of seeing that gender and racial injustices actually go away, since not doing anything about it hasn't worked yet.
