White and male, Google releases diversity data

[notorious bum]

It's not Blubb's fault, this is exactly how our country's history is taught in the classrooms. If you don't compare notes when you get out, you'll think that slavery ended long ago, Obama proves black people can be anything they want, and all this other stuff is just coincidence.

[ronin sparthos]

just want to point out this is not quite correct. vote fraud is rampant, but it's usually conducted on a massive scale; "lost" ballots, gerrymandering, voter I.D. laws, etc. the type of voter fraud that would be "prevented" by voter I.D. laws is so rare as to be negligible.

You're talking about inefficiencies in the polling process which falls on bad training, inadequate polling staff, human error etc which most definitely was not the argument pols were making to ram through voter ID laws.

The way those bills were sold is that magic vans full of brown people were pouring in like clown cars and rigging elections cause Obama is a blackomancer out to destroy America or that 'everyone should have an ID, it's so innocuous rite?!' and the bam, no more election day registration, less hours for polling sites, weekend reg cuts and a strategy of making it harder for old/poor people who happen to be mostly minorities to vote.

Making an old black and white lady wait 7 hours on a line to vote is specifically designed to discourage people from voting. It's intimidation and goes against everything America is supposed to stand for but who gives a shit.

[ronin sparthos]

And if you think I'm pulling this out of my ass Blub, here's some homework:

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/...ations/361631/

[BaneTheBrawler]

You're talking about inefficiencies in the polling process which falls on bad training, inadequate polling staff, human error etc which most definitely was not the argument pols were making to ram through voter ID laws.

The way those bills were sold is that magic vans full of brown people were pouring in like clown cars and rigging elections cause Obama is a blackomancer out to destroy America or that 'everyone should have an ID, it's so innocuous rite?!' and the bam, no more election day registration, less hours for polling sites, weekend reg cuts and a strategy of making it harder for old/poor people who happen to be mostly minorities to vote.

Making an old black and white lady wait 7 hours on a line to vote is specifically designed to discourage people from voting. It's intimidation and goes against everything America is supposed to stand for but who gives a shit.

yeah, i think i formatted that poorly. that was three sentences.

just want to point out this is not quite correct. vote fraud is rampant, but it's usually conducted on a massive scale; "lost" ballots, gerrymandering, voter I.D. laws, etc.

The type of voter fraud that would be "prevented" by voter I.D. laws is so rare as to be negligible.

though obviously i question the innocence of those "inefficiencies"

[Aksannyi]

I'm still stuck on same-day voter registration. I don't remember that ever being a thing in my adult life, or perhaps these were changes in certain states? I've always had to be registered to vote several months before the general election.

[Cantih]

It's fairly new, Montana was the first to implement it in 2006.
CA will implement it next year, 2016 is going to be busy as fuck, already steeling myself to handle the crowds.

[Talus]

Anecdotally, I know a black woman that works for Google. Gonna go play the lottery now.

[Charismatic]

Anecdotally, I know a black woman that works for Google. Gonna go play the lottery now.

Not sure if that's such a smart idea.
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c2...uke/myluck.jpg

[Abandon]

or, it may be the best idea ever

[Acevalefor]

Not sure if that's such a smart idea.
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c2...uke/myluck.jpg

Haha. I rolled a zero 3 different times during my career. I think I have a screenshot of one of those times. Anyways, the "inefficiencies" in counting ballots and the like are in no way entirely innocent.

[ronin sparthos]

Who said those inefficiencies were innocent? Every method of tabulating votes has a downside. No pol has made the argument that significant elections have been thrown because of voter fraud unless we mean conspiracy theory.

Open bribery of pols and money buying elections is far more pressing, dudes aren't even pretending anymore. Fascism, here we come!

[Blubbartron]

Spoilered for being a veritable fucking novel and stuff.

Spoiler: show

@Blub

I like how you put in that irrefutably caveat as an escape hatch.

Recall that 'show me your papers' law in Arizona? Where you could be stopped for being Hispanic and forced to prove you were 'Murican? And the subsequent provisions that were deemed discriminatory and struck down by a judge?

Or the silliness of rock cocaine vs. powder cocaine sentences?

Or the overwhelming insular white makeup of the NYC Fire department? I guess by virtue of faeries the department was 91% white. A judge also struck down the exams as discriminatory against minority applicants.

Or the racist tendencies of one Robert Moses, architect of the modern New York highway system known for placing his pools and parks in white majority areas, unleashing his hostility towards the poor and minorities in his grand vision for New York City by cutting through neighborhoods and generally having great disdain towards mass transit.

You can continue to apologize for racist ideology finding its way into our laws and practices by saying it's all about the money and I'll continue to argue that both money and the systemic slant towards oppressing minorities are to blame. You can almost taste when it comes off the lips of our elected officials. They cry reverse racism, design commercials that rile up working class whites and inevitably apologize for their gaffes all while promising this country is one of meritocracy. This Google diversity data dump shows exactly how big the gulf is. How amusing.

We don't joke about darkies being criminals and hispanics being mango vendors without good reason and it's the manifestation of our bad acts.

As for critically analyzing? It's what I try to do and people far better at such things do when they drop the statistics and show that racism isn't just the brown people whining because they can't do capitalism right. It isn't a cop out, there are concrete facts and you can choose to acknowledge them and try to fix the imbalances or continue to make excuses. The New Jim Crow delves into just how disgustingly racist out justice system is and that's the branch of government that determines fairness. Or at least it likes to think of itself as doing so, until someone browns up on trial and gets a higher sentence cause.... brown people! Give me a break, Blub.

I'm not going to sit here and preach it's all the white mans fault or whatever strawman people attempt to employ when they're hit with the ugly truth but to ignore the systemic racism is to deny reality itself. I don't care how po' white trash you get in this country, you've still got a big advantage over your po' black trash.

I think I'd settle for even "strongly implies" that there was racist intent, but this is of course a tricky area to pin down. A racist and non-racist can make the exact same decision, but it's the reason why they make a decision that determines if they're racist.

The Arizona law is irrefutably racist. I remember it, but one law in Arizona is hardly something that's affecting minorities everywhere. You don't need to convince me that racism is still a thing, but you do have to convince me that racism is literally everywhere in government. From what I've seen, the only places with anything ranging from overt to covert racism is in the south or along the border with Mexico These have historically been extremely racist areas to begin with, and therefore it's not surprising that a racist would get elected and find support for his racist policies.

I mentioned the retardedness of crack vs cocaine in one of my own posts; I'm obviously aware of it.

I don't know much about the NYC fire department, but this is a good opportunity to reiterate (and prove that this is relevant to the thread topic) that there's no reason to expect the racial diversity in a particular field to match the racial diversity of the population at large. If they were using exams that discriminated against minorities, then fine, that's racist, though I'm curious how much an exam can discriminate against minorities for the purpose of fighting fires. Based on some quick research and the legal write up of the case, it seems like they were guilty of using an exam that minorities disproportionately failed (or did worse on) than others. To be perfectly honest, that seems like a loophole in the writing of Title VII. It closely parallels this irrational argument that something is suddenly racist because it coincidentally affects blacks/other minorities more than others. You can't evaluate intent based on outcome, and the definition of racism requires there to be intent. I found a couple of decent articles that indicate they're as "racist" as a rational person might suspect - they use some large words and aren't written in ebonics or other cultural dialects, but overall the questions aren't that hard. I would've preferred to get the actual exams to judge for myself completely, but finding copies of official exams online (even ones ruled discriminatory) seems to be difficult.

Robert Moses died over 30 years ago. It's a shame a racist was allowed to make important decisions, but it happened. However, he's just an architect, and he did what he did over half a century ago. Do we really expect that the racial mix of certain neighborhoods will remain the same over the course of multiple generations? I certainly don't, and I think only a fool does. The link you have in the next quote has a nice map of Chicago that shows how the diversity changed over 50 years, and it's changed a hell of a lot. That's just Chicago, but I imagine New York is likely pretty similar in terms of quantity of change.

I'm not apologizing for "racist" ideology finding its way into laws and practices - I'm questioning how much of it is actually racially motivated. If a law or practice is put in place in bad faith (i.e. obviously racially motivated) like the Arizona law, I'm right there with you calling the politicians that did it human garbage. But again, you're a fool if you think racism like that is widespread throughout the country, and you're more of a fool if you think that the Google diversity dump says anything other than "minorities and women don't go into Computer Science as frequently as others." Answering why they don't go into it as frequently is a very tricky question, and some part of it may, in fact, be racism, but I highly doubt it's the largest contributing factor.

I think I've written enough of a book responding here, but I'll finish it out by saying that the judiciary branch of government is not for "determining fairness." Its purpose is interpretation of the laws that the legislative branch has written. Fairness has absolutely nothing to do with it. I agree with you there's a lot of unfairness in the justice system (even calling it the "justice" system leaves a bad taste in my mouth), but I'm still not convinced that it's all because racists wrote racist laws, or racist judges make racist decisions. A lot of it has to do with the interaction between judge, prosecutor, and public defender. That last one is the most important deciding factor, and the reason a lot of people think the justice system is racist - minorities are often poor, and poor people can't afford a good lawyer to defend them in court, so they get stuck with an inept/uninterested defense, which is why they end up convicted more often, and get longer sentences than average.

And if you think I'm pulling this out of my ass Blub, here's some homework:

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/...ations/361631/

I read about 50-60% of this before I got bored. I have a really hard time giving a shit about stuff that happened 50-60 years ago that I'm relatively familiar with. I'm even less interested in it when it's being used to suggest there's still systematic racism today, and yet it seemingly only mentions stuff from decades ago.

[Xantavia]

I'm still stuck on same-day voter registration. I don't remember that ever being a thing in my adult life, or perhaps these were changes in certain states? I've always had to be registered to vote several months before the general election.

You're in Florida right? Every anomaly about traditional voting seems to pop up in that state. I think they were the big ones for shortening polling hours last election, but only in certain districts that have a tendency to vote democrat.

[Aksannyi]

You're in Florida right? Every anomaly about traditional voting seems to pop up in that state. I think they were the big ones for shortening polling hours last election, but only in certain districts that have a tendency to vote democrat.

Yeah, I'm in Florida, but I moved here in 2008. I voted in Pennsylvania in 2000 and 2004, and I thought you had to register in advance but hell I could be wrong or just thinking that because I did it that way, it must have been policy since I procrastinate everything else. Since moving here, I haven't had any issues or complaints about voting.

[Priran]

US population: 72% white, 5% asian, 12% black, 16% latino

Google: 61% white, 30% asian, 2% black, 3% latino

conclusion: too many white people

[Byrthnoth]

Speaking of "too white," I went to a Head and the Heart concert last night and we were just a few sheets and a little racial hatred away from a KKK meeting. It was the most racially homogenous crowd I've been in since I moved out of suburbia.

[Salodin]

Don't get it, can we blame companies if black people would rather try and make it to the NBA than learn how to code?

Anecdotal, but my girlfriend is a 4th grade teacher and the darkies would rather talk about sports and call of duty then learn how to read at their grade level. Its sad, but the parents do suck pretty hard too and I wouldn't be surprised if they were the same way when they were kids.

[notorious bum]

Well, aren't you the observant little bigot. It's almost as if this is some sort of.....socioeconomic issue. Nah, black people just wanna play some ball.

[Salodin]

Ah, good ol fashion name calling. Whatever floats your boat dude.

The tools are there for a lot of these kids (I concede not for all of them); they just aren't motivated to use them. I can't blame them, I liked video games a lot more then school at that age; and dreaming about making it big is a lot easier then making it big. I won't pretend I know how to fix the issue though.

[Milkster]

When people who have never been around poor areas for any significant amounts of time and try to give their theories on, on the internet, why they aren't better and how they would fix them...



Take it to Tumblr.