Is diversity inherently good?  Have their been studies to prove the increase of anything by hiring people from different skin colors or proposed backgrounds?  I work in a small office of about 20.  We have 3 homosexuals, one bi female, 2 blacks and 2 Spanish speaking Hispanics.  Out of coincidence 8 of us are in multicultural or interracial relationships.  My company's owner is gay and goes to all sorts of conferences on minority-owned businesses etc.  This gets him connections to other businesses and such.  There are awards for locally owned minority-owned businesses.  He is a gay midwest American man whose ancestors were Dutch.  If we were keeping score, on Facebook he would still be called white privileged.  Which leads me a dumbass question. Does anyone have the balls to call a Jew white privileged?


Anyhow, I digress.  If my company was 20 straight, white, cis-gendered (some of you may need to google that) males would anything be different in terms of productivity, efficacy, efficiently or creativity?  Say we take it a step further and say they are all from similar backgrounds.  An area steeped rich in say Czechlosvokians who came over during the communist refuge era.  (try calling one of those guys white privileged too) Has there ever been a study the effectively measured that my current company would be better than my hypothetical company?

It seems diversity is glamorized.  I am by no means saying it is inherently bad.  Or negative at all.  But there is a lot of emphasis on it in society from college campus building, modern company hiring and movie and Broadway casting.  

A black guy from Milwaukee that can't trace his ancestry, a Filipino American whose parents came here with medical degrees to be Dr's and half native American from the Oneida tribe who doesn't live on the reservation but goes to a pow-wow twice a year walk into a bar.  Is that bar inherently more diverse than a politically conservative French Canadian living in America, a yarmulke-wearing jew and a male feminist from Green Bay who are all white?   Do we draw the line at skin color like racists? 

Sometimes it is my opinion that we value to skin color diversity more than we value individuality.  Or maybe it is not that we value it, but that there is an assumption that the conversations would be different with different skin tones as opposed to just different individuals.  

Maybe this is just a random rant.  I am sure some have some viewpoints on it.  I would like an open conversation without people throwing stones are each other about it.  It seems like this is a good venue to do it.  Let's go!

My work has over 100 employees, and to my knowledge only one them is non-white, and they only work once a month or so.

I do live in a mostly white rural area though, can understand that it’s not as noticeable unlike if it was in Sydney or a really multicultural area. My work is also 90% female staff so maybe people only notice that more.

I think diversity in the workplace is part of the globalist agenda, personally.

I was going to start a similar thread a few weeks ago.

When we start hiring, promoting or developing employees and/or potential employees and allowing opportunities based on primarily race, sexual orientation, gender, colour, etc  - we're totally missing the point of equality and diversity. Promotion should be based on merit, character and most importantly the ability to do the job regardless of any of these things. 

I can understand, and support supporting those from historically disadvantaged groups through employment schemes into entry level jobs - that's an entirely different conversation and shouldn't be confused with what we're talking about. 

Previous generations fought for free speech, and this generation is so content with shutting down alternative opinion to one's own. In line with that, this generation is so content with ticking the correct boxes to show how diverse they really are whether it adds true value to their organization or not. 

My parents weren't rich, they both worked. My Mother came from a white working class background, my Father, the son of Dutch immigrants who came here in the wake of WW2. My parents didn't drink, didn't smoke, didn't do drugs. They are responsible adults. They encouraged me to get a part time job when I was 15 to learn the value of money, to take some pressure off the family of 5 and to save for my first car. I'm of above average intelligence, yet at different times throughout my adolescence struggled with schooling, more so due to my inability to relate to or care about what was being taught. I work in business, in management & leadership. It's a different mindset to learning some of the dead-shit classes we have to endure. I'm also not a 6'0" 200 lb athlete - no free rides. 

I've worked hard. Now make good money, have good money and today I'm rather comfortable. I'm no more intelligent or talented than the next person, just better through hard work, through repetition. I'm a firm believer in success not being attained by what you're willing to gain, but in what you're willing to lose, to sacrifice. I started at the bottom and didn't get any free rides, nor was the door opened easily for me, I had to take on some hard constructive criticism, and often failed. I hate the term 'white privilege' and I don't accept anyone using it to devalue one's work ethic or success. 

random stoner thought. On any message board, we never know anyone's "diversity" background. We just know their individual personality and avatar. You could be a black Muslim and never share it here.

Dec 23, 2017 18:14:05 GMT theend said:

Is diversity inherently good?  Have their been studies to prove the increase of anything by hiring people from different skin colors or proposed backgrounds?  I work in a small office of about 20.  We have 3 homosexuals, one bi female, 2 blacks and 2 Spanish speaking Hispanics.  Out of coincidence 8 of us are in multicultural or interracial relationships.  My company's owner is gay and goes to all sorts of conferences on minority-owned businesses etc.  This gets him connections to other businesses and such.  There are awards for locally owned minority-owned businesses.  He is a gay midwest American man whose ancestors were Dutch.  If we were keeping score, on Facebook he would still be called white privileged.  Which leads me a dumbass question. Does anyone have the balls to call a Jew white privileged?


Anyhow, I digress.  If my company was 20 straight, white, cis-gendered (some of you may need to google that) males would anything be different in terms of productivity, efficacy, efficiently or creativity?  Say we take it a step further and say they are all from similar backgrounds.  An area steeped rich in say Czechlosvokians who came over during the communist refuge era.  (try calling one of those guys white privileged too) Has there ever been a study the effectively measured that my current company would be better than my hypothetical company?

It seems diversity is glamorized.  I am by no means saying it is inherently bad.  Or negative at all.  But there is a lot of emphasis on it in society from college campus building, modern company hiring and movie and Broadway casting.  

A black guy from Milwaukee that can't trace his ancestry, a Filipino American whose parents came here with medical degrees to be Dr's and half native American from the Oneida tribe who doesn't live on the reservation but goes to a pow-wow twice a year walk into a bar.  Is that bar inherently more diverse than a politically conservative French Canadian living in America, a yarmulke-wearing jew and a male feminist from Green Bay who are all white?   Do we draw the line at skin color like racists? 

Sometimes it is my opinion that we value to skin color diversity more than we value individuality.  Or maybe it is not that we value it, but that there is an assumption that the conversations would be different with different skin tones as opposed to just different individuals.  

Maybe this is just a random rant.  I am sure some have some viewpoints on it.  I would like an open conversation without people throwing stones are each other about it.  It seems like this is a good venue to do it.  Let's go!

There is value in diversity of viewpoints, which comes from differing backgrounds and yes, skin color is often associated with that.

There once was a soap ad in 2011 which looked like this:



which looks innocuous enough on its own, until you realize that the dirty -> clean matches darker skin -> lighter skin (implying that black people are less clean than white people). Whether you think it's something worth making a big deal over is irrelevant, because the point is that if the marketing peeps had a sufficient cross section someone would have caught that before it went to publication and they wouldn't have had to issue an apology after the fact.

Do we know anything at all for sure about the people who put together that ad? Or is this all a speculative guess based on the end result?

Dec 27, 2017 4:47:12 GMT Michinokudriver said:

Dec 23, 2017 18:14:05 GMT theend said:

Is diversity inherently good?  Have their been studies to prove the increase of anything by hiring people from different skin colors or proposed backgrounds?  I work in a small office of about 20.  We have 3 homosexuals, one bi female, 2 blacks and 2 Spanish speaking Hispanics.  Out of coincidence 8 of us are in multicultural or interracial relationships.  My company's owner is gay and goes to all sorts of conferences on minority-owned businesses etc.  This gets him connections to other businesses and such.  There are awards for locally owned minority-owned businesses.  He is a gay midwest American man whose ancestors were Dutch.  If we were keeping score, on Facebook he would still be called white privileged.  Which leads me a dumbass question. Does anyone have the balls to call a Jew white privileged?


Anyhow, I digress.  If my company was 20 straight, white, cis-gendered (some of you may need to google that) males would anything be different in terms of productivity, efficacy, efficiently or creativity?  Say we take it a step further and say they are all from similar backgrounds.  An area steeped rich in say Czechlosvokians who came over during the communist refuge era.  (try calling one of those guys white privileged too) Has there ever been a study the effectively measured that my current company would be better than my hypothetical company?

It seems diversity is glamorized.  I am by no means saying it is inherently bad.  Or negative at all.  But there is a lot of emphasis on it in society from college campus building, modern company hiring and movie and Broadway casting.  

A black guy from Milwaukee that can't trace his ancestry, a Filipino American whose parents came here with medical degrees to be Dr's and half native American from the Oneida tribe who doesn't live on the reservation but goes to a pow-wow twice a year walk into a bar.  Is that bar inherently more diverse than a politically conservative French Canadian living in America, a yarmulke-wearing jew and a male feminist from Green Bay who are all white?   Do we draw the line at skin color like racists? 

Sometimes it is my opinion that we value to skin color diversity more than we value individuality.  Or maybe it is not that we value it, but that there is an assumption that the conversations would be different with different skin tones as opposed to just different individuals.  

Maybe this is just a random rant.  I am sure some have some viewpoints on it.  I would like an open conversation without people throwing stones are each other about it.  It seems like this is a good venue to do it.  Let's go!

There is value in diversity of viewpoints, which comes from differing backgrounds and yes, skin color is often associated with that.

There once was a soap ad in 2011 which looked like this:



which looks innocuous enough on its own, until you realize that the dirty -> clean matches darker skin -> lighter skin (implying that black people are less clean than white people). Whether you think it's something worth making a big deal over is irrelevant, because the point is that if the marketing peeps had a sufficient cross section someone would have caught that before it went to publication and they wouldn't have had to issue an apology after the fact.

To imply this meaning from that article is a sign of oversensitivity. Also, not doing good enough market research is the issue that caused them to not understand the sensitivity of the world, diversity had nothing to do with that. 

Dec 27, 2017 13:45:26 GMT theend said:

Do we know anything at all for sure about the people who put together that ad? Or is this all a speculative guess based on the end result?

Speculative, to be fair. But I do believe if the company had a fairly diverse cross-section of humanity on its marketing team someone would have caught it, since this has been an ongoing, ongoing discussion among parts of the beauty community (continued below).

Dec 27, 2017 16:32:32 GMT nazzer said:

Dec 27, 2017 4:47:12 GMT Michinokudriver said:

There is value in diversity of viewpoints, which comes from differing backgrounds and yes, skin color is often associated with that.

There once was a soap ad in 2011 which looked like this:



which looks innocuous enough on its own, until you realize that the dirty -> clean matches darker skin -> lighter skin (implying that black people are less clean than white people). Whether you think it's something worth making a big deal over is irrelevant, because the point is that if the marketing peeps had a sufficient cross section someone would have caught that before it went to publication and they wouldn't have had to issue an apology after the fact.

To imply this meaning from that article is a sign of oversensitivity. Also, not doing good enough market research is the issue that caused them to not understand the sensitivity of the world, diversity had nothing to do with that. 

No, it's totally a thing.

Beyonce has been accused of lightening her skin, as has Rihanna among others, to conform to Western beauty standards, and it brings up a discussion of 'is black ugly,' stories of moms using scrubs and bleaches on their kids to make their skin less dark and therefore (according to the society we live in) more beautiful.

       

I mean, I'm an Asian dude. I had no idea about any of this since it falls outside of my general world view and existence, I wouldn't know of this unless someone with a different background, with different life experiences and a different outlook on life offers up an alternative way to look at things which is the whole goddamn point of this diversity thing. 

Speaking for myself and my life experience, (again) I'm an Asian dude who grew up in the States. Quick, name me five Asian male protagonists from 80s pop culture. Four...? Any romantic leads?

And I gotta tell you it f---'s with your head, man. All your childhood, all your teenage years you're bombarded with TV and movies showcasing you as the nerd, you never get the girl and you're socially awkward and you just sort of internalize that as the way it is; the world is telling you this is how YOU'RE supposed to be. Then you grow up and even if you shake that off you realize (via the miracles of online dating) there's a bias against Asian dudes because we're thought of -- since that's all anyone has grown up seeing -- as weak, unmanly, and painfully geeky.

There once was a (female) then-comic book fan, now comic book writer who started a list called Women in Refrigerators, which documented the frequency to which girlfriends in comics were killed, superheroines were de-powered (to provide motivation for the male hero to get revenge, natch) and the message was pretty simple: Wonder why girls don't read comics? 'Cause you keep killing or forcibly retiring the ones we identify with!

And the thing is that none of this is malicious, no one person orchestrated mainstream media to behave this way. It's not the kind of thing one expects the masses to notice but if you're an Asian guy or a girl comics fan you can't help but notice it, and the best way to get it changed is to have minorities in the boardroom where decisions like these get made who can say 'yo, that's a problem' and THAT is the point of diversity in the workplace.

Attachments:

Trivia point in 1980, 3,500,439 Asians in America. Total population 226,545,805. 1.5% of the population wasn't represented in media as leading roles or love interests. In 1970 1,526,401 Asians total population 203,210,158 .75% of the population. Not a good talent pool to build into leading men I reckon.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_demographics_of_the_United_States

See the intent probably wasn't racist. But someone who was sensitive and likely closet racist read into it.

www.cbsnews.com/news/h-m-the-weeknd-coolest-monkey-in-the-jungle-racist-hoodie/

I doubt it was ever intended to be racist, but not exactly smart though considering we live in a world of outrage politics.

Intention has nothing to do with it, and carelessness or cluelessness isn't an excuse. It's a perfect example of systemic racism.

Good on The Weeknd for taking a strong stance.

Woah systemic racism. There is a system here? That term is usually a ludicrous claim. Sounds like a good new thread

systematic

sɪstəˈmatɪk/Submit

adjective

done or acting according to a fixed plan or system; methodical.


Highly doubt it.