Con: The author seems to try to be fair, but quickly falls into the trap of characterizing men in the field as "socially-challenged-uber-nerd[s]". She says that "a lot of men would rather not live like code-cowboys", but goes on to recite a litany of bad traits that are "masculine qualities" and contrasts them with the traits of a "good developer". That's a good way to alienate male readers who would otherwise be sympathetic. Perhaps men do advocate for themselves more actively in the workplace, and that should be corrected for by affirmative action; saying that men "pester the boss until she finally relents to send them to a conference" doesn't accomplish anything.

Con: spelling.

Even those who advocate for affirmative action generally do not deny this. You are behind the times.

Affirmative action is not racism, even though yes it is intentionally a type of positive discrimination. It’s also out in the open and temporary and more fair, as opposed to cultural racism that it hidden and systemic and permanent and hurting people unfairly.

Getting stuck on the existence of discrimination is a way to lose sight of the goal. The goal is to battle systemic cultural racism & sexism that laws have been unable to fix for more than a hundred years, by trying to adjust outcomes temporarily in favor of the people who’ve been unfairly excluded, only until we have evidence that systemic discrimination is mostly gone. In the mean time, there is still a ton of evidence that the bad kind of discrimination is still pervasive and durable. If you don’t want affirmative actions of any kind because you can’t get past the discrimination, then how do you propose to fix racism? Note people have been trying for centuries and unable to do it without some kind of balancing offsetting positive discrimination to counter the known measurable negative discrimination. Do nothing has already failed. So what’s your solution?

Arguments for or against AA aside, this line of reasoning, where you invalidate somebody's argument based on what demographic group they belong to (white middle class males in this case), really seems like a simple ad hominem argument. You're no longer addressing what is said - only who is saying it.

(Please note: this is not my point of view. I'm channeling the Right simply to demonstrate how their rhetorical techniques work.)

Hard disagree that all discrimination is the same, this is a short-sighted and antagonistic view that seems rather ignorant of history. I do not agree that affirmative action is racist by definition.

> Defining discrimination as “positive” is just a convenient way to tell yourself you’re not being a bigot.

Listen, brother, we appear to have the same goal. You’re attacking people who agree with you. This kind of escalatory language is unproductive for all of us. I didn’t define discrimination as positive, I said there are some kinds that are positive, and affirmative action is one of them, which is why it was named that way.

One major difference you’re ignoring is that racism is prejudiced against a specific group and discriminates against a specific group, where affirmative action discriminates in favor of a specific and underprivileged group. It’s partially a sort of dual or opposite, it does not discriminate negatively against any specific group. Any disadvantage or negative discrimination, if you want to call it that, applies to everyone except the group being boosted. And again, the idea is that it’s temporary and open-source, just until we can demonstrate equality of opportunity. Another difference you’re failing to consider is that affirmative action is different from racism because affirmative action targets advantages and help toward whichever group is currently underprivileged. That’s the opposite of, for example, systemically holding back black people or women, which is what has happened for hundreds of years. If white people in America became underprivileged all of a sudden, the affirmative action policy, unlike cultural racism, would switch benefits to the new target.

There are real differences between these different kinds of discrimination that you’re trying hard not to see. I’d recommend reading more about the history of affirmative action and understanding that many many very smart and very kind people of all races have thought very hard about this problem and haven’t come up with a better solution. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action

Suggesting that any attempt to fix the known problem is willfully racist is a non-starter, and you should be aware that it’s a talking point that originated from white supremacy groups.

Affirmative action absolutely could be construed as racist, and one can reasonably debate whether it’s ethical or effective, but regardless, it’s nowhere near as racist as it’s possible to be.

(I left the Holocaust out of the list above because I bet you’d reply either that there is insufficient evidence that it happened or that it wasn’t racist per se.)

You also completely ignore the host of major issues that NOW has taken important stands on in its 40 year history and focus on these two things, as if that's all NOW was about.

I think this will be my last post in this thread. I didn't mean to get in to an hours-long debate about this.

It's a disingenuous argument which doesn't take into consideration the whole history of why the program exists in the first place. Not only that, by trying to justify it on biological terms, the author introduces the supposed existence of an inherent bias that Google is supposedly trying to ignore.

How about we try to achieve 1-1 parity with society's distribution and if after 30 years of encouraging people of all genders to participate in all professions there's solid evidence that some people don't care for X or Y reason, then we let the problem take care of itself? I mean if we truly are aiming for non-discrimination, that should be the metric, right?

> Not all discriminations are equal.

Never said that.

I was implying that anything that was discrimination was wrong. Are you arguing the opposite?

> We can measure the effect [etc] and the impact [etc] and it can ascribed monetary value [etc]. No formula will be ideal in all cases, but that is not an excusable barrier. [emphasis mine]

You'll have to inform me then why there's debate on the ballpark percentage of the wage gap or even that it exists in general, just as an example. (not arguing for or against, but that there is a debate) And it is perfectly excusable for someone not to take action, or not to execute a very big action, if it is not the correct action, unless you think justice is necessarily coexistent with wrongful imprisonment.

And how do you pick who gets affirmative action anyway? I'm a Polish immigrant. My ancestors have been fucked 5 ways from Tuesday by just about every major happening in Europe. It was still 1989 when communism fell (only 27 years ago), and it left desolation and despair in its wake. Coming to the US, my parents and I had just about nothing.

And better yet, I'm not going to claim I deserve something. Because the world dealt me and everyone a shitty hand and the best I can do is play it, no matter the odds. Even if someone got a better hand than I did.

> What if the "privilege" you think you see is actually a difference in average ability or preferences between groups of people that are in fact different from each other?

...is the textbook definition of racism (and sexism). Moreover it criticizes affirmative action precisely on the basis that there are inherent differences of ability among different groups, by race or gender, etc.

Initially I gave you the benefit of the doubt, assuming for the sake of argument and also in the interest of fair discussion that you probably didn't mean what you said, exactly. It is clear now I overestimated you.