IME it's 50% loss of power and 50% perceived scarcity. Lots of places in the country have been great places to be a mediocre white man. Admitting that non (white men) can be excellent was one thing (tokens are fine) but allowing that other non (white men) can be mediocre, too? Unthinkable.
I think it's mostly about wages. It is easier to pay people shit if you can point to an outgroup earning even less.
I've been somewhat surprised at the corporate interest in diversity. It's hard to tease out how much is PR and how much is genuine interest in employee effectiveness, but for a company like Disney (for example) both seem to be pretty important considerations.
My first thought is that it has always required a higher emotional intelligence to be at the bottom of the chain of power than at the top.
In a broad cultural sense, if you're a despised minority, you are required to have enormous emotional intelligence to successfully navigate the world.
But in corporate hierarchies, the people at the bottom of the chain of power are required to do less emotional work than they think they are. The rank-and-file at Disney can afford to be a lot more openly racist (to pick one example) than the folks at the top.
Here's a bannable analogy for you: The world is a lot like a university. The folks at the bottom of the hierarchy in a university are also the people with the least emotional intelligence: The students.
I really hate theme parks, but I gather they don't want to alienate the people who like standing in lines waiting to feel slightly sick.
I realize that I should make clearer what the theory I'm proposing is intending to explain (so that you can all tell me I'm wrong).
While we see much backlash toward advocates of racial and gender equality why hasn't it played out like with a broader cultural turning away from the issue. What sustains the continued energy towards diversity efforts (particularly in PMC settings) rather than looking like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backlash:_The_Undeclared_War_Against_American_Women
There are any number of possible reasons (social media makes it easier to share stories of personal experience and that helps sustain the efforts; we live in a more polarized society so the backlash also energized proponents; there's a critical mass of people who believe it is the morally correct and just thing to do; etc . . . ).
In addition, I'm arguing, one motivation is that these concerns play out in people's professional lives in a non-abstract way. This theory was partially prompted by watching my spouse, who has a job that frequently requires communicating with people from a number of different organizations and if you feel like 1/4 of those are jerks who can't get your name right and probably don't care about responding to your questions or comments in a meaningful way it becomes much harder to do the job.
Or, to take another example, immediately after sending the e-mail I read this: https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/i-have-notes/625718603a37470020d12043/chanda-prescod-weinstein-science-writing-accessibility/
And was struck that this anecdote pulls at both, "this is personally frustrating" and "this seems minor but represents a significant stress on career success:
Having The Disordered Cosmos come out and seeing how people reacted to it made me very aware of how differently I would be read compared to my white colleagues. I have a book by a white man in physics that's literally his story of a specific thing that happened to him in science, and he tells you about his childhood; you learn about the key players in his life. You learn very little about me in The Disordered Cosmos. His book was labeled by the Library of Congress as science methodology, and mine was originally labeled as African American biography. I don't want to swing toward trying to sound like one of them just to stop having discussions about labels with people. But there's that temptation--like, I don't want to deal with that; can't I just be like everybody else? Which can become a discussion about Can I just assimilate? and all the awful things that come with that.
The rank-and-file at Disney can afford to be a lot more openly racist (to pick one example) than the folks at the top.
Wait what? You're picturing someone loading people into a ride or serving customers at a restaurant and being openly racist without repercussion?
7: Absolutely. Employees who only need to control their behavior in brief interactions carry much less of a burden.
I have! Among the rank-and-file, restaurant work is pretty damn racist -- or at least it was several decades ago when I did it. But I guess that racism really did extend up to the management level, too.
But you had to control your behavior like all the time.
If you want to be racist, you had to be careful around a certain subset of the customers. But yeah, fair enough: Wait-staff have to be pretty solid on the emotional intelligence thing. (I was a much better cook than I was a waiter.)
I got a horrible skin condition from working in a McDonald's kitchen, so they moved me to the counter.
I'd say that there are three principal motivations for corporate diversity: PR to customers, PR to recruits (incl. non-diverse recruits), and, thinking about Robinson joining the Dodgers, the knowledge that the right non-mediocre person of color is going to be a star.
Libertarians tell us that sports are scrupulously meritocratic. Libertarians also propose that the market promotes meritocracy and therefore disincentivizes discrimination. In conclusion: Libertarians are full of shit.
To be fair, 96% of everyone is full of shit when talking about sports.
93.8% according to this complicated formula I have devised, called Mobes Above Replacement.
18: True also of discussions of meritocracy and free markets.
And a lot of other things, for that matter, if you believe Theodore Sturgeon.
the ability to work well with others and be part of a flexible adaptable team is becoming more valuable, and the ability to accomplish tasks alone is becoming less valuable,
Interesting if true; why do you think it's true? I've been hearing about "flat organization" and "no I in team" and so forth for decades; is that included or are you thinking of more recent changes?
Management fads come and go, but structural inequality really has sticking power.
Interesting if true; why do you think it's true?
Maybe it's not true; maybe that perception just reflects my experience of aging (in that when I was a young programmer and didn't know much it was productive use of time to throw me at a problem and say, "code as much of this as you can by yourself" whereas, as I get older, my ability to contribute depends more on being able to work with with others and share information.
Second, my reference to teams might not be the most important way to frame it; the importance of "networking" and communication is part of what I have in mind.
But, one answer is in 6.2, if I'm looking at the difference between the social movements of the 70s and the backlash of the 80s compared to the current social movements and backlash I think there's a clear difference from then to now, and when I think about where I see things going in 20 years I would expect that skills at communication and collaboration to grow in importance, but I'm not sure that there's been much change in the last 10 years.
I think that both careers are less tied to specific organizations these days and, I would also expect an increasing globalization of services (even if we may be seeing globalization of goods slow slightly). About 12 years ago I had a client that I'd been working with for a long time cancel their contract with us and replace us with a team of 5 people in India (which, I guarantee, was not a cost savings; we were cheap for contract programmers in the US) and I had absolute confidence that was going to fail. I knew, from working with the client, that they didn't do a good job of producing clear specs or managing projects and that I was able to compensate because I could fill in the gaps, but I didn't think that was going to work for a team in India. But, in the long run, I have to think that there are going to be more and more cases in which hiring a team in India will look better than hiring me -- and that implies a world in which more people have the skills to manage distributed responsibilities.
Maybe it's not true; maybe that perception just reflects my experience of aging (in that when I was a young programmer and didn't know much it was productive use of time to throw me at a problem and say, "code as much of this as you can by yourself" whereas, as I get older, my ability to contribute depends more on being able to work with with others and share information.
Interesting. I think this sort of perception of change over time is very field-specific. My line of work is pretty collaborative and communicatory in general, and my current job is actually much more of a "do it all myself" role (though not 100% by any means) than previous jobs I've had. Most of that is just that I'm the only person with a background in this kind of work in the organization, though.
I didn't think that was going to work for a team in India.
Do you know how that turned out?
Do you know how that turned out?
Not precisely, but I think the company ended up getting bought out -- and not in a good way.