I am not sure how you got that out of my comment... you created a rather unfortunate strawman of my comment and are calling me sexist and racist? That hurts. Are you going to call me republican next?! Because that’s where i draw the line.
I have worked in high tech for 20 years: biotech, a PhD @ Carnegie Mellon, NASA, some startups, back to biotech... I have worked with so many awesome people of all walks of life that notions of gender or racial superiority are long gone. Quite the opposite, i have experienced the tremendous benefit that usually arises with diverse teams: deeper group experience, less competition and more cohesion, stronger friendships and sense of connection, diverse technical experience and interest, really different and novel ways of approaching problems and developing solutions (things that blew my fragile little mind), etc.
No, I'm sure you are not a racist, please don't take my comment that way. But sometimes we can promulgate ideas that we don't actually agree with unintentionally. It's the pattern of thinking that I wanted to examine, that I seem to encounter everywhere lately. Others spoke of the lack of "diversity", by which they clearly meant diversity of sex and race or ethnic background. You added the idea that this type of diversity was beneficial because it's an advantage to have a diversity of interests and intellectual strengths in different areas. So you are equating a racial and sexual diversity with the latter. If that's not what you meant, I apologize for misconstruing your comment.
Lee... You are straw-manning my statements again. You are reading a bias into my statements and put extrapolated argument, that I didn't write, into my virtual internet mouth. I don't like it.
Yes I did write of myself as a historically privileged class... which definitely falls along racial/gender divides. Hopefully the manner of that frank discussion indicates that this privilege really sucks for most everyone (we really all lose) and is short sited. Then I started a new paragraph which signifies a though break --> moving on to a different but related thought.
Nowhere in my post did I the use word "race" or the phrase "intellectual strengths", and I did't use those phrases because I don't believe in them... I used "thinking patterns, backgrounds, and interests."
To address this: "You added the idea that this type of diversity was beneficial because it's an advantage to have a diversity of interests and intellectual strengths in different areas. So you are equating a racial and sexual diversity with the latter."
I wrote none of that... I believe none of that. It requires multiple logical fallacies to get from what I expressed to what you wrote above. Rather than jumping to conclusions, why don't you ask me to clarify what I meant?
So what do I think about diversity and inclusion, in brief:
Diversity is highly multivariate... what team diversity means can vary from situation to situation. Hiring for a Mechanical engineering team vs. women's fashion design team would probably have very different diversity hiring goals but the desired benefit and improvement for the team is similar.
If people only look at diversity as race and gender, they are missing the boat entirely... how about personality, age, ethnicity, religion, educational background, work experience, world/life experience, family responsibilities, life aspirations, out of work interests, health concerns and disabilities, sexual preference, ...all factors which make us different/unique and interesting.
The flip side of diversity, which is inclusion and appreciation, is pretty simple: it is really important to try to understand people, appreciate them for who they are, do your best to allow them to be who they are in the workplace, and not pigeon hole them into a box.
Regardless of what I'm called next, I'm done replying to this thread. If you figure out how to construe this as "I must be the second coming of Hitler", more power to you.
I have worked in high tech for 20 years: biotech, a PhD @ Carnegie Mellon, NASA, some startups, back to biotech... I have worked with so many awesome people of all walks of life that notions of gender or racial superiority are long gone. Quite the opposite, i have experienced the tremendous benefit that usually arises with diverse teams: deeper group experience, less competition and more cohesion, stronger friendships and sense of connection, diverse technical experience and interest, really different and novel ways of approaching problems and developing solutions (things that blew my fragile little mind), etc.