Facebook Makes Little Progress in Race and Gender Diversity (theguardian.com) 200
An anonymous reader shares a Reuters report: Facebook has said about one-third of its workers are female, while black employees accounted for 3% of its US senior leadership, both numbers only slightly higher than a year earlier. The data released by the world's largest social network on Thursday reflects the scant progress made by Silicon Valley heavyweights in making their workplaces more diverse in the face of criticism for having mostly white, male workers. Last month, Alphabet's Google released data on diversity, saying it had more black, Latino and female employees but still lagged its goal of mirroring the population. Women represented 33% of Facebook's global workforce, according to data from 30 June, compared with 32% a year earlier. Women held 27% of senior leadership roles, up from last year's 23%.
And? (Score:5, Insightful)
mirror the population (Score:2, Insightful)
If the goal is to mirror the population, they'll have to start hiring more stupid people with no incentive to work.
Now THAT's a real challenge.
This goal was easy (Score:4, Insightful)
All they need to do is look to their content creation base. 75% women. Pretty damn easy to take the top N% content creators, start paying them to create more content, double your workforce, and claim that you've reached 50% female on the diversity numbers.
Bet the same is true for other minorities as well, at least as far as Facebook is concerned.
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So that they actually work *harder* at creating content- pick the ones who have a huge following, and their posts will actually bring more eyes to your advertisers, thus increasing ad revenue far more than the piddling amount of their salaries are worth.
That happens already (Score:2)
Content creators are already financially rewarded. Plenty of artists make a good living on Youtube. Not all, and not a majority, but not all content/art is equal.
Perhaps you are attempting to claim that the lady who made the 20 minute "art" program shoving Spaghettios up herself is worth as much as the person managing services, selling products, building hardware, etc? Society disagrees with you, as does every economic model and civilization since we have recorded history.
Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)
You just don't understand. " ....while black employees accounted for 3% of its US senior leadership,... Clearly this isn't PC. So more blacks must be hired and put into these positions, even if we are not capable of doing the work. Sheesh, next thing you're likely to criticize the quota system that pushed through colleges and universities the many black students who displaced more qualified white students and call it racist, even though some of those receiving degrees are still not capable of doing the work. White people must stop using the ability to actually do the work as a racist way to keep the black man down, it should be enough that we were pushed through the system and given a token diploma.
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If you bothered to look at what they are actually doing it's clear that the seemingly slow rate of change is due to them not lowering standards or introducing quotas, but simply relying on encouraging more good candidates from minorities to apply in the first place. That's done through a combination of assistance with mentoring/training, better networking and removing some of the barriers that other people don't face.
So rather than your insane bullshit, they are taking a practical steps that are working. Ye
Re:And? (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess this is what they tell bleeding heart liberals who have no real world experience and have not seen the actual results of affirmative action. I've worked in a University where I actually saw a black graduate student who got their BS in Computer Science from a predominately black college and was admitted into the post grad CS school to fill a quota. This grad student couldn't even act as a teachers aid, and ended up taking freshman level CS courses and failing them. But they still had a BS in computer science and an employer who hired a while candidate over them could be called racist. Talking to the faculty I found this was not an isolated incident.
For other examples of harm done by hiring that ignores real qualifications, see Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Loretta E. Lynch.
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I think what should really grind people's gears is that the research has found that whites are more or less in a position where affirmative action neither helps nor hinders them. However if you're Asian, you're facing a massive uphill battle to get into a good school, because AA very heavily discriminates against them.
This is one reason why they're so well represented in higher paying jobs compared to other ethnic groups: In order to get their degree at a high end school, they seriously had to stand out of
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So your argument is one anecdote and a list of people who seem to be successful in their fields but who you personally disagree with? That's a terrible argument. In fact, it's barely an argument, more like just simple racism.
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The above post illustrates the problem. A racist post gets upvoted by Silicon Valley geeks.
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Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you set a goal you can't achieve why are you surprised? Facts matter, people should really go back to using them.
Political correctness cares not for facts nor reality. Never has, never will.
Hire the best or not? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares about race or gender? Hire the best. If only 3% are black, should they hire someone less qualified just to meet a quota? That's bullshit. Try being the best instead.
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Who cares about race or gender? Hire the best. If only 3% are black, should they hire someone less qualified just to meet a quota? That's bullshit. Try being the best instead.
Citizen, your comment has been reported to the PC Police by multiple social justice warriors. Please report to your nearest liberal arts college by 8am tomorrow for PC rehabilitation.
Re:Hire the best or not? (Score:4, Insightful)
"The best" is rarely fully quantifiable. For instance, in a purely arbitrary way, solving PC issues is one problem that one person can "be the best".
But there's rarely a need to be "the best". It's a rare position where the top 5% aren't all capable of producing practically identical work output. In some jobs (e.g. burger flippers) that number is a lot higher.
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The reason it is taking them so long is that they are maintaining hiring standards.
As for hiring the best, most companies realize that "the best" isn't just the guy who studied really hard to pass interviews. In fact, looking at individuals in isolation is a bad idea, because most of the time people work in teams. You need to build a good team, and diversity actually helps that. Monoculture doesn't produce the best solutions.
Having said that, they do find it hard to get qualified candidates of colour, and a
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Exactly, companies don't and shouldn't care about the gender of ethnicity of their employees. Suitability for the job at hand should be the only criteria.
If you want to see more diversity among companies you have to start with kids in school and encourage them to take an interest in particular fields, as well as eliminating the peer pressure that exists in schools to push people away from certain fields.
For instance technology fields are seen as geeky, so people who show an interest are often picked on in s
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Plenty of women creating content in my facebook feed for free.
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I imagine it must seem that way to you.
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I imagine it must seem that way to you.
To be fair if he's in "Man Jose" then he's probably right, there aren't enough women to go around.
Re:Hire the best or not? (Score:4, Informative)
That's because the statistic is false. Women typically make 98 cents on the dollar vs males when you compare actual positions and monthly paychecks. The 70 cent study has thoroughly been debunked, they were taking the aggregate income across a lifetime for the entire population - and yes, in our population there are plenty of women who have 0 income, not any employer's fault for them not applying for jobs.
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Still, working 7.3 days a year for free because you don't have a dick kinda sucks, right?
Also, while on the subject of true stats, the actual number varies by industry. Tech is actually one of the better ones, but it's still only at about 96%. That's working three weeks a year for free.
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I'm sure we'd all love to hear how you worked that out.
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How did they "find out you met the conditions of being a minority?"
I'm curious both because most conditions are outwardly visible, and the ones that aren't would have to be revealed by you...
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Racism or availability? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm of the mind that this is more reflective of the available talent pool rather than any inherent racism.
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The talent pool of black engineers is small in Silicon Valley because no one will hire them.
http://www.ibtimes.com/why-mor... [ibtimes.com]
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That's not what your article suggests. Indeed, it doesn't seem to make any conclusions as to why black engineers don't end up in tech firms beyond a hand waving, "Something in the pipeline is broken".
There is no indication that companies are activity discriminating or avoiding minority hires.
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Also, know what happens if you're very sure you've been discriminated against in the hiring process? Nothing. You go to a lawyer, talk about a lawsuit? You'll get told it's a waste of time and to just go looking for a job somewhere else instead. Therefore how are there any real statistics about discrimination in hiring? Employers, if questioned, will just say that the applicant in question didn't meet the qualifications, or 'wasn't the best fit', or any number of totally subjective, non-obje
Re:Racism or availability? (Score:4, Insightful)
You may find this hard to believe, but engineering degrees aren't all interchangeable, either in quality or in areas of expertise. Furthermore, many American born engineers don't want to move to Silicon Valley, and many engineers find it offensive when they are hired not for their skill and expertise, but to satisfy some diversity quota.
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Mechanical engineering pays alright outside of silicon valley $100k/year in the mid-west will buy you a really nice house that would cost you half a million in CA.
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And the great thing is, you don't need to be able to write!
Re: Racism or availability? (Score:2)
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Well, at least he doesn't have to be nervous on the elevators, nor worry about getting mugged there....and likely not many folks there playing the knock-out game either to worry about.
I guess there are trade-offs for everything in life, eh?
Re:Racism or availability? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Are you proud of being a "citizen" and do you "brown bag" your lunch to avoid unhealthy fast-food joints? According to the City of Seattle, you're racist. http://dailycaller.com/2013/08... [dailycaller.com]
And if your "brown bag lunch" contains a peanut-butter-sandwich, you're potentially in trouble in Portland. http://www.dailykos.com/story/... [dailykos.com] So yeah, I agree with parent post. If I wwere a white guy in the vicinity of a minority employee, I'd STFU and keep ineteraction to a minimum to minimize my risk of being hauled bef
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That's a great example of how racists and misogynists are trying to keep people down. Create an air of suspicion around them, keep the majority white males' nerves on edge and discourage managers from hiring them out of fear.
Re:Racism or availability? (Score:5, Funny)
T.J. Hicks: How did you find me?
Deuce Bigalow: Well, this seemed like the only chicken and waffles place in all of Holland.
T.J. Hicks: Ohhh, so the black guy has to go to a chicken and waffles place, that's Racist!
Deuce Bigalow: But you're here.
T.J. Hicks: Yeah, but figuring it out was racist.
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^Gets insight into race relations from a Rob Schneider movie^
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^stormfront^
Re:Racism or availability? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Apples to oranges happening here, but I'll bite and point out it's a question of efficiency over talent in this case. It makes more financial sense for some companies to hire low wage imports than local high cost talent.
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If they're that good, why do the outgoing workers have to train them?
If I was the cynical kind I might suspect some form of shenanigans.
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I'd love to hear from other managers out here, but in my instance I can tell you that the minorities ( and women ) who apply for positions are usually far out numbered by the white male.
Thinking back, even if I hired all the minorities and women I've interviewed ( which would be a disaster, but I digress ), I don't think I could hit any diversity quotas.
Diversity will be there soon (Score:2)
They'll have all workers in india, and india is a diverse country. So facebook will have great diversity!
My new hope for humanity... (Score:3, Interesting)
Age discrimination (Score:5, Insightful)
While ignoring age discrimination. The chances of someone over 40 being hired by Facebook is zero.
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While ignoring age discrimination. The chances of someone over 40 being hired by Facebook is zero.
Except for Kent Beck, right? https://www.linkedin.com/in/ke... [linkedin.com] says he was hired in 2011, when he was 50, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
Oh, and me, I started last year ago and I'm 43. I have numerous colleagues that are 40 and over, many of them relatively new. But glad you got your facts straight!
Re: Age discrimination (Score:2)
"Little Progress" (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would any employer want to do anything other than hire the best, most qualified employee for a given job? If that happens to be a black woman, great. If that happens to be a gay Indian man, hire him. But, if Facebook's job requirements are predominantly filled by white males, what is the problem?
Re: "Little Progress" (Score:2)
They have either evidence or assumption that the demographic ratio within their employees is different from the demographic ratio of the "best and the brightest". Therefore their hiring practices failing to catch all of the best and brightest.
Some ways to move to that demographic ratio aren't progress. Other ways are. If any company is in the business of gathering data about people and their activities (in order to tell whether it's progress or not), surely that company is Facebook.
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No superpower. Just the interview process, which is the best tool available to evaluate a potential employee -- even better then *gasp* skin color.
I see this concept parroted repeatedly in discussions like these with nary a real-life me
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No superpower. Just the interview process, which is the best tool available to evaluate a potential employee -- even better then *gasp* skin color.
Is it though? People have unconscious biases. There is no perfect objective way to judge individuals, which is why it is important to look at outcomes.
I see this concept parroted repeatedly in discussions like these with nary a real-life metric to back it up. How, pray tell, does having people with different colored skin lead to a "more productive work place"?
Let me google that for you: http://news.mit.edu/2014/workp... [mit.edu]
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What about Diversity of Opinion? (Score:2)
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wrong premise (Score:5, Insightful)
Last month, Alphabet's Google released data on diversity, saying it had more black, Latino and female employees but still lagged its goal of mirroring the population.
You will find on closer examination that, actually, many of these tech companies' hiring results actually do mirror the population. But the relevant population that you're talking about is those people who apply to places like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. And that population is heavily underrepresented in female/black/hispanic people compared to the population at large. That is what many people seem to be willing to be blind to. If the source population from which you draw such workers is skewed, no amount of effort is going to enable you to hire 100 female/black/hispanic workers when there are only 30 to choose from. And yet people will still criticize you for it.
These companies are not going to singlehandedly change the makeup of tech (or even just high paid) workers in the United States, no matter how much they try (or are put under political pressure to do so). And I think that it is rather disingenuous / politically correct of them to simply market that they will do it because it's fashionable to say they will. Addressing this problem is deeper and requires more of the desired target segments to go into these fields to be available to apply to the positions to start with. Which is a much more difficult challenge that most of the advocates for such policies actually don't even want to put in the effort to do themselves.
I will openly say that I do not believe (as many people seem to reflexively parrot the phrase) that a company's workforce "needs to look like the general population". I find that a dubious proposition, usually supported by poor logic. If it happens that the general population has the propensity and skill to become tech workers in equal proportions across all demographics, then that could be true, but I doubt it. But at the same time, I support any effort to make sure that primary/secondary/higher education gives everyone access to succeed in these fields, if they want to.
But I will not subscribe to the idea that we should skew the output of the process to some political goal, when the input of that process is what matters and determines it more than anything else. When you do that, all you get is symbolic, and often detrimental, results.
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These companies are not going to singlehandedly change the makeup of tech (or even just high paid) workers in the United States, no matter how much they try (or are put under political pressure to do so). And I think that it is rather disingenuous / politically correct of them to simply market that they will do it because it's fashionable to say they will. Addressing this problem is deeper and requires more of the desired target segments to go into these fields to be available to apply to the positions to start with. Which is a much more difficult challenge that most of the advocates for such policies actually don't even want to put in the effort to do themselves.
I do often feel that if these companies actually did manage to change the makeup of tech workers among their own ranks, to reflect what everyone wants their stats to look like, we'll get into a different kind of bizzaro world. One where a handful of big-name tech companies have *all* of the desired diversity, and the rest of the industry is *entirely* 100% non-diverse. The supply-side problem really does feel that bad.
Does this problem need to be addressed? Yes. Is it right to point blame at companies s
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According to its own diversity report a few months ago, Google employed 32,527 people. This breaks down along some of the various populations of interest:
If these employment stats had to mirror the population (which is 50.9% women, 12.2% b
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White: 19,809
Black: 628
Asian: 9,924
Hispanic: 1,428
Hawaiian/Pacific: 61
American Indian: 41
You see, this is the funny bit. If you wanted to make it representative of the general population, you'd need to hire about 5,000 MORE whites and fire about 8,000 asians. But of course, facts are wildly unpopular when people just want to play identity politics and hate on the majority.
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> those people who apply to places like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc
Nope. The number of minorities applying at Google and Facebook is small because few minorities are able to gain the required experience because no one in Silicon Valley will hire them.
Anyone who has worked in Silicon Valley and has looked at their coworkers can see there is a problem. I have worked many years in Silicon Valley and I don't ever recall ever working with a black engineer.
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I don't have mod points so, I'll symbolically +1 you. The need to "diversify the workforce" basically implies that there was racism/sexism involved in the hiring of the current workforce. That's probably not true. Companies generally hire the applicant most suited to fill the job. If few or no females/minorities apply for the job, should the company withhold hiring an ideally suited white male so that they can meet some diversity requirement? It's insanity.
The other thing I find bizarre about this "div
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Dumb people generally look the same as smart people. There is no press to be gained by strolling in a bunch of morons and saying, "We are proud to announce that we have hired some of the dumbest humans on earth".
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You should tell the democrats and republicans.
They are both about to have conventions to do almost exactly that.
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But the relevant population that you're talking about is those people who apply to places like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.
So, you are saying there is literally nothing they can do to increase the number of applicants from those groups?
By the way, if you read the reports about 50% is stuff about the programmes they are running to increase the supply.
And yet people will still criticize you for it.
You have to understand what is criticism and what is people trying to get past the basic denial that there is a problem, and what is just journalists stirring shit up to make a story. The efforts of Google and Facebook are generally viewed quite favourably, with most of the criticis
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The problem is that generally people that do those outcries also demand for quotas, instead of demanding for actually looking why the problem exist and coming with a solution that actually works.
Quotas are awfully racist, and not talking about "reverse-racism" here or even actual racism (the act of grouping the populace into races and embedding each of the groups with a common collective set of properties), but the "academic definition of racism".
You're basically painting every minority and women here as "d
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The problem is that generally people that do those outcries also demand for quotas
Who? I keep hearing about these "people" but when you look at all the activity that is actually happening, there are never any quotas.
Specifically who is calling for them? The only people I've ever heard suggest it are anti-feminists and racists.
Mirroring the population (Score:5, Insightful)
Which population are we mirroring here? What percentage of the population is female? Every human being in the city -- I believe that 51% are female. How about the workforce population -- I'd bet that fewer than 50% of the workforce is female, probably closer to 30% actually. What about the population who work in office jobs amongst adults -- if we remove day-care, health care, teachers, children services, and government jobs, I'll bet it goes even lower.
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47 is less than 51.
You didn't adjust your numbers for part-time vs full time. You might want to do that.
And, once again, you've chosen to argue my argument, instead of my point. My point was that "mirroring the population" is a meaningless sentence without first defining the population. There's nothing sexist about that. You're just throwing flames. I was quite clear when I said that the workforce females are closer to 30% than the 51%. I was very clear when I said that I was making up the numbers. I
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So, using your very simple single-source, six-year-old resource, I'm right.
First, it says in the report that proportionally more women are projected to enter the workforce than men by 2020, so the numbers may be even closer to parity now. Second, I was trying to point out your inherent biases in this situation. The fact that you are so far off (orders of magnitude) on your idea of the disparity between men and women in the workplace shows that you are completely out of touch with reality. Barely 50% of women even have children in the US. If you are so mistaken on such an impor
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13,000 employees. (Score:2, Interesting)
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Facebook has 13,000 employees. What the F do they all do? What do they need 13,000 employees for?
I heard a fair percentage are accountants who specialize in international taxation.
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That's the elephant-in-the-room question right there.
We like our H1B's and don't give a dam about usc's (Score:2)
We like our H1B's and don't give a dam about usc's
it's still just racism (Score:2)
How fast would I get sued if I said I was deliberately trying to hire/encourage white men to improve some aspect of my company?
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It would depend on a lot of circumstances. If you ran a gay strip club where the dancers were 95% non-white, that seems totally relevant.
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What is the turnover/new hire rate? (Score:2)
Let's say you run a business with 100 employees, 33 of whom are female. You express a desire to get that number up. But let's say after a year, you still only have 100 employees. You've made a concerted effort to favor qualified female applicants. In fact, half of your new hires are female. Problem in, you only hired ten people, to replace ten who left. Of those who left, 7 were male and 3 were female. So now your workforce is 35% female and people scream "see, you aren't even trying!"
Unless someone expects
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But Inclusion! (Score:2)
Yesterday we read about `tech' `leaders' profound revulsion for Trump, and all about their "vision for an inclusive country" and just how dearly they "believe in an inclusive country." In actual fact it's a big white sausage fest of hypocrites opining about their expectations of you.
mirroring what? (Score:2)
What population would that be? The US population? The OPEC population? The world population? The population of US computer science graduates? The population of Google search engine users? The population of Android users? I'd like to know what these "diversity" goals for companies are supposed to be and why.
So sick of this Scheiße... (Score:2)
And there were a number of times in the US where I experienced what I can only call, "reverse-reverse discrimination". That is, those treating me differently for the sole reason they feared I might "play the race card
Venn diagram (Score:2)
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Sorry to disappoint you, but this white guy said, "SFW?" and went to get some more coffee.
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The VP for Pie Making should have a higher salary.
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You know the best money will be CBJO.
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Have ever heard a white female complain she can not obtain a job in her dream field of landscaping?
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No, just the cushy well-paying ones. Women and black people don't have any interest in ensuring shitty or dangerous jobs are equal.
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Low paying manual labor jobs are dominated by men, you see very few women working in these jobs.
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That's because they already get more than their fair share of shitty and dangerous jobs.
As an example, most carers in the UK are women. Currently there is a fight going on because they weren't getting paid even the minimum wage due to the way their hours were calculated. Now the minimum wage is going up a lot of them are out of work because the local government authorities don't pay enough and their employers are simply withdrawing services. It's a fairly dangerous job too, health wise (particularly with li