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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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if given a level playing field

There are entire government agencies that exist to give preference to 'socially disadvantaged' Americans - it basically assumes everyone from Asia, Africa and Latin America is disadvantaged by default. There's a wide-ranging diversity apparatus devoted to elevating non-whites and reducing white employment in hiring and promotions.

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-13/chapter-I/part-124

https://www.resumebuilder.com/1-in-6-hiring-managers-have-been-told-to-stop-hiring-white-men/

You may not want a level playing field as much as you think.

Look at the Harvard lawsuit. AA penalized East Asians and Indians even more than whites (the men, anyway).

True. Then they (Asians) attacked that and got it formally fixed.

Meanwhile in hiring... https://www.airandspaceforces.com/air-force-recruiting-service-institutes-diversity-targets-for-usaf/

No of course it's not reverse discrimination we're just setting targets that people have incentives to meet if they want to maximize chances of being promoted in this huge bureaucratic organization

Or on company boards: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/esg/contested-nasdaq-board-diversity-rules-take-effect-explained

Or in film (OK technically film awards but my point stands): https://www.oscars.org/awards/representation-and-inclusion-standards

Companies must have a woman, “underrepresented minority” or LGBTQ+ board member or report in their proxy statements or on their websites why they’re unable to comply.

Since you are not an American I cannot blame you for being unfamiliar with American HR-sprache. "Underrepresented minority" (or "URM") is code for "not white, Asian, or Indian". Nobody is going to get points for having a bunch of Tamil Brahmin guys on the board, because not only are they not underrepresented, in fact they are overrepresented, as a million WhatsApp memes will demonstrate.

Asian grifters have gotten some status in Hollywood awards due to #stopasianhate, but it's anyone's guess how long this will continue (and I doubt the Count cares about the Oscars anyway). Federal hiring is its own shit show, but it doesn't even pretend to be meritocratic, and again, I doubt that this is what the Count is talking about.

It literally says you need an underrepresented minority and defines it:

Underrepresented minorities are individuals who are “Black or African American, Hispanic or Latinx, Asian, Native American or Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, or Two or More Races or Ethnicities,” according to Nasdaq.

If you want to go deeper into the definition of Asian, I have another link: https://listingcenter.nasdaq.com/assets/Board%20Diversity%20Disclosure%20Matrix.pdf

Asian means Asian: Chinese and Indian.

In the link I posted earlier about subsidies for non-white businesses, it includes Chinese, Hong Kong, Japan, Indians...

There is the rule as written, and then there is the rule as the HR caste understands it. Simply watch and see what happens.

I am watching and seeing what happens.

The company where I work is hiring a lot of Indians for very senior management positions right now (including C-suite).

The last round of layoffs got rid of a lot of blacks, whites, and Chinese from middle management… but all the Indians got to keep their jobs.

If Indians “aren’t worth any points”, then plainly my company doesn’t care.

but all the Indians got to keep their jobs.

Might be due to the ethnic nationalism our guy is complaining about - if there's a couple of Indian execs high enough up, they can shed the required excess by carving away the black/white/Chinese guys but keep the Indian guys.

I strongly suspect that’s what happened yes.

To be clear I don’t think it’s “good” or “bad”, I just think it’s natural. Most people, when given the chance, will hire people who are like themselves - sometimes the salient characteristic will be race, sometimes it will be language/accent, etc.

The other explanation for it is that the Indians are just so much better than the alternatives that they were still kept on despite the negative AA against them. That, or nepotism (which I openly agree is bad).

Being a male from the subcontinent is the least desirable gender/race combo for "gibs" purposes in the modern day USA. Barring nepotism everything we achieve we do so on our own merit and then some. You know that meme about "I needed to be twice as good as everyone else here to get this job"? That actually applies to us.

My previous white manager was replaced with an Indian who is less competent and has less experience.