Comment by crazygringo
2 years ago
> surgically precise ethnic/gender diversity
What does that mean and why is it bad?
Diversity in marketing is used because, well, your desired market is diverse.
I don't know what it means for it to be surgically precise, though.
I imagine the commenter was calling out what they perceived to be an inauthentic yet carefully planned facade of diversity. This marketing trend rubs me the wrong way as well, because it reminds me of how I was raised and educated as a 90s kid to believe that racism was a thing of the past. That turned out to be a damaging lie.
I don't mean to imply that companies should avoid displays of diversity, I just mean that it's obvious when it's inauthentic. Virtue signaling in exchange for business is not progress.
It think it could be a seen as a good thing, it's a little chicken and egg. If you want to increase diversity at a company, one good way would be to represent diversity in your keynotes in order to make it look to a diverse base that they would be happy working there, thus increasing the diversity at the company.
You'd prefer the alternative with just a few white guys in the picture and no consideration given at all to appearing diverse?
The alternative is to just be authentic and not put up a fake show.
1 reply →
Just take a group of people that actually know and work together and you're authentic. Forced diversity is idiotic: either you do it or you don't, but you show what you're doing to be authentic.
Imagine how cringe it would be if only white guys were allowed to work at Google and they displayed in all their marketing a fully diverse group of non-white girls. That would be... inauthentic.
Just the fact girls are less than guys in IT is something we should demonstrate, understand, change if needed. Not hide behind a facade of 50/50 display everywhere as if the problem was already solved or that it was even a problem in the first place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village
But for diversity.
It's bad if the makeup of the company doesn't reflect the diversity seen in the marketing, because it doesn't reflect any genuine value and is just for show.
Now, I don't know how diverse the AI workforce is at Google, but the YT thumbnails show precisely 50% of white men. Maybe that's what the parent meant by "surgically precise".
It's new token black guy. It's not completely bad, just feels inauthentic.
Agreed with your comment. This is every marketing department on the planet right now, and it's not a bad thing IMO. Can feel a bit forced at times, but it's better than the alternative.
The alternative being showing actual level of diversity in the company?
Of course to normal people, this just seems like another Google keynote. If OP is counting the number of white people, maybe they're the weird one here.