Lack of diversity at Eurogamer Page 13

  • Jeepers 27 Mar 2018 13:37:39 16,616 posts
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    @AaronTurner

    You said that you didn’t believe in positive discrimination and that you’d rather see all people being given equal opportunities in education.

    Given that there are some members of society who currently have fewer opportunities to access education you would need to positively discriminate in their favour to achieve the outcome you want.

    Edited by Jeepers at 13:38:18 27-03-2018
  • minky-kong 27 Mar 2018 13:38:01 14,787 posts
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    Why won't EG give these chaps a job? It's a fucking outrage!

  • Deleted user 27 March 2018 13:40:07
    Jeepers wrote:
    @AaronTurner

    You said that you didn’t believe in positive discrimination and that you’d rather see all people being given equal opportunities in education.

    Given that there are some members of society who currently have fewer opportunities to access education you would need to positively discriminate in their favour to achieve the outcome you want.
    Sorry, I still don't get your point. I think everyone should have equal access to education - how would that lead to positive discrimination?

    Edited by AaronTurner at 13:40:21 27-03-2018
  • Load_2.0 27 Mar 2018 13:45:18 33,582 posts
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    Choosing the "best person for the job" is fine.

    But if the "best person" for the job has always been and continues to be white males you might need to consider who is defining the criteria and definition of best person and whether that may need a refresh from 1980.
  • Deleted user 27 March 2018 13:46:51
    I propose that at every interview going forward for a position at EUGHQ all the candidates should be provided with Phillip Schofield skin suits so that gender, race or sexual attractiveness will not play a factor in the decision.

    Edited by whatfruitlivesagain at 13:47:12 27-03-2018
  • Jeepers 27 Mar 2018 13:48:50 16,616 posts
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    @AaronTurner

    You want to provide equal access to education. If Groups X and Y in our society have historically not had equal access to education - structurally, culturally or for whatever reason - how do you ensure that they have that equal access in the future?

    You can’t just say “Well, legally everyone now has the same access to education so that’s the job done”.
  • Deleted user 27 March 2018 13:51:56
    The thing is, humans tend to be conservative (even if "only" subconsciously) and established structures have a habit of stubbornly resisting change. In an ideal world, only competence would count, but the real world is not the ideal world. The vast majority of bosses isn't white male because they're just the most competent.

    I really wish we didn't need quotas, and if you're optimistic, they might be obsolete at some point in the future. But that's not the case today. To reach that point, some sort of measures must be taken to break those stubborn structures.

    I believe precedents must be created. If you allow, I'd veer off to film&TV for an example. Star Trek was outrageous in the late 60s for having a black woman on the bridge of a flagship (a few years after racial segregation was abolished in the US), and that famous interracial kiss was downright scandalous back then. A lot of people, including producers, didn't want that, someone really had to push it. Some 10-20 years ago, Hollywood movies emerged that had a black POTUS, which seemed quite unrealistic at the time.

    A long time ago, I read Michael Moore's "Stupid White Men", and if I recall correctly, he made a point that it was hypocritical that white people had a black friend in some major TV show (I think it was Friends) because that didn't reflect the sad reality in his opinion. My point is that film&TV shouldn't just show how things are. They influence the mindsets of people, and imo it's a good thing if they show that it can be perfectly normal to have interracial friendships and romances. Maybe Hollywood's black presidents helped to make Obama possible?

    You might say that's fine in entertainment, but stupid if an incompetent POC or Muslim or whatever gets a job that a competent white guy applied to. And yes, in that case it probably is stupid, but I hope that's the exception (and for the record, I had to deal with a great lot of people who were spectacularly incompetent at their jobs, very most of them ethnic Germans).

    The thing is, there are two different motivations here, one being on an individual level hiring the most competent person, the other being on a societal level taking affirmative action to fight discriminating structures. There's no way that either one is the perfect solution. Like in everything, there's compromise and in some cases, bad examples. You can't have any policy without some unfortunate side-effects, no matter how highly you think of it. There hasn't been any policy in history that was perfect and did only good. You must compromise if you want to do anything.

    So, do I think affirmative action is the solution to everything? No. Do I think it isn't flawed? No. Do I think that it's important (at least for a while) and the benefits may outweigh the problems? Yes.

    Back to EG: in their Kingdom Come Deliverance review they (or at least Bertie) complained that it had no POC. This is an issue worth discussing. But it actually is kinda ironic coming from a site whose staff is 100% white, unlike the demographic of their home country or their readership. Which is 94% male, very much unlike country and (I assume) readership. I'd never accuse EG of racism or sexism, but the issue of diversity at EG is a pretty valid question here.

    Just my two cents. Sorry if I veered off a little.

    Edited by DrStrangelove at 13:57:39 27-03-2018
  • StarchildHypocrethes 27 Mar 2018 15:02:56 33,974 posts
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    I'm fairly certain you would never get feedback from an interview stating they chose another candidate over you because you were white, so I wouldn't worry about it.
  • disusedgenius 27 Mar 2018 15:06:28 10,677 posts
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    omg i never thought about it like that before
  • Deleted user 27 March 2018 15:07:51
  • Load_2.0 27 Mar 2018 15:13:46 33,582 posts
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    I didn't get a job several times because I am too muscular and well endowed.

    Don't hear me complaining about it.
  • marilena 27 Mar 2018 15:24:20 8,238 posts
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    "The best person for the job" is such a bullshit concept. I've tested and interviewed at least a few dozens of people in my time, in a field with a decent amount of measurable proficiency. And, even so, there's an insane amount of subjectivity to it. And there are a lot of fields where subjectivity is even more pronounced and completely unavoidable. Writing being a good example, though it's not even the most subjective one. Think about sales, for instance, and the fact that the recruiter is going to measure your likability as part of the assessment.

    There are plenty of studies on how this bias affects persons of color. A very well known one shows how the exact same CV passes screenings less often if attached to an obviously "black" name like Shawnda.

    If you think that right now we are in a pure meritocracy, and persons of color don't have reduced chances because of the biases of the mostly white people in charge of the hiring process, you are living in fantasy land.

    The push for more diversity is a counter-balance to the existing biases, not the lone bias in a perfect system.
  • JamboWayOh 27 Mar 2018 15:30:21 25,237 posts
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    I would love for this site to have some new writers with names like Shawanda, Laquecia and A-a-ron
  • Decks 27 Mar 2018 15:36:35 31,014 posts
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    Destiny 2 done released a shit ton of new hairstyles son.

    By Shaniqua Brown
  • Deleted user 27 March 2018 15:37:49
    RandolphCarter wrote:
    Ok, to all those championing the fact that people are deliberately being denied a job over the fact that they are of the wrong skin-tone:

    - if it was yourself who had been declined a job opportunity in favour of someone else purely because they were of a different race would you be all "Well, we DO have to address social injustices, so I am proud to be the sacrificial lamb in order for the company to hit its demographics quota"?
    I'd apply somewhere else because I know that not every employer won't hire straight white males. But I don't think that'd happen in the first place, because in engineering I've got some great bonus just by being a male native German. That's not just what Germans want, that's what international customers want.
  • Load_2.0 27 Mar 2018 16:04:05 33,582 posts
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    So unconscious bias is a myth.

    The reality is white males are superior and that is why their is such an imbalance in senior roles?
  • Rivuzu 27 Mar 2018 17:27:14 18,424 posts
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    Not entirely related, but did anyone catch this?

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-43556887/speaker-john-bercow-accuses-boris-johnson-of-sexism

    Always good to see Bozza get a sharp tongue lashing.
  • ResidentKnievel 27 Mar 2018 17:42:28 7,679 posts
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    Concrete wrote:
    marilena wrote:
    "The best person for the job" is such a bullshit concept. I've tested and interviewed at least a few dozens of people in my time, in a field with a decent amount of measurable proficiency. And, even so, there's an insane amount of subjectivity to it. And there are a lot of fields where subjectivity is even more pronounced and completely unavoidable. Writing being a good example, though it's not even the most subjective one. Think about sales, for instance, and the fact that the recruiter is going to measure your likability as part of the assessment.

    There are plenty of studies on how this bias affects persons of color. A very well known one shows how the exact same CV passes screenings less often if attached to an obviously "black" name like Shawnda.

    If you think that right now we are in a pure meritocracy, and persons of color don't have reduced chances because of the biases of the mostly white people in charge of the hiring process, you are living in fantasy land.

    The push for more diversity is a counter-balance to the existing biases, not the lone bias in a perfect system.
    I believe this is a classic case of "projecting".

    You know yourself to be a racist who is unable to make impartial hiring decisions, so you assume that it must be a systemic problem that effects everyone instead of you being a horrible human being.

    You should spend less time piling on additional discrimination in an attempt to create balance and address the core problem.
    classic case of being uncomfortable engaging in a topic about racial prejudice and accusing those discussing it of being racist.
  • OnlyJoeKing 27 Mar 2018 17:49:35 1,293 posts
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    RandolphCarter wrote:
    Unconscious bias = You are a racist, but you are unaware that you are a racist so to counter the racism that you are unaware of I support the implementation of racist employment practices because racism is wrong.
    Eh?

    Addressing unconscious bias means aiming to remove scope for bias, not aiming to introduce more bias. So you take away things like candidate names, date of birth, etc, you standardise interview questions as far as possible.
  • ResidentKnievel 27 Mar 2018 17:59:13 7,679 posts
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    @Concrete

    Your only real contribution has been to attack a poster

    How would you go about creating balance and addressing the core problem?
  • nickthegun 27 Mar 2018 18:01:11 87,711 posts
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    RandolphCarter wrote:
    It's a journalistic role - how the writer looks is utterly irrelevant. We don't even need to see their picture.
    I hesitate to ask, but even you can't be that stupid, right?
  • Saidity 27 Mar 2018 18:02:15 10 posts
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    Most things are systemic and unconscious though, you have to be pretty daft to think communal prejudices don't affect everyone.
  • Tonka 27 Mar 2018 18:08:39 31,980 posts
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    All this "best person for the job" turns a blind eye to the fact that plenty of incompetent white males are hired every day.

    Let's give brown eyed people the same opportunity and without them becoming a threat to society when they snag a job they're shit at.
  • JamboWayOh 27 Mar 2018 18:09:27 25,237 posts
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    nickthegun wrote:
    RandolphCarter wrote:
    It's a journalistic role - how the writer looks is utterly irrelevant. We don't even need to see their picture.
    I hesitate to ask, but even you can't be that stupid, right?
    I'm trying to figure out if he's actually read it back to himself and still ok with it.
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