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To be pedantic, the poster did say "looks like" and:

- "looks like" is associated with physical appearance - possibly things like clothes, jewelry, gender, hair, skin color, face, etc. - "sounds like" is associated with their speech - tone, accent, choice of diction - "acts like" is associated with physical behavior + speech

But anyway, I think the point is that, we don't know what mabbo's intent was and 95% likely it was totally benign, but CydeWes is pointing out that saying things like that has a harmful effect by propagating certain stereotypes.

Pointing out someone's implicit biases is not necessarily a personal attack on them. Everyone has them so we should welcome when people point them out (unless done in an mean-spirited or aggressive fashion).

Personally, when I read mabbo's comment, I thought, "Yeah, so true, good point!", then I read the next comment and I thought, "Oh right, thanks for pointing that out to me".

5 comments

We should also welcome pointing about the stupidity in assuming things always boil down to race/gender/sexual orientation.

It should be obvious that aesthetic stereotypes go far beyond race and gender. Here's 2 very stereotypically different white guys: http://ricerfiles.gizmore.org/images/20160629/28030-human-ha... and this: https://i1.adis.ws/i/Superdry_com/NS_MP_Hoodies_hb_right?qlt...

But to some people, they only think in race/gender/orientaion terms. We should fix that.

Thanks. This whole derailment from topic smells delisive, and tastes impracticable, and it's starting to sound like ostentaion. Old, white, pedantic ostentaion

It reminds me of when I interviewed at Google.

At the end of one of my onsite interviews, while showing me out the door, the interviewer turned to me with a big smile and said "you really look like you fit in around here". I almost burst out laughing.

I guarantee he had no malice but I just found it funny for one tall, white dude with glasses to say that to another tall, white dude with glasses. And he was right, I did blend in pretty well.

You might argue that perhaps he wasn't referring to my appearance but rather my uhhh.... hand gestures while talking, but at some point you have to call a spade a spade.

I left without saying anything just because I feel awkward sometimes, but in retrosepct, I should have said something. He was so good-natured, I'm sure he would have genuinely appreciated me pointing out that certain people might find his words harmful.

What's harmful about saying someone fits in? I use that as a filler statement after good interviews... if they performed well, they fit in. Does that offend people?

You might be eminently qualified to do the work but in reality no one works in isolation (unless you are Joe Hewitt [0]). So unless you can mind read, no one can say for sure if you will fit in with the existing culture to get the job done, a subtle aspect many people overlook.

A good example of a qualified hire quitting just after six months is Chris Lattner who quit because "... Tesla isn't a good fit for me after all." [1]. You are free to Google the personality clashes which made it difficult for him to continue at Tesla.

[0] https://medium.com/@joehewitt/entrepreneurship-or-lack-there... - original deleted but archived from Google's cache here: http://archive.is/1aDdk

[1] https://twitter.com/clattner_llvm/status/877341760812232704?...

That uncertainty is always a given... addressed in the first three words of "it looks like you'll fit in". I still don't see how that can be perceived as offensive or insulting.

It's called being "Googley".

> Pointing out someone's implicit biases is not necessarily a personal attack on them. Everyone has them so we should welcome when people point them out (unless done in an mean-spirited or aggressive fashion).

I wish I could upvote this 1000 times. We all have implicit biases, and they are often a product of society rather than personal failures. It is painful when you suddenly notice your own shortcomings. But the desired response isn't "omg I'm horrible", it's "I can try to fix this in myself, and think about how to fix it in the whole culture for future generations."

How about you just give the person the benefit of the doubt they weren't talking about race or gender unless they explicitly called it out?

That would work to.

No, it wouldn’t and hasn’t. The whole point is that this type of bias does lead to discrimination in the workplace. Our prior should be that discrimination is happening. This doesn’t mean we are horrible people ... more often that we simply have reflected on the background assumptions/heuristics that drive our behaviour.

So you're saying we should always examine everything people say and view it through the worst possible light? That sounds like a great way to piss people off and get them working against you.

I personally perfect the more charitable approach.

> "looks like" is associated with physical appearance

Yes in very strict sense, but many people use "looks like", "sounds like" and so on interchangeably. I say "your proposal sounds good" even though proposal was sent by email and I didn't mean it is pleasing to my ears, melodic and soothing - I mean its content is OK. So we should not overanalyze and imply meaning that the author may not have put there. "Looks like" may just mean "gives general impression, by appearance, behavior, speech patterns, actions, etc." not necessarily excluding non-visual inputs. Human speech is not always precise.

That said, I agree that we should not have biases like if somebody, say, looks good on TV (and here again I don't mean just pretty face or nice clothes but more overall competent communicative behavior) they must be TV actor or hired comm person and can't possibly be genuine engineer. It's true that many engineers are awkward and some are socially inept, but that shouldn't be required. One can be a good engineer and a good presenter and a good communicator.

> To be pedantic, the poster did say "looks like"

The phrase "looks like" is commonly used as short hand for "seems like", "feels like", "gives the impression of", etc. It would be the same as if someone said they "appeared to be" professional actors, that doesn't necessarily indicate that it's based on visual cues.

Seems like bad form to assign malice to someone based on a likely misinterpretation of their comments, then accuse them of racism and sexism.