You’re dead wrong, and of course you can’t refute a well constructed argument when your only way to argue is to make an argument that would come across as either racially charged or just incredibly naive. I’m going to assume the better of the two, that you’re just naive and not in favor of racial bias in any direction.

But from a purely logical standpoint, this whole argument of “we have to hire people to match the ratio in the population, regardless of what the jobs are” is an absolutely stupid notion. And you can tell how stupid it is by just looking at the NFL. Now imagine them “correcting” the ratio of employees. You’d have more black coaches, sure, but a large number of black players would get dropped to add white players to make sure it matches the population ratio in order to not be “racist.” Of course, that’d lower the quality of play (not the coaches part, the players part), but hey, it’d be “fair.” And then with NASCAR you need to ditch a lot of drivers and bring in more black drivers, because NASCAR is “too white” versus the population’s ratio. I mean, trying to find those black drivers might be tricky, because if you’re going to be an athlete, it makes more sense to get into the NFL or NBA and earn more money, but maybe all the displaced athletes from there can fill the positions in NASCAR. Of course, without any experience, they’ll be as bad as all those inexperienced new white NFL players would be, but eh, NASCAR would be happy because they want more wrecks anyway. Honestly, I’m kind of surprised we don’t see more black auto racers. The best Formula 1 driver right now is Lewis Hamilton. That guy is insanely good, and gets paid well for it. But it’s likely a cultural thing… which is where the problem is with trying to wedge people into jobs just to match a specific quota. There might not be enough people who are interested.

The only argument I’ve seen in favor of hiring someone based on skin color is that they’d be able to bring knowledge of a specific culture/aesthetic, which assumes that they would be part of that culture/aesthetic based solely on their skin color. And you don’t see what’s wrong with that assumption? Again, let’s assume it’s not racism on your part, just an incredible display of naivete. But since you missed this: People don’t fit into cultures or aesthetics based on skin color. Especially developers. Developers are nerds. (I can say that. I’m a nerd. I’ve also been a developer. We’re proud of being nerds.) Nerds aren’t exactly on the cutting edge of knowing any culture or aesthetic outside of video games, glasses, and POP figures. (Okay, that’s an over-simplification for comedic effect, don’t rush to get upset.) You have a problem with hiring someone who would be more suited to actually knowing the culture and aesthetic, and paying them to be a consultant? Why? You want more of that in the game, but you’re opposed to doing it properly? So then you *don’t* want that in the game? Then that does away with your reason to hire people based on skin color rather than talent.

I’ve never said that some black folks can’t be the best coders available for the job. I know black developers, they’re good at what they do. They’re just also a rarity. Dunno why, but if I had to hazard a guess, I’d guess that it’s because a lot of black kids grow up in less affluent neighborhoods so have quicker access to something like a basketball court than a really good computer with a fast Internet connection to research and practice coding techniques, and the allure of making so much more on the court than you can behind a desk, coming back and buying your folks a nice new home, all that stuff, probably weighs in. But that’s a whole other thing. So yeah, if you’ve got a series of candidates and the best developer is black, absolutely, hire him. But hire him because he’s the best person for the job he’s being hired for. Don’t hire him to fill some bizarre race-based quota and then try to excuse it by talking about something that absolutely is not his role. (Also please note that while I use male pronouns here, I’m not discounting female developers. If the best candidate is a black woman, hire her.)

You are arguing that a company should not hire the best developers to fill developer roles, and should not hire consultants for cultural and aesthetic information, but should instead hire potentially less qualified candidates just based on their skin color and assume, based only on their skin color, that they’d know something about culture and aesthetic which is outside of their realm of expertise but is forced upon them as a role to fill simply because of their skin color.

And you think there’s nothing wrong with that?

Again, every argument you make, replace black with white and run the argument back to yourself. If you find yourself arguing against it, congrats, you’ve found your problem. No, don’t try to argue “but privilege” or “but some bad stuff happened in the 1960s.” Totally different issue. Some douchebag cop pulling over a guy just because he’s black doesn’t add any extra qualifications to other black people looking for a job anymore than my dad physically and emotionally abusing me as a child means someone should hire me over a more qualified candidate. They’re irrelevant.

If you’re hiring developers, hire the person who is best at developing, regardless of skin color. It’s that simple. Same for any job out there. Otherwise, whichever skin color you’re moving ahead of the others, you’re a racist. Same goes for gender, religion, LGBT or not, etc. Isn’t that the freaking goal we’re all supposed to be aspiring toward? And yet you claim that’s “wrong?” Really?

Her parents were both at work. Came home, no reaction. I had to force the mother to mourn her own daughter, after which she finally got a Sad moodlet.

Of course, the latter problem – and, worse, the issue of family members who’ve moved out dying but having no effect on other family – got addressed with an update which added phone calls when someone you know dies and drops a Sad moodlet on your Sim, so the more Sims your Sim knows, the more likelihood they’ll hit a point in their adult life where they spend the rest of their days crushingly depressed from people they barely knew passing away as the reality of their own impending demise and descent into the void beyond weighs heavily on them… or something. But yeah, man, that was rough. They said they toned it down, but I’m still afraid to let my Sims get too many friends.

Blimey, it feels like he’s making a terrible excuse to wave away a recommendation for improving the game because he can’t figure out how they’d implement it or just doesn’t want to put in the effort… but at this point, that feels like 30% of Grant’s tweets (with another 60-65% being just telling people “we’ll look into that” or something similar).

With the culture and aesthetics thing… Honestly, that’s not something that’d be a full-time job. It couldn’t be. There’s too many cultures, you can’t hire someone from all of them. Bringing in someone as some kind of reference while working on a pack or some new content where they’d be relevant, though… yeah, that’d make sense. But full-time, you’re going to be wanting people who are solid developers.

There are black developers, but you’re not going to find a ration of black to white developers that matches the ratio of black to white people in the area, for pretty much the same reason that the ratio of black to white players in the NFL doesn’t match the population. Trying to force that kind of ratio doesn’t work. If you happen to find black developers who are excited about working on something like The Sims and are good fits for the positions available, absolutely, yes, hire them. But if you’re looking at two candidates and the better qualified candidate by a large margin happens to be non-black, you don’t just sign the black candidate just to fill some kind of ratio.

But I think the idea of bringing on people who’d be well versed in black culture/aesthetics (or, rather, the myriad forms of it, as there’s no one set “black culture” or “black aesthetic”), as a contractor, to aid in making sure they get the look of stuff right and add more to the game… Yeah, that’d be a good idea. For that role, though, I’d want someone who’s specialized in that, not just bring in a black developer and say, “Hey, John, you’re black, you know what black people are into, so help us make stuff for black people,” because John might be into anime and country music and dress like a goth, and expecting him to know what “black culture” is just because of his skin color is, well, kind of a terrible assumption. (I wouldn’t call it racist, that’s a terrible misuse of the term, as there’s no malice intended in that scenario, just ignorance.)

Obviously, replace “black” with any other ethnicity, same concept, across the board. Same situation would go if there’s a team of almost all black developers working on some kind of game. Even if they’re doing a NASCAR game, you wouldn’t insist they need to hire more white developers so that it matches the population ratio (which would end up likely watering down the talent pool among that team of developers).

On a side note… I’d love more stuff for various cultures. I try to make sure my Sims are varied, and enjoy using Sims of all colors and trying not to make them stereotypical or anything. Give me an Afrofuturism Stuff Pack, Maxis. I will freaking use the heck out of that.