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Jesse Jackson To Take On Silicon Valley's Lack of Diversity

Posted by Soulskill on from the equality-in-industry dept.

New submitter wyattstorch516 writes "San Jose Mecury News reports that Jesse Jackson will lead a delegation to HP's next board meeting to discuss the hiring of technology companies in regard to African-Americans and Latinos. 'About one in 14 tech workers is black or Latino both in the Silicon Valley and nationally. Blacks and Hispanics make up 13.1 and 16.9 percent of the U.S. population, respectively, according to the most recent Census data.' Jackson sent a letter to HP, Apple, Google, Twitter, Facebook, and others about meeting to discuss diversity issues."

3 of 397 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Fuck that guy. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    there is probably a more nuanced discussion to be had about affirmative action

    but having been in the hiring seat, I can tell you that almost every single
    applicant is white and male, and very few of those are actually qualified

    so unless Jackson thinks HP should hire unqualified people just because
    they are black or latino, he should probably focus his efforts earlier
    in the pipeline

  2. Re:Fuck that guy. by AlphaWolf_HK · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Pretty much. I've had arguments with a lot of people over affirmative action, and 95% of the time they think it helps Asians get a job and education. Basically they think it helps everybody but whites, and they themselves are huge advocates of white guilt. They quickly shut up once I show them facts about how affirmative action actually fucks over Asians pretty bad, in fact it screws them much worse than white people, mainly because they have an even higher interest in higher education and the high tech career fields than whites do while being an even smaller portion of the population than blacks.

    The problem with affirmative action is it assumes that a given percent of every race is interested in x career or y school, but that just doesn't reflect reality one bit. Take music for example; by far more black people are into rap, but there's nothing inherent about rap that makes them like it more or white people like it less. The underlying cause of this schism is a simple cultural difference. The same thing is likely to cause them to be less interested in IT careers, so they don't even apply for those jobs.

    --
    Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
  3. Re:Fuck that guy. by gandhi123 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "The problem with affirmative action is it assumes that a given percent of every race is interested in x career or y school, but that just doesn't reflect reality one bit. "

    It's not just this. Even when black students are interested in STEM careers, affirmative action puts them in a position where their white and Asian classmates are much better prepared and capable to handle difficult STEM classes. As a result they get poor grades, feel demoralized, and transfer to easier majors. This is called the "mismatch problem."

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03...

    Recently, economists from Duke studied the effects of Prop 209, comparing undergraduate graduation rates for blacks, Hispanics and American Indians before and after the ban. In a paper being considered for publication by The Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Duke economists conclude that mismatch effects are strongest for students in so-called STEM majors — science, technology, engineering and math. These subjects proceed in a more regimented way than the humanities, with each topic and class building on what came before. If you don’t properly learn one concept, it’s easier to get knocked off track.

    The Duke economists say that lower-ranked schools in the University of California system are better at graduating minority students in STEM majors. For example, they conclude that had the bottom third of minority students at Berkeley who hoped to graduate with a STEM major gone to Santa Cruz instead, they would have been almost twice as likely to earn such a degree.

    and

    http://blogs.sciencemag.org/sc...

    More Evidence that Admissions Preferences Discourage Minority Students from Majoring in STEM

    Recently Science Careers commented on Mismatch, a provocative and persuasive new book that examines the effects of giving large admissions preferences to minority college students. One of the unintended consequences of such measures, write authors Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr., is to steer minority students away from majoring in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. This happens, they argue, because large preferences encourage students to attend colleges where their academic credentials place them toward the bottom of their college classes. Science majors, however, overwhelmingly come from the upper end of their college classes, regardless of where they go to college. Students admitted with large preferences--as many African American and Hispanic students are--are therefore deprived of the realistic opportunity to earn STEM degrees.