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Black IT Pros On (Lack Of) Racial Diversity In Tech
Nerval's Lobster writes While pundits and analysts debate about diversity in Silicon Valley, one thing is very clear: Black Americans make up a very small percentage of tech workers. At Facebook, Google, and Yahoo, that number is a bit less than 2 percent of their respective U.S. workforces; at Apple, it's closer to 7 percent. Many executives and pundits have argued that the educational pipeline remains one of the chief impediments to hiring a more diverse workforce, and that as long as universities aren't recruiting a broader mix of students for STEM degrees, the corporate landscape will suffer accordingly. But black IT entrepreneurs and professionals tell Dice that the problem goes much deeper than simply widening the pipeline; they argue that racial bias, along with lingering impressions of what a 'techie' should look like, loom much larger than any pipeline issue.
Aren't you over this charade that the every white person on the planet is a racist and that everyone and society as a whole is against you? Can you stop victimizing yourselves now?
Black males are 5.5% of all college students in the US. From those graduating, 2% going to tech doesn't sound that bad, statistically.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._incarceration_rate_by_race_2.gif
And maybe their diversity in tech would improve.
Since when did RACE only mean black... That's weird.
Oh shit i said black. Downmod me. I'm racist!
what's the proportion of blacks against whites who graduate from high school again?
Start there.
And fuck off with your "Me now!" wont of entitlement.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Basements whiten people.
In 2018 the explosion of the Yellowstone caldera will block the sun for years, killing everything that needs the sun to survive.
Leaving behind only IT professionals.
Thus, Morlocks.
Mr. Wells did build the friggin machine.
How about the fact that in urban America, there is an overwhelming mentality of selling out your black-ness if you do "smart white people" stuff... like going to college, studying, getting jobs where you wear suits, etc. Our kids are getting ostracized for not being black enough when they get good grades or have good behavior or dress well. Come on!
I applaud the young black people who make it through that and become successful professionals.
What does Neil deGrasse Tyson have to say about racial diversity in astrophysics?
That's right, nothing, so who fucking cares??
Read the Bell Curve.
Individuals are individuals but populations have statistics.
I'm over 65, but over these many years I encountered many Blacks who had been siphoned off into management. STEM folks have rigor and perseverance, so this is a natural source for people with proven talents and capabilities. It IS a pipeline issue.
It has everything to do with brothers not getting into STEM fields. The few of us that are here get jobs pretty easily, actually. Companies want to be diverse, they just don't have the applicants for it.
When a white techie doesn't get the job, it's not because he isn't white enough but because he isn't competent enough, but when a black techie doesn't get the job it's never about competence but always about skin color? Ooook. Go to hell.
Says the AC posting on Slashdot instead of getting some actual work done.
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Yet another dumbshit article about (the lack of) diversity in the workplace brought to you by your local bleeding hearts liberals. If it's not racial, it's gender. If it's not gender, they'll cry about ethnic diversity, sexual orientation, or something else.
Why aren't more women working in IT?
Why aren't more men working as registered nurses?
Why aren't more homosexuals working in IT?
Why aren't more heterosexuals working in interior design?
Why aren't more people of diverse racial backgrounds working in IT?
Why aren't more people of caucasian background working in fast food?
Why do ducks quack?
Because they look like a duck, and sound like a duck.
Quacking liberals.
http://www.theatlantic.com/nat...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I guess the new owners of Slashdot really want to run this site into the ground as all these other English majoring losers have done to the major media outlets. First gamergate, now this.
Listen up you nerds! You're all racists, sexists, and homophobes. The world sucks because of you. Get over it! And stop being such meanies!
not by the color of their skin
And they pay better too.
these things all shape a kid's perspective in life and what they end up pursuing. for me it was watching movies like war games that really got me think this is what i want to do. I wonder.. if the main character was a girl... would I not have pursued it?
Are they not also a significant minority in the US? And yet somehow, they managed to vastly over-represent themselves in STEM fields. Maybe, and this may be just a wild ass guess, but maybe it's because they spent their time focusing on their homework rather than whining about diversity?
Washington DC Chapter of the BDPA, found on Potomac Area local tech links.
It looks like around 10% of college graduates are black. If we're going based on that, Apple is pretty close to being there. Other companies? Not so much.
It's sad, but we're rare birds. It's not the fault of any one thing. Culturally, families DO encourage it, however, there are few mentors. I just lucked out and had a dad who was a real dad worthy of mentorship, in engineering. It's rare because of.... I'll leave it at "forces of history" (internal, and external, both).
The stereotypes can be hard to shake, though. Being taken seriously can be an obstacle. It's a different experience, I'm sure. The only way to break the cycle (IMO) is to get out there and try to teach/mentor/train (which is an entirely different can of worms.)
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
The only thing that I can think of, as far as color goes in the IT field, is the wires. But even then, the color really doesn't mean anything, except whatever you decide to denote them as, for your own setup.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
I use to work for a company that did phone support. We had a policy of hiring a certain percent of our work force as ethnic and time and time again I saw black people who flat out "didn't want to be like white people"... I also saw it growing up in school so it didn't surprise me to see it in the work place. These people were being given jobs with no skills and getting training and this is the mentality most black workers I've dealt with have. The racial bias isn't on the side of the fence at this point that most people like to think it is. Black's just want to complain they don't have something and then blame the color of their skin.
A week ago Slashdot had another funky racist article about a black woman calling all white people homogenous because she wanted to be around more black people at work. Again we have this black vs white mentality and it's all whitey's fault for something... Not sure what it was but something... something.... white people are homogenous.....
When I was in college (2 year community college) every quarter we had the gangsta black kids who showed up for about 2 weeks so they could collect their check for a free education. Then they would go away until next quarter. This is the reason why black people don't have high graduation numbers. Many of them are gaming the system for college and getting away with it. When I hear someone talk about this when talking about black education then we'll know someone's actually paying attention.
Im a white guy, so take any "I know how to solve diversity problems" with a grain of salt, but one reason I'm able to be in tech is scholarships and grants.
I didn't have a lot of money growing up, and once I got to college, a state school since i couldn't afford much else, I got a free ride from grants and scholarships. Since then, I've paid years and years of taxes in payroll tax, house tax, sales tax, etc. Back then, i noticed a lot more diversity in my classes. I got my first job as a reference from a Mexican engineer who knew another Mexican engineer at the place I'd end up working. I sublet from two other Mexican engineers that went to Motorola There were a few black electrical engineers, a few female CEs, etc.
Now, it's very very expensive to go to school. If you were just on the "hey, i can barely afford to go to college" divide before, you're now on the no-I-sure-can't other side. In the US, who's more likely to be on the bad side of the can-I-afford-college question? Minorities. It's not Bull-Connor-with-a-firehose racism, but it's a filter on minorities, an extra burden on just some of us that skews numbers. And that will carry over to the next gen. Those who can't become engineers now will likely have less well paying jobs, less good school systems for their kids, and less money for kids tuition. Cycles are had to break and you really need to stop them as early as you can.
While some racial minorities are very under-represented in IT, it is not because it's an all-White profession.
Look around in most respectable engineering/computer science/IT-training schools and you will see many people with Indian-subcontient or Asian heritage. Not even counting current HB-1 and similar visas, you still see a significant number of people with Indian-subcontient or Asian heritage in the workforce.
Yes, people of African and Latin-American heritage are under-represented in IT. However, they are also under-represented in other professions that typically require similar educational paths. The solution is not to pretend this is an IT problem but instead to realize that this is a society-wide issue, and solve it that way.
Start in preschool and work up from there.
they argue that racial bias, along with lingering impressions of what a 'techie' should look like, loom much larger than any pipeline issue.
Having once taught one of the most difficult to understand topics in mathematics, many of my students, after getting comfortable with me, told me they didn't expect me to be their teacher when they forst saw me. On one occasion, at the beginning of school, a this particular class continued with their business instead of acknowledging my presence at the podium, till I called the class to order.
Where I now work, members of the public will gravitate toward an office assistant to help them solve a problem instead of talking to me directly. This assistant then has to advise them to talk to me if anything is to be solved. I am the chief here.
I have gotten so used to this treatment that it doesn't bother me anymore.
Bosnia is in CET tz, and it's 18:00 here. Work for me ended two hours ago. What's that about AC? What's your point?
Because people like to complain about their perceived natural handicaps more than breaking out of them.
20-30 years from now when Asians dominate actual tech innovation (if they haven't already) and all the lazy white guys like myself will be slagging the 'yellow guys stealing my job', or insert some other out group who I feel threatened of.
Racial / religious / sexual / etc.. intolerance happens, I try to avoid it like the plague but the only way to truly overcome is on a personal level. Donate money to outreach and education programs if you think it'll help (i'm doubtful) or be the shining image of what -insert said minority- can be by outshining your peers and FORCE them to recognize your achievements. Is it hard? Sure, but to assume no handicaps in this world is to welcome a very disappointing life. I'll welcome the world when we're all born with the same opportunities, but I'm not deluded enough to assume it'll happen in my lifetime.
Bye!
Are they not also a significant minority in the US? And yet somehow, they managed to vastly over-represent themselves in STEM fields. Maybe, and this may be just a wild ass guess, but maybe it's because they spent their time focusing on their homework rather than whining about diversity?
And you never stop hearing the white people whining about it! Right? Right!?!? It never stops!
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I see plenty of racial diversity. There are folks from India, China, Korea, Japan and many of the islands in the south Pacific where I work. And if you look closely at the so-called "white" folk, many come from all across Europe and Arabia. Are they represented equally? No. If anything, "white" people are underrepresented compared to their percentage of the population. It's a mistake to talk about "racial diversity" when that's not really the problem. It just distracts us by framing it as a problem of white people discriminating against non-whites.
Of course the largest minority group in this country is invisible so they can't be sure how many are working at IT companies.
You repeated mostly what Charles Barkley said in an interview about a week back, but you missed his point that having served a prison term is considered "cool" and "street creds". Ironic that this article blames the problem on racism instead of reality, considering that I mentioned this same thing in a different propaganda thread this morning regarding misogyny.
Certainly racism exists, but there are much bigger issues at hand. The same people propagating the "racism" arguments happen to be the same people propagating "misogyny", and the same people promoting and glamorizing a certain lifestyle through various forms of media.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I fell for the dicevertisment again
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
This reminds me of the anarchist scare in the 20s. The communist scare in the 50s. The nuclear holocaust in the 60s. Then the "Japan invasion" in the 80s. Then the death of the American manufacturing economy in the 90s (which is still the world's largest, believe it or not). Then the IT outsourcing to India in the 2000s. Etc.Etc.
The only constant in this culture is people who claim it's about to collapse.
lucm, indeed.
On the other hand many large corporations have diversity quotas.
At a former employer (producer of printers/copiers) minority employees were a protected category. They were completely safe from RIF's, and that was a company with continuously declining sales.
It also applied to ADA people and LGBT's. Both of the ADA people I knew were incredibly incompetent, but both were immune to layoffs.
True indeed. And yet he was modded down.
I've been working in several large companies' IT departments and time after time I'm simply astonished of the amount of racial and gender discrimination that still exists today.
My previous work place was the worst I've seen this far, though. The people there openly laughed at incredibly racist jokes on isles and in production and mocked our department's women's capabilities to accomplish any IT related tasks. These guys didn't even mind laughing aloud at a few eugenetics jokes when we had black visitors touring our factory. I totally gave up any hope of things improving when I noticed even the head of our department took part in this.
Well, this is how it seems to be in Finland anyway and I sincerely hope it's better elsewhere. Can't wait to get out of this cesspool of a country.
Apple included their Retail workers in their diversity count, which is not a fair comparison to google, facebook, and other pure tech companies. There's less of a diversity problem in the Retail industry than the Tech industry. The diversity stats for Apple Corporate (non-Retail) are dismal - probably worse than the others. I know ... I work here.
If you stop at 16:00 you shouldn't be allowed to call it work.
As a manager, I have good employees, average employees and bad employees. I make every attempt to hire people with the best resumes and references. If they do well, I do well. Race never comes into the equation.
The good employees move up, the average employees are static and the bad employees get fired.
Period.
Now, it is also undeniably true that such talent is not present in proportional numbers amongst various minorities. That's a problem, but it's not of the tech industry's doing. There's plenty of blame to go around. Many of those minorities still suffer from inadequate education. The members of those communities must shoulder some of the burden as well - it is, all too often, still not cool to be smart in those communities. Intellectual achievement is often met with derision even within families. Girls are usually conditioned against pursuing STEM interests. Such observation is not racist, or sexist. The lack of achievement is nothing to with race or gender. It has everything to do with what the community is doing, or not doing.
I have only a single data point so it's probably not worth anything... My only experience with a Black IT professional was a network admin for the company who took over my employer. I was the previous defacto network admin even though my job description was 'embedded firmware developer'. So this company takes us over and hires this guy as the network admin. I meet him in a conference call and his first task is to come up and migrate our servers over to their corporate platform. So I volunteer to give up my weekend to facilitate since he doesn't know our existing infrastructure... He shows up and I give him the nickle tour, show him to a meeting room where he can unpack boxes and start bolting things together. I go back to my cubicle and work on some bugs telling him "if you need anything, just come get me." ... So everything's cool. He gets things connected, and starts migrating data... Around dinner time I check in with him and suggest we go across the street for a bite and a pint while data copies across the network. We have a lovely dinner and chat about families, school, weather, previous work places, etc.. All the usual stuff when you go out for dinner with a co-worker... Then we go back to the office, stop in the machineroom and it's back to business... So that was basically the whole weekend... I made sure he had what he needed from our old servers and instead of sitting around like a lump, I try to get some work done while he configures his new servers...
Monday afternoon, I get a call from my ex-CEO who says there's been a complaint made against me and I need to fly down to meet with HR. In short, the complaint was that I treated him like a subordinate because he's black and that I should remember he doesn't work for me and that I'm not his boss. Prior to that meeting, it hadn't really registered that he was black. I mean sure, I could tell his skin color was different but so is the skin color of 75% of the people I worked with back then. None of my other co-workers were black though. They were either of asian descent, italian, or middle eastern... To me, they're just my co-workers... So I get this mark on my employee record and everything kind of blows over. My future dealings with this IT guy were subsequently 100% about work and that was that. I stayed away from him as much as possible except when unavoidable. A year later, I left the company but reports from my ex-co-workers were that this guy had complained about at least 2 other people in the company and they had eventually let this guy go... Of course you never find out why someone is let go but they hired someone to replace him in exactly the same position almost immediately so the subtext is "this guy has too much 'victim mentality'."
On LinkedIn, this guy doesn't seem to hold on to any jobs for more than 1-2 years and he never seems to 'move up'.
Amen!
It's not bout racisim, it's about having qualified applicants. More brothers need to invest in themselves and stay in school.
This is such bullshit. Post a job opening in IT at any size company and track who applies. Your answer lies there.
White student: Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn't have anything to say about racial diversity in astrophysics.
Black student: Neil deGrass Tyson isn't the emperor of black STEM professionals!
White student: (to himself) He told my father he was.
I'm in Telecom and over here Asian includes people from India, Pakistan, Philippines as well as Eastern Asian countries. As far color diversity goes, I think we're covered. So when Google or Facebook publish their stats everyone assumes Asian = all east asian countries forgetting that Sundar Pichay is Asian. Color is well represented in our fields.
With all the focus given on getting women into the tech field (and if we are honest, we are talking about white women), imagine my shock when other people get left high and dry..
In a world of limited resources, you can't make bets on every single horse; you have to pick and choose.
And thus far, the choice has been overwhelming in favor of women to the detriment of others who perhaps need and are deserving of more help.
Sad but true.
...to judge a person by his or her skin color.
So let me get this straight: When I need to fire someone, I should never take skin color into account; however, if I'm hiring for a new position, I should always take skin color into account? OK, got it.
If you check at the "diversity reports" from tech companies and compare them with US demographics, you'll find that whites are underrepresented in IT, while Asians are strongly overrepresented. And a lot of those Asians are Indians (i.e., fairly dark skinned).
How can those demographics possibly be explained by white racism?
I stop usually stop by 16:00, of course I get started at 5:00, and I'm not talking about when I get out of bed (that's at 4), that's when I sit down and start working. But hey, if you think an 11 hour day isn't long enough, well, screw you.
" ... a young man with a ponytail and an earring!"
Doesn't say "young white man", but one might infer as much from the ponytail.
-kgj
As Parent pointed out. Can I claim discrimination because I am a US citizen yet? Also the article is nonsense. If anything a company would be falling over themselves to hire a qualified black man, for many reasons. it is just a classic 'the first time it got hard they quit and later blamed it on racism' shtick.
"...they argue that racial bias, along with lingering impressions of what a 'techie' should look like, loom much larger than any pipeline issue."
Um that quote is from an idiot. The problem is cultural; not racial. Sounds like just another excuse, in a long line of excuses, to use race in justifying racism in giving preferential treatment to students.
That's so last century. Get over it.
As in, close enough to white that hey, welcome to the white people's club, as far as most things are concerned.
Note that white people do not have an actual club, nor do we hand out provisional memberships to said imaginary club, but certain fucktarts like to insist we do.
Well, I mean, we have Costco memberships, but we pride ourselves on offering them to anyone who can buy one.
OK, this is the last article I ever read on slashdot. As a white male who works in the tech industry I come here to read about tech. Over the last few years every other article seems to be about some resentful group or another who I'm oppressing by existing, having white skin pigment, having male genitals or being heterosexual.
If you hate your readership that much slashdot, why should I patronize your shitty website?
It's time to fuck off, so off I am going to duly fuck.
I am black. Let me tell you my story. This was my last attempt to enter the IT industry
Once upon a time, a big financial company whose name ends in "berg" and begins with "Bloom" came to my school for an onsite interview for financial software developers. I went to the interview and blew their socks off. They told me there and then that we want you in New York for the final interview. They flew me to NY that evening and put me up in a hotel not far from their office.
Next morning I went to the office for the final interview. The HR lady looked at me and told me the position has been filled. No interview, no nothing. I never tried for any programming job since then. The end.
I left the computer field for pure finance, only doing programming purely as a hobby now.
Why is it a problem that blacks are underrepresented in IT? Why is it a problem that women are underrepresented in IT? Why must all of society fret about such things? How about letting people just do what they are interested in? The institutional barriers are gone and have been illegal for decades. That's why the whole "white privilege" meme was invented - in order to perpetuate the victim/oppressor narrative that has been used to demand special treatment.
If we are to be so worried about representation not satisfying strict proportionality, then let's not fall back on double standards. Blacks are wildly overrepresented in government bureaucracies. I think HHS is something like 60% black. Let's start firing some blacks to make way for whites and Hispanics.
Seriously, the article is a bunch of hand wringing based on false premises about a problem which is only a problem to people with political agendas.
Okay, here's the deal. I am passionate about computer science and programming. It's what I do, both for my job, and as my only hobby. I write code for open source projects, and I write code for work, and I design little one-off projects for my own entertainment.
I stayed up all night every summer growing up teaching myself how to code. When I go to the used book store, I go to the section and buy old computer science textbooks talking about esoterica (I'm the only person I know under 45 who knows any APL, for example). My bedtime reading last week was the Oberon System manual that I got off eBay for $5.00.
All this was despite the fact that I grew up in rural Texas and got my ass beaten on a daily basis for being a "geek". The fact that my family was the only non-Christian family in town meant that I couldn't go to the school administration for help; when I tried it turned into a "let's pray for you, son." And yet, I kept doing it because I was passionate about it.
And guess what? If you're that passionate about something, you'll do it regardless of what your peers think. You'll *make* it happen. We didn't have any money growing up, so I'd stay after school and work on the computers there. When we finally scraped up enough money to buy a used Commodore 64 in like 1992, I had that hooked up to an old black-and-white TV and taught myself 6502 assembly.
So yeah, I'm sick of people saying "it's someone else's fault that I can't do this." No, it's not. If you're passionate enough about it, you'll *make* it happen.
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
In engineering and academia, I've appreciated those rare black colleagues. For one thing, they were all much more social (and it is well established that culturally and/or genetically, africans statistically have superior social ability to whites and asians), so I could enjoy hanging out with them more. Another is that they had different things to say, making our work environment litterally more diverse in terms of ideas.
However, in many ways, those black colleagues were not extremely "black" culturally. Dialectally, they sounded more mainstream, along with their general comportment.
As others have pointed out here, the biggest barrier to blacks getting into white collar jobs is black culture. Those who manage to escape the anti-education indoctrination demonstrate themselves to be just as smart as everyone else. It's not politically correct to suggest that different genetic sub-groups (i.e. races) might have different intelligence levels (albeit just averages), but it's anthropologically, it's an important question. However, what we find is that the culture dominates so strongly that we can't even begin to explore that question. (And of course, it is both stupid and unethical to assume that every member of a race is equivalent to the average (whatever that is) and prejudge them on that basis.)
/ducks
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
i doubt that will happen. asian countries have their own cultural obstacles to being and the forefront of tech.
First, we have constant articles on gender discrimination. Are we now going to get race discrimination articles? If we're all such white male racists here in Tech, why would women or black people even want to work here. These articles are getting so tiresome it almost feels like we're getting deliberately trolled.
IS hiring or not hiring someone base on skin color, it should be about who best fits the job description FINAL.
Only one race on this planet and it's humans unless you can tell me that someone comes from a dolphin, the other from an elephant and someone else from a cat, where all the same.
Who cares about %%% , these are only statistics and NO ONE should be hired because you need to fit in a ratio somewhere
Way to screw up my joke with your time zone facts.
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I call shenanigans.
I just left teaching IT at the collegiate level (a trade school). There are two issues:
Not many black students enter IT programs. Don't ask me why. I have theories, but to voice them might open me to charges of racism. Suffice to say that I heard a black commentator recently bemoan how some black people denigrate other black people who try to better themselves. They call it "acting white."
IT is bettering yourself. It's "acting white."
The vast majority of High School graduates are now outright illiterate. They cannot read nor write nor perform the most basic math.
Want real fun? Try teaching binary logic and arithmetic to students who can count to ten if they remember to include both their thumbs.
I had students that were unaware that books had page numbers. Consider the implications of that, for a moment.
We have raised an entire generation of illiterate ignorami. Small wonder that this might include black people, who tend to be hurt even worse than whites in situations like this.
We have raised an entire generation of illiterate ignorami.
Microsoft leads to Bluescreen; Bluescreen leads to downtime; downtime leads to suffering.
This doesn't have a fucking thing to do with racism.
Now... if there were a couple million american africans that were being turned down in favor of other races, that I could understand.
The fact that there are a significantly/statistically low number of american africans have historically had access to computers has a whole lot more to do with this than any 'perceived' racism.
At the technology level we don't really give a shit what you look like, it's your ability to work with others without being a fuckwad that's most important. I've met an equal number of fuckwads from all races.
Piss off and go find something useful to devote your energy towards. Like getting more computers in front of american africans. (Yeah, if you were born in africa and moved to america you'd be an african american. You didn't though so you're an american african)
I have had two co-workers who were black, but only one whom I worked with closely. One whom was heavy on the road to alcoholism. He came from San Francisco and moved to our small little town for a job. My town is mostly white with a largish Spanish and Mexican culture mixed in. I am not sure exactly why he came out here, but he was, as best I could tell, terribly home sick. While I don't think I ever applied any particular racist views on him, I am sure the culture felt toxic to him. Perhaps it was racism, perhaps it was subtle differences, like asking for his drivers license at his bank when other people would just show their ATM card and get access to their bank account. Is that racism when it happened more often to him than others or is that the affects of a small town seeing someone who doesn't fit their cultural norms? I get that "black culture" tends to be self-defeating. I get most techies are not trying to be racist, but I do wonder if there is something subconscious also at work. Consider the TAL episode that suggests black students are punished more harshly than white students: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/538/is-this-working Consider the study that showed white people had more physiological reaction from seeing a needle go into a white or purple arm compared to a black arm: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/05/27/racial-bias-weakens-our-ability-to-feel-someone-elses-pain/
I don't know if we know if it is cultural or biological or a mix. But there is something beyond just blaming black culture.
It's surveys/posts/studies like this that drive me nuts...they are incomplete. Although statistically there is a low # of black IT folks, does that make it wrong? Here are some topics/points the article should at least bring up, even if they don't address them:
1)Do black folks even WANT to go into the IT field to begin with? What are black kids interested in late in high school or college? What stops them from pursuing a career in IT?
2)The IT field is huge...salaries start around $30k for a phone support rep to over $70k for a programmer to over $100k for a high-up manager to over $200k for a CIO or CTO. Saying that blacks are paid ~$3500 less than others is pointless unless the survey gives the details. And besides, let's say it's someone getting paid $55,000 vs $58,500...so what! a)employees should not and do not need to know what their peers are earning and b)the difference could simply be experience or better salary negotiations or 10 other reasons why...it doesn't HAVE to be racism. And is this survey comparing a phone rep to a db admin or what?! Come on, details!
3)As someone pointed out, a small % of black males graduate college and hence a small part of that % go on to the IT field...you can't blame the IT field for a lack of particular clientele you want. You have to go back to the WHY question...why aren't there more blacks going into IT when in college?...which should spawn more WHY questions. However, I disagree with folks that state companies will hire IT folks who never attended college...In general, that's a load of baloney. It's not about certifications. There may be certain entry-level IT jobs you could get without a college degree, but still, the vast majority of companies are looking for college grads for IT positions. You, I, and others may not like the reality, but that's the reality. I started in phone support in 1993 (for a very large company with dozens of products) and 100% of my 75+ peers were college grads...not all CS degrees, but 100% college grads. I went and got my CS degree simply for the act of getting the stupid piece of paper. Yup. Because I knew WITHOUT a college degree (and I graduated high school in 1989), a)job openings in general would be limited to me and b)IT job openings would be EXTREMELY limited to me.
4)What is the correct % for blacks (or any race in ANY job title) to be in IT field positions? 50%? 51%? Seriously...when will all these stats questions end? There will never be a perfect harmony of every race/religion/age/gender/etc. regarding employment. I am very serious on what the % should be to make whoever is complaining happy. Do I complain that a very high % of American basketball and football players are black? Nope. Do I complain that most nurses are female? Nope. Do I complain that most mall retailers hire mostly people under 25? Nope. And what's the IT race % for Indian or Asian in US companies?...the article states "blacks hold less than 8 percent of all information technology jobs in U.S"...ok...well maybe it's 8% black, 15% Indian, 15% Asian, 10% Other, and 52% White.
I may not have hit every question/topic that this article failed to address, but these incomplete surveys do nothing but rattle people's nerves.
Just curious, are you on the west coast? Something I noticed is that these newsline stories tend to focus on companies headquartered on the west coast. I just looked, and apparently California is only ~7% black. I wonder if diversity is a bit stronger in different areas, maybe an east coast IT company? Of course, this brings up the topic of lack of hispanics in IT out there, but that's another story.
A few years ago, I helped interview new grads for my employer for entry level programming positions. Among the candidates were a couple of promising fellows from a well-regarded "Black" university (that such an institute would exist at that point in history shocked me but c'est la vie). These were graduates with bachelor degrees in computer science. We were stunned to learn that they had never taken even a single programming course - they were looking to be project managers. Needless to say, they were not hired as programmers.
If this sort of thing still goes on, I'm not surprised at a surfeit of black folks in IT.
I am a black IT pro. Here is something that happen to me.....
I am a programmer but being a techie I dabble in other areas. One company I worked for there was a problem with a server configuration so being proactive and a team player as, I was good friends with many of the network and system engineers. So I went and got the server working, partly as a favor to one of my network buddies. Upon leaving the server room after the problem was resolved I was greeted by one of my managers who was coming over the thank the person who fixed the server. When he saw me he said "Oh you fixed that I didn't expect someone like you to know that." He was a nice enough manager and I could tell there was no ill-will. So jokingly I said "What do you mean by that?" just pointing what was said as I did not think he thought about what he was implying. When he realized how it came across he apologized a lot (I think for several days). We used this as a teachable moment and he actually became aware of his own bias and worked to get over it.
Just saying education is not always the fix all. Some people need to take responsibility for their bias and work towards a more diverse workforce.
I have slightly over 21 years of experience in this business now. Programmer, SW architect. Aerospace industry, logistics, small businesses. You name it. And in all these years, I encountered exactly one black person. He consulted with Red Bull, here in Austria. And - besides being impressively knowledgeable on network infrastructure - he was American. The only black person among the numerous Americans I met and worked with in this field. Yes - there were Asians. I trained a couple of highly gifted Senegalese. South Americans ? Nope - exact for the seemingly gifted girl I, enrolled in an MA with an unknown Brasilian university, I helped this week with her MA thesis by letting her interview me. That was the first time I professionally met a South American in 21 years. We have a long way to go.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
What a techie is supposed to look like? You mean the sort of thing that might be influenced by pop culture?
A particularly prominent "high tech" espionage show comes to mind.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Is eye color in tech representative of the population as a whole? Come on.
For beautiful eyes!
I taught electronics.
I had a class with two blacks, one of which skipped a lot.
The one who came to class regularly asked me for help, so I told him to read more, try to do the problems, THEN ask for help on the parts he had trouble with.
4 weeks into the class, the one who asked for help was doing OK, no real problems.
The one who skipped was flunking.
He made a remark that I was flunking him because of his color.
The one who was passing looked over and told him that "You stupid 'N&&%%R, if you study it IS easy!".
Peer pressure worked. Both passed.
I did have to tell one class that electrons do not care what color the wire is, only that it conducts.
Also that the same learning has to be done by anyone to do electronics.
So the problem is not just cultural effects, but the personal willingness to try, work at it, learn, practice, and THINK!
That this applies to all fields ( arts, sports, music, writing included ) of endeavor is lost on most people.
That these qualities apply to any field where the person becomes an expert, and is expected to perform at
any level above average ( medicine, engineering, technology, science ) is a fact.
Most people will be average at anything, but to succeed each one still has to do the work.
Here's a few tips. Don't follow the "cool" crowd. Get in early and make a good impression on your teachers, peers, and mentors. I sent my first e-mail in 1993 and my sister and I spent $2800 on a Gateway 486 DX2 with 8MB of RAM. Whereas all around our Bronx neighborhood crackheads with sucking on pipes, and b-boys were hooking up their cars with $4000 sound systems. Most of my mentors groomed me to help them with their repair and consulting businesses. Hang out with people who are smarter than you and realize how much more there is for you to learn. Have a good internal compass and good social skills. I know a lot of really smart assholes. I know how to tolerate them and *keep* learning. Stop blaming the white man. Save your money for things that really matter. A $600 iPhone buys a lot of used Linux and Unix books on Craigslist. Talk up people at the data center. Even the people who take out the trash and run the freight elevators. One week after moving into a new colo, my next door neighbor was borrowing couplers and tools, and four weeks later, he remembers my first name. Some of the cleaning staff might not know Cisco from Juniper, but if tell them to look for green or blue boxes in the trash, I will make it worth their while. When my admin rights on the Ciscos got taken away, I cranked on my Cisco lab at home. It's winter, I don't mind the warmth. Finally, dark skinned people, please stop pulling each other down. I speak Spanish and English in clearly enunciated words and come off as really friendly. I am not gay, not a cop, not an informant. If I see a drunk man in the middle of 145th Street and Amsterdam and I bring it to the attention of the two idle cops on 144th Street, please keep your bullshit "snitch" attitude to yourselves. Grow the f*ck up. I might be the guy sitting across the table when your son or daughter is looking for a job.
Fully half the workforce at my last several positions has been non-white, foreign nationals. Making this about race is absurd when that's the reality we all know to be true.
Could've easily done 8 hours, starting at 8 AM. Not everyone is a silly workaholic.
Someone else put it best, on an earlier article about racial crap:
"which group is more diverse: 20 people of all races and genders who grew up in the same town, or 20 white guys who grew up all over the world?"
Maybe if we didn't focus so much on race when we talk about "diversity," race would cease to be such a major issue for society.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The problem in reality is that people in the top 1% (really more like the top .01%) income brackets want us to be pitted against each other. They pay good money to generate propaganda, pay people like Sharpten to spread hate, pay agent provocateurs to infiltrate groups they see as a risk to their propaganda campaigns. The fact that you can't see this is not surprising or uncommon. But your blame is in the exact wrong place.
Sadly there are plenty of people that buy into the lie and do what Sharpten does for free, because they can't see beyond the messenger. Listen to black community members like Professor Griff, or if you prefer history listen to MLK and MalcomX. They will all tell you the shape of the world. People need to stop believing everything they are told and actually "look" at the world to see it..
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
This is like the worst forum for this stuff. Half of the respondents are like there is no problem and the other half is like black people suck. Any black people reading this would say why would I want to be part of this community. I actually kind of think this is click-bait for white people rather than any interest in social issues.
You nailed it. I don't know what's changed over the past few years but this site seems to be run by SJWs now.
Don't let the door hit you on the way out, friend.
My sons Black (Adopted) and is getting his first computer in a few days for his 7th birthday. It's got Kubuntu, the Steam client for some games, and he's already learning some that will teach him about functions. He absolutely loves computers and is already running circles around Mama.
Tech billionaire in the making!
Is Leigh Alexander working for SlashDot too, because I just turned AdBlock on again, just in case.
Simply tax all H1B's 20% per year, and use this money to fund technical scholarships. This makes H1B more expensive than native born, and helps fill the pipeline.
According to the very article that says it is not the pipeline, avg black component in IT master graduates is 3.5%, the workforce is around 3%. Looks normal to me, at the workforce level, that is. The result indicates a completely disproportionate number of white males in IT university curiculums, and that's the problem that needs addressed. Before minorities can have a chance to compete on the good jobs, they need to have a chance to get the degrees for such jobs.
When I was coming up (30 years ago), people would ask me if I played basketball ( i was 6' 3" in the 11th grade ) and were surprised when I said no. White and Black.
It's not bad, but it is prejudice, racial prejudice. So it's racism right? I mean, really, take the bad connotations away and just go by the literal definition and that is racism.
So if the Asian or Indian guy comes into an interview and looks like the stereotypical indian or asian guy, are you more or less likely to believe that he or she can code?
Now, if a black guy, especially one who is obviously culturally black comes into an interview, is it not just a little more likely that they are going to be seen as slightly less technical than an asian guy with the same credentials and experience. Not vastly less, just a little less, 1% or so.
And if you catch even a whiff of attitude from the asian guy are you likely to think they are an angry person or that you asked the wrong question or caught them on the wrong day. Now how about that black guy? Was it you? or did you just catch that he is one of the angry ones? If a woman responds a little sharply to one of your questions is it you? Or is she one of those bitchy ones? If it were a guy like you, is he a bitch? Or just assertive?
Everyone assumes that racial or gender bias in tech is necessarily about people seeing women or blacks or hispanics as being too stupid to code or just hating them too much to hire them. The problem is more insidious than that. It usually presents as a slightly higher scepticism about our abilities and a slightly higher sensitivity to our personality quirks. And that can make all the difference in getting hired. Especially at a top technical firm. People at those companies claim that they can just "recognize" a good hire when they see one. Perhaps it is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I once had a boss complain that I was so even handed with our client base, that he wondered if I even had feelings. Then the one first time I got slightly testy with someone on the phone ( they kept calling and asking for my predecessor; 3 times in one day ), I had to go to sensitivity training.
I have never had a problem finding and keeping a technical job, but you can't tell my race from resume (until recently, perhaps) and I dress like a banker at work. Not just on interviews, always. No flashy suits, no overly stylish or fashion-forward shoes. Just what I was taught was appropriate 20 years ago at my first real job: Arthur Andersen.
Now the other side of what some of you are saying is true. There is a price that I pay for fitting in at work; I don't fit in in my community. The way I dress, talk and carry myself. My slowness to show anger. My unwillingness to get loud in public makes me seem weak to many that I grew up with. Many aren't willing to make that choice. And the choice isn't as simple as you might think.
Schools need bodies to fill out classes or those classes don't happen. They can't afford to filter or discourage paying customers because the failures help pay for the good students.
I've been a student and paid adjunct at a community college. The following may be controversial but IDGAF. Black men (unless they were raised by the classic strong take-zero-shit Black family or Strong Black Woman) are frequently indifferent students.
Black women often make excellent students. I guess they know it's "sink or swim" but I am impressed at the level of dedication I saw. Black female interest in STEM could be developed since many are career-oriented.
Inb4 "nerd with jungle fever" as I could care less about interacting with Blacks outside business. I give everyone a fair shot and they got what they earned.
Here's one:
Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination (NBER Working Paper No. 9873).
Studies like that have been done repeatedly for decades. I expect that if you read the NBER study, they'd have a bibliography of older research.
Each one repeatedly demonstrates actual discrimination against blacks in hiring. I don't know how anyone could avoid that conclusion. Employers are more likely to hire a person with a white name than a person with a black name with the identical resume. It's not just socioeconomic disadvantage, inability to do the job, lack of qualifications or laziness.
I don't know if anyone has done a similar study in tech fields specifically, but it would be a good thing to do. If you're taking a black studies course, you could get a good paper out of it. Send out 100 resumes to Monster.com from Greg and 100 resumes from Jamal.
If you want to know generally why there are so few minorities in science, Science magazine has had many articles.
http://www.chicagobooth.edu/ca...
http://www.nber.org/digest/sep...
Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination (NBER Working Paper No. 9873).
Employers' Replies to Racial Names
"Job applicants with white names needed to send about 10 resumes to get one callback; those with African-American names needed to send around 15 resumes to get one callback."
Now a "field experiment" by NBER Faculty Research Fellows Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan measures this discrimination in a novel way. In response to help-wanted ads in Chicago and Boston newspapers, they sent resumes with either African-American- or white-sounding names and then measured the number of callbacks each resume received for interviews. Thus, they experimentally manipulated perception of race via the name on the resume. Half of the applicants were assigned African-American names that are "remarkably common" in the black population, the other half white sounding names, such as Emily Walsh or Greg Baker.
To see how the credentials of job applicants affect discrimination, the authors varied the quality of the resumes they used in response to a given ad. Higher quality applicants were given a little more labor market experience on average and fewer holes in their employment history. They were also portrayed as more likely to have an email address, to have completed some certification degree, to possess foreign language skills, or to have been awarded some honors.
In total, the authors responded to more than 1,300 employment ads in the sales, administrative support, clerical, and customer services job categories, sending out nearly 5,000 resumes. The ads covered a large spectrum of job quality, from cashier work at retail establishments and clerical work in a mailroom to office and sales management positions.
Here's more:
http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/200...
Study: Black man and white felon – same chances for hire
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12...
In Job Hunt, College Degree Can’t Close Racial Gap
"A more recent study, published this year in The Journal of Labor Economics found white, Asian and Hispanic managers tended to hire more whites and fewer blacks than black managers did."
"There is also the matter of how many jobs, especially higher-level ones, are never even posted and depend on word-of-mouth and informal networks, in many cases leaving blacks at a disadvantage. A recent study published in the academic journal Social Problems found that white males receive substantially more job leads for high-level supervisory positions than women and members of minorities."
There are more than 2 races on this planet ...
There is, to a certain degree, a culture of wanting children to do well. Saving for their child's education and working with them on school work probably contributes to success. Of course not everyone does well, but at least many motivated people get their chance.
==
... pros in "Black IT" think there should be more diversity.
Who would have thought that the bad guys were so politically correct?
Gee. I can't imagine why.
I'm sitting in a room here at a large Teleco in New Zealand with half a dozen people who would not be considered "white". There are an additional 3 people who could be considered "white".
As for "African American", we don't generally have many here in the local population, so it's unsurprising that we don't have any in our workforce.
So the fix is simple, right?
Pick the right names for your kids; problem solved.
I can't think of too many qualified black candidates that I interviewed and then didn't hire. I'd have to say that percentage wise, people from Ohio (no idea) and India have the lowest success rate with me.
The name one I found dubious since they chose middle-class white names and lower-class black names. It's not like they chose Billy-Ray Luellen-Mae. I suspect that a lot of "racism" in the US is actually classism where being black correlates being lower-class, and so it forms the assumption "black means lower-class unless proven otherwise". This would explain why people forget that Colin Powell was black and other successfully black men. "Black", I posit, is a hybrid race/class construct. --- Annecdote: I met a black African girl from Tanzania who **hated** African American names and African Americans and had nothing good to say about them. That was the moment that really made me realised is that it is not actually about race-itself. Personally, I notice myself much more comfortable dealing with Africans than African Americans as cab drivers, much friendlier, jovial, positive, and animated.
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
In case it wasn't clear, my point is that when we talk about race there are many confounding factors such as culture and socio-economic class and its hard to figure out what the actual underlying issues... and if you could its probably complicated.
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
Tons of racism in these comments, but no, no racism in the tech world, no siree!
They belong on a noose swinging from a tree.
A couple of years ago, I met the guys from thedailywtf.com and as the only black guy at the table, I was asked my opinion on what should be done to get more "diversity" in technology. My answer was "Nothing. The last thing we need is to have more people getting into this field if they don't have a love of it."
There are two problems, as I see it.
First, there is the racism that exists in western society.
Second, there is the anti-intellectual facet to some parts of African American culture.
Racism is complex. It takes many forms, on one hand you have the outwardly hostile racist who just plain doesn't like people of #Race and then you have what Michael Gerson dubbed "the soft bigotry of low expectations". That is manifest where many people, who think they're progressive, automatically assume that a black person is less skilled than his white or asian counterpart. I have a very Anglicized name. It's not Demetrialis or some other ridiculous nonsense like that. When people get emails from me and speak to me on the telephone, they almost never assume that I'm black.
Occasionally, when I meet someone who has only seen my resumè or spoken to me of the phone, I can see the surprise in their face when instead of a skinny white guy, they find a 6'2" 250 pound black dude.
In September, there was a teacher strike at the local district and I addressed the school board. You wouldn't believe how many left-handed compliments I received about "how well spoken" I am.
The anti-intellectualism present in African American culture is extremely destructive. I have experienced it. In large parts of the US, any black kid who is smart, who achieves academically, who has college and career aspirations is derided as acting white. I have been accused of "thinking that[I'm} white". Fortunately, I had strong parents who gave me a much different message at home and reinforced it constantly.
I traveled in different circles, I had many groups of friends, all of them distinct. Of the core group of black guys with whom I hung out when we were growing up, two of us have never been to prison; three have and one is still there. Of the white guys who were my friends, none of them have been to prison.
We all grew up in the same area. At most, five miles separated all of the various neighborhoods. There's a reason why there's such a high rate of incarceration among the black guys. There's a reason why most of the white guys went to college. We were all middle-class. None of us had particularly wealthy parents. The white guys usually heard the message that education or training was important. It was necessary to go out there and be the best person you can be. A lot of the black guys, not all and certainly not most but a lot, were primarily concerned with getting money and bitches. Fast money and lots of bitches.
These things have consequences that last far beyond childhood.
I have a M.S. degree and I work a good job in tech. I'm the only black guy in my department. I was the only black guy in my last department and the one before that(I replaced the previous only black guy when he went back to school for his Doctorate) and the one before that and the one before that. It's not the industry's fault. It's mostly not the fault of racism. It's mostly the fault of a society, subculture and families that don't impress upon young black people, the value of education.
I love tech. I love the people. I love spending my entire day surrounded by geeks.
I find far more camaraderie in that than I do among people who share none of my interests or life experiences beyond being black.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
False. Neil deGrasse Tyson has an amazing story which is exactly about diversity in astrophysics. You can watch it for yourself here.
Factchecking is for winners.
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
Good point, They thought of that. Their answer is no.
http://www.nber.org/papers/w98...
In Section 5, we discuss possible interpretations of our results, focusing especially on two issues. First, we examine whether the race-specic names we have chosen might also proxy for social class above and beyond the race of the applicant. Using birth certicates data on mother’s education for the dierent names used in our sample, we nd little relationship between social background and the name specic callback rates.
Also see Table 11.
Black culture seems to celebrate a lack of intelligence. Not at all racist, it's akin to pretty white girls not wanting to be smart
Imagine 2 running tracks, each 200 yards long but at geographically separated locations not visible to each other.
At the end of each track there is a television camera to broadcast the winner, but other than that, no cameras at any other
point on the track...
At each track, there is one runner... one white runner and one black runner. The track with the white runner we will refer to
as the white track, the track with the black runner we will refer to as the black track.
To start each race, a whistle audible to both runners will sound.
Racism:
Even though we take it as fact that each track is 200 yards long, the black track has a number of 10 ft obstacles that the
white track doesn't have.
The whistle sounds, the race begins, and fairly consistently the white runner crosses the finish line first.
Sometimes, in some races it is true that some black runners running on the black track cross the finish line first, but everyone
on the black track does so after scaling the 10 ft obstables, and realistically and statistically those obstacles stop a lot of
runners.
From the white runners' perspectives, they've never seen the black track, and they've never seen the 10ft obstacles. They've
only seen the white track which has no obstacles. They simply assume that because the tracks are the same length that
they are in fact the same. When the black runners complain about the obstacles on the black track, the white runners
discount them because in fact some black runners have still run and won races.
From the black runners' perspectives however, they know that the white runners don't have to confront obstacles on their
track so there is a feeling of unfairness that they carry around like luggage.
On top of that, it doesn't help that the white runners discount and evade discussion of this unfairness, often choosing to find fault with
the black runners themselves. This usually only serves to add indignation to the feelings felt by the black runners.
This is what black people refer to as 'white privilege'.
When the white runners hear this, they express outrage because as individuals, they actually did RUN their track. Nobody
ran their race for them... moreover, they won and nobody likes to lose...
For this reason, I prefer to use the term 'white sabotage', because the black track has been sabotaged in such a way that
it makes it harder for black runners to win.
These obstacles are erected all over our society. Many in our society bristle over the idea of Affirmative Action assisting
minorities, pretending that such programs seek to elevate mediocrity over merit... but those same people often conveniently
ignore that such programs primarily benefit white women whose merit is rarely questioned relative to people of color seeking
to benefit from the same programs. Such stigmatization or lack of it for white women colors sentiments and erects
obstacles.
Most people in the world who are killed are killed by people that look just like them, whether it be whites killing whites, arabs
killing arabs, asians killing asians, or blacks killing blacks... yet despite school shootings, serial killers, and plain old
fashioned murders committed by whites against other whites, you'll never hear the phrase "white on white crime" or
"white people killing their own" despite the fact that they do. Instead to stigmatize black people, we fault the black runner
vs the unfairness he must confront on a daily basis. "Black on black crime" holds black people back-- at least according to Bill O'reilly.
"You have a victim mentality... how dare you question and/or complain about the unfairness you are forced to confront
everyday despite living in a country that declared its independence with the words: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of H
Aren't you over this charade that the every white person on the planet is a racist and that everyone and society as a whole is against you? Can you stop victimizing yourselves now?
Howzat read - "Shaddup, nigger, there ain't no such thing as racism"?
After all, that effectively is what you're saying.
And there is diversity in NBA players? Oh never mind.
It's funny how most of the well known and esteemed black technies that I know of are of recent immigrant background and how most of them are very, very much black. One would think that the "racist" White, Asian and Indian cabal that's doing all it can to keep the black man out of IT would hate african blacks even more than they hate african-american blacks, right ? I think I get it though. What we have here is the evil, racist Whites, Asians and Indians using divide and conquer, for sure. Also, the Whites, Asians and Indians work with Nigerians/etc but keep the African-Americans out because they're *know* that AAs so much more qualified than they are and that the Nigerians are not a threat, you see. Surely that must be why Nigerians and other immigrants are the only black face in IT. It has nothing to do with their own talents and abilities. It's all about the Whites, Asians and Indians scheming to keep the brother down!
H-1Bs won't hire blacks. They're all Indians, and they are massively prejudiced against women and blacks. Simple as that.
White players (LACK OF) in professional football and basketball.
White professors (LACK OF) in many university engineering departments.
White students (LACK OF) in the multicultural student union.
(and yes, I have tried, but mean looks I get tell me to leave and never come back.)
Oh I know!!-----
White people (LACK OF) in Nigeria. HAH
Why would we see stories like these? The lack of white people in ANY situation is culturally acceptable.
And people seem to be trying to avoid it. There aren't that many blacks interested in IT/Coding work and that ones that are, are drowned out and washed away in a see of other diversity hires namely from Asia and India. This isn't about racism, but a matter of sheer numbers. Blacks simply do not have them.
I can think of several major social structure differences between the history of black Americans and asian Americans. I just wrote half a book explaining it. Then deleted it. If you are curious you can figure it out yourself.
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1118373109
Casteism
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_politics_in_India
Casteism
Correlation does not imply causality. A name tells something about social class, not about skin colour, even though there is a correlation. A light-skinned woman called Lakisha would be equally disadvantaged against a dark-skinned woman named Emily as the other way around.
Let's be honest.
Not only are there not many black coders. There's not many females. And there aren't that many people from arab nations.
Now I don't see a problem with this. What's with this obsession with trying to get everyone to think the same way and even distribution across genders for everything?
Now let's draw the lines on where this leads: Not just homogenization: But a race that looks, functions, and feels the exact same.
Are you buying on to the concept that we should be part of a production line based on form by homogenization of mind?
My point is: Black people, at least the ones I have met - think and act differently. In my opinion, they tend to make for good entertainers, actors, and YES I have met a FEW decnet coders, but by and large, they have other things they excel at different than white.
This is NOT to be mistaken for capacity to achieve. I can learn Dutch if I wanted to. but the truth is. I dont want to. I KNOW it changes the way i see the world, the way i feel about myself, and more. NOW SHOULD I find value in learning Dutch one of these days. I MAY make that choice.
But to cite 'imbalance' rhetoric based on statistical bias - is misleading by numbers.
These numbers and this information fails to recognize nor respect the individual experience and the mindset of the individuals that comprise that group.
Let them make the decisons for themselves. Quit trying to melt it all together, Yes, this is the melting pot, but you've taken it too far.
Cudos Nerval's Lobster - a genuine Troll
It's 2% of tech, not 2% of college students total.