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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?
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.
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.
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?
I Graduated HS in class of 200 - 95% black, 3% white, 2% other in rural America.
How many went to college from that class? 4 total, 3 whites, 1 black (on a full ride athletic scholarship)
How many graduated? Two that I know of, I'm half. I got an Engineering Degree. The guy with the scholarship flunked out of NCAA eligibility in his 2nd year and one of the other two got an education degree. I hope more have graduated since, but I moved out of state so I don't know.
Who do they remember from my class at that school? The kid that flunked out of a full athletic scholarship.
It's not that this school was full of stupid people, it wasn't. None when to college because they didn't want too leave, or didn't want to be seen as a traitor to their race and get shunned by their friends. Many got stuck in the cycle of dependance. "I cannot wait to turn 18 so I can move out and start getting my own welfare checks!" was a commonly heard sentiment in the hallways. It still makes me sad to think many of my friends didn't even try.
This is a cultural issue not an opportunity issue. It is also a perception issue where we somehow think Outcome=Opportunity, regardless of the effort put in. This is an issue of dependance on welfare. Yet many of these people would be more than willing to look at me, a middle aged, middle class, white man as the problem. They think I am why they never succeed, but it's really because they never tried.
This is not to say racism is not a factor in some cases, I'm just saying it is not THE factor in why the statistical numbers looked skewed. We need to be totally honest with ourselves before we start suggesting solutions to this, or we will NOT fix anything, only make things worse.