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Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

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Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#321

Post by vacri »

autoreleasepool wrote: post #203
Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As soon as a minorty achieves success (and often disproportionate success) they are no longer considered minorities.

With 'Latinos' its even weirder. Cubans are almost never treated as minorities (disclaimer: I'm Cuban). White-mexicans are treated as if "you're not really who we're talking about." I have a sneaking suspicion that minority is doublespeak for brown people, but even Indians get excluded from this category... for some reason. Even though I've heard countless heart breaking struggles about first generation Indian-Americ…

> Do we call these folks African American (they're not from Africa)

My favourite example of this was a black British model, whom an American commentator called "African-American". She was born and grew up in the UK, and was neither African nor American.

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#322

Post by alistproducer2 »

alistproducer2 wrote: post #238
devalier wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The imgur photo came from the Bell Curve by Charles Murray. There was some controversy about parts of the book, but the fact that blacks score one standard deviation lower on IQ tests was never disputed. You can also find this by just googling "race and SAT scores" "race and LSAT scores". Look at the official results put out by those organizations, and you will find that on every single test the average black score i…

The very idea that you can abstract IQ from socio-economic status has no basis in science. The idea that IQ is a measure of intrinsic intelligence is also not accepted. There's a reason race is not accepted as a biological handicap anywhere but in white supremacy circles and it's not political correctness.

I would love for the 3 asshats that downvoted me to link to studies showing no association between socio-economic status and IQ. Or studies supporting IQ tests as non-biased measures of intrinsic human intelligence. I'll probably be waiting forever because troll don't care much for evidence.

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#323

Post by vacri »

autoreleasepool wrote: post #203
Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As soon as a minorty achieves success (and often disproportionate success) they are no longer considered minorities.

With 'Latinos' its even weirder. Cubans are almost never treated as minorities (disclaimer: I'm Cuban). White-mexicans are treated as if "you're not really who we're talking about." I have a sneaking suspicion that minority is doublespeak for brown people, but even Indians get excluded from this category... for some reason. Even though I've heard countless heart breaking struggles about first generation Indian-Americ…

> For some reason, the government (and most other institutions) desperately seems to want to lump you into one of 4 or 5 unscientific categories.

Not governmental, but medically, your race can affect what treatments will be effective.

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#324

Post by Animats »

igonvalue wrote: post #281

The clickbait article headline is "Why Doesn’t Silicon Valley Hire Black Coders?" The answer is buried three quarters of the way into the article: > When they started interviewing seniors, companies found — as Pratt did at Howard — that many were underprepared. They hadn’t been exposed to programming before college and had gaps in their college classes. So why isn't the article titled, "Why Aren't Enough Black Coders…

This seems to be the same problem as women have in Silicon Valley. If you didn't spend a lot of time with computers on your own before college, you're not in the running. Up until 1985 or so, that wasn't the case, because few people had pre-college access to much CPU power. More women were going into computer science then.

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#325

Post by colmvp »

KingMob wrote: post #292
colmvp wrote: post #269

“There are not a lot of people of color in the Valley—and that, by itself, makes it kind of unwelcoming” Oh I forgot, us Asians don't when it comes to people of color or diversity.

You do know that "people of color" doesn't refer to Asians, correct? It's primarily African-Americans.

That's patently false.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_color

"Person of color typically refers to individuals of non-Caucasian heritage"

"As Joseph Truman argues, the term people of color is attractive because it unites disparate racial and ethnic groups into a larger collective in solidarity with one another."

http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/03/30/295931070/...

"In U.S. history, "person of color" has often been used to refer only to people of African heritage. Today, it usually covers all/any peoples of African, Latino/Hispanic, Native American, Asian or Pacific Island descent, and its intent is to be inclusive.

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#326

Post by officemonkey »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #113
officemonkey wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it were a game, it would be called "Whiteness unlocked." An Indian- or Chinese-American can attain "no longer considered minority" (aka whiteness) but African-Americans don't get that achievement.

I'm not sure how a first-generation immigrant with skin 80% as dark as a random African-American who celebrates Diwali instead of Christmas, follows cricket instead of (American!) football, and favors rice puddings to apple pies is actually statistically deserving of the "no longer considered minority" flag in America, financially successful or not. It sounds more like some people are changing their criteria as they…

In order to accurately describe the situation, we have to first understand that the concept of race is bullshit. It's a societal one, not a biological one.

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#327

Post by pabb »

oldmanjay wrote: post #290
pabb wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a white guy who also grew up in a predominantly black area with black friends and makes good money, your attempt to appear as the paragon of racial enlightenment makes me cringe.

Do you feel as though your experiences made you better than the OP and so you cringe because of your superior enlightenment? I can't imagine what else you might have in mind, I find nothing particularly cringeworthy in the OP, especially since the whole "paragon of racial enlightenment" bit seems to come entirely from your own head.

I know enough to not pretend I'm on a higher plane of racial understanding by giving trite justifications such as "I'm the only rich white guy in a gentrified neighborhood" while simultaneously giving the example of being the target of an attempted theft, so as to not so subtly show the bias of minorities as criminals.

Not to mention the "OG Cody" at the end, once again showing that these must be stereotypical (highly presumably) black minorities, again to hammer home this sort of bizarre feigned legitimacy he presumes. The whole passage is essentially saying "I get these things that you people don't get it, here's why".

Edit: Another way to put it, he's giving the expanded version of "I have black friends, so that racist thing I said can't possibly be racist."

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#328

Post by rezistik »

The issue I take with this is that American assimilation is a two way street. Every culture puts in and takes out. Tacos, sausages, pizza, sushi, these are American foods as much as they are Mexican, German, Japanese, or Italian. Some of them more American than their source in ways. It's not about forcing White Angle-Saxon culture. It's about forging American culture and identity.

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#329

Post by zBard »

oldmanjay wrote: post #290
pabb wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a white guy who also grew up in a predominantly black area with black friends and makes good money, your attempt to appear as the paragon of racial enlightenment makes me cringe.

Do you feel as though your experiences made you better than the OP and so you cringe because of your superior enlightenment? I can't imagine what else you might have in mind, I find nothing particularly cringeworthy in the OP, especially since the whole "paragon of racial enlightenment" bit seems to come entirely from your own head.

> and had a few people conspire to potentially remove a few select items from my house. So I started going out in the city more, and now everything's back to the nice vibe it once was. I'm just as comfortable as I was before and that process of potential betrayal and silent forgiveness (I'm not sure my friend even knows I knew he was planning to pull the jux (as my friends from my hometown might say)) is just a part of who I am.

Not entirely from his head.

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#330

Post by dang »

Kinnard wrote: post #189

Wonder why this isn't on the front page . . . a simple points/time since posted doesn't add up to me . . . IMHO HN is too opaque.

It was heavily flagged and set off the flamewar detector. We reduced those penalties, because the article is substantive. We changed the title to make it less misleading and linkbaity, as the HN guidelines request.
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