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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

#401

Post by Joof »

stuxnet79 wrote: post #216
Larrikin wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different races are exposed to different cultures and when everyone knows about some aspect and you don't, you will feel left out and experience culture shock. My elementary school and middle school were about 95% black with rest mostly being white and my high school was about 85% white with the next largest percentage being Asian. The kinds of music, tv shows, and activities people did on the weekend had barely any…

+1 Quick question, what was your experience as a white person in a majority black school? I always hear about the plight of black students in majority white schools but never the inverse.

I went to middle school in a majority black school. In all honesty, most of the white kids were in the honors courses and generally segregated from everyone else. In high school I chilled with more black people because the area was very country-culture influenced and we generally felt out of place.

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

#402

Post by jnbiche »

fortes wrote: post #231
rhino369 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America is undisputedly the best country at assimililating immigrants. It comes from doing it for centuries. We are one of the only countries with complete mixed ethnicities and a strong nationality. But that doesn't really work for blacks because they aren't a different culture, they are a subculture. Their culture has been a part of American culture from the beginning. For almost all of American history they were e…

> America is undisputedly the best country at assimililating immigrants. > It comes from doing it for centuries. We are one of the only countries with complete mixed ethnicities > and a strong nationality. I'll dispute that. In my experience, Brazil is a better melting pot. Anecdotal example: In Brazil, you don't see people claiming they are Irish when their families have lived in the US for generations.

Perhaps not, but you have people who honor their US Confederate ancestry after living in Brazil for generations:

http://www.vice.com/read/welcome-to-americana-brazil-0000580...

But I agree that Brazil overall is an impressive melting pot, on par or better than the US.

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

#403

Post by clarkm »

kenjackson wrote: post #393
dingbat wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

further complicated by the tendency towards aspirational naming, as over time formerly upscale names like Emily / Alexandra / Madison etc become associated with low-end socioeconomics due to overexposure. however, you'd have to be willfully ignorant to deny the perceptual gap between high-end/low-end Emily/Amber vs. Lakisha

So what is a "high-end" black name?

Reginald?

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

#404

Post by gohrt »

stuxnet79 wrote: post #229
vanattab wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about finn's character is bumbling?

Rather than list attributes consistent with "bumbling" it would be better if you compared Finn to other prominent black characters in Star Wars: Mace Windu? Master of the Jedi high council. Lando Calrissian? Permed out badass who is in charge of Cloud City Vader? The original voice actor was black but does anything else need to be said? Can Finn really compare to any of these? Is he a hero I can personally identify w…

> Is he a hero I can personally identify with?

> Mace Windu

> Vader

Mace Windu was a completely bogus effort to put Samuel L Jackson in front of Black ticket-buyers. It wasn't even a good role for the incredible (but range-limited) performer Jackson is.

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

#405

Post by Joof »

dang wrote: post #256
rhino369 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America is undisputedly the best country at assimililating immigrants. It comes from doing it for centuries. We are one of the only countries with complete mixed ethnicities and a strong nationality. But that doesn't really work for blacks because they aren't a different culture, they are a subculture. Their culture has been a part of American culture from the beginning. For almost all of American history they were e…

Canadian disputes this.

At least to Canadians we can point out 'French' Canada. The people are different, but still Canadian.

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

#406

Post by cgy1 »

dcole2929 wrote: post #378
colmvp wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, every day I feel like I'm told that I have to do something to help other people. There's always a cause. And you know, I'm not against that. I realize people have it rough. But there is this weird perception that Asian men have this amazing privilege in Western society and that we don't endure any racism or discrimination despite the fact that we still do. They range from how we're depicted in the media, to…

This is an absolutely serious question. Can you elaborate on some of the racism you as an Asian male have experienced? Honestly, outside of certain examples of the "good minority" I've seen very little racism towards Asians in any context so I'm interested to hear what is you may have experienced.

1) dating as an Asian men 2) representation of Asian men in popular media

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

#407

Post by gohrt »

stuxnet79 wrote: post #222
wooger wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hero is a white woman - Finn is a bumbling sidekick.

Who also works in "sanitation" I am still incensed by this. The marketing of the movie totally misrepresented what Finn's role would be. I thought he would be the lead jedi. I doubt I will watch any of the forthcoming Star Wars movies.

"worked", past tense, on Starkiller Base, before he became a storm trooper.

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

#408

Post by ashark »

Animats wrote: post #324
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.

I did a relatively easy CS program, but even so I can't imagine going into it without already knowing how to program. It seemed pretty brutal for the people who didn't, and I think even many who made it through didn't get much out of it. Too much too fast.

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

#409

Post by ryandrake »

vacri wrote: post #321
autoreleasepool wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or the white guy from South Africa who emigrated to America and tried to get a scholarship as an "African American". By all quantifiable measures he should get to use that label.

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

#410

Post by puredemo »

devalier wrote: post #360
dang wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN accounts aren't supposed to be used just for ideological purposes. HN is a community, and the threads are conversations. That dynamic isn't served when someone shows up only to post lengthy, prepared screeds on tendentious topics.

If the top article on the Hacker News home page contradicts the evidence and the data that I have read, what am I supposed to do? I did not paste in a pre-written screed. I have read a lot on this subject, so I had a bunch of links and sources at my fingertips. It seems to me that posting as someone who has read a lot on this issue, and who can cite sources, is a much greater net contribution to the discussion than o…

I wouldn't read too much into it... dang is basically a professional tone policer. An extremely biased one at that, he doesn't like "ideological speech" but only when it's politically incorrect. Idealistic gibberish is completely fine.

If unpleasant truths contradict dang's personal sense of propriety, he'll use a couple ten cent words to justify removing your comment before he pats himself on the back for doing so.

Ironic, as PG himself has written how much he dislikes tone policing, [1] however YC is not really about honest discussion anymore. More accurately it's social signaling for upper crust programmers and potential fundees, that's the moderation style he tries to enforce.

[1] http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html see DH2

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