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Howard University opens a new campus at the Googleplex

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Re: Howard University opens a new campus at the Googleplex

#71

Post by sAuronas »

xienze wrote: post #20
throwa34567 wrote: post #6

I'm very happy to see this. I grew up in a town that, before I was born, decided to actively integrate (from being an historically all white, wealthy suburb) and I'm certain I'm better off for growing up in a diverse community. I'm in mountain view now and it's all "silicon valley white", and something actively needs to be done. I worry when I realize my kid can go a week or more without seeing a black person, and I'…

So, let's say you were born in China. Would you have a similar level of anxiety about never seeing anyone outside of your ethnic group? I find it very odd how white people are seemingly the only ethnic group so hung up on seeing people of different races one day-to-day basis. On a related note, if being around so many white people bothers you so much, why aren't you living in, say, East Palo Alto or Richmond?

Edit: You can't just replace White with Chinese: unless Chinese people enslaved and murdered a race of people for hundreds of years, then segregated them in tiny ghettos while charging higher rents than other 'Chinese' had to pay, to finally - allow - them to leave the ghetto only to "redline" (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining) any community that crossed the color line, outlaw discrimination - after - poverty had set in... (not to mention Chinese-flight, I mean, white-flight from communities that reached a tipping point of racial integration.)

The issues of race in American are legacy issues that won't just dissolve in time. And full dissolution cannot take place if the underlying issues of poverty are not corrected (read: aggressively attacked). This is but a small step in that direction.

Full disclosure: I'm not (totally) white.

Re: Howard University opens a new campus at the Googleplex

#72

Post by and0 »

FT_intern wrote: post #65

I think we are in need of an open discussion on redefining "diversity". Race is not a good metric for diversity. Nationality completely trumps it. People of the same nationality with the same primary language have much more in common with each other. You can actually see this dynamic play out at work where people hang out with others from the same nationality. Americans hang out with Americans, Mandarin Chinese hang…

It's kind of wild you think the NAACP is this huge factor tipping the scales. I'd guess that's a product of consuming alt-right news, which tends to massively amplify organizations and figures within the black community that can be smeared as corrupt, but who knows.

Every study I've read relating to economic mobility points to having economic leverage in the first place as the greatest factor. Blacks have a disproportionately low share of wealth ownership in America (can't cite this atm), which combined with systematic biases puts them at a pretty significant disadvantage. Speaking English isn't enough to counteract that.

You make some interesting points re: how to categorize diversity, but it sounds like you're just moving the goalposts.

Re: Howard University opens a new campus at the Googleplex

#74

Post by FT_intern »

throwa34567 wrote: post #6

I'm very happy to see this. I grew up in a town that, before I was born, decided to actively integrate (from being an historically all white, wealthy suburb) and I'm certain I'm better off for growing up in a diverse community. I'm in mountain view now and it's all "silicon valley white", and something actively needs to be done. I worry when I realize my kid can go a week or more without seeing a black person, and I'…

> it's all "silicon valley white"

You don't consider the thousands of immigrants who grew up in completely different cultures with different primary languages in Asia and Europe as diversity?

Instead, you consider the American born Black person whose primary language is English and who grew up with American culture as "diversity"?

Re: Howard University opens a new campus at the Googleplex

#75

Post by entee »

misterbowfinger wrote: post #52

I want to comment on the anti Affirmative Action arguments here. I went to a really prestigious high school in New York City. For the summer of my junior year, our AP Computer Science teacher hooked up a few of us with internships at the finance firms, specifically in tech (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, etc.). Now, sure, I did really well and studied really hard to get into my high school. However, I did practically…

I think what you're saying is a great way to describe what advantages accrue with wealth, even middle class wealth.

Essentially you had the system work in your favor and in turn knew how to work to system. You got a warm intro into an internship, this helped you get into college afterwards. These kinds of subtle boosts are mostly a function of being in the right place within the system and knowing how to pull the right levers, and if you don't know to look for those levers, you'll never know they're there and be disadvantaged as a result.

In your case, it was being in the right place and having the flexibility to take that internship. For someone else it might be knowing how to work the college financial aid system, or something else. I look back and see that throughout my academic career, if I didn't have people who knew how the system worked telling me, "you should do this, and this is how", I don't think I'd have gotten where I am.

Essentially, I got a better shot at things even though I was no more qualified on a purely intellectual basis.

AA is an imperfect tool to give people some of those same advantages, and I'm a little ambivalent about it. But I think it or something like it is probably necessary to give everyone an equal shot.

Re: Howard University opens a new campus at the Googleplex

#76

Post by tdb7893 »

FT_intern wrote: post #70
misterbowfinger wrote: post #52

I want to comment on the anti Affirmative Action arguments here. I went to a really prestigious high school in New York City. For the summer of my junior year, our AP Computer Science teacher hooked up a few of us with internships at the finance firms, specifically in tech (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, etc.). Now, sure, I did really well and studied really hard to get into my high school. However, I did practically…

The test to get into the prestigious high school is orthogonal to race. Given that the top percentile of the test takers are the children of immigrant parents who don't understand American culture and whose primary language is not English, the tests appear to be very objective.

The way I see it is if your numbers for race as a whole don't match the underlying distribution you probably have a selection bias in there. I'm not sure affirmative action is the right move but I don't know how you can deny a selection bias against certain groups (racial or otherwise) and I think that we need some way to try to correct for it

Re: Howard University opens a new campus at the Googleplex

#77

Post by kukac »

misterbowfinger wrote: post #52

I want to comment on the anti Affirmative Action arguments here. I went to a really prestigious high school in New York City. For the summer of my junior year, our AP Computer Science teacher hooked up a few of us with internships at the finance firms, specifically in tech (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, etc.). Now, sure, I did really well and studied really hard to get into my high school. However, I did practically…

Not all white people are as privileged as you.

Re: Howard University opens a new campus at the Googleplex

#78

Post by entee »

FT_intern wrote: post #74
throwa34567 wrote: post #6

I'm very happy to see this. I grew up in a town that, before I was born, decided to actively integrate (from being an historically all white, wealthy suburb) and I'm certain I'm better off for growing up in a diverse community. I'm in mountain view now and it's all "silicon valley white", and something actively needs to be done. I worry when I realize my kid can go a week or more without seeing a black person, and I'…

> it's all "silicon valley white" You don't consider the thousands of immigrants who grew up in completely different cultures with different primary languages in Asia and Europe as diversity? Instead, you consider the American born Black person whose primary language is English and who grew up with American culture as "diversity"?

Of course immigrants and different languages increase diversity. But it's also true that other people from within the US are critical to developing a balanced view of the world. A black person is going to have a very different experience that I will as a white dude, and we are all poorer for it when we don't know people with those experiences. The same goes for the white farmer who grew up on a ranch in Nebraska, I would love to know more of those people, they see the world differently than I do.

Re: Howard University opens a new campus at the Googleplex

#80

Post by nybbler »

If this succeeds, how will Google and Howard keep whites and Asians from taking too many positions in the class? Outright racial discrimination in university admissions is still illegal, and Howard couldn't seriously argue that they're engaging in affirmative action (their student body is over 90% black)
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