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Why are there so few black people in STEM?

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Re: Why are there so few black people in STEM?

#201

Post by susiecambria »

In "Raj Chetty: The Fading of the American Dream | Amanpour and Company" (https://youtu.be/_rffAhR4mSs) (summary below), Chetty makes the case that doing what works is essential. The discussion ) ultimately turns to race and black boys in particular. Turns out that black boys (versus white boys or black girls) need their father present.

What spoke to me the most was Chetty's statement that race always mattered no matter income, education, family, neighborhood. Go to 18:15 to learn more. Basically, while system and program improvements could result in lifting black boys/men up the ladder, the system was pushing against them. This is a profoundly difficult thing to labor against even in a systematic, data-informed, policy- and practice-driven way. But the failure to take a piecemeal approach may result in so few black people in STEM.

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Summary: Raj Chetty believes he may have found a way to reignite the American Dream. Using “Big Data,” Chetty says we can offer equality of opportunity to kids of disadvantaged backgrounds. The renowned Harvard Professor has received plaudits for his work in harnessing data to propose solutions to economic inequality. He sits down with Hari to explain his work.

Re: Why are there so few black people in STEM?

#202

Post by harpratap »

selimthegrim wrote: post #191
harpratap wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe the Indians and Chinese who immigrated back in 1900s ever got rid of poverty. It's only the last few decades of educated immigrants that changed the narrative that Asians are the model minority, it's been a part of US propaganda for decades now - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/29/the-r... I can see the same happen in my ancestry too. The ones who migrated back in 1900s or during t…

My great grandfather immigrated to USA in 1920s from Kapurthala in Punjab. Most of his descendants work as nurses if they went beyond high school, few went to college but almost all own property, so I’m not sure what you mean here.

So they were military/landlords back in Punjab and did the same in US? Where's the American Dream™ upgrade? Btw if you were a Jatt in Punjab you were already upper-middle class but now in US you downgraded to lower-middle class.

I would like to see if a Chamaar from Punjab was able to go to US before 1960s and able to become a land owner.

Re: Why are there so few black people in STEM?

#203

Post by selimthegrim »

harpratap wrote: post #202
selimthegrim wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My great grandfather immigrated to USA in 1920s from Kapurthala in Punjab. Most of his descendants work as nurses if they went beyond high school, few went to college but almost all own property, so I’m not sure what you mean here.

So they were military/landlords back in Punjab and did the same in US? Where's the American Dream™ upgrade? Btw if you were a Jatt in Punjab you were already upper-middle class but now in US you downgraded to lower-middle class. I would like to see if a Chamaar from Punjab was able to go to US before 1960s and able to become a land owner.

He was Muslim, not Jat or Rajput as far as I know (and yes I know you can both but he didn’t have any sort of obvious last name like Rathore or whatever) I don’t think he owned any land there. Hence the upgrade. I think he imported itar at one point but mostly ran small tuck shop. I think his cousins might have owned land near Batala but after 47 they lost it and went to PK. He did buy the land he built his house on in Cleveland though.

Re: Why are there so few black people in STEM?

#204

Post by imtringued »

CyanLite2 wrote: post #32
neffy wrote: post #10

For the same reason there are so few poor whites in STEM. America's dysfunctional education funding. Make education funding federal, and have a nationwide push to have small classes and well funded schools for everybody, and this would be fixed in 10 years. As it is, rich districts pay more taxes and get better schools. Funny that.

Why is that the first thing people think of when it comes to explaining black behavior is that they must be poor? Not all black people are poor. Stop it with the stereotypes.

I don't know why behavior like yours exists. Nobody knows why X is happening but people notice that a potential solution Y is only possible if Z is true. Then someone says Z is wrong and therefore we lost all our agency and ability to solve X.

If this was too difficult to understand then I'll explain it differently. If there are environmental differences between races such as socioeconomic background then you can fix things like educational attainment by improving the socioeconomic background of black people. If there is no environmental difference or solving the environmental difference gives no improved outcomes then this basically means black people are somehow inferior to white people simply based on their race. I don't think that is true. Poor white people suffer from the same things poor black people suffer from so an explanation that is purely based on race is completely insufficient. However you want to deny the socioeconomic differences and blame the differences in ability entirely on race.

Re: Why are there so few black people in STEM?

#205

Post by DanBC »

imtringued wrote: post #204
CyanLite2 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that the first thing people think of when it comes to explaining black behavior is that they must be poor? Not all black people are poor. Stop it with the stereotypes.

I don't know why behavior like yours exists. Nobody knows why X is happening but people notice that a potential solution Y is only possible if Z is true. Then someone says Z is wrong and therefore we lost all our agency and ability to solve X. If this was too difficult to understand then I'll explain it differently. If there are environmental differences between races such as socioeconomic background then you can fix…

> If there is no environmental difference or solving the environmental difference gives no improved outcomes then this basically means black people are somehow inferior to white people simply based on their race.

Or it means perfectly competent black people are excluded simply because they are black; because the white people who gate-keep academic institutions are racist.

Re: Why are there so few black people in STEM?

#206

Post by imtringued »

chii wrote: post #161
downerending wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most basketball fans would agree with that argument.

And yet when there's little or no representation of one race in one area of human endeavour, it's OK and accepted. But in another endeavour, it's frowned upon and spell racism.

Professional sports is a competitive industry where absolute performance is irrelevant. Only relative performance counts. In cooperative industries like engineering and software development only absolute performance counts. As long as someone is competent enough to be able to bring in enough money to pay for food and rent they will be hired and since that is such an incredibly low bar there is no reason to exclude "less skilled" people who perform 3.4% worse than the best. Those "less skilled" people are more important than the top performer simply because they are in the majority. Having 10 competent people is better than only having the best person for the job.

Re: Why are there so few black people in STEM?

#207

Post by DanBC »

the_omegist wrote: post #182
chii wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet when there's little or no representation of one race in one area of human endeavour, it's OK and accepted. But in another endeavour, it's frowned upon and spell racism.

Even more visible than basketball and totally genetically admitted : 100m race. Even the most gene-allergic person will have trouble denying perhaps predisposition for speed can be unequally distributed among different races. But genes would magically stop having any meaningful effect above the waist...

You may be interested in reading Superior: The Return of Race Science which is a comprehensive debunking of your racist ideology.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Superior-Return-Science-Angela-Sain...

Re: Why are there so few black people in STEM?

#208

Post by imtringued »

DamnYuppie wrote: post #29
nimbius wrote: post #25

I could venture a guess, and its probably why i'll never go from my current job as a diesel mechanic to junior python programmer no matter how badly i want to: criminal record. in the US you can discriminate against employees who have any sort of criminal record. I've served jailtime for possession of cannabis, so that automatically rules me out for a lot of white-collar jobs. Black people tend to get the brunt of po…

So your premise is all Black people have criminal records and that is why they aren't in STEM?

The article doesn't say that all black people aren't in STEM. So your statement is completely wrong. Additionally drug bans are often completely arbitrary and therefore they can carefully chosen to impact certain races more than others. Cigarettes are equally popular among all ethnics but something like cannabis might be especially popular in black communities. So cannabis gets banned but cigarettes can stay. The public doesn't care because they think junkies are bad people and should go to jail even if going to jail doesn't actually result in decreased drug usage.

Re: Why are there so few black people in STEM?

#209

Post by imtringued »

CyanLite2 wrote: post #77
joyj2nd wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Most companies are actually trying to INCREASE diversity, be it based on skin colour or gender. So it may actually be much EASIER to get accepted in this companies if you are black. I know in some STEM fields (not all in STEM is CS), you have MUCH MUCH higher chances to land a good job at a big company if you are female. But being female in medicine or law buys you nothing since there is no imbalance.

Of course everybody says they're TRYING to increase diversity, but none have actually DONE it. But not because there's a lack of qualified diverse candidates applying there. If they wanted to solve the problem, they could, but it's not a priority for them. Facebook grew their overall employee base by nearly 400% over the past 6 years, but their percentage of black employees only grew by 0.8%. https://www.cnbc.com/202…

Growing from 3% to 3.8% is 26% growth over 5 years or roughly 5% per year. That's incredibly far away from "none have actually DONE it". If you could solve systemic problems in just 5 years then why hasn't anyone done it over the last 200 years?

By the way the facebook data is only from 2014 to 2019. The headline is misleading when you only look at facebook.

Re: Why are there so few black people in STEM?

#210

Post by whb07 »

frizzo____ wrote: post #197
whb07 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the largest crock of BS one could plausibly spin up to calm their minds from exploring the harsh reality. I worked for a bit with a Cuban immigrant who studied CS to a high level (post bachelors) without a computer. As in the university and the whole of society didn't have access to computers because you know....communism. He correctly retorted at my shock of "how can you do CS without a computer" question to…

He did not have access to a computer in Cuba because of the embargo, not communism.

lol there is a trade embargo between the U.S and Cuba, there isn't a naval enforced embargo from all nations to Cuba. Please check your facts. Cuban citizens trade with other nations in the surrounding areas openly.

source: Cuban family and emigres. Please don't talk to me about communism without reliable data.

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