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Racism in Tech

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Re: Racism in Tech

#41

Post by davidw »

gizmo wrote: post #36
davidw wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say "shut up because you're white". I said that someone who, in the US, is not likely to be the victim of much discrimination due to the color of his skin should have a little bit more respect for those who are, and those, in general, who are angered by discrimination. Saying he doesn't think racism is an issue is one thing, calling people who are victims of it 'backwards' is galling.

It is tantamount to "shut up". That's what I said. You dismissed his point of view because of his skin color. You looked up his race and based your opinion on him based on that. Had he been of black or asian descent you wouldn't have made the argument you made. You even acknowledge this. You wanted to make an argument but you quickly had to look up if his race matched your preconceived notions about his race because…

I would have been equally offended had he been black or asian. I didn't look at his profile until after my first response to him, and I looked because I was curious if I really was interacting with someone who was simply trolling for fun.

Re: Racism in Tech

#42

Post by davidw »

chernevik wrote: post #39
davidw wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not believe your comment was worthy of respect, frankly. If you'd started with your comment above saying that "racism is irrelevant", perhaps I'd have called it a bit naive, but taken no offense. To make the connection between people incensed by discrimination to those who perpetrate it is very, very offensive. Racism is very much relevant as long as people have power over other people (which is part and parcel…

The "racist" tag has become a contemporary excommunication. That might be good were it always applied accurately. But perhaps the diligence of a Soledad O'Brien, interested more in arresting video than strict fairness to subject, makes the tag something very dangerous. There was a day when people thought witches necessarily worse than the people who spotted witches. Go look at how that turned out. But of course you a…

Due to its seriousness, it certainly is not a label to be bandied about lightly, but that's entirely besides the point in this case.

I was talking about whether people who get offended at actual, real cases of racism are "backwards" or not.

Re: Racism in Tech

#43

Post by phillmv »

Causification wrote: post #18
d3x wrote: post #6

This entire issue is crap. I am a black programmer... I have no college education, came from single family home blah blah womp womp. I have launched 10+ projects for clients this year alone. I have 1 failed contract where I left because it just didn't work out. When I had success it was not because I was black and when I failed it was not because I was black. Both when I have succeeded and when I have failed was neve…

Agreed. Unless it's supported by a legal framework, racism is a self-defeating phenomenon. Racist individuals deprive themselves of the benefits offered by the group toward which they are racist, therefore making themselves less likely to succeed. If anything, a person or group of people being racist should alert you, the observant seizer of the day, to an under-utilized resource and/or market niche. So long as big b…

>Unless it's supported by a legal framework, racism is a self-defeating phenomenon.

It's more complicated than that. Substitute legal framework with 'cultural normative behaviour' and we end up at a different position.

I just highly doubt there's a lack of women or black people physically capable of being engineers.

Re: Racism in Tech

#44

Post by shareme »

d3x wrote: post #6

This entire issue is crap. I am a black programmer... I have no college education, came from single family home blah blah womp womp. I have launched 10+ projects for clients this year alone. I have 1 failed contract where I left because it just didn't work out. When I had success it was not because I was black and when I failed it was not because I was black. Both when I have succeeded and when I have failed was neve…

In corporate settings some of them banks I have come into contact with racism, sexism and age-ism against Blacks, Indians(both from India and from Native America), Jews, Mexicans, etc..the point of Feld's piece was that its alive in the infrastructure and only by shining the light of day on it will make it go away..

Re: Racism in Tech

#45

Post by Rariel »

d3x wrote: post #6

This entire issue is crap. I am a black programmer... I have no college education, came from single family home blah blah womp womp. I have launched 10+ projects for clients this year alone. I have 1 failed contract where I left because it just didn't work out. When I had success it was not because I was black and when I failed it was not because I was black. Both when I have succeeded and when I have failed was neve…

You are the exception and not the rule. It's great when things work out as they did for you but it's not the norm. Just because this has been your experience as a black programmer doesn't mean it is that of all others.

I also don't think its true that "This entire issue is being exploited to get attention for Angela Benton and her new accelerator." This issue would exist regardless of whether the NewMe accelerator existed, Benton is just bringing some press to the subject.

Re: Racism in Tech

#46

Post by dholowiski »

notauser wrote: post #19
watty wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be surprised if racism in the tech industry was more towards Indians.

There's certainly a lot of dislike for working with people who have strong accents, and the most commercially successful Indian technologists I have met have been the ones with the most westernised mode of speech. Unfortunately some people take a fairly legitimate gripe (lack of easy communication) and pre-judge an entire group rather than investigating the skills and attributes of a specific individual.

I worked for 13 years doing phone based technical support. I can tell you that people with a strong accent are often seen as 'stupid'. I worked with several Indian co-workers and it wasn't unusual to have calls transferred to me (no accent) because people didn't want to talk to them. As a team lead I got to listen in to those calls, and it's amazing how badly one human being can treat another. There's the passive aggressive person who just keeps saying "i don't understand you". There's the person who says things like "Where am I talking to" "are you in india?" "Can I speak to someone from Canada" (we were all in Canada, same country as the callers). Then there's the people who would just rip in to the agent, questioning their intelligence, yelling at them and much more.

On the other hand, we would often have people call in who had strong accents, and the tech support agents would often judge the callers as 'dumb'. I earned a reputation of being a genius, not because I was a genius but because I'd actually listen to people and try to understand them (sometimes they were hard to understand) rather than being an asshole to them.

In short - it was very common for people on both ends of the phone to rationalize racisim with a hard to understand accent.

Re: Racism in Tech

#47

Post by Jun8 »

I am fed up with all the bla bla around this issue. Really. Look, if you think there is racism in the tech field (let us define this narrowly as prejudices against blacks; prejudices against Indians and Chinese are, I think, a bit different), stop writing cute, angry blog posts; instead write about what the solution is and what you are doing about it.

That there are too few blacks in the tech industry is a fact. The reason is actually very simple (as others have commented): African-Americans are underrepresented in CS, EE, and other tech fields. This is similar to the issue of the dearth of women in these fields. Now, the reasons for this are complex and are not easy to solve. So, instead, while waiting for the root causes and biases to go away, be pragmatic and solve the problem at hand.

The solution is easy, but is not affirmative action or specialized VCs or quotas: It's as simple as increasing the demand of black (or women) programmers.

How to do this? I am working as a software mentor for two FIRST Robotics Teams in Chicago South Side, these teams are almost all black and this is their first exposure to programming (unfortunately, we have to use C++ for first exposure!) So, I alone have the power to introduce 5-10 black programmers to tech community! Assume I have 20% success, which is really lousy, that means 1-2 programmers. If 1K people do this, that's 1K more black programmers on the market.

Another example: Finding that the teams on the Apps for Metro Chicago challenge were all-male, my friend Pallavi quickly assembled an all-female team of college students, who won the second prize (http://www.metroplanning.org/news-events/blog-post/6262) and were featured in the local press.

So, same as starting a company: you don't need anybody's permission to start helping kids to solve this problem.

Re: Racism in Tech

#48

Post by jhamburger »

notauser wrote: post #19
watty wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be surprised if racism in the tech industry was more towards Indians.

There's certainly a lot of dislike for working with people who have strong accents, and the most commercially successful Indian technologists I have met have been the ones with the most westernised mode of speech. Unfortunately some people take a fairly legitimate gripe (lack of easy communication) and pre-judge an entire group rather than investigating the skills and attributes of a specific individual.

I'm not blaming them, racism is always unfair to the recipient but on projects I've worked on Indians have done absolutely nothing to combat it. By that I mean, they hang out together, they go to lunch together, they basically avoid any unnecessary communication with non-Indians. I ask them to go to lunch and I get a reaction like "um, we kinda go to lunch together." I understand that there are a lot of cultural barriers there, but people are naturally very social and fair or not, they aren't going to have as much trust and faith in people that they don't have a social relationship with.

Re: Racism in Tech

#49

Post by stonemetal »

wpietri wrote: post #31
davidw wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My opinion is that a white guy (you: https://twitter.com/#!/mikekeen ) saying that people getting upset about racism are 'backwards' is either mind-boggling insensitive or out and out trolling. Nothing rude about it - that's how I see it. I can accept people saying "luckily, in this day and age, I think it's not so much of a problem" as something up for debate, but to state that those angered by discrimination are "b…

I see you're taking some heat for this comment, but I agree entirely. Trolling seems the more polite interpretation, because otherwise you'd be accusing somebody of levels of ignorance and arrogance that are mind-boggling to me. Racism does of course exist and is a problem. There's a ton of research on this. Here's a good place to start: http://www.projectimplicit.net/media.php http://www.projectimplicit.net/articles…

some sounded black and some sounded white.

The research on what people name their children shows very little racial correlation after controlling for wealth. Though it does show high correlation with wealth and status. So showing a bias against names poor people choose regardless of race then claiming it is about blacks is poor form.

Re: Racism in Tech

#50

Post by eddie_the_head »

Rariel wrote: post #45
d3x wrote: post #6

This entire issue is crap. I am a black programmer... I have no college education, came from single family home blah blah womp womp. I have launched 10+ projects for clients this year alone. I have 1 failed contract where I left because it just didn't work out. When I had success it was not because I was black and when I failed it was not because I was black. Both when I have succeeded and when I have failed was neve…

You are the exception and not the rule. It's great when things work out as they did for you but it's not the norm. Just because this has been your experience as a black programmer doesn't mean it is that of all others. I also don't think its true that "This entire issue is being exploited to get attention for Angela Benton and her new accelerator." This issue would exist regardless of whether the NewMe accelerator ex…

Hardly, I am another black programmer and I've had the fortune of working with other black programmers, whites, Asians, Polynesians, Hispanics and more. He is not the exception. Racism is just not a thing in the high-tech industry. If there are any negative vibes towards a person because of their background, it's only ever because of their "foreign-ness"; if for example they might have an accent. Even this is quickly brushed off wherever I've worked. High-tech doesn't care what color your skin is or where you grew up. The best hackers I've been honored to share a repository with have been from countries I've never been to in the former USSR and South America, all of varying ethnicities.

This is a false issue that is being propagated by someone to garner attention to their accelerator. This whole idea of a race-based fund for high-tech is repulsive to me. If there are black entrepreneurs out there in high-tech, what is wrong with applying through YCombinator and other established incubator programs if they need the coaching and funding to go to market? It's insulting to think that blacks cannot compete for whatever reason in a normal fund and have to go make their own one and then blame it on perceived "racism". Big cop-out card there.

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