BlackGirlsCode Raises $21,000 To Fund Summer Of Code Program • Hacker News Board

Re: BlackGirlsCode Raises $21,000 To Fund Summer Of Code Program

#61

Post by drumdance » Wed, Jul 18, 2012, 7:18 PM UTC

JPKab wrote: post #13

I realize that the realities of the limited resources available for charities and non-profits is what leads to the ethnic and gender based targeting, but this just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Is it a good cause? Yes. Teaching any disadvantaged group a useful skill is a great thing, but solving a problem of exclusion with further exclusion is, in principal, bad. I grew up in a poor, mostly black, rural county in V…

It's an issue of marketing. Which message converts better?

1. Children are starving in Africa. Send money.

2. This particular child [picture] in Sudan will probably die in the next 7 days. Send money.

Specialization is good.

Re: BlackGirlsCode Raises $21,000 To Fund Summer Of Code Program

#62

Post by peterwwillis » Wed, Jul 18, 2012, 7:21 PM UTC

_delirium wrote: post #56

JPKab wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be zero targeting of ethnicity. Excluding people based on ethnicity is wrong, no matter what the ethnic group is. And what makes you so sure that black men would relate to black women better than they would men of other ethnic backgrounds? Which is the bigger divider, gender or ethnicity? The point I am making isn't that this isn't a good thing, because as I said in my original post, helping any disadvan…

> There should be zero targeting of ethnicity. So I shouldn't be allowed to volunteer with the American Hellenic Progressive Association, a group dedicated towards looking at problems and interests specific to Greek-Americans? Why not? Not every group can target every community's problems, so it sometimes makes sense to target subgroups imo.

Apparently that makes you racist.

Re: BlackGirlsCode Raises $21,000 To Fund Summer Of Code Program

#63

Post by unit_testing » Wed, Jul 18, 2012, 7:22 PM UTC

Why not NonCodersCode?

There are plenty of poor, uneducated white girls and boys who could benefit from programs like this.

Oh, what's that you say? We already have enough people with their skin color in the computer science field? Shame on me! You're right -- ignore the white trash.

The (attractive, affluent, privileged) whites who enjoy ignoring white trash are right -- poor, uneducated whites are unimportant. In fact, poor, uneducated whites (especially the toothless ones) are less important and less worthy of help than attractive, affluent, privileged people with more melanin.

Re: BlackGirlsCode Raises $21,000 To Fund Summer Of Code Program

#64

Post by tysonjennings » Wed, Jul 18, 2012, 7:23 PM UTC

JPKab wrote: post #22

peterwwillis wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying that charities should do a breakdown of all the demographics in a given area, and spend exactly the same resources on getting them all help? I wasn't aware that charities and non-profits were supposed to be so generalized. I thought targeting specific issues was part of the point, to have a greater chance at solving at least one problem. The net effect of this organization's efforts will be to elevat…

There should be zero targeting of ethnicity. Excluding people based on ethnicity is wrong, no matter what the ethnic group is. And what makes you so sure that black men would relate to black women better than they would men of other ethnic backgrounds? Which is the bigger divider, gender or ethnicity? The point I am making isn't that this isn't a good thing, because as I said in my original post, helping any disadvan…

Dude, I'm a fairly new user with low karma but I'm going to burn every bit of it up in this one post so I'm going to try to make it good.

First, let me ask you a question. What's the poorest country in the western hemisphere? Haiti. What makes it "special"? Now, what's the poorest most impoverished continent in the world? Africa. What makes it "special"? I think you get the picture.

I'm going to tell you a little secret. Black people statistically speaking are intellectually inferior. You don't have to like it, I don't have to like it, the Hacker News zeitgeist doesn't have to like it but it's true.

The question is, what do you do about that. Do you pretend everybody is the same and give everybody equal opportunity sink or swim? That sounds good in the libertarian utopia but the fact is we live in the real world and if you do that you are going to have a class of people that will never reach parity no matter what happens. Left to their own devices, black people are incapable as a group to ever reach the cultural and social level of white and Asian people.

That being the case, you can either live with that which is a non-starter unless you want downtown SF look like downtown Johannesburg. So the only realistic option is to "stack the deck". Everyone that has ever thought about it for more than 5 minutes realizes that this has to happen in order for our mixed society to remain sane. The ivory tower "liberals" understand this far more than you realize and despite the public rhetoric of equality, behind the scenes, the dials are turned to make sure that despite the fact that blacks could never compete on merit, there is just enough stacked in their favor and just subtly enough that they have at least some chance. Thus programs like BlackGirlsCode.

And that's it. I don't like it. I wish blacks were on par intellectually but that just isn't the case and won't be anytime soon so I buy in to this "fix". Give it some thought and you might too.

BTW, before you get too far off on your own superiority remember that Ashkenazi jews (Einstein, etc.) are statistically a fifth to a full standard deviation above the average in mathematical and verbal IQ tests. Ever wonder why something like 50 percent of the nobel prizes go to them? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence

Bye bye Karma.

Re: BlackGirlsCode Raises $21,000 To Fund Summer Of Code Program

#65

Post by malvim » Wed, Jul 18, 2012, 7:24 PM UTC

Ok, cool. Everyone has their ideas, they all make sense (we're all reasonably rational people here) and, in an ideal world, I agree that we should not need or have these groups. Except... the under-representation is already there, so we have to deal with it. And I think BGC is a damn fine way to deal with part of it.

Is there anyone here who is NOT a white male and would care to comment?

Re: BlackGirlsCode Raises $21,000 To Fund Summer Of Code Program

#66

Post by mibbitier » Wed, Jul 18, 2012, 7:24 PM UTC

natrius wrote: post #49

mibbitier wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Everyone can be a minority if they decide to, depending on how you cut the population. To claim "white males" are a majority is just an arbitrary distinction you're making. Everyone is a majority or minority depending on your criteria. You don't fix racism/sexist/etc with more racism/sexism/etc. You fix it by being inclusive, and judging people on their merits.

The goal of this program isn't to fix racism or sexism. It's to encourage a group of people to explore programming who do so at lower a rate than many other groups. If the talents and desires needed to program are evenly distributed among the population, this is a targeted way to improve the lives of people who wouldn't discover programming on their own. A program that wasn't narrowly targeted would have a lower retu…

And that's fine. But you can't have it both ways...

If you believe in free speech, you have to accept people saying things you don't like.

If you believe in freedom to set criteria on who you accept for something, you should also accept "white men only private clubs" etc.

Re: BlackGirlsCode Raises $21,000 To Fund Summer Of Code Program

#67

Post by accountswu » Wed, Jul 18, 2012, 7:25 PM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #58

There's a simple test I use for these cases... it's called the "Least Restrictive Subset Test", or LRST for short. You apply it to see if targeting a specific group is worthwhile. It works by asking two simple questions: 1) If I marketed to a less restrictive subset, would I capture a smaller percentage of my target audience (in proportion to the population)? For example, if I said, "GirlsCode" -- would I still get ~…

I can see your point but I think it is pretty clear that most of the minority groups are at a disadvantage to start with (Asian and Jewish minority in US are exceptions, their income is higher than average, the proportion of Jewish representation in law schools, for example, is disproportionately higher, perhaps 35% at Harvard, but that's an exceptionally well-accomplished group).

If the parents don't have enough money to feed the kids, the first thing on the mind would not be the next programming language to learn, it would be about the meal for the next afternoon. Compare that kid to someone whose parents are able to afford the education of kids at the top, most expensive business school or law school of the country. They are not competing at an equal level. Unfortunately the average black happens to be much poorer than the average white (although there are more poor whites than the total number of poor blacks but that's because the blacks are about 13% of total, whites are about 72% of the total). [edited]

I don't think anyone in Brazil would have an event "Latina hackathon" but a "Latina hackathon" in US would be understandable.

http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/us/study-finds-medi...

Study finds median wealth for single black women at $5

Among the most startling revelations in the wealth data is that while single white women in the prime of their working years (ages 36 to 49) have a median wealth of $42,600 (still only 61 percent of their single white male counterparts), the median wealth for single black women is only $5.

Re: BlackGirlsCode Raises $21,000 To Fund Summer Of Code Program

#68

Post by slurgfest » Wed, Jul 18, 2012, 7:25 PM UTC

Produce wrote: post #33

slurgfest wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If some black girls want to code, what possible reason do you have to object? Let them. Leave them alone, if you aren't supportive. That's all you need to do. The group isn't preventing white people from coding. If you want white people to code, you can make your own group. And it will fly really well anywhere in the South and many places in the West and you won't have to say anything about how it's only for white pe…

So if I started a charity called WhiteMenCode, do you think that it would be fair to all of the other races and genders? Would it be fair that one segment of the impoverished get special treatment? Surely it would be better to organise something like PoorPeopleCode, since that is the segment of society which, in fact, needs help - poor people. Who gives a crap about race or gender? It's bigger than that.

In the current situation white men don't need any help with this, they already dominate the scene. Not that I really mind, I am a white man.

But you could easily implement this plan and be lauded just by naming it something other than WhiteMenCode.

If this were a government welfare program it would be important not to be partial but this is self-help.

I think it would be very laudable to go to very white parts of Appalachia and found HillbilliesCode or whatever you wanted to name it.

Re: BlackGirlsCode Raises $21,000 To Fund Summer Of Code Program

#69

Post by rmc » Wed, Jul 18, 2012, 7:26 PM UTC

unit_testing wrote: post #60

rmc wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all defintions of racism mean "Any segmentation based on skin colour". Some people define racism as a privileged powerful racial group discriminating and holding back a disadvantaged racial group. So yes, a programme that targets helping black people in tech is not racist, but helping white people in tech is racist.

Are poor, uneducated whites less worthy of help than wealthy, affluent blacks? If you believe so, you're a bigot. Also, are poor, uneducated whites less worthy of help than poor, uneducated blacks?

Poor uneducated people (yes including whites) are a disadvantaged group compared to rich people. We should set up a group targetting them.

There are numerous advantaged and disadvantaged groups. Some people are in 1 or 2 or lots. We should try to end all disadvantagness. I don't see a contradiction.

Re: BlackGirlsCode Raises $21,000 To Fund Summer Of Code Program

#70

Post by dinkumthinkum » Wed, Jul 18, 2012, 7:30 PM UTC

IanDrake wrote: post #12

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? This is one of the hardest hit economic demographics in the country. I don't think targeting it to be specifically for them is bad; in fact I think it is probably best. This demographics tends to get lost in the "need more women in tech" crowd.

>Why not? I agree - IF we can also agree that groups for "White Women", "Bald Hispanic Men Under 40", etc... are also allowed. Society needs to come to a consensus on this. Either there is a useful purpose to segmenting private groups by age, gender, race, income, etc... or there isn't. If there is a valid purpose, then we should all agree that all possible combination of these factors are equally valid. The end resu…

But this is nothing more than naive pedantry. There is a very large economic demographic in this country that is apparently at a disadvantage. It's called black girls/females. It's not bald hispanic athiests, or freckle-faced Irish mormons or celebrity scientologists that have blond hair.

There is a real problem that can potentially be solved. You can play this game if you want but there is quite clearly a qualitative difference between groups like "black girls" and "bald hispanic men under 40." It's just ridiculous; it's sophomoric to conflate the two.

As to your last point, so the perfect is the enemy of the good? The end goal is to help real people, not sit in an ivory tower and debate about whether "race even exists" or any of this nonsense. If calling the group "Black Girls Can Code" allows the group to raise more money and help a very specific group of girls, then that is good.

I think there is a good reason to think that if there was a group called "Woman Can Code" that this particular group/demographic would not benefit as much as it might as it is currently labeled (perhaps less participation, perhaps drowned out by the others, etc). We can be pedantic and cry foul that "Wah, there is not a White Women group or a Native American Transgender" group but that doesn't end up helping anyone.

The world is more complex than that. "Bald Hispanic" is not a comparison to "black girls" any serious person would make.