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…
Yeah, you know what else sucks - there is funding for support groups of cancer survivors. What a pile of crap that they don't fund me to go in and learn about surviving cancer. I think cancer sucks too, and its just so unfair that they are exclusionary because of some silly thing like "had cancer". What makes them special? I mean shit, I grew up in a household where my grandma DIED of cancer. I don't deserve support…
Excellent analogy. Medical care (i.e. money spent) is given out to people who need it. The more you need it, the more you should get it.
Conversely, you don't give a cancer sufferer the same amount of money as you gave someone without cancer. Which is what people often suggest when projects want to help disadvantaged groups ("We shouldn't get BlackGirlsCode any more money than we give to WhiteGuysCode, otherwise it's RACIST!")
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 sec…
The poorest countries in Europe are ethnically Catholic. By your logic, catholics are stupid. Stupid mentally inferior JFK.
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…
Yeah, it's not about playing favorites, good try though. It's about actually helping a specific group. Under this view, we should just have
"Help Kids learn to code"
or, maybe that is agist
"Help People learn to code"
I won't be pedantic and claim maybe you won't like the emphasis on "people," I'll stop there. The problem is that I think you could demonstrate that such a broad/general program would not be as effective as one focused on this particular or similar groups ("bald hispanic men under 40" as someone else so eloquently put is not a serious group).
There is something qualitative about the world and social interactions that is completely missed by this simplistic mentality; this sort of thing is always couched in logic but it is argument free of any necessary context.
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.
While I might find someone's speech distasteful, I'd fight for it's legality. While I'd find "white men only private clubs" distasteful, I think they should be legal.
When it comes to taste, however, I'll absolutely have it both ways. Some racial preferences are noble. Some are repugnant.
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?
I can't reply to your comment, so I'll comment here.
Let's think about some poor, uneducated white kids living in a trailer park without an internet connection. What should they feel when they hear of programs like this? "I'm not important enough to help, because people who look like me already have good jobs?" How should they feel about the myriad of programs and scholarships which explicitly exclude them?
At this point, being black isn't a disadvantage in-and-of-itself. Being poor is a disadvantage, and blacks are more likely to be born poor due in no small part to slavery. But all things being equal, being a poor white person is more difficult than being a poor black person.
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 sec…
The poorest countries in Europe are ethnically Catholic. By your logic, catholics are stupid. Stupid mentally inferior JFK.
I'm not arguing that blacks are "stupid" because they are poor. It astounds me that you would misinterpret my words so grossly.
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?
While agree with your comment, I think your last comment is unwarranted.
Just because somebody is a white male does not devalue their point. Moreover, you should really never judge an argument based on the person making it.
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 sec…
Old studies show that intelligence is largely genetic. New studies are increasingly showing that it is much, much, more influenced by environment.
This isn't reddit, so nobody can downvote you. You know what you said was offensive, but you probably don't know that what you said is completely, absolutely scientifically inaccurate.
I could answer this with data, but instead I'll be anecdotal. It's not scientific, but it speaks a little for the science.
My best friend growing up (his family lived a mile away from my trailer park) was a black kid. His family practically took me in. His mom was a lawyer and his dad was a cop. They worked their asses off teaching their kids right. Both children became stellar successes in academics. High SAT scores, the whole package. Their influence on ME was huge. Without them I would've ended up like my white trash family. It was their culture that helped me get out of the cycle of poverty. It was their culture that created an environment of learning that fostered higher IQ's in their kids, and by proxy, me.
Culture, not race, is what drives environment. Environment drives intelligence.
I don't want to sit here and call you a racist, or say anything mean. I just want you to read this and change as a person, and realize that what you believe to be true is wrong.
My buddy and his family are still very close with me. We hang out on a weekly basis, and he is a role model to me in his accomplishments as a professional and a father. I wish I was half the guy he was. If just a third of the black men in America had been raised the way he was, America would be in much better shape as a country.