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Black Girls Code launching in Miami

miamiherald.com

21–30 of 98 posts

Re: Black Girls Code launching in Miami

#21
post #4

I wasn't thinking about race; now I am. I believe minority focused groups, such as this, perpetuate racial discrimination. Can't we all just be one big group of humans? Disagree with my viewpoint? Please comment before you downvote. I'm willing to rethink my views.

> I wasn't thinking about race

Maybe you should just appreciate having that luxury rather than criticize those who do not have it.

Re: Black Girls Code launching in Miami

#22
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one cares if you are thinking of race, because obviously it is not about you. It's easy to not think about racism when racism isn't an issue in your environment. It's not as if now that you're exposed to racism, that you will perpetuate it, right?

Jeez, talk about unhelpful and condescending.

Condescending maybe but GP has a point. If racism is already a big deal, ignoring it isn't going to help. Explicitly addressing it and helping out the less-privileged group will.

Re: Black Girls Code launching in Miami

#24
post #4

I wasn't thinking about race; now I am. I believe minority focused groups, such as this, perpetuate racial discrimination. Can't we all just be one big group of humans? Disagree with my viewpoint? Please comment before you downvote. I'm willing to rethink my views.

I have no strong opinions on this but perhaps the initiative isn't meant to make you think or not think about race or gender. It's not designed to make you more racially sensitive or be more considerate towards women.

I imagine it exists for the purpose of making programming more popular among women and particularly women of African American background because at the moment I guess it's not seen as a valid career option for them. I don't know anything about the effectiveness of these programs or anything, but I believe they have a purpose outside of making men people feel welcoming to women in programming.

Re: Black Girls Code launching in Miami

#25

I really value initiatives that teach people to code, and I've taught at a few myself. But I wonder at the value of this increasing focus on certain minorities. Should we have classes focussed on teaching gay people to code?

I take your point, but in my experience gay men are over-represented in tech, not under-represented.

Re: Black Girls Code launching in Miami

#26
post #4

I wasn't thinking about race; now I am. I believe minority focused groups, such as this, perpetuate racial discrimination. Can't we all just be one big group of humans? Disagree with my viewpoint? Please comment before you downvote. I'm willing to rethink my views.

I don't see too many black and hispanic people at startups in SV. Whether it is intentional racism or not white men dominate the space. I'm not hating on white people but this is the reality.

Re: Black Girls Code launching in Miami

#27

I really value initiatives that teach people to code, and I've taught at a few myself. But I wonder at the value of this increasing focus on certain minorities. Should we have classes focussed on teaching gay people to code?

Being gay may make you a minority, but not an obviously visible minority that people could instantly discriminate against.

The reason any of these kinds of initiatives exist is because the end results are skewed. That is, some population is statistically under-represented relative to major population. In this case, you might look at the number of black women in tech and wonder why its so low. The creators of this initiative must therefore think that the resources of inspiration/training/education or whatever may not be making it to enough young black girls to persuade them into technology. Hence the desire to "correct" it.

Re: Black Girls Code launching in Miami

#28
post #4

I wasn't thinking about race; now I am. I believe minority focused groups, such as this, perpetuate racial discrimination. Can't we all just be one big group of humans? Disagree with my viewpoint? Please comment before you downvote. I'm willing to rethink my views.

Disagree with my viewpoint? Please comment before you downvote.

The presence of this part of your comment indicates that you already know the answer to what you've asked, and are really just trolling by 'playing the innocent'. Please don't do that.

Re: Black Girls Code launching in Miami

#30
It's clear that the goals are extremely laudable -- to help a disadvantaged group gain experience.

But this indeed asks the question, which as far as I can tell is completely unaddressed on their website: why create a group that excludes others by sex and race? How do they explain to a black 14-year-old that their group isn't going to help him? Or a Hispanic 14-year-old girl? Or any 14-year-old whose parents are below the poverty line, who also wants to learn to code?

Why can't we just help disadvantaged youths in general?

I mean, limiting to a certain location (Miami) is fine. Limiting the number of students who can participate is fine. But I really have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of telling a black boy that they won't help him, because of the gender he was born as.

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