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Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

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Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#201
post #173

What a big steaming pile of political correctness. The author interviews a tiny handful of mediocre college students who blame their "color" for not getting hired right out of school by big, glamorous tech companies. Are we supposed to be sympathetic? I remember my own struggles to break into the tech business, many years ago now. Although white and "privileged", i.e. no cultural barriers to entry, I found it very to…

> What I do know is, you can't compensate for that by handing people undeserved opportunities. How do you know this? Not that I agree with your framing, but even if I accept it for the sake of argument, that black culture is lazy and underachieving in a way white culture isn't, it still seems to me that if you hand black people undeserved opportunities (leaving aside that the word "undeserved" is a huge stretch here,…

>> Not that I agree with your framing, but even if I accept it for the sake of argument, that black culture is lazy and underachieving in a way white culture isn't...

That is absolutely not my thesis; you're either wilfully or ignorantly misrepresenting what I said. Some black people do make it in tech; some make it in other fields. They generally do so the way the rest of us do, by hard work. Perhaps harder work, in fact, because of cultural barriers that still exist.

Actually, the parent posting is an excellent example of the extreme conclusions to which people jump whenever the hot potato topic of race comes up. It's a kneejerk response: White man shoots black man, must be racism. Half of inmates in max security prisons are black -- must be racism.

The fact is that black culture itself is diverse and while most blacks do achieve respectable middle class lifestyles, there is an achievement gap that some experience, that cannot be dressed up with canards like "cultural barrier" or "dialectical discrimination".

>> ...they'll move into a culture of good white traits...

Yes, this is the old 1970s era rationale for quota systems. "Such practices are inherently unfair and even a form of reverse racism, but in the long run it somehow magically produces equality." This notion has been long since discredited and indeed these kinds of affirmative action and quota practices may even have prolonged black underachievement. It's just like the failed forcible integration efforts of the '70s. They didn't work because while you can mix ethnic groups, you can't mix economic classes; those who can move, move.

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#203
post #9

> One senior, Sarah Jones, ... “There are not a lot of people of color in the Valley—and that, by itself, makes it kind of unwelcoming." This statement may be true if "people of color" means African American. Otherwise, it is just not the fact. I do think, through my personal experience, the Valley is probably the most diverse place that I have been. I've seen people all over the wrold here: Asian, Latino, European,…

As soon as a minorty achieves success (and often disproportionate success) they are no longer considered minorities.

With 'Latinos' its even weirder. Cubans are almost never treated as minorities (disclaimer: I'm Cuban). White-mexicans are treated as if "you're not really who we're talking about." I have a sneaking suspicion that minority is doublespeak for brown people, but even Indians get excluded from this category... for some reason. Even though I've heard countless heart breaking struggles about first generation Indian-Americans dealing with the pain of culture shock, exclusion, and discrimination...

In the end, everything breaks down when you frame things in terms of race, because framing things in terms of race is lazy and dumb. In fact, "race" is a dumb concept. It only makes sense in Middle Earth. What is the significant difference between a "white hispanic", and a "non-white hispanic"? Is there a "hispanic-hispanic"? What about "black hispanics"? Do we call these folks African American (they're not from Africa), or are they Latino? Why do we lump all these cultures together anyways? Is it because they all speak (various dialects) of Spanish? Then what about Brazilians? Are Spanish speaking people from Europe called anything? "Asian" is another absurd category that lumps hundreds of diverse ethnicities and cultures into one.

For some reason, the government (and most other institutions) desperately seems to want to lump you into one of 4 or 5 unscientific categories. All the categories are old racist ones with PC wrappers. It's all anti-intellectual. IMO we should culturally wean ourselves off of using these categories.

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#204
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty standard in the US, due to our history, for colored people to just feel out of place in 9/10 white environment. But it goes beyond that, and is most likely true for French blacks as well, that if you're the only one who is distinctly visually different, you feel out of place. It's not something you can really explain to white males, but at least female devs tend to have somewhat of a similar experience. J…

> It's pretty standard in the US, due to our history, for colored people to just feel out of place in 9/10 white environment. Calling them "colored people" certainly doesn't help.

Isn't it interesting how "people of color" is a common self-designation for (most frequently) black people, whereas "colored people", literally synonymous, is considered offensive? Of course there are valid historical reasons for it, but many people (probably including GP) don't know about them.

The euphemism treadmill can get quite exhausting.

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#205
post #18

"as the only African American on her team, she didn’t feel she had much in common with her colleagues. “When I went out to lunch or something with my team, it was sort of like, ‘Soooo, what are you guys talking about?’ ” she says" I find this sentence really shocking, perhaps because I'm french and in France we try to assimilate people more (I don't really know), but I would definitely think that as a white software…

What do you mean by the French try to assimilate people more? I'm confused because France is notoriously horrendous to tourists. I've seen polls rate it as the worst place for customer service with tourists and my own brother's experience got him nearly in a fight with some French guys bullying him. Furthermore, this is just a cultural thing. I'm white and was in a team with a bunch of white engineers that loved cars…

[deleted]

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#206
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which parts are not true: 1) Majority of employees at Google FB etc are graduates of top tech schools. 2) Majority of employees started coding and had interest in CS before college. How likely you are to be good at CS if you never had an interest in CS before college :)? I have a lot of friends from Easternn Europe now working at Google, Apple, FB, but this anecdotal evidence does not change the fact that majority of…

It might be true that the majority are coming out of top tech schools, I really have no way of knowing that. However, I'm skeptical about how important the school is to Google as an employer given their rigorous screening process. Coming from a top tech school certainly can't hurt but I don't believe the school you go to necessarily dictates what quality of engineer you are, though it can increase your opportunities…

To Google school is not important it is important to the top rated Universities that Google is hiring people from :)

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As soon as a minorty achieves success (and often disproportionate success) they are no longer considered minorities.

If it were a game, it would be called "Whiteness unlocked." An Indian- or Chinese-American can attain "no longer considered minority" (aka whiteness) but African-Americans don't get that achievement.

As another poster pointed out, red tribe conservatives are not the ones saying that Indian/Chinese-Americans are no longer a minority.

The only people who consider Indian/Chinese-Americans "no longer a minority" are the same ones who complain about them being whitewashed.

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#209
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It often seems like the people writing this articles don't realize that preferring your own race is racism, no matter what race that is. If she feels that she doesn't fit in because there aren't enough people like her (black), that's just as racist as white people not wanting to hang out with blacks because they're not white.

Haven't you heard that racism = power + prejudice, so black people by definition can't be racist because they don't have power? (This is not an opinion that I agree with, but a lot of people actually think that way).

Isn't this a clear cut example of linguistic prescriptivism? The vast majority of people do not use the word to mean that.

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#210

What a big steaming pile of political correctness. The author interviews a tiny handful of mediocre college students who blame their "color" for not getting hired right out of school by big, glamorous tech companies. Are we supposed to be sympathetic? I remember my own struggles to break into the tech business, many years ago now. Although white and "privileged", i.e. no cultural barriers to entry, I found it very to…

I'm not sure why you think that this is political correctness. There's a clear representation gap in employment at high-wage jobs for large portions of the population. And, that's a social issue that has been identified. As a society we can then either ignore it or address it. I get that you have a strong opinion on why that gap exists. And, you have opinions on which things won't work to solve the problem. But, by d…

>> ...by dismissing the issue as political correctness, you seem to be saying that it's not something that we, as a society, should address.

I'm neither dismissing the issue, nor am I denying we should address it.

>> We can all decide to do nothing.

Nowhere did I state that we should do nothing. I haven't shared my own thoughts on how to solve the problem, which is real.

>> ...one of your family. Would you try to help them? Or, would you tell them to get lost?

Of course I'd try to help them. If a nephew, say, were having trouble breaking into high tech, I'd advise him to start small and work his way up. Get an entry level job in the best and most promising business you can find, and do lots of extra-curricular work either at the business or at home. Contribute to some open source software, and write a couple of mobile apps of your own and put them in the Play Store and AppStore. Create a promotional website that shows off your stuff. Network, network, network, both online and at local entrepreneurial and tech meetups. Go to all the tech shows (free exhibit hall pass, if that's all you can afford) and hand out your card.

>> Our society seems to be turning into 'us' vs. 'them', and to me that's problematic.

I think you're jumping to conclusions. A lot of us do care about making our society a better place for everybody, even if we don't agree with your approach. There's more than one approach, and some approaches are better than others.

The shallow, body count approach advocated by the Bloomberg writer and that Howard U. advisor does not work so well; it's like saying, even if these kids aren't quite up to XXX's standards, XXX ought to hire them anyway because to not hire them smacks of racism. Plus, these kids are my students and I think they deserve to succeed in life.

My approach would be to say, these kids are capable of anything they set their minds to and the only thing holding them back is societal expectations that they're not up to the task and need an extra boost. I set high standards for everyone, including myself, not that I always live up to them. But expectation of great achievement is half the battle. When you've been raised in an environment where the white social welfare establishment has told you all your life that you need extra help, you're going to start to believe that.

Look, I believe that African-Americans are capable of brilliant achievements and there's plenty of proof of that. I don't think they need, nor does anyone else need, what you refer to as double standards. We all should be held to the highest standards of achievement so that we are secure in the knowledge that everyone has faith in us, so we should have faith in ourselves. And that is the basis of great achievement.

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