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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

#261

Post by vinceguidry »

rhino369 wrote: post #247
fortes wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> America is undisputedly the best country at assimililating immigrants. > It comes from doing it for centuries. We are one of the only countries with complete mixed ethnicities > and a strong nationality. I'll dispute that. In my experience, Brazil is a better melting pot. Anecdotal example: In Brazil, you don't see people claiming they are Irish when their families have lived in the US for generations.

>Anecdotal example: In Brazil, you don't see people claiming they are Irish when their families have lived in the US for generations. That is actually the key to Americas success. The total separation of ethnicity and national identity. It allows an immigrant to keep their ethnic identity and merely add an American one. It's also helps when a white 5th generation american thinks they are Irish and American. They'll b…

That is something we inherited from the British. You can be British and any ethnicity. The US just took that idea and rolled with it.

America's success results largely from its geography. Being isolated from Europe by a large ocean and having the mighty Mississippi river system to build an agricultural powerhouse from made it pretty much inevitable.

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

#262

Post by asdfaw3f »

pmorici wrote: post #13
gtk40 wrote: post #5

It's interesting that it describes Silicon Valley as being too white, when it seems like there are quite a few Asians. Even working elsewhere, a high percentage of our programmers are Asian, higher than the metro's demographics would suggest.

"it struck her as a startlingly homogeneous culture, made up of white and Asian people who “like Star Wars and stuff like Pokémon.” When companies began to visit Howard, they’d boast about having on-site playground equipment and volleyball courts—not the kind of thing Jones or her friends got excited about. “Slides are not really appealing,” she says. “There are not a lot of people of color in the Valley—and that, by…

I'm not black but I don't understand why a black person wouldn't enjoy going down the slide or playing volleyball. And in terms of being into Star Wars and Pokemon -- I am actually very into rap music, and not into Star Wars or Pokemon at all -- but asking a black colleague if she likes rap music is a one way ticket to unemployment.

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

#263

Post by [deleted] »

pingou wrote: post #181
AndyMcConachie wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not my experience in France at all. I'm a white American male, and I was shocked when I worked in France for a month. When I ate lunch in the cafeteria the muslim employees grouped together and there was a whole 'who are you eating with' question that I found odd. This was in 2004, and it is only 1 data point. But when talking to French friends of mine in tech who are African they share similar stories. One F…

Well it doesn't mirror my experience at all, at school or at work, but yes I'm pretty sure it does happen. I didn't say there wasn't racism in France, more that the concept of belonging to a definite community depending on your color is probably less present as in the States. The job application problem is a terrible one, as getting a job is the best way to use the social ladder. That's the thing I don't understand,…

[deleted]

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

#264

Post by joe5150 »

pc86 wrote: post #144
tosseraccount wrote: post #51

Silicon Valley would rather hire foreigners than hire black Americans. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/04/technology/silicon-valley-... ... "Google revealed that its tech work force was 1 percent black, compared with 60 percent white. Yahoo disclosed in July that African-Americans made up 1 percent of its tech workers while Hispanics were 3 percent." Affirmative Action has worked in other industries. Why does it fail…

Simply stating a number like that adds absolutely nothing of value. There are a lot of questions you need the answers to in order to make any kind of judgment: - What is the racial makeup of the accepted applicant pool? - What is the racial makeup of the interviewed applicant pool (including those not extended offers)? - What is the racial makeup of the overall applicant pool (including those not invited for intervie…

"It's a systemic problem (I am not referring to systemic racism)"

Well don't keep it to yourself...what is this systemic problem that's not racism?

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

#265

Post by fawefawef »

Let's talk about what is "black" http://d236bkdxj385sg.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013... People would agree he is black. http://www.paulstravelblog.com/images/090401/1260.jpg Many people would disagree that he is black. EVEN THOUGH HE HAS NATURALLY DARKER SKIN.

Silicon valley hires the latter in the THOUSANDS from India. This bloomberg article is nothing but a shill article written by the American "elite" who want nothing more than class and race warfare among the non-elite.

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

#266

Post by asdfaw3f »

xaa wrote: post #204
pc86 wrote: 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. 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.

"People of color" generally means black people, dark-skinned Latinos, and Native Americans.

"Colored people" is not used because that was what was used by segregationist whites during Jim Crow (e.g. water fountains labeled "colored").

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

#267

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast »

hueving wrote: post #129
rquantz wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you not realize that US education is on par with a third world country in a lot of regions?

Access to a computer has little to do with education anymore. If someone wants to tinker with computers, they can use one in a library or just get an old one for <$100.

When was the last time you tried to use a library computer?

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

#268

Post by gknoy »

autoreleasepool wrote: post #180
huac wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

those are basically the same thing to put it another way: if your white friends grew up watching spongebob squarepants and you grew up without cable, that could certainly make a cultural difference

> grew up without cable, that could certainly make a cultural difference I don't understand. This would happen to anyone who grew up in poverty. What does it have to do with race?

Growing up, my parents watched pretty much only PBS and listened to NPR / classical music. Riding the bus for the first time in middle school, I was exposed to a lot of popular things (music) that felt very foreign. Any joke that referenced song lyrics or a particular actor was lost on me for a while. It's like making a meme-related joke to my parents: they weren't exposed to it, they don't get it. In many ways they don't feel like part of my "tribe" (nerds?).

I can certainly see how being exposed to (or immersed in) a different culture could affect your feeling of belonging in a different one.

For example, I didn't grow up listening to rap. If all of my coworkers listened to rap music, and talked about it in Slack or the like, I would feel almost completely lost. I appreciate flow, interesting lyrics, and the mastery that the artists have over words, but there are many layers of references to prior artists or prior songs that I am not at all familiar with, and didn't even realize existed until I started looking at the Genius.com lyrics for some songs I'd heard on the radio. So, some new song comes out that references Big Names in the industry, and I would not get them at all (or even know they were references to things) unless I were already familiar, or were dedicated to pursuing that art as an interest.

The same kind of thing applies for things like TV show references (Friends, Seinfeld, Simpsons, Family Guy, Spongebob, Star Trek, etc) or movies or comic books.

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

#270

Post by School-Cotton »

pingou wrote: 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…

African-Americans are a distinct ethnocultural group with their own cultural references, dialect, religious traditions, and so on (of course this doesn't apply to all black people; I'm talking about averages here.) "Black" in France is just a phenotype.

Progressive-leaning people in the US would typically be uncomfortable with the idea of "assimilating" Blacks because it implies that White Anglo-Saxon culture is (or should be) the default or standard, whereas in reality it has coexisted with Black culture in the same country for hundreds of years.

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