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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

#371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and it was hard to communicate. I'm curious what the differences where in communication, here in the UK the black people I've worked with have been no harder to communicate with than anyone else, I have noticed there is slightly more of a communication gap with black people who come from London (but I've only known two and they where both deeply religious which I think had more to do with it).

Black Americans have had their own culture developing separately from Anglo-Saxon Americans for hundreds of years. I'm not sure why you think immigrants to Britain that don't share any common group characteristic other than "has dark skin and an African phenotype" are comparable.

I never said they where comparable, I was asking what the differences where.

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

#372
post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of assumes that it is everyone's job to try hard to attract underrepresented minorities. That's expecting way too much noble-mindedness of people. What employment tends to optimize for is good capable employees in general. If the pool does include qualified and capable minorities, they will get employed in most cases (and racial bias will likely be there only in a minority of cases -- atleast in Silicon Val…

I think you are exaggerating how much merit is taken into account during interviews.

Perceived merit, not necessarily actual merit. I think in every interview, how much ever you sneer at it, the people employing will prefer someone who can do their job than someone who will end up needing support to do their job. They may include their bias later, but they still will look for people they perceive to be capable of doing the job they are hiring for.

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

#373
post #213

I'm a black guy working in IT at a company in the top 5 of the Fortune 500. This is complicated issue. There have been experiment that show having a "black" name lowers your job prospects [1]. Other studies that show: "...race actually turned out to be more significant than a criminal background. Notice that employers were more likely to call Whites with a criminal record (17% were offered an interview) than Blacks w…

The first study confounds the issues of race and class. Emily is not the white equivalent to Lakisha, Brandi is.

further complicated by the tendency towards aspirational naming, as over time formerly upscale names like Emily / Alexandra / Madison etc become associated with low-end socioeconomics due to overexposure.

however, you'd have to be willfully ignorant to deny the perceptual gap between high-end/low-end Emily/Amber vs. Lakisha

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

#374
post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

I disagree completely, I think that type of attitude leads to the notion of "Real" Americans. Keeping the ethnic identity is the opposite of the melting pot. In Brazil, you're just Brazilian, regardless of color.

Brazil has a pretty significant and open classism via race issue. Not sure we should hold them up as a superior melting pot...

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

#375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Black Americans have had their own culture developing separately from Anglo-Saxon Americans for hundreds of years. I'm not sure why you think immigrants to Britain that don't share any common group characteristic other than "has dark skin and an African phenotype" are comparable.

I never said they where comparable, I was asking what the differences where.

The difference is that from 1066 until recently England has had one dominant ethnocultural group. Relatively small groups of immigrants are able to integrate into this culture seamlessly.

Black people in England aren't culturally "Black", they are either culturally English, or culturally Trinidadan, Jamaican, Ugandan, and so on. Or some combination/superposition of the above.

There is no particularly strong shared experience between a Trinidadan-English person and a Zimbabwean-English person other than living in England.

Blacks in the US, on the other hand, have a common and separate culture. 20th century immigrants are a tiny proportion of the (biologically) Black population of the US. The overwhelming majority of US black people are descended from slaves.

This population has been separated from the white population to varying degrees from the time of slavery to the present day. Now there is more mixing so the cultures are converging, but that can't happen overnight.

You may as well ask why Scotland and England have separate cultures, or England and China. It's not a matter of skin color; it's a matter of a group of people that have primarily had contact with each other, and less contact with other groups, for hundreds of years. I am not sure how else to explain it.

Edit: re-reading your comment. I didn't realize you were asking about communication difficulties specifically. This can probably be largely explained by the fact that African-Americans speak their own dialect of English that is in some ways quite dramatically different from the (White) standard. Here is some info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_En...

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

#376
post #4

I would say some of the students in the article probably aren't SV material - "They’d begun studying computer science in college"? So you've been involved with computers for 4 whole years and you think you're qualified for a top tier job? I'm sure not all of the students only started in college - I'm also not naive enough to think there isn't prejudice in SV, but didn't start until college...

I never programmed before college, and my first job after college is at a highly-reputable SV software company. I know plenty of other people in the same situation.

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

#377

Looking at the commentary at Hacker News, I would say that the author has done a disservice to the topic by ignoring the minority status of East Asians, South Asians, and Latinos. With very minor changes, they could have used the correct words to cover the topic they really wanted to cover: that there are fewer black programmers in SV than is desired/expected/needed. And that is a topic that deserves discussion. But…

In fairness to the author, the title is "black coders". Not "minority coders".

Typically, editors choose the headlines, not authors.

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

#378
post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://medium.com/message/the-tech-diversity-story-thats-no... http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/01/...

You know, every day I feel like I'm told that I have to do something to help other people. There's always a cause. And you know, I'm not against that. I realize people have it rough. But there is this weird perception that Asian men have this amazing privilege in Western society and that we don't endure any racism or discrimination despite the fact that we still do. They range from how we're depicted in the media, to…

This is an absolutely serious question. Can you elaborate on some of the racism you as an Asian male have experienced? Honestly, outside of certain examples of the "good minority" I've seen very little racism towards Asians in any context so I'm interested to hear what is you may have experienced.

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

#379
post #133

As a human that people in America would call black/African-American I really dislike articles like this. I understand that some black people feel like they cant relate to others, but I find the entire premise of such arguments about homogeneous workplaces and cultures completely ridiculous. The culture of 'black' people in Alabama will be very different from Howard or Washington DC, does that mean Alabama is unwelcom…

> I've never been openly been discriminated against Yes, I always walk around with my head in the sand too.

> Yes, I always walk around with my head in the sand too.

That crosses into personal attack, and you can't comment like that here. On HN, please post civilly and substantively or not at all.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

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

#380

The issue I take with this is that American assimilation is a two way street. Every culture puts in and takes out. Tacos, sausages, pizza, sushi, these are American foods as much as they are Mexican, German, Japanese, or Italian. Some of them more American than their source in ways. It's not about forcing White Angle-Saxon culture. It's about forging American culture and identity.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10947696 and marked it off-topic.
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