Black IT Pros On (Lack Of) Racial Diversity In Tech 459
Nerval's Lobster writes While pundits and analysts debate about diversity in Silicon Valley, one thing is very clear: Black Americans make up a very small percentage of tech workers. At Facebook, Google, and Yahoo, that number is a bit less than 2 percent of their respective U.S. workforces; at Apple, it's closer to 7 percent. Many executives and pundits have argued that the educational pipeline remains one of the chief impediments to hiring a more diverse workforce, and that as long as universities aren't recruiting a broader mix of students for STEM degrees, the corporate landscape will suffer accordingly. But black IT entrepreneurs and professionals tell Dice that the problem goes much deeper than simply widening the pipeline; they argue that racial bias, along with lingering impressions of what a 'techie' should look like, loom much larger than any pipeline issue.
Yeah, right... (Score:5, Insightful)
Aren't you over this charade that the every white person on the planet is a racist and that everyone and society as a whole is against you? Can you stop victimizing yourselves now?
Re:Yeah, right... (Score:5, Insightful)
While I certainly agree that the "victim" mentality is not helpful, let's not pretend that racism is not real and pervasive. There is a lot that has to change if we want true equality, and that includes everyone. This is not an us-vs-them situation - everyone needs to work together to identify problems and make changes. In your case, actually meeting and talking frankly with real live black folks would probably go a long way towards giving you some empathy towards the situation many blacks face.
Re:Yeah, right... (Score:5, Insightful)
While I certainly agree that the "victim" mentality is not helpful, let's not pretend that racism is not real and pervasive.
"Real", yes, absolutely. Pervasive in hiring decisions for tech workers? I don't think so. It really does not make any sense. It is certainly something that I have seen zero evidence of from many years in the tech world - just the opposite, in fact. You could say it's pervasive in traffic stops (and that is something that we should try to fix), but uniformed cops don't hire programmers.
Re:Yeah, right... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, according to government statistics [census.gov], the "Percent Black or African-American" represent about 7.1% of 2011 graduates and about 7.4% of the workforce, and both are trending upwards. Compare the roughly 7.4% of black computer programmers with 10.8% of the general population. So a smaller percent of the population get the training, but those who get the training are not discriminated against for hiring purposes. (Not talking about wages, just hiring diversity.)
From the same report with a 10-year granularity, females make up about 33.9% of the 2011 graduates and about 26.6% of the computer programming workforce. Women are also making up an increasing number of the workforce that changes based on age. The report notes "these estimates could be consistent with an age effect. That is, when women are young, they are more likely to be employed in STEM, but as they age, they move out of STEM employment." The trend lines show 35-year-old females in the group as a growing population, with the growth dropping rapidly by age groups. Compare that with the 48% females in the general national workforce. So in hiring diversity women do make up a lower number by diversity but it is largely by their own choice rather than hiring discrimination.
One of the real problems with the gender gap is that many times it is a sign of wealth or poverty -- that is, in various demographics of wealthy households and poor households women are not part of the workforce. It forms a bell-shaped curve. Poor mothers ($90K) the line starts to rapidly drop again. So splitting out the numbers, if the individuals are making $30K-$50K then often the mother is educated and also the mother works. But once the family has highly paid workers, with the husband highly paid making >$90K then the women again tend to stay home with children rapidly trending back down to about 43% working once you've crossed the roughly $150K husband's income. Since the tech field is very highly paid that puts the gender gap as a voluntary choice, not an involuntary hiring discrimination.
Based both on what I have seen and also what I have read in various reports, the problem (if there is one) is at the source end of the education pipeline. When it comes to "Black or African American" demographics the number of graduates and number of workers is at parity. When it comes to females, the numbers are that women who choose to stick with the field are readily employed and that many women leave as they age at a rate far more rapid than other fields.
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Argh, didn't proofread my edits and two links broke the gender gap paragraph. Forgot that greater than and less then signs get treated as html blocks and get eaten.
From various reports the first one in a tab I closed, the second one like this [bls.gov] we get stats. Poor mothers, UNDER $25K, usually stay at home. About 45% work. Once the individuals in the family make between $30K to $60K each it is common for both to work, with 77% of mothers in the workforce. But once they enter the "highly paid" range of over $90
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It really does not make any sense.
I totally agree. I've conducted dozens of interviews for software engineers. I couldn't hire a black developer if my life depended on it -- I've never had a black candidate. I know the recruiters aren't to blame -- they're desperate for qualified candidates. There were no black people in my university classes either. The dearth of women in IT gets plenty of headlines, but I've known lots of women programmers, including 3 bosses over the years. In my entire career, I've only ever known one black programmer.
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There were a few studies where they submitted/reviewed/ranked the same resumes with different names.
The resumes with female names ranked lower than the same resume with a male name.
Resumes with "black" sounding names didn't get called back for an interview.
If you're not a minority it will seem very odd that there is pervasive and real issues facing minorities.
There are many many more studies that show all sort of bias in just about every working relationship:
from funding, hiring, training, etc. You just hav
Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha... (Score:5, Informative)
Here's one:
Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination (NBER Working Paper No. 9873).
Studies like that have been done repeatedly for decades. I expect that if you read the NBER study, they'd have a bibliography of older research.
Each one repeatedly demonstrates actual discrimination against blacks in hiring. I don't know how anyone could avoid that conclusion. Employers are more likely to hire a person with a white name than a person with a black name with the identical resume. It's not just socioeconomic disadvantage, inability to do the job, lack of qualifications or laziness.
I don't know if anyone has done a similar study in tech fields specifically, but it would be a good thing to do. If you're taking a black studies course, you could get a good paper out of it. Send out 100 resumes to Monster.com from Greg and 100 resumes from Jamal.
If you want to know generally why there are so few minorities in science, Science magazine has had many articles.
http://www.chicagobooth.edu/ca... [chicagobooth.edu]
http://www.nber.org/digest/sep... [nber.org]
Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination (NBER Working Paper No. 9873).
Employers' Replies to Racial Names
"Job applicants with white names needed to send about 10 resumes to get one callback; those with African-American names needed to send around 15 resumes to get one callback."
Now a "field experiment" by NBER Faculty Research Fellows Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan measures this discrimination in a novel way. In response to help-wanted ads in Chicago and Boston newspapers, they sent resumes with either African-American- or white-sounding names and then measured the number of callbacks each resume received for interviews. Thus, they experimentally manipulated perception of race via the name on the resume. Half of the applicants were assigned African-American names that are "remarkably common" in the black population, the other half white sounding names, such as Emily Walsh or Greg Baker.
To see how the credentials of job applicants affect discrimination, the authors varied the quality of the resumes they used in response to a given ad. Higher quality applicants were given a little more labor market experience on average and fewer holes in their employment history. They were also portrayed as more likely to have an email address, to have completed some certification degree, to possess foreign language skills, or to have been awarded some honors.
In total, the authors responded to more than 1,300 employment ads in the sales, administrative support, clerical, and customer services job categories, sending out nearly 5,000 resumes. The ads covered a large spectrum of job quality, from cashier work at retail establishments and clerical work in a mailroom to office and sales management positions.
Here's more:
http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/200... [cnn.com]
Study: Black man and white felon – same chances for hire
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12... [nytimes.com]
In Job Hunt, College Degree Can’t Close Racial Gap
"A more recent study, published this year in The Journal of Labor Economics found white, Asian and Hispanic managers tended to hire more whites and fewer blacks than black managers did."
"There is also the matter of how many jobs, especially higher-level ones, are never even posted and depend on word-of-mouth and informal networks, in many cases leaving blacks at a disadvantage. A recent study published in the academic journal Social Problems found that white males receive substantially more job leads for high-level supervisory positions than women and members of minorities."
So the fix is simple, right? (Score:3)
So the fix is simple, right?
Pick the right names for your kids; problem solved.
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wtf? I have literally never heard of surinam... how the fuck did you find someone from a country on the ass end of south america?
also... wtf happened to your life? you need to calm the fuck down. I see way too many nationality/ethnicity flavored adjectives in that post.
stop being so global.
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Why don't you try a trip through Birmingham, Alabama
No need...The gang from Top Gear [youtu.be] did it for him.
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NYC is one of the most diverse and accepting places in the whole US. I lived there for about 5 years. You should know very well that a drive 100 miles south to Philly or up to Boston would have a very different atmosphere - to say nothing of the deep south.
Re: Yeah, right... (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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I don't think your example is overt enough to be considered discrimination.
http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/syste... [eeoc.gov]
Examples of systemic practices include: discriminatory barriers in recruitment and hiring; discriminatorily restricted access to management trainee programs and to high level jobs; exclusion of qualified women from traditionally male dominated fields of work; disability discrimination such as unlawful pre-employment inquiries; age discrimination in reductions in force and retirement benefits; and compliance with customer preferences that result in discriminatory placement or assignments.
A special "fast track to management" program for newly hired college grads is an example of systemic discrimination because it's restricted (e.g. discriminatory) to something that correlates strongly with age, putting older workers at a disadvantage for promotion to management.
If you changed your example so that ONLY word of mouth was used for hiring, and you COULD NOT be hired without a recommendati
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'cause I don't see a single item in the summary or article that says all white people are personally to blame, or even racists.
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Yes, because affirmative action is an overtly racist government program. You're linking to a bunch of individual racist incidents, like a political exit poll that asks questions that offended some people. Considering that the poll was designed to *measure racism*, it's kind of stupid to even count that as being racist in and of itself, don't you think?
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Do you go by CaptianDork at work? I thought so. Your point is made. Carry on.
It's a product of the environment (Score:2)
Basements whiten people.
In 2018 the explosion of the Yellowstone caldera will block the sun for years, killing everything that needs the sun to survive.
Leaving behind only IT professionals.
Thus, Morlocks.
Mr. Wells did build the friggin machine.
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Why would we need Sun to survive? Nobody uses Java applets anymore!
Oh wait. I'm a Morlock.
City life (Score:5, Insightful)
How about the fact that in urban America, there is an overwhelming mentality of selling out your black-ness if you do "smart white people" stuff... like going to college, studying, getting jobs where you wear suits, etc. Our kids are getting ostracized for not being black enough when they get good grades or have good behavior or dress well. Come on!
I applaud the young black people who make it through that and become successful professionals.
Re:City life (Score:5, Insightful)
White kids get the same thing. Anyone who cares about studying is branded a nerd, regardless of race.
Re:City life (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone who cares about studying is branded a nerd, regardless of race.
But there is a difference.
A black nerd is an outcast.
A white nerd hangs out with the other white nerds.
An Asian nerd is part of the in-crowd.
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Are you saying non-black kids are racists who don't let black kids join their nerd cliques? Or that races naturally segregate? Seriously, I'm trying to understand what you mean.
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a black nerd is an outcast in a black majority school.
at a more racially diverse school, they are just a nerd.
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In the black community it is the ADULTS (parents, family etc) making these (ignorant) comments. It's not another kid calling them a geek or a nerd, it's their support network at home, in their communities, their parents, their grandparents, aunts and uncles, their pastors etc.
Even though your hick dad may give you a hard time once in a while for doing such a sissy job, most white parents (even ignorant ones) are glad and make a big deal of it with their drinking buddies when their kids get a better educatio
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I don't actually know what the numbers are, but I suspect that not all black people are "urban". Also-- again, I'm not really an expert-- but I suspect part of the aversion to doing "white people stuff" (where that aversion exists) is the result of disbelief at the prospect of actually becoming accepted among white people. In other words, the reason some black people might discourage education (and be discouraged from trying to become educated) is that they don't really expect that they can enter into the
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So effin true. I still have some physical (!) scars from being the kid who was "acting white" growing up. If it weren't for my family I would have probably killed myself, seriously, it was that bad. My son is going through a few of the same things, but he's more headstrong than I was, so he is handling it much better than I did.
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NdGT (Score:4, Interesting)
That's right, nothing, so who fucking cares??
NdGT (Score:2)
Black student: Neil deGrass Tyson isn't the emperor of black STEM professionals!
White student: (to himself) He told my father he was.
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What does Neil deGrasse Tyson have to say about racial diversity in astrophysics? That's right, nothing, so who fucking cares??
As a young child, I lived in the same housing complex where NdGT grew up, and two of my brothers went to the same high school as he did (one of them contemporaneously). NdGT grew up middle/upper-middle class, which is a much greater indicator of education/tech success than race, IMHO. I can tell you from personal experience that neither of those places were hotbeds of crime or "thug culture." In fact, they were, for the most part, quite nice. What is more, that high school has produced at least eight Nob
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I'm black and in tech (Score:5, Insightful)
It has everything to do with brothers not getting into STEM fields. The few of us that are here get jobs pretty easily, actually. Companies want to be diverse, they just don't have the applicants for it.
Same here (Score:5, Insightful)
It's sad, but we're rare birds. It's not the fault of any one thing. Culturally, families DO encourage it, however, there are few mentors. I just lucked out and had a dad who was a real dad worthy of mentorship, in engineering. It's rare because of.... I'll leave it at "forces of history" (internal, and external, both).
The stereotypes can be hard to shake, though. Being taken seriously can be an obstacle. It's a different experience, I'm sure. The only way to break the cycle (IMO) is to get out there and try to teach/mentor/train (which is an entirely different can of worms.)
West Coast demographics (Score:2)
Just curious, are you on the west coast? Something I noticed is that these newsline stories tend to focus on companies headquartered on the west coast. I just looked, and apparently California is only ~7% black. I wonder if diversity is a bit stronger in different areas, maybe an east coast IT company? Of course, this brings up the topic of lack of hispanics in IT out there, but that's another story.
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Teach who? Unless your referring to teaching the people who stereotype then its usless.
Not at all. Not to put words in the GPs mouth, I believe he was referring to teaching and mentoring more young black people, to give them something akin to the opportunity he got from his dad. And that is not useless. No, it doesn't change the stereotypes held by others, but do you know what will demolish those stereotypes? Significant numbers of people who defy and invalidate their stereotypes.
In fact, that is the only thing that ever does eliminate stereotypes.
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everyone stereotypes...
Citation?
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1. In a class of ~500 CS majors, we had maybe 10 black students. Of that number, I *think* only 2 or 3 graduated?
2. In my ~15 year career as a devops IT guy I've worked with exactly two black co-workers who've been in the same org-chart as me.
Why is it that other racial/ethnic groups aren't attracted to STEM? Unfortunately, I don't a good answer.
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Pointless comment, not over 9000.
Charles Barkely Explains (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.theatlantic.com/nat... [theatlantic.com]
Why are Asians always ignored in this discussion? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are they not also a significant minority in the US? And yet somehow, they managed to vastly over-represent themselves in STEM fields. Maybe, and this may be just a wild ass guess, but maybe it's because they spent their time focusing on their homework rather than whining about diversity?
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Because people like to complain about their perceived natural handicaps more than breaking out of them.
20-30 years from now when Asians dominate actual tech innovation (if they haven't already) and all the lazy white guys like myself will be slagging the 'yellow guys stealing my job', or insert some other out group who I feel threatened of.
Racial / religious / sexual / etc.. intolerance happens, I try to avoid it like the plague but the only way to truly overcome is on a personal level. Donate money to outr
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i doubt that will happen. asian countries have their own cultural obstacles to being and the forefront of tech.
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Are they not also a significant minority in the US? And yet somehow, they managed to vastly over-represent themselves in STEM fields. Maybe, and this may be just a wild ass guess, but maybe it's because they spent their time focusing on their homework rather than whining about diversity?
And you never stop hearing the white people whining about it! Right? Right!?!? It never stops!
fyi (Score:2)
Color (Score:2)
They're playing the race card again..... sigh (Score:3, Interesting)
I use to work for a company that did phone support. We had a policy of hiring a certain percent of our work force as ethnic and time and time again I saw black people who flat out "didn't want to be like white people"... I also saw it growing up in school so it didn't surprise me to see it in the work place. These people were being given jobs with no skills and getting training and this is the mentality most black workers I've dealt with have. The racial bias isn't on the side of the fence at this point that most people like to think it is. Black's just want to complain they don't have something and then blame the color of their skin.
A week ago Slashdot had another funky racist article about a black woman calling all white people homogenous because she wanted to be around more black people at work. Again we have this black vs white mentality and it's all whitey's fault for something... Not sure what it was but something... something.... white people are homogenous.....
When I was in college (2 year community college) every quarter we had the gangsta black kids who showed up for about 2 weeks so they could collect their check for a free education. Then they would go away until next quarter. This is the reason why black people don't have high graduation numbers. Many of them are gaming the system for college and getting away with it. When I hear someone talk about this when talking about black education then we'll know someone's actually paying attention.
Money too... (Score:3)
Im a white guy, so take any "I know how to solve diversity problems" with a grain of salt, but one reason I'm able to be in tech is scholarships and grants.
I didn't have a lot of money growing up, and once I got to college, a state school since i couldn't afford much else, I got a free ride from grants and scholarships. Since then, I've paid years and years of taxes in payroll tax, house tax, sales tax, etc. Back then, i noticed a lot more diversity in my classes. I got my first job as a reference from a Mexican engineer who knew another Mexican engineer at the place I'd end up working. I sublet from two other Mexican engineers that went to Motorola There were a few black electrical engineers, a few female CEs, etc.
Now, it's very very expensive to go to school. If you were just on the "hey, i can barely afford to go to college" divide before, you're now on the no-I-sure-can't other side. In the US, who's more likely to be on the bad side of the can-I-afford-college question? Minorities. It's not Bull-Connor-with-a-firehose racism, but it's a filter on minorities, an extra burden on just some of us that skews numbers. And that will carry over to the next gen. Those who can't become engineers now will likely have less well paying jobs, less good school systems for their kids, and less money for kids tuition. Cycles are had to break and you really need to stop them as early as you can.
I agree with the IT workers' take... (Score:5, Interesting)
they argue that racial bias, along with lingering impressions of what a 'techie' should look like, loom much larger than any pipeline issue.
Having once taught one of the most difficult to understand topics in mathematics, many of my students, after getting comfortable with me, told me they didn't expect me to be their teacher when they forst saw me. On one occasion, at the beginning of school, a this particular class continued with their business instead of acknowledging my presence at the podium, till I called the class to order.
Where I now work, members of the public will gravitate toward an office assistant to help them solve a problem instead of talking to me directly. This assistant then has to advise them to talk to me if anything is to be solved. I am the chief here.
I have gotten so used to this treatment that it doesn't bother me anymore.
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you teach in the deep south or something? or a really crappy school?
in my math/engineering classes, we didnt have time for any of that shit. you worked your ass off. plenty of foreign students who were on 100% in every class or go home scholarships. there was never a curve.
There's plenty of diversity-- but not all races (Score:3, Interesting)
Can I claim discrimination because I am a US citiz (Score:2)
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It's a mistake to talk about "racial diversity" when that's not really the problem. It just distracts us by framing it as a problem of white people discriminating against non-whites.
To hell with white vs. non-white. I'm "offended" that my Irish and German ancestries are minimized my lumping me in with Scotts and Welshmen. This is extremely "insensitive" to my cultural heritage. Let alone lumping me in with Italians, given what the Romans did to my peoples about 1800 years ago.
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How the hell do you think the Scotts and Welsh feel about you being lumped it with you!
Oh Crap (Score:2)
I fell for the dicevertisment again
It's Not Racism In The Tech Industry (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, it is also undeniably true that such talent is not present in proportional numbers amongst various minorities. That's a problem, but it's not of the tech industry's doing. There's plenty of blame to go around. Many of those minorities still suffer from inadequate education. The members of those communities must shoulder some of the burden as well - it is, all too often, still not cool to be smart in those communities. Intellectual achievement is often met with derision even within families. Girls are usually conditioned against pursuing STEM interests. Such observation is not racist, or sexist. The lack of achievement is nothing to with race or gender. It has everything to do with what the community is doing, or not doing.
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Over the years I have, at times, found the software industry to be downright hostile, especially when I was at university, where the CS guys seemed extremely unwilling to suffer fools like me (I was an EE major - and I was a pretty good student, but any mistake was derided in a way that an issue about, say, physics was not). There was the attitude barrier to cross, the CS crowd there seemed to think that one should be born knowing this stuff.
At least I looked as pasty as most of the other CS undergraduates,
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Well, there is hiring on merit for sure, but you can look at any major tech company chart and see that asian managers hire asians almost exclusively. We had one Indian VP, who made 20 consecutive hiring decisions and all hires were Indian, even if there would be 50% Indian engineers in the valley, the chance of this happening randomly is 1:1,000,000. The Chinese managers often hire Chinese not based on racism though, but the language difficulty. A lot of the brilliant Chinese engineers I worked with had eng
a single data point. (Score:5, Interesting)
I have only a single data point so it's probably not worth anything... My only experience with a Black IT professional was a network admin for the company who took over my employer. I was the previous defacto network admin even though my job description was 'embedded firmware developer'. So this company takes us over and hires this guy as the network admin. I meet him in a conference call and his first task is to come up and migrate our servers over to their corporate platform. So I volunteer to give up my weekend to facilitate since he doesn't know our existing infrastructure... He shows up and I give him the nickle tour, show him to a meeting room where he can unpack boxes and start bolting things together. I go back to my cubicle and work on some bugs telling him "if you need anything, just come get me." ... So everything's cool. He gets things connected, and starts migrating data... Around dinner time I check in with him and suggest we go across the street for a bite and a pint while data copies across the network. We have a lovely dinner and chat about families, school, weather, previous work places, etc.. All the usual stuff when you go out for dinner with a co-worker... Then we go back to the office, stop in the machineroom and it's back to business... So that was basically the whole weekend... I made sure he had what he needed from our old servers and instead of sitting around like a lump, I try to get some work done while he configures his new servers...
Monday afternoon, I get a call from my ex-CEO who says there's been a complaint made against me and I need to fly down to meet with HR. In short, the complaint was that I treated him like a subordinate because he's black and that I should remember he doesn't work for me and that I'm not his boss. Prior to that meeting, it hadn't really registered that he was black. I mean sure, I could tell his skin color was different but so is the skin color of 75% of the people I worked with back then. None of my other co-workers were black though. They were either of asian descent, italian, or middle eastern... To me, they're just my co-workers... So I get this mark on my employee record and everything kind of blows over. My future dealings with this IT guy were subsequently 100% about work and that was that. I stayed away from him as much as possible except when unavoidable. A year later, I left the company but reports from my ex-co-workers were that this guy had complained about at least 2 other people in the company and they had eventually let this guy go... Of course you never find out why someone is let go but they hired someone to replace him in exactly the same position almost immediately so the subtext is "this guy has too much 'victim mentality'."
On LinkedIn, this guy doesn't seem to hold on to any jobs for more than 1-2 years and he never seems to 'move up'.
makes no sense (Score:2)
If you check at the "diversity reports" from tech companies and compare them with US demographics, you'll find that whites are underrepresented in IT, while Asians are strongly overrepresented. And a lot of those Asians are Indians (i.e., fairly dark skinned).
How can those demographics possibly be explained by white racism?
The System's Crashed! Quick! Get Me ... (Score:2)
" ... a young man with a ponytail and an earring!" [allposters.com]
Doesn't say "young white man", but one might infer as much from the ponytail.
There is discrimination at the door (Score:2)
I am black. Let me tell you my story. This was my last attempt to enter the IT industry
Once upon a time, a big financial company whose name ends in "berg" and begins with "Bloom" came to my school for an onsite interview for financial software developers. I went to the interview and blew their socks off. They told me there and then that we want you in New York for the final interview. They flew me to NY that evening and put me up in a hotel not far from their office.
Next morning I went to the office for th
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I can relate. I've had the same experience, applying for an IT job at a large bank, aside from a number of other places. They'd fly or voucher me out, I'd do the interview or two, managers would already be assigning projects, and then I'd be excluded for no apparent reason.
At one point, I had a company tell me that they were only hiring programmers with sysadmin experience (which I had) but that I had to have BOTH and ONLY "system administrator" and "software developer" as my job title for the last 5 year
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ima have to call bs.
Re:There is discrimination at the door (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, but here's the thing. Your conclusion was that it happened because you're black. I think that's a hasty conclusion.
Not only are you black, but also you were dealing with a big, probably disorganized company. The larger the organization, the more moronic its hiring practices can be, and the more they can accidentally poop on candidates. I'm white, have a CS PhD, and have experienced similar things.
Also, even if you did actually run into racism, I suspect it's rarer than you expect. Running a software company is so difficult that one generally wants the most productive, high-quality software developers available. There's rarely enough wiggle room to accommodate personal bigotry. Most of us care a lot more about having our company succeed so we can be wealthy, than we do about skin color.
Also, you had one bad job interview experience, right out of school, and you quit the entire profession? I know that's discouraging, but seriously, you need to grow some backbone.
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I did not say I had one. I said the last interview I had. Trust me, I had done plenty of interviews.
Dear lord... (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, here's the deal. I am passionate about computer science and programming. It's what I do, both for my job, and as my only hobby. I write code for open source projects, and I write code for work, and I design little one-off projects for my own entertainment.
I stayed up all night every summer growing up teaching myself how to code. When I go to the used book store, I go to the section and buy old computer science textbooks talking about esoterica (I'm the only person I know under 45 who knows any APL, for example). My bedtime reading last week was the Oberon System manual that I got off eBay for $5.00.
All this was despite the fact that I grew up in rural Texas and got my ass beaten on a daily basis for being a "geek". The fact that my family was the only non-Christian family in town meant that I couldn't go to the school administration for help; when I tried it turned into a "let's pray for you, son." And yet, I kept doing it because I was passionate about it.
And guess what? If you're that passionate about something, you'll do it regardless of what your peers think. You'll *make* it happen. We didn't have any money growing up, so I'd stay after school and work on the computers there. When we finally scraped up enough money to buy a used Commodore 64 in like 1992, I had that hooked up to an old black-and-white TV and taught myself 6502 assembly.
So yeah, I'm sick of people saying "it's someone else's fault that I can't do this." No, it's not. If you're passionate enough about it, you'll *make* it happen.
Remember: Cultural, not racial (Score:2)
In engineering and academia, I've appreciated those rare black colleagues. For one thing, they were all much more social (and it is well established that culturally and/or genetically, africans statistically have superior social ability to whites and asians), so I could enjoy hanging out with them more. Another is that they had different things to say, making our work environment litterally more diverse in terms of ideas.
However, in many ways, those black colleagues were not extremely "black" culturally.
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The reason it's not correct to state that different genetic sub-groups might have different intelligence levels is that there is no evidence that there is any significant difference between any population or group overall genetically.
You mention anthropology. Yes, there is an interest in studying how our population grew and spread over the planet. To do this, they do sophisticated analysis to detect certain changes to try and model how the population moved.
Here's the problem, you've assumed that these group
Does Dr. Dre count? (Score:2)
/ducks
not again (Score:5, Insightful)
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First, we have constant articles on gender discrimination. Are we now going to get race discrimination articles? If we're all such white male racists here in Tech, why would women or black people even want to work here. These articles are getting so tiresome it almost feels like we're getting deliberately trolled.
It strikes me as click-baiting. It's abhorrent, but if you look at the numbers, something about the topic does keep us coming back for more, over and over.
My 2 cents ( I'm European == are Euro cents ) (Score:2)
The Secretary will disavow you? (Score:2)
What a techie is supposed to look like? You mean the sort of thing that might be influenced by pop culture?
A particularly prominent "high tech" espionage show comes to mind.
The problem isn't racism in tech (Score:3, Interesting)
A couple of years ago, I met the guys from thedailywtf.com and as the only black guy at the table, I was asked my opinion on what should be done to get more "diversity" in technology. My answer was "Nothing. The last thing we need is to have more people getting into this field if they don't have a love of it."
There are two problems, as I see it.
First, there is the racism that exists in western society.
Second, there is the anti-intellectual facet to some parts of African American culture.
Racism is complex. It takes many forms, on one hand you have the outwardly hostile racist who just plain doesn't like people of #Race and then you have what Michael Gerson dubbed "the soft bigotry of low expectations". That is manifest where many people, who think they're progressive, automatically assume that a black person is less skilled than his white or asian counterpart. I have a very Anglicized name. It's not Demetrialis or some other ridiculous nonsense like that. When people get emails from me and speak to me on the telephone, they almost never assume that I'm black.
Occasionally, when I meet someone who has only seen my resumè or spoken to me of the phone, I can see the surprise in their face when instead of a skinny white guy, they find a 6'2" 250 pound black dude.
In September, there was a teacher strike at the local district and I addressed the school board. You wouldn't believe how many left-handed compliments I received about "how well spoken" I am.
The anti-intellectualism present in African American culture is extremely destructive. I have experienced it. In large parts of the US, any black kid who is smart, who achieves academically, who has college and career aspirations is derided as acting white. I have been accused of "thinking that[I'm} white". Fortunately, I had strong parents who gave me a much different message at home and reinforced it constantly.
I traveled in different circles, I had many groups of friends, all of them distinct. Of the core group of black guys with whom I hung out when we were growing up, two of us have never been to prison; three have and one is still there. Of the white guys who were my friends, none of them have been to prison.
We all grew up in the same area. At most, five miles separated all of the various neighborhoods. There's a reason why there's such a high rate of incarceration among the black guys. There's a reason why most of the white guys went to college. We were all middle-class. None of us had particularly wealthy parents. The white guys usually heard the message that education or training was important. It was necessary to go out there and be the best person you can be. A lot of the black guys, not all and certainly not most but a lot, were primarily concerned with getting money and bitches. Fast money and lots of bitches.
These things have consequences that last far beyond childhood.
I have a M.S. degree and I work a good job in tech. I'm the only black guy in my department. I was the only black guy in my last department and the one before that(I replaced the previous only black guy when he went back to school for his Doctorate) and the one before that and the one before that. It's not the industry's fault. It's mostly not the fault of racism. It's mostly the fault of a society, subculture and families that don't impress upon young black people, the value of education.
I love tech. I love the people. I love spending my entire day surrounded by geeks.
I find far more camaraderie in that than I do among people who share none of my interests or life experiences beyond being black.
LK
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Says the AC posting on Slashdot instead of getting some actual work done.
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Way to screw up my joke with your time zone facts.
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Yet another dumbshit article about (the lack of) diversity in the workplace brought to you by your local bleeding hearts liberals. If it's not racial, it's gender. If it's not gender, they'll cry about ethnic diversity, sexual orientation, or something else.
Why aren't more women working in IT? Why aren't more men working as registered nurses?
Why aren't more homosexuals working in IT? Why aren't more heterosexuals working in interior design?
Why aren't more people of diverse racial backgrounds working in IT? Why aren't more people of caucasian background working in fast food?
Why do ducks quack? Because they look like a duck, and sound like a duck.
Quacking liberals.
And because some idiot seems likely to come along with some crap like "so says the ac," I'll echo this using my account.
For the last time - equal opportunity does NOT mean equal outcomes. Correlation is not causation - if you can actually prove the system is biased against minorities/women/any other special interest, then do it instead of complaining the outcomes aren't what you want. If you want to prove someone isn't being paid fairly, the ONLY way to do it is show that people with equal educations, equ
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Precisely. They're not under represented once you filter for skills.
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Not sure why college is relevant. Quite a few of my peers here haven't gone to college and are in IT. Maybe a specialized branch requires college? On my team, half have college, half don't.
[John]
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Certifications aren't required either... you could have started as a tech grub for an ISP or computer manufacture and worked your way up with only on the job training.
At no point have I ever had anyone say to me "Isn't your degree in applied arts? How can you know that without a CS degree?"
The company I work for employs fewer people with degrees than people with extensive experience.
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I had this argument before w.r.t. affirmative action. I asked if they didn't want to be judged on the content of their character instead of the color of their skin, and was told - seriously - that quote is from Martin Luther King Jr., and he's "theirs," so I'm not allowed to use his quote in an argument. No,.. really.
The proper response is to laugh in their face.
Re:biased claims (Score:5, Insightful)
I Graduated HS in class of 200 - 95% black, 3% white, 2% other in rural America.
How many went to college from that class? 4 total, 3 whites, 1 black (on a full ride athletic scholarship)
How many graduated? Two that I know of, I'm half. I got an Engineering Degree. The guy with the scholarship flunked out of NCAA eligibility in his 2nd year and one of the other two got an education degree. I hope more have graduated since, but I moved out of state so I don't know.
Who do they remember from my class at that school? The kid that flunked out of a full athletic scholarship.
It's not that this school was full of stupid people, it wasn't. None when to college because they didn't want too leave, or didn't want to be seen as a traitor to their race and get shunned by their friends. Many got stuck in the cycle of dependance. "I cannot wait to turn 18 so I can move out and start getting my own welfare checks!" was a commonly heard sentiment in the hallways. It still makes me sad to think many of my friends didn't even try.
This is a cultural issue not an opportunity issue. It is also a perception issue where we somehow think Outcome=Opportunity, regardless of the effort put in. This is an issue of dependance on welfare. Yet many of these people would be more than willing to look at me, a middle aged, middle class, white man as the problem. They think I am why they never succeed, but it's really because they never tried.
This is not to say racism is not a factor in some cases, I'm just saying it is not THE factor in why the statistical numbers looked skewed. We need to be totally honest with ourselves before we start suggesting solutions to this, or we will NOT fix anything, only make things worse.
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Dude, I know you were trying to make a point here, but fucking seriously. The example of grammar here seriously questions your initial claim.
Not really. A lot of the posters on /. have terrible spelling and grammar.
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I end up having effectively poor spelling or grammar in a lot of my posts. The truth is that in person, when speaking, I have very good grammar, and my spelling ability is at least average. When writing posts, however, I tend to go back and edit them heavily, and somehow I end up missing that I've left old words in sections I meant to delete, etc. I suspect it's due to my ADD problems, diagnosed only as an adult.
Anyway, my point is that someone having poor grammar in posts doesn't necessarily say much ab
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That looks more like a missed autocorrect via a smartphone post.
Snooze time (Score:2, Interesting)
This reminds me of the anarchist scare in the 20s. The communist scare in the 50s. The nuclear holocaust in the 60s. Then the "Japan invasion" in the 80s. Then the death of the American manufacturing economy in the 90s (which is still the world's largest, believe it or not). Then the IT outsourcing to India in the 2000s. Etc.Etc.
The only constant in this culture is people who claim it's about to collapse.
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there's no such thing as a victimless crime.
Read the citations. Just the first line. A lot of them say "STATE VERSUS..."
The STATE makes the claim. The STATE is the victim.
Re:Something they should focus on... (Score:5, Interesting)
there's no such thing as a victimless crime.
That's true. But not the GP called it "crime", as in, they are put away for non-crimes (i.e., they were incarcerated despite the lack of an identifiable victim.
The STATE is the victim.
No. The "state" cannot be a victim, it owns a monopoly on "legal" violence, and exists only to protect the rights of its citizens. If the State can claim to be a victim and kill and incarcerate citizens because to protect itself from its people, then it has become a tyranny and should be dismantled. The state should rightly fear its people, not the other way around.
And since you seem to be implying that possession and/or distribution of some state-declared contraband (an act the state punishes blacks for very disproportionally than whites), I'll leave this quote from Lysander Spooner right here for you to ponder:
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The people (or more accurately their representatives) made those laws. We can argue all day about the rational for any of them, but it's their choice as to what they want to permit or not in their state. Some would argue that legalized pot, or prostitution is victimless. Others would can counter, and claim both are not...society being the victim, or the young ladies. It mostly depends upon which side of the issue you stand.
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Maybe not so much [thinkprogress.org]. From the link:
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I'm sure there is a vast middle ground between the Rainbow Coalition and the KKK, but for some reason "tolerant people" appear not to see it that way.
Stop pretending that you are not a phony liberal, put your iPod earbuds back on, and go back to listening to MSNBC.
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...to judge a person by his or her skin color.
So let me get this straight: When I need to fire someone, I should never take skin color into account; however, if I'm hiring for a new position, I should always take skin color into account? OK, got it.
That's not quite right. You should never take skin color into account when hiring. However, you should take it into account when seeking people to hire, and you will be chastised if you don't end up with a particular racial mix in your workforce at all levels. But obviously, you have no reason to consider race when making hiring decisions.