Is There an Institutional Bias Against Black Tech Entrepreneurs? 645
An anonymous reader writes sends this excerpt from CNN:
"The vast majority of top executives at the leading Silicon Valley tech firms are white men. Women and Asians have made some inroads, but African-American and Latino tech leaders remain a rarity. About 1% of entrepreneurs who received venture capital in the first half of last year are black, according to a study by research firm CB Insights. ... 'The tech industry is pretty clubby,' said Hank Williams, an African-American entrepreneur in the NewMe program who had success in the Internet boom of the 1990s. 'There are really no people of color in Silicon Valley.' Others say the issue could be rooted deep within the black community. The NewMe co-founders said African-American families don't typically encourage business leaders or programmers to pursue interests in tech."
observing a lack is not proof (Score:5, Insightful)
Observing an apparent deficiency in demographics is not proof of bias, it is merely an observation of what is.
What about me (Score:4, Insightful)
About 0% of entrepreneurs who received venture capital in the first half of this year are white with my ethnic background.
I'm tired of being lumped together with "rich white men" just because I'm white.
No. (Score:5, Insightful)
There are 100 times as many white teenagers plastered to their monitor messing around with their computer as there are black teenagers. Since successful tech entrepreneurs tend to be the kids who spent thousands of hours in front of their computer when they were kids, and the kids spending thousands of hours in front of their computer are almost all white (or asian), then of course almost all the tech entrepreneurs will be white.
It's got nothing to do with silicon valley. It's due to the comparative lack of computer availability to young black teens, and a cultural difference where American black culture has a much lower opinion on average of nerdy endeavors as opposed to American white culture.
Re:No. (Score:2, Insightful)
There are 100 times as many white teenagers plastered to their monitor messing around with their computer as there are black teenagers. Since successful tech entrepreneurs tend to be the kids who spent thousands of hours in front of their computer when they were kids, and the kids spending thousands of hours in front of their computer are almost all white (or asian), then of course almost all the tech entrepreneurs will be white.
It's got nothing to do with silicon valley. It's due to the comparative lack of computer availability to young black teens, and a cultural difference where American black culture has a much lower opinion on average of nerdy endeavors as opposed to American white culture.
In regard to an issue as important as this (why a certain sector is not reflecting society), it would be a lot easier to accept someone's opinion if they could refer to some kind of research or statistics instead of just offering blunt statements and/or rants.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
No people of color my ass (Score:5, Insightful)
Ever heard of Vinod Khosla? How about legions of Asian programmers? Oh, no people of *his* color. Yeah, just another conspiracy by The Man to keep the bruthas down.
Seriously, when will this victim mentality shit ever end?
Re:observing a lack is not proof (Score:4, Insightful)
There are almost no black tech entrepreneurs for the same reason there are almost no black hockey players - black children and teens don't do either, and in any activity, the very top people in that activity are almost always the people who got involved in it before they were early teens.
A black person who goes to college for computers is not going to compete with a white kid who has been plastered to his computer monitor since he was 11, anymore than a black kid who starts playing hockey when he turns 18 is going to make an NHL team (or any kid who starts playing/doing/learning anything is going to make the Pro level of it if there are other people who have already been doing it 10 years - that counts musical instruments, sports, etc.)
The problem is twofold: Lack of access to computers for black children/teens, and a culture that doesn't support "wasting time" messing with technology. (Not that white culture was greatly supportive of my nerdy endeavors but at least my parents didn't stop me beyond demanding I go outside more.)
Cause/Effect (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's look at the fundamental facts here. Well, fact, since there's only one inarguable thing:
African-Americans and Latinos are underrepresented in tech-firm leadership.
That's a correlation - executives in the tech industry tend to be white males (who are significantly overrepresented). Asians and white females are more or less as common as expected. Probably a bit less, but not as significantly.
Now, as we all know, correlation does not imply causation. But it does hint pretty heavily that there is something involved. Since I don't have access to many studies, and can't do my own, all I can do is list every possibility I can imagine, and informally think about it.
Possibility 1: There is a specific bias in technology against blacks and latinos. I find that a bit hard to believe - the tech industry trends liberal, and I'm sure plenty of techies would rather have Geordi La Forge for a boss than Gates or Ellison. It's still a possibility, and I'm not saying no techies are racist, but overall, I don't think this is the best explanation.
Possibility 2: There is a specific bias among business executives against blacks and latinos. That I can definitely believe, but I don't have any statistics to support or refute it, and I'm not sure it would explain it fully.
Possibility 3: There is a specific bias amongst blacks and latinos against entering technology. I suspect this may be a contributing factor, perhaps even the main one. It's only anecdotal evidence, but when I was in high school, there were very few african-american students in the tech program, and no hispanics at all. The ones who were there were fine (one of them remains a good friend, and one of the brightest people I've met), but you'd see a lot more in the art or music programs.
Possibility 4: There is a specific bias amongst blacks and latinos against becoming business executives. This probably isn't a major factor, but it may be a small one. At the very least, racial minorities tend to be less wealthy, which would naturally make them less likely to become major business leaders.
Going off gut instinct, I would say it's a combination of business leaders being biased against blacks/latinos, and blacks/latinos not being encouraged by their parents to enter the tech field. That would be my hypothesis. The best way to check would be to look at the independent factors - you should see a bias against blacks/latinos at all levels of technology, and a bias against black/latino business leadership in other industries, but neither bias should be alone as significant as that seen in tech business leadership. I'd look myself, but I haven't even RTFA yet.
Re:What about me (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Access to a Computer (Score:5, Insightful)
That doesn't matter. The computer has to be in the child's home already. A kid who doesn't have a computer doesn't know that he wants to mess around with his computer. He has to have a computer, then be one of the few kids who would rather mess around with it than just play on it or do something else.
Yeah, I do. (Score:5, Insightful)
Comic Con.
Option 5: Victim Mathematics (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:anonymous reader? (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Because Cain believes that a person stands on their merits, not their skin colour. Being half-asian, I do the same. Institutional bias to 'create' groups of people and segregating them does more damage than anything, and the left are very happy to use those all the time.
Useful tip: You might want to actually look into his "computer related" background experience.
Re:Not exactly (Score:5, Insightful)
None of that is true, or only true in very exceptional cases. There's absolutely no discriminatory laws in place (except perhaps to advantage minorities, and very few racist individuals. Of those who are racist, the majority would never admit it.
The under-representation of particular races in particular fields have little to do with racism, and nothing to do with innate capability. It is purely a social artifact of history.
Re:observing a lack is not proof (Score:5, Insightful)
If your theory is correct, then the current advent of masses of cheap-to-free computers is going to boost black presence in the tech field within the next 10 years.
Not necessarily. You're correct that access to computers is a big part of the equation, but equally important is the culture the child is raised in. You'd need to be sure the family that owns the computer encourages using it as a learning tool (like an Erecter set) and not just as a portal to youtube and facebook.
Re:Affirmative action (Score:5, Insightful)
It's also been found to have detrimental effects when applied to other walks of life. The cure for racism is not to enshrine it into law, as affirmative action does. The important thing is to make race an irrelevant factor in success in a field... and I believe it is, in the tech industry.
I think it's very rare in Silicon Valley that an otherwise deserving businessman loses out because they're black. Rather, the deficiency is in the lack of deserving minority businessman in the first place. That's a social and cultural issue, and may not even be a problem. Not every culture needs to have equal representation in all fields; that's one of the ways in which cultures are different.
Re:Access to a Computer (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone with $50 - $150 and a library card can pretty much obtain a PC and learn how to use it. Craigslist special. Cable companies are offering dirt cheap broadband, as well as various other gimmicks to get cheap net access.
That's true right now. It wasn't true 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago, which is what is impacting the current market for entrepreneurs.
Re:No. (Score:3, Insightful)
In regard to an issue as important as this (why a certain sector is not reflecting society), it would be a lot easier to accept someone's opinion if they could refer to some kind of research or statistics instead of just offering blunt statements and/or rants.
Why isn't the NBA reflecting society?
Have you got evidence that the NBA in fact doesn't reflect society? Yes, we can all think of why there might be more black 7 foot tall guys in the NBA that in society, but there's no excuse for not having the evidence to hand. The assumption that evidence will turn out as expected, especially for things that seem obvious, will make people not bother to check reality against what they're saying. This goes for all sorts of issues, such as the cause of ulcers, whether lower taxes increase government revenue, whether people act rationally, and so on.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Access to a Computer (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a very important point that you make. Everyone I know who is into tech had a computer in the home from a very young age. Most black people I know aren't into the inner workings of technology. I know one black guy who's a bit of a computer geek and he's had a computer in his home since a very young age. When I was a kid - the 80s/90s - having a computer wasn't exactly common unless your family had money.
I'm not going to bother to look up the statistics b/c everyone knows it's true: black families in America tend to live in poverty. It's a result of how they got here in the first place and the fact that they haven't had legal equality until the 1960s. I would be willing to bet that tech entrepreneurs by and large were raised in middle class or upper class families - that they tend to have parents who went to college. It's not black or white, it's rich or poor. Thus it looks black/white because a disproportionate amount of blacks are poor. I'm sure somebody can find an example of some rag-to-riches tech entrepreneur, but that's the exception, not the rule. And why does tech have anything to do with it? There aren't many black entrepreneurs in general (no, I don't consider LeBron James an entrepreneur, no matter how many companies he starts up).
Re:No. (Score:3, Insightful)
Black culture (and not just in the US - my experience is in the UK) is going to be more negative about education/qualifications because of the much higher exclusion rate in schools and the far lower achievement levels. This is probably almost exclusively due to the higher rate of single families raising black children, with the knock-on effect of a lack of a male role model etc etc blah blah. So to me this is not surprising and unlikely to change anytime soon.
This is why black culture is generally anti nerd, because being intelligent/educated isn't cool. To be fair, this is hardly purely a black-only thing; there are plenty of white kids in exactly the same situation, but the figures are out there.
http://www.metro.co.uk/news/44768-race-divide-on-single-parents [metro.co.uk]
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-3497925-move-to-boost-black-pupils-exam-results.do [thisislondon.co.uk]
etc
No that's not it at all (Score:5, Insightful)
First off, whoever modded you Troll - I think they're wrong. I think you're asking a serious question. So I'll give you my serious answer.
The problem is cultural. The culture that a great many black children grow up in is simply broken. Are you familiar with the term "Uncle Tom"? It's an insult that black people aim at other black people that used to mean "sucks up to white people" but these days means "act too white", i.e. speaking proper English and getting good grades. It's actually frowned upon.
I'm not making this up. Here is an example. [thegrio.com] The one person is "less black" and an Uncle Tom because they grew up not poor, in a middle class area with both parents married. Less black. Think about that one for a bit.
And the submitter is wondering why you don't get a lot of scholastic achievement from this culture.
Black people are NOT denied education. My university has a list of grants and help as long as my arm for anyone who isn't Caucasian. The problem is that black people (in this area anyways, YMMV) are taught from birth that you are "less black" and something of a traitor to your people if you get good grades and act "too white". There is your real reason.
Think I'm kidding? Watch this bit from Chris Rock (nsfw). [youtube.com] Why is everyone laughing? Because it *hits home*.
The culture itself is broken. Fix the culture and allow success to be defined as "gets good grades" and the numbers will change as if by magic.
Stupid argumentation (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the kind of stupid argumentation that drives me crazy! (Disclaimer: It is not really a drive, but more like a short putt.)
Somebody notices a glitch in the distribution where the data has been sorted by a hot political topic, and immediately everyone starts expressing an opinion. They are jumping to conclusions which, by definition, means they have not done any meaningful research, analysis, or other investigation. The whole discussion becomes a time-waster or political agenda.
This is an opportunity for some sociology team, anthropology team, or maybe economics team to FIND OUT WHY, by researching the issue and discovering what actually influences the situation.
Re:No people of color my ass (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Option 5: Victim Mathematics (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No. (Score:2, Insightful)
There are 100 times as many white teenagers plastered to their monitor messing around with their computer as there are black teenagers. Since successful tech entrepreneurs tend to be the kids who spent thousands of hours in front of their computer when they were kids, and the kids spending thousands of hours in front of their computer are almost all white (or asian), then of course almost all the tech entrepreneurs will be white.
Even if this were true (and you have absolutely no evidence to back any of it up), is it not possible that fewer black teenagers spend their time in front of computers because black teenagers are more likely to be economically disadvantaged due to the legacy of racism in American society, and thus they either don't have computers or they don't have the luxury of sitting around in front of them all day?
Re:observing a lack is not proof (Score:5, Insightful)
This has not been my experience so far. True, there are few black engineers, programmers, and people starting businesses in Silicon Valley. However, those I have met have generally been outstanding at their work, and gained plenty of respect as well as responsibility. I believe engineering in Silicon Valley is as close to a meritocracy as the world has ever seen. There are all races, religions, and frankly no one cares so long as you are good at what you do.
Now just some rough estimates... about 1 in 10 Americans are black roughly. American born engineers make up maybe 1 in 2 in Silicon Valley. The vast majority of these people did well at well respected universities. I'm going to guess that reduces the potential population of black men to hire by a factor of four, just because the black community is so much poorer and parents are typically not college educated. Multiply all that and I'd guess we come up with a pretty good estimate of why blacks are under represented in Silicon Valley. For one thing, white men are also under represented. Americans in general have for some reason decided to avoid real science, math, and engineering.
"Cluby"? Give me a break. You can be a black Jewish lesbian and get a great job if you have engineering talent in Silicon Valley.
I Don't Buy It (Score:5, Insightful)
What I know about VC's:
#1 They love money
#2 They never have enough money
#3 Nothing much else matters to them in this life other than acquiring more money
Given the above, I believe that most VC's would gladly suck a bag of dicks if it meant an additional $1B in their bank account. I assume that funding a black guy's tech firm is much more pleasant than sucking a bag of dicks. My conclusion is that VC's would be happy to fund black tech firms, or asian tech firms, or latino tech firms if they thought they could make a bunch of money from doing so.
The open question is whether or not VC's underestimate the ability of black/asian/latino firms to make them a ton of cash.
Affirmative Action Won't Work (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:observing a lack is not proof (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:observing a lack is not proof (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. Also, it's not that the culture "doesn't support 'wasting time'" with (technology|hockey|etc.), it's that the culture has different priorities from causasian and asian cultures. Black kids spend all kinds of time playing basketball when they're young, because that's what they have access to, and it's popular in their culture. They don't play hockey, because it costs a lot of money to buy hockey equipment, and you have to have access to a frozen-over lake, or pay a lot of money for membership with an ice-hockey rink. Being frequently poor and living in the inner city, the northern blacks don't have much access to frozen lakes and equipment. Southern blacks have it even worse, because the idea of a frozen-over lake is like something out of a fairy tale for anyone living in the South. There's a reason all the best hockey players aren't even American, they're all from Canada or Russia or eastern Europe, and the few that do come from the USA come from places like rural Michigan.
These people complaining about a lack of black and hispanic technology entrepreneurs are idiots. I can tell you exactly why there's so few: because there's so few people from those groups who are engineers! It should be pretty obvious that tech entrepreneurs, largely being ex-engineers, are going to have a demographic makeup similar to the demographics of tech engineers (electrical and software mainly) in general, since they're really a subset of that group. As someone who's been an electrical and software engineer for 13 years, I can tell you that the number of hispanic and black engineers I've met throughout my college years and career I can probably count on one hand. In fact, I think I've met maybe 2 hispanic engineers total, and a handful of black ones (I had one who was my boss for a little while); blacks are definitely much more represented in my experience, though that's not saying much. However Indians, east/southeast Asians, Europeans of all types, and of course caucasian Americans are all very well represented, and there's even some middle-eastern Muslims and of course Israelis in this industry (I mean working in the USA).
If you want to do something about the lack of black and hispanic tech entrepreneurs, don't: do something first about the lack of blacks and hispanics in engineering. Only after you do something about that problem will you see a change with entrepreneurs. Otherwise you're putting the cart before the horse.
People of Color (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:observing a lack is not proof (Score:5, Insightful)
DNS's statement that intent is not required is false. If you make a decision, based on your belief that your race is superior to another, then you intentionally committed a racist act. It doesn't have to mean that you burnt a cross on a guy's front yard.
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Need more women (Score:3, Insightful)
We need more women and less guys of all races.
Most software houses are sword fests and that just sucks.
What sucks worse CNNs shallow report identifies an effect without ever trying to understand or identify the underlying cause.
Re:Access to a Computer (Score:5, Insightful)
yeah, tell that to the thousands of Indians and East Asians in tech. Many of whom come from more poverty than you could imagine.
Its not a rich and poor thing, it's a cultural thing.
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:observing a lack is not proof (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Option 5: Victim Mathematics (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't you love it when a sentences starts with "Using the same logic. . ." and then continues with a false analogy?
One of the many reasons that logic should be taught in elementary school. I find it sad that we expect kids to learn mathematics and to write argumentative essays but we never teach them the structure these tasks depend on. It's like teaching someone who doesn't understand algebra a programming language. Most people don't even know what 'logic' means but they use the term all the time.
Re:observing a lack is not proof (Score:4, Insightful)
Same thing. Women just aren't interested in engineering, it's that simple. I can't tell you for sure if it's because of nature or nurture, just that people have been trying to push girls into engineering and computers for ages and it hasn't worked; they just aren't interested. I do believe it may be more of a culture thing though, because I have met many female EEs (I actually dated one for a while, in and out of college), and while the number of female white EEs is tiny, the number of non-caucasian female EEs isn't. Most of the ones I've met (plus the one I dated) were Indian, some Chinese. Of course, if you look at who's going into these fields today ignoring gender, they're mostly Chinese and Indian, so this shouldn't be too much of a surprise, but these cultures don't seem to have the cultural biases against women in engineering that (caucasian) Americans do.
You're probably in a different industry than me, though; not only did I meet female EE students in college, I met plenty of them while working at Intel. Incidentally, that girl I dated ended up doing really well in semiconductor memory, went to the Intel spin-off that worked on phase-change memory and got into management, and is now finishing up her MBA. :-~ Most of the other women EEs I met seemed to be more on a management track too; unlike the stereotypical nerdy white guys, they didn't seem to be in the field out of any great interest in the subject matter, but as a good overall career choice. The nerdy white guys seem to go into EE and CS (and CpE, the hybrid of the two fields) not only out of great interest in the subject, but because they're big introverts and a job working on computers all day is appealing to someone who prefers to avoid human interaction (except perhaps with similar nerdy guys with the same interests); so guys like this tend to avoid management like the plague. I know I fit into this profile.
Strangely enough, I did come across about 4 caucasian female EEs in my years of college who were absolutely gorgeous and definitely didn't look like the kind of girl that would go into EE. I have no idea if they graduated in that major though. Note also that I went to college in the mid-90s, so I don't know how things have changed since then.
Re:No people of color my ass (Score:5, Insightful)
--
o Homicide is the number one cause of death for black men between fifteen and twenty-nine years of age and has been for decades.
o Ninety-four percent of all black people who are murdered are murdered by other black people.
--
(speaking of America, of course)
They are victims of themselves and although it is an economics issue it is also a cultural issue, and the solution is first for the black population to stop doing it to themselves. Some black men feel that they needs to deal drugs in order to get by, but they deal those drugs mainly to other blacks, "knocking them out" of mainstream society as Cosby puts it. A handful of dealers will wipe out an entire community, and when push comes to shove they then commit violence against each other.
The grossness of this state of affairs is that it is popularized, even idolized, by the mainstream black culture. Racism used to be a thousand times worse, but back then the mainstream black culture was much healthier. It used to be that a white man could get away with lynching a black man, even with plenty of witnesses.. but back then the black communities had to look out for themselves, protecting each other. Now they don't. Now they feed on each other in a cycle of abuse and violence.
There are exceptions to every rule.. but go to any inner city and you will see exactly this. Communities knocked out by drugs and violence, and not enough are standing up to say "what the fuck are we doing to each other?"
Re:observing a lack is not proof (Score:5, Insightful)
As a black nerd guy, the only thing I think you got right is the culture aspect. My parents didn't like me 'wasting time' with computers, but I worked around them and 'wasted time' with computers anyway.
Granted I am not the picture of success, but I think I did OK for what I had. In my opinion, we don't need assistance, we get enough of that. This isn't a problem the government can fix. It has to be fixed from within, by people like myself who know better.
Re:What about me (Score:5, Insightful)
i for one am sick and tired of being told that i have an advantage because i was born white, if anything it seems the government is trying to keep me down instead of bringing them up.
If you are sick and tired, why don't you do something about racism? Because you are naive and sheltered if you thing being a white male doesn't give you enormous advantages.
Try facing the widespread discrimination and racist attitudes that minorities encounter every day; then you'll really understand sick and tired. Try getting followed around the mall by security, or being pulled over for driving in a white neighborhood, or seeing people cross the street when you approach. Try being the only black-skinned in your comp sci class, computer club, country club, neighborhood, or job; and deal with the portion of people who write you off as racist, the portion who see you as the 'black guy', the portion who try to give you special treatment, and the few who treat you like everyone else. Try guessing which person is in which group. Try turning on Fox and seeing Bill O'Reilly claim we are a white Christian nation. Try not being able to live in certain towns because of the physical threat and discrimination make it hopeless.
Then try that tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that, and the day after that, for the rest of your life. Try starting as a child. Then you might be sick and tired.
The U.S. has come a long way, but has a long way to go.
Re:observing a lack is not proof (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd need to be sure the family that owns the computer encourages using it as a learning tool (like an Erecter [sic] set) and not just as a portal to youtube and facebook.
It's not just a home culture thing either...there's the culture at school as well.
I can't speak for the current situation, but as of the early 90s, there was significant peer pressure to value things like sports and violence over learning and pursuing more traditional avenues for societal advancement. African-American students who did well in school or pursued intellectual hobbies were labeled sell outs or "house n...s" (lesson learned from my two years at that school...I'm not allowed to use that word.) There seemed to be a pervasive attitude that if you went about trying to succeed while playing by the rules of the establishment that you were somehow betraying your race. There was a belief that if you learned to speak proper English, you were somehow denying your racial identity. This was even codified by the school district trying to claim that Ebonics was a legitimately distinct language rather than admit that they couldn't teach the actual language to the African-American students (yes, I went to a school in that district...I was really fortunate to get into a private high school.)
If you want African-American tech entrepreneurs, you need to foster an environment for them to grow up in that nurtures their tech interests rather than persecutes them for it. My two years in that school environment makes me completely unsurprised by the numbers in the story and highly doubtful that they represent a racial bias.
Re:observing a lack is not proof (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:observing a lack is not proof (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry mate, but that's crap. My wife has a degree in CS and she desperately tries to find a job in the field (in Germany). The reason why there is so few woman engineers working like engineers is because company bosses think like this:
1. if she doesn’t have children, she will get pregnant and the company must search for replacement during maternity leave
2. if she does have children, she will think more about children and tend to go home when regular working hours are over instead of staying and showing "loyalty" to he company
3. I can squeeze more energy from man then from women because they they think less about their health and the future then women (who cares about burnout, projects must be finished as fast as possible with as least engineers possible)
Blacks in Technology are Viewed as Space Aliens (Score:5, Insightful)
The questions as posed, is whether this prejudice applies to Silicon Valley. If your idea is good
No one should be asking if there are smart, qualified black people - There are. There are smart qualified people of all kinds of backgrounds. If you discriminate, you shrink the talent pool.
I do think though that African people (Black Americans, West Indians, Africans and others) working in American technological firms can be viewed as space aliens
I am a programmer - I program in C++ and C mostly
I think one challenge may be that SOME white people do not know how to interact with black people in general. This is not controversial or alarming at all. Why? Well when I look at my managers - I see 40 something, 50 something and 60 something year olds. For the older ones, they very likely did not go to schools with black people due to segregation - I understand that! This is America, and there is a social consequence that affects guys who graduated in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Heck even guys I knew in college, that was their first time interacting with a black person. Truly for a good deal of white people there are sometimes few blacks in their elementary and high schools. Not to be an apologist for people - but from a social studies aspect - when a black person is suddenly introduced, people can act like a space alien fell from outer space. Will the black person lower the API score of my school (for Californians), is he qualified to work at my company? Did he get in through affirmative action? These are things black people think white people think about them.
So in o
Re:No people of color my ass (Score:4, Insightful)
Dude turn off the filter and grep for the n-word on this forum. It will open your eyes!
Re:observing a lack is not proof (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:observing a lack is not proof (Score:5, Insightful)
The resume test needs to be redone (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem isn't that they were comparing "black" names to "white" names it is that they were comparing ghetto names to American names. "Jill" is a very normal, neutral, name in America. "Shaniqua" is a name you tend to only see come from, well, the ghetto. It is not a name that comes from African roots or anything. It sounds, well, lower class.
However turns out it isn't just "black" names that have that. Try hillbilly names. Have "Shaniqua" run against "Sheri-Moon" and see how that goes. Both names are "odd" to the American ear and both speak of a lower class upbringing.
In terms of "black" names I might note that someone who has a REAL "black name," as in one that has an African influence, currently holds the highest office in the land.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
There's also alother pressure on smart black kids (Score:5, Insightful)
There is this expectation that they should go and do some sort of civil rights work, or something like that which helps the "black community". Neil DeGrasse Tyson gives a great talk on that at the HHMI: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I5Fl1Qn-Do [youtube.com].
In it (at around 32 minutes) he talks about an experience on college where another smart, motivated, black student found out he was working to be an Astrophysicist and said to him "Astrophysics? The black community cannot afford the luxury of someone with your intellect to spend it on that subject."
So there is this pressure for smart black kids that you need to go do something that directly helps the black community. Be a leader in some respect. That of course negates doing engineering or anything like that.
Now if you continue to watch the video, Dr. Tyson points out how his path has done ever so much, despite not working for "the black community." The man is the director of the Hayden Planetarium, a minor celebrity, a living, breathing, example that it doesn't matter if you skin has more melanin in it, you can still be brilliant and excel in your chosen field.
But there's that pressure there. Once you've got out of the anti-intellectual community, which as you point out is EXTREMELY strong for black kids, you then face this pressure from the intellectual community that you should be doing some specific things. Doesn't matter what you are interested in, you "owe" your community to use your smarts in some way.
Hopefully, time and people like Dr. Tyson will change that. People will see him, and more people like him, and say "It is ok to be smart, no matter my skin colour, and it is ok to use my smarts on the field I like."
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Re:observing a lack is not proof (Score:5, Insightful)
In any developed country, old computers are regularly thrown out and can be obtained even by poor people for very little money and often for free.
Someone who is genuinely interested in technology will be happy to have one or more old computers, especially for free because it means you can experiment with them and not worry about breaking them.
Re:observing a lack is not proof (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately, and note I'm OBSERVING this fact and did not make it so:
"Shaniqua" doesn't merely convey "black", it conveys "my backward parents think Ebonics is a respectable language". This is like a white guy with "Bubba" as a first name, and yes I've met a few.
NEVER give your offspring a name which conveys (rightly or otherwise) an intellectually-deprived background. That's using your kid to masturbate YOUR ego, not some noble gesture of defiance.
Yes, there is, but there's more to it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's my 2 cents as an old white guy as to why. In the 60s, black people decided that they needed their own culture to survive, one different from white culture. Prior to this, most black people tried to be more white, culturally speaking. The problem is, when you isolate cultures, you increase alienation, decrease communication and decrease social connections.
So here we have a pretty successful (economically) culture of Europeans in the USA and a not-so-successful culture of African Americans. After the 60s, they go their separate ways, more or less. White culture was rejected by young blacks who become more isolated from social connections, education and attitudes that could help them be a success, economically. The result seems to be an African-American youth culture obsessed with activities and attitudes that guarantee failure. Sports. Entertainment. The development of the physical. A lack of interest in the mental. And most insidious of all, a tendency to go for immediate gratification, rather than to work for long term rewards. The history is different for Hispanics, who have linguistic separation and legal issues thrown in the the mix, but some of the cultural characteristics of separation are similar.
And so, failure is guaranteed as long as there is no assimilation into the majority culture. The only exceptions I've seen to this rule are situations where the children were acculturated in white neighborhoods with "white" values and little to no exposure to their own racial group's culture. Is this fair? No. Is it real? Sure looks that way.
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