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As someone who grew up poor (albeit white), I'm going to try to explain a core problem to you - role models.

When I looked at the adults around me growing up, I didn't see educated people. The responsible adult professionals were motorcycle mechanics, truck drivers, stuff like that. The less responsible were day laborers or petty criminals. The only people I encountered who were educated were teachers and doctors, and the wealthy men my father often worked for whom he condescendingly called "edjicated mow-rawns" in his thick Kentucky drawl. What I knew of success was seething class resentment.

I don't think I knew a single adult who was an engineer or technical professional. But I was clever, and read a lot of science fiction. I was originally interested in automotive/motorcycle engineering, having grown up around racing. But I discovered computers in high school, and that was that.

The boundaries we can imagine are limited by our childhood experiences. If you grow up wealthy and privileged, surrounded by doctors and lawyers and executives, you expect adulthood to look like that. If you grow up in a world where the only adults you know are hustlers and criminals, that's what you can imagine.

So why aren't there more black engineers? In part, because there aren't black engineers. And what black engineers there are, are underemployed, because they didn't necessarily go to the elite schools or have the other earmarks of privilege.

Fixing this is going to take more than the myth of rugged individualism.

Glad to hear you made it out. But seems like your own story gives lie to the theory that role models are necessary. You didn't have any; didn't need them. Just needed opportunity.

It's possible to escape without role models - but it's a lot harder. And quite frankly, I'm still privileged. I'm white. I'm male. If I'd been black, I don't think I would have escaped. The fact that I'm a white male means that, once I've melted into the new System, no one notices me as different. One of my best friends, who is far more professionally successful than me, is black. It still trips him up all the time. If he drives through the wrong town, cops don't see a doctor who shifted careers to finance. They see a big dark-skinned black dude driving a car way too nice for him.

White male engineers, working careers surrounded by white males, socializing mostly with successful white professionals, typically have no clue how everyone else lives. Their advice is mostly useless. Or, as a female friend recently put it, it's like someone whose entire experience with horses is owning a stuffed unicorn giving advice on how to ride to people struggling with actual horses.

That's a very vivid analogy! I'll use that in future if you don't mind.

Isn't it? My friend Jennifer came up with that. I'm sure she wouldn't mind if it spreads around!

How many events have you attended as the only white person? How comfortable did you feel? Do you think your merit was accurately reflected at these events?

The attendance of the events have no function to keep people out so merit is not required, although there probably is some correlation with merit.

The Meetup events that I attend (in NYC which is very multicultural) has people of all skin colors, not just white people. Lots of Indians, lots of Asians, just all sorts of colors, so it is not like one black among whites.

At any rate, if blacks want to advance technically and get jobs, going to Meetups and connecting with others is a good way to do it. All these "diversity" initiatives are the wrong way to do it.

So the lack of black participation in free tech events === lack of interest from black people? That's a stretch of a conclusion rife with confounding variables.

Yes, as an approximation.

Could you please explain in plain english with examples exactly what you mean by that statement?

NYC where I live has at least 1 million blacks. NYC has many hi tech firms NYC has many banks and financial institutions and media groups that all employ programmers and engineers. It has many tech Meetups. It has many opportunities to attend tech events that are free, and where there are no restrictions on attendance.

So, please explain what you mean.

Where I can agree is that there are basic opportunities (e.g. networking) in the tech community that Black Americans may not take interest in. The stretch comes when you equate that to having no interest at all in technology (correct me, if I've misconstrued your point there).

What makes it a poor approximation IMHO is that you place assumptions around how to "make in tech". "Not participating == not interested" assumes that there is some universally accessible and well-known path to working in tech.

Now, if you are saying that you've taken advantage of all of those events/opportunities (from your OP) because one day you magically became interested without implicit/explicit involvement from role models, loved ones, inspirational teachers, etc. then I will concede your point... but that would make you exceptional IMHO.

>> Where I can agree is that there are basic opportunities (e.g. networking) in the tech community that Black Americans may not take interest in.

I look for people who don't do the job for the money but because they enjoy it and they have a passion for the work and technologies. Today I don't work with the tech directly but apply it to a particular domain but I need to keep up-to-date with the technologies and work with them on my laptop.

Many of the meetups I've gone to (including Google Tech talks in NYC) are ultra cool. I don't go for the networking, but because I want to learn about the new technologies and ideas and ask questions. While attending, of course I end up networking and learning more about what other attendees are up to.

In my case, I paid for 90% of my tuition and housing/living costs for undergrad by programming computers beginning in high school. I could not get a penny of loans or grants in financial aid. But because I had so much work experience, my many campus job interviews were about the interesting projects that I'd programmed and I got many offers from great firms.

In summary, attending the Meetups is not about the networking per se, but that the topics are ultra-cool applying different technologies to many domains (finance, healthcare, media, urban planning, etc. etc.) and its fun to meet people with similar passions and interests.

Not only do I not see blacks, but I also do not see hispanics at these events.

Instead of whining about diversity, create a github account, do some interesting projects with spark and machine learning or one of the other spark libraries. Do it with Scala or use Python or R. Solve, some interesting problem with all of the data out there or do some volunteer work while in school to do such a project. Interview with that.

Companies should hire on the basis of merit, not skin color or sex.

I agree! Unfortunately, right now there's quite a bit of evidence that we hire based on skin color and sex, disregarding merit. Let's fix that.

There used to be severe amounts of antisemitism in this country. Even as late as 1997 Donald Trump sued so that Jews and blacks could attend country clubs in Palm Springs.

Richard Feynman wanted to attend Columbia University but was turned away because of the Jewish Quota.

But even with the antisemitism there were always firms who ignored the prejudice and hired on the basis of merit where merit was important. There were never diversity programs.

I believe there are firms in tech and other firms that need good computer tech that hire on the basis of merit and could care less the sex or color of skin of the individual. Who would want to work in a firm that isn't merit based anyway?

But even with the antisemitism there were always firms who ignored the prejudice and hired on the basis of merit where merit was important. There were never diversity programs.

And there were and still are plenty of firms which didn't/don't hire based on merit. Your argument here is basically "oh well, let's just sweep that under the rug and be hopeful that in the future it'll get better". Diversity programs are about taking the norms of the future and starting to implement them now, because telling people to wait another generation, or another century, for the discrimination against them to fade away naturally is not a great thing to do.

I'm sorry but I gave the wrong impression.

Someone who is highly competent, is deserving of merit, never want to work for a firm that doesn't hire on the basis of merit. So those firms that don't hire on the basis of merit are turning these people away. There is a shortage of people with competence and merit in computing, so that person will find a job and with a firm who values that person for their abilities.

Just as the case with antisemitism, no need for diversity programs. Physics Nobelist Richard Feynman was turned away from Columbia University because of the Jewish Quota. He went to MIT instead. MIT wanted someone like him and didn't care whether he was Jewish or not. The fact that MIT accepted him and Columbia did not demonstrated that MIT was the better school.

In a world where every market participant was perfectly informed and perfectly rational, and always acted in perfectly enlightened long-term self-interest, then you might have an argument.

We do not live in such a world. Your Feynman anecdote is a rare exception rather than a norm. Tech companies and software engineers will give up their racial and gender biases only when absolutely forced to, and at the moment nothing in the market is forcing them to -- you might not become the most profitable company in the world, but you can have major bias and still do well enough that it's simply not perceived as a problem for the companies which do it.