Ask HN: How Can Developers Support the Black Community? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How Can Developers Support the Black Community?

13 pointsdevcommunity5 comments

Some resources aggregated here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FFixoVlj1p2gqJOhycwxxPNliuFupp2svIBQ4caLtGI/edit?usp=sharing

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The issues we are dealing with now have been brewing for years and can't be solved over night. The way for the tech community to help is to get involved. You can't change things without understanding how we got here and what the issues are. A five minute read of the news will not get you informed. One of the aspects of being a techie is that if we don't understand something we take the time to get informed, learn and understand.

Also, support diversity. Look around, how diverse are your colleagues? Do they reflect the rest of society? Diversity starts early. Everyone of your coworkers started their view of the world early in life. Ask yourself what you can do to influence the youth to be part of the career that has given you the kind of life you have and enjoy. You can't create software to fix it but you can get involved and change the future. What can you do? Become a mentor, support people that are driving change. You need to get involved and be the driver of change. At the very least understand that what you do now will change the future.

Programmers make a /lot/ of money. Spending this money effectively and increasing the pool of money that is spent is probably the most impactful way a programmer can support a cause. I am sure the linked resources are fantastic, but for my dollars I will be directing them towards political campaigns. Obama recently posted something talking about ensuring a focus on influencing change at all levels of government, not forgetting about local and state/provincial governments. A solid addition to this list of resources might be ways of donating to political campaigns that can flip a seat. A lot of major tech companies are donating thousands of dollars to undeserving campaigns. Programmers in these companies can influence where that money does or doesn't end up.

We as programmers are quite good at assessing prior art as well. If we take cues from protests in Hong Kong, it has been widely reported that the HKmap.live mapping app that Apple banned has been a major resource for protesters in those areas. There is probably room for a similar appllication? To add an additional anecdote, the "This American Life" Podcast "684: Burn It Down" seems to me to be a relevant story. It details the story of a corrupt fire deparment, and how an attempt at organizational change (cultue/values/operations) was effected. Long story short, it didn't work! To me, the "why?" behind the relative failure is interesting. The leader who was attempting to remove corruption and corrupt and sexist firemen was was outsted by a shift in the political climate. He had support from the mayor of the city, but after the mayor lost in an election, the chief lost his job and any progress he made was reverted.

If all you have is a hammer, hit something.

Use the tools you have to identify problems and turn them into opportunities that present high value returns. Be specific and address problems that can be observed to be clearly within measurable bounds of satisfaction. Employ YAGNI.

Today’s biggest concern is specifically about police treatment of the public it serves. The part that is maddening is the poor treatment and poor handling of people they interact with. Equally concerning but less articulated is the polar opposite, where the shining standouts are part of the training set for tuning the model of law enforcement appropriateness and effectiveness.

Thanks for the insight!

Do you have any examples we can use to learn from?

Just to stop treating any community as something special.

That event have nothing about particular community. And I do not understand who and why decided to assign color label to that crime act.

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