Black Girls Code
blackgirlscode.com
blackgirlscode.com
What to do instead: have curious conversation [1, 2]. Be reflective, not reflexive [3]. If you're unsure whether you're doing those things, wait for it to become clear before you post [4].
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
[4] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
If I was trying to figure out how to actually give kids the opportunity to get interested in coding, well, I'd start off trying to go for an open-ended after-school program, where you can drop in and mess around with computer stuff with access to knowledgeable adults if needed. I'd try to get the adults to propose interesting little projects that might capture the imagination of the kids. I'd try to get donated VPS time, not so we can force the kids to make cookie-cutter web apps but so they can put together their own janky terrible stuff, and if they screw up we just kill the VPS and start over. Personally, I think trying to focus on games too much is also a mistake--either you end up with the Logo turtle (educational but incredibly boring) or you have 9 kids just playing Minecraft while the tenth actually learns to script it.
We don't expect a summer math program to make math work for kids. At best it "stimulates" in the same way a summer-long Raspberry Pi electronics project does, but it builds no foundations. The education market has way too many of these motivational products and not enough investment in foundations.
But any program that focuses on foundations is over a year from application, and that implies that you have enough credibility to go for over a year without stakeholders demanding very concrete results. I suspect that what many people in this forum want are classes which provides a substantial accumulation of foundations over the years.
If you're going to start with web dev, better to teach teach plain HTML and CSS, and enough JS to make something small happen, then let them run with it and help them customize it. Something like an in-browser alarm clock would be interesting. Show them how to change the font, colors, sound, background image (maybe even a background slideshow), and some animations.
Edit: i appreciate Go because there's not as much boilerplate or setup required as with some languages (unpack the tarball, set $PATH, and I'm off to the races) but even those steps mean we're talking about shells and directory trees.
Otherwise, it's really easy to get lost in boilerplate before you even know what the payoff is.
It's good to show what's possible but it isn't fun and will bore them to death fast because it's very limiting for beginners.
I can think of many ways to spark people's interest in cooking or music, but programming seems a bit harder to me. I never thought about why I love it, let alone why others should.
How would you do that?
Combining programming with music is a cool idea - https://sonic-pi.net/
Go is simple but not really beginner friendly. In my opinion teaching novices should start with Ruby (not Python or Javascript that's so often is the case). Show them how to do simple scripts, later build some games together.
Web-dev stuff like React, Webpack, Node etc should be out of the question, it would be a huge turn off for kids; heck it is that even for adults.
Something like Processing or some other easy and intensely audio/visual programming interface would be much better since it's made with that in mind and produces near instant feedback.
A lot of these programs try the 'hard-sell' of "programming is soooooo much fun and important" on participants and if you're not in it for the hard work and the minutiae of what takes to build a "modern web app", you're just never going get that into coding.
I've slowly come around. I understand now why things like this program aren't racist, why they exist, and why the people they target can uniquely benefit from outreach. Moreover, I don't think I understand enough the struggles that underrepresented groups go through, and the fact that I'm oblivious to them is part of my own privileged upbringing (white, male, middle class, suburbs, nuclear family, single income, etc).
I think I still have a long ways to go, and one thing I've been thinking about is how I can try to capture the worldview that I used to have while I was in the "this isn't a problem, stop posting about it/i'm tired of reading about it" camp and thus use it to explain to people who are still stuck in it. The only reason I think I came to understand is because a dear friend of mine gradually explained it to me in a way that I understood.
Anyway, while I was writing this, lots of low-quality comments have come and been deleted, so I feel like it's worth hitting post. I can't eloquently and convincingly articulate why things like this are needed yet, especially to an already-convinced-otherwise audience, but maybe someone else can.
E.g., whenever a company lobbies for stuff, it's never "for the profits of our stakeholders"; it's always "for the sake of the children".
Therefore while I applaud positive movements, I'm also always weary to note the timing and subtext in which they are presented, and very often it feels like there is a disingenuous agenda behind them, that sours the apple for me.
I'd prefer kids were taught that they can try anything they dam well please. They just need to try.
Btw this is all hypothetical, my daughter is two and we live in the UK.
I don't think that's the case. Quoting from a description of one event hosted by Black Girls Code:
>Who can participate in the hackathon?
>The Hackathon is open to girls of all experience levels. All are welcome and encouraged to register, whether a participant has previous coding exposure or is new to coding and app development!
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bgc-and-nike-virtual-hackathon-...
If your daughter wants to go with her friend, I don't think the staff at the event would mind. Heck, they might love it to know a little girl in their target demographic had a coding buddy.
>I'd prefer kids were taught that they can try anything they dam well please. They just need to try.
They should also be taught that, but they're only human like the rest of us. Discouragement is often irrational, but that doesn't make it irrelevant.
More concretely, the need for this program is described as a welcoming environment for black girls to get into STEM, because black girls are discouraged being that they are "outsiders".
Why would a white girl not feel like an "outsider" as a program specifically for black girls?
Okay, this addresses the race, not sure what to do about gender. Maybe choose a stereotypically girly topic and make posters in pink color, but again allow anyone to join, I guess. Send a signal, don't close the door.
I grew up attending a "Saturday academy" sort of STEM program where I was the only white kid in a cohort of perhaps 50. It was open to anyone, but because they reached out to Black families and were in a Black neighborhood, they were able to target without having strict, exclusive rules.
Just targeting places with lots of Black people is definitely a huge improvement over what we currently do.
College finance system already works this way to an extent. I think making more educational programs adjust cost based on means would have the effect of helping the least-privileged people in our society without the moral hazards of racial segregation.
It is good to help underprivileged people...
It is bad to assume that race and gender are the only sources of privilege, thus throwing under the bus e.g. all the poor disabled people guilty of the sin of being born white and male...
I guess it's better to help some underprivileged people (and throw the others under the bus) than to help no one... but when you put it this way, it reduces the happy feeling.
> white, male, middle class, suburbs, nuclear family, single income, etc
You have next to nothing in common with a poor, rural white male with a single mother, so why shut them out based on your own privilege? Since poverty is already seen as a proxy for race, why not just start programs in poor areas without explicit focus on race? It has the same general effect without shutting the door on other underprivileged people.
I think we can all think of a hobby or topic we'd feel more comfortable joining if there was such an environment to introduce us to it.
For example, I'd love to play soccer, but I'd embarrass myself at the local field, especially with the language barrier. A "soccer for out of shape immigrants" group would certainly get me to play more. Likewise, I'd take a "welding for bead-curious urbanites who never get their hands dirty" class.
We can all appreciate the value of such environments. We just have to accept that the barrier of entry is different for everyone. For some, it might be gender or colour.
https://arslege.pl/zasada-rownosci-kobiet-i-mezczyzn/k15/a52...
In the hundreds of years prior to that most everyone else in the country was allowed to acquire land, wealth and an education while the enslaved folks were legally blocked from doing the same. It took nearly another ~100 years for their right to vote to be marginally protected and to finally end legal segregation, that was less than one generation ago so you can imagine that the inequity here won't match that of every other country.
My assumption is that they are not aware of the tragic, race-based history here (they said they live in Poland, I doubt the curriculum there has years and years of US history) so I gave them a brief overview of the history behind the current inequity that this group aims to help correct (including specifically talking about some related differences between their statement about the Polish constitution and how the US constitution started and changed over the centuries)
Rather than whittling down subgroup after subgroup, why not try to help out the underexposed in general?
The differences between what the sexes are interested in is distinct enough that figuring out how to get girls interested and prevent them from being discouraged needs to be considered.
However, I don't belief the racial differences are enough to justify efforts to encourage black people specifically - there's use in shared culture from an outreach perspective, but here I think that the most ground can be gained from efforts to engage with marginalised children in general; regardless of race.
I just don't think that focusing on intersections of the disadvantaged yields useful results. For example, efforts to help blind kids learn to code could be very useful - but a specific effort to help only blind black females with gimpy legs would be a waste of time and resources (and good luck finding teachers at all, let alone any that meet your increasingly exclusionary criteria).
I can't imagine that once those barriers have been broken and a well supported kid gets into code that the impact of race and sex will be significant when compared to motivation and aptitude.
I also think that if your trying to break down barriers you're not going to do a very good job with class rooms defined by anti-diversity.
Anyway, what's with the month old throwaway account?
But they're getting that sweet sweet investor $$$ from Nike and AT&T!
Edit: in anticipation of controversy, it is not my attempt to troll or start any flamewars with this comment. It's a perspective that is sorely lacking in discussions addressing diversity in tech, and dangerously so, because if we refuse to question the role of the choices of those who are underrepresented, then the only alternative is to blame people and systems who are not responsible for the issues, which makes the interventions ineffective at best, counterproductive and destabilizing at worst.
ANYWAY:
>the vast majority are simply uninterested in such pursuits
I really think this is an "image" problem. I'd say the majority of people are uninterested in technology, so the numbers are already low. But it also has a huge connotation of the people who DO like it being white/asian nerds, or affluent people who can afford to go to college for computer science. People want to fit in, no one wants to be alone. And if you're just some black kid, you're going to feel really out of place. Even if no one is being racist to you, you're still going to FEEL alone (even if you're not). And that's not fun.
This isn't just a tech problem. Think about welders or metalworkers. I think about bearded, husky white guys. But I'm sure there's plenty of girls who think swords kick ass but don't want to feel like an outsider. It's understandable for people to feel this way.
It's like the complete opposite of the Utopian Hacker idea where just your contributions matter, nothing else. About how good or enthusiastic you are, not about WHO you are. I don't think any single group or initiative can get rid of stereotypes with careers or subcultures. I'm not even sure if it CAN be done.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/POC https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=poc
I attended a STEM program when I was in elementary school and I was the only white person in a cohort of like 50 black kids. More often than not, the programs just aren't set up in Black communities, they aren't advertised, there is no outreach to parents.
I'm not sure your hate for this group is based on facts.
From a Google search I learned that their EventBrite lists 615 past events in 70 cities in 18 states (plus DC). Since the beginning of 2020 there were 120 events, 88 were last year and 32 this year so far, most of which being online. I don't know if they've had any others that didn't make the EventBrite list and no clue what city you live in, obviously they haven't reached every "fairly large inner city" in person.
With no knowledge of how they spend their money (other than the scholarships they mention) I assume it goes to staffing the part of the org that plans and puts on these events, and said scholarships for the paid events.
Looks like 279 of them were free (including all 2021 events), 30 in-person events had paid and free tickets available. It seems 53 events were summer camp options for between $70 and $699 (most common being $299) from 2016 to 2020. Of the rest, 6 were $20 or less and the remaining 270 events were $35.
I'm aware of $1M grants from Nike & AT&T, CrunchBase lists another $409k from an individual and GM, plus individuals have donated small amounts.
From my personal experience putting on individual live shows, tours, learning events and full blown conventions I doubt that even double this total would be enough to cover all of the live events they did pre-pandemic even with a skeleton crew staff of 3-4 and plenty of volunteers.
That's not the only reason, but (based on frequent comments on this topic) it's a reason that should be articulated, because it isn't necessarily obvious to someone who wasn't told -- so many times, in so many ways -- "this isn't for you".
XD yeah, because racism is always the answer. Also there is no enough black people hiking because forests in US are racist as fuck.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/13/hiking-a...
This statement feels a bit yucky to me. Like the whole premise of this movement is that diversity is valuable, but then there's this feeling of discontent about a lot of people not looking like you. It kind of reeks of hypocrisy, if I'm being honest. Even if black women were represented in programming in a way that reflects America's demographics, "few of my classmates looked like me" would still be true.
> Much has changed since my college days, but there’s still a dearth of African-American women in science, technology, engineering and math professions
In agreement so far...
> an absence that cannot be explained by, say, a lack of interest in these fields.
This is where it falls apart for me. This is an assertion without evidence. I haven't yet heard a convincing argument (or really any argument) that people of different cultural, racial, gender backgrounds will gravitate towards similar professions, on average.
To me, the better question (and harder to address) is "_why_ do you feel so utterly disconnected from white and Asian men on a person-to-person level that you would be pushed out of a dream job?" We're all human beings, and there is plenty of common ground to be found in that. The long-term goal should not be to have your Netflixes, Amazons, and Googles of the world full of black, Asian, latino, and white men and women all sitting at their own lunch tables. Unfortunately, it feels a lot like that's where it's going to me.
I however could see them having negative psychological effects on participants that do more to widen gaps than close them. For instance it gives an impression that black girls need to do programming in a protected separated environment because the environment at large is not safe for them or accepting of them.
I think this might even be true in some cases but regardless I don't think it's beneficial to anyone to promote the idea, and I think it is certainly sending the signal that that is the way things are to these young girls which I think can be self perpetuating.
I hope I am wrong.
That's a pretty accurate impression. And it's not groups like BGC perpetuating that idea, it's the culture at large. We're nowhere near the utopian ideal where black groups are overly cautious about American society.
Personally I like donating by getting something in return, like a sticker or a t-shirt. Also helps spread the word.
I didn’t come from much but I did have access to computers via relatives and my school district. That’s something not everyone has. The interest I developed at a young age led me to a very lucrative career. It does not threaten my white male ego to think that other people from more disadvantaged backgrounds deserve a chance to at least learn a little about the field.
A group for emigrants in a foreign country would be reasonable, but just segregating by gender and race like this where there is no language or cultural barrier is unnecessary and could be harmful.
Maybe OP would also exclude folks from religious institutions as well, people who learned to code at BYU or a Catholic college, or one of the like 30,000 Christian high schools, but I would probably downvote that sentiment too.