Because not being part of the majority can make it feel as though you do not belong in a given career or sphere of human endeavor. Is that really so hard to grasp?
I mean, I'll spontaneously zero in on that one argument: suppose people of race/gender x are known to make less money in a given career than people of another gender/race. Does that really explain why there would be less of those people in the given profession? Seems to me that for that to be true, there would have to be other professions where the disadvantaged people would earn more.
Is that really the case for IT? As a black(?) guy, are there other (legal) professions where you are likely to make more money than if you would go into IT? Presumably discrimination would range across all jobs (even white garbage men might make more money than black garbage men), so it should be cancelled out as a reason for choosing a career.
Sorry if I don't understand you, but when I got my first computer I was 12. I really wasn't thinking about my career. All I knew was that I liked computer games and that it was cool that I could make the computer do things (actually make things appear on the TV). How would your gender or race change your reaction in the same situation? I really don't get it. And by the way, at the time the computer games of the day were Pong and Pacman, so nothing violent that would drive away girls.
Edit: sorry for my extreme examples (garbage men), I just like to use ridiculous examples to make things clear but often people take that the wrong way. I mean I use them for the sake of logic, not to offend.
No, you clearly don't understand anything that anybody who doesn't share your experiences is trying to say about this subject. This isn't about "coolness".
This is about whether or not something even seems like it's a possibility for someone. When I wanted to be in software, growing up, I didn't question whether or not it was something that "someone like me" could do, because everyone I ever saw, in magazines or books or on TV, was already like me. When I told relatives and strangers alike what I wanted to be when I grew up, they didn't discourage me or tell me that "people like me" couldn't be programmers. They didn't tell me that programming was a job for the other gender and that I was being silly for wanting to violate norms; they were supportive and encouraging, because everybody they knew of in software was like me.
Women grow up today, in 2012, being steered away from software because it "isn't for girls". Black kids grow up today, in 2012, being told that software isn't for people like them. White boys are statistically bought their own computer much earlier than minorities or girls, because it's seen by people as a logical career to encourage them in, thereby perpetuating the structural disadvantages that gave rise to the white male programmer as "norm" in the first place.
And every damn time someone dares broach the subject and advocate for putting a more diverse public face on the field so that it might actually stop being such a toxic monoculture, the white male majority roles its eyes and complains that they haven't experienced any of the problems that minorities are experiencing in the field, that they wouldn't have even noticed that a speaker line-up at a major conference was all just like them.
Of course you wouldn't have noticed that. That's the privilege that comes with being in the majority.
This isn't a personal attack on you and your lifestyle and your people. It's a call to broaden the church.
I'm really proud of some of the comments like yours, danilocampos', and msbarnett's. It's just a shame you're being met with the same crap most of these conversations have in the programming community.
Oh the irony...
Actually I think what makes me angry is that notion that white men have handed everything to them on a plate. That is very far from reality, and dismisses a lot of human experience. Life is much more complicated than the height of your paycheck.
It's funny you say that.
Despite the fact that all my talents were related to computers and technology, I never thought to pursue an actual career there. I did briefly, when I was 12, but as time went on, it looked less and less practical because:
My mom had no opportunities to interact with people in that industry and knew nothing of technology herself, so there was no clear path to my making a career of it.
With no one in tech I could point to whose life background seemed similar to my own, I had no confidence I could forge such a path on my own.
Eventually I did forge that path and got where I needed to be. But how nice it would have been to align my education properly with my career direction. How nice it would have been to see some hispanic people in a more obvious, prominent position to assure me there was a place for me there. How nice it would have been to ease into this career with internships instead of credit card debt. But that's not the way it is. And that's okay. I'm doing great now. But I want to make sure it's better for the next guy.
Sure, it would have been nicer to be surrounded by math people, but I think you overstate the challenge you face just because your parents were not in IT.
It is normal for kids to not have a lot of confidence in all sorts of things. That is why you get to be kid for quite a while before you have to make serious decisions about your life.
Sure, it would be nicer for some things to work in another way. I am very interested in how to properly support kids. But I think you overstate the factor of race in your case.
Actually, just a theory, but I think one problem of racism is that people who are discriminated against end up attributing more of their problems to their race than what is actually true. "Boss didn't trust my opinion? Must be because I am a woman" - but perhaps she was just new at the company so the boss preferred to ask somebody he knows he can already trust. And so on...
But sorry, I am a white male, so I guess my very existence tells every woman and non-white person on the planet that they can not be a programmer? That just doesn't make sense. It's not my fault that black parents tell their kids not to go into computing, or that parents in general discourage girls to use computers.
I repeatedly said in my comments that I understand the statistical likelihood of people being less exposed to computers in their youth. But of course, you didn't read that. You only read what you wanted to read, which is "hey presto, here is another one I can vent my accumulated rage to".
Thank god people like you understand so much. You make the world a better place.
Also, who exactly tells black kids computing isn't for them? Any citations? The media? Parents? Gang members? Peers? Teachers? They really do that, they actively say "computers are not for you"?
You're personalizing this as an attack on you when it's nothing of the sort. Nobody is claiming that anything is your fault. Unclench.
All anybody is saying here is that it'd be nice if, in addition to you and me and every other white male with a similar upbringing, there were a visible number of people of other people with dissimilar backgrounds to serve as inspiration to other groups of people. And that takes some effort on the part of community leaders and conference organizers to actually try contacting some of the brilliant speakers out there who come from diverse backgrounds, instead of just reaching out to a bunch of people like them and then throwing their hands in the air and hijacking the narrative with cries of tokenism when nobody is calling for anything of the sort.
You're a frequent, angry voice in gender-related discussions on HN. You really need to walk away from the computer and start asking yourself some hard questions about why it is that people talking about this issue is making you so angry and defensive when it is in no way, shape, or form an attack on you.
> Also, who exactly tells black kids computing isn't for them? Any citations? The media? Parents? Gang members? Peers? Teachers? They really do that, they actively say "computers are not for you"?
Yes. Yes to all of the above. People really say that. All of those groups actually send that message to kids. If you really don't understand how systemic this is, why do you feel so strongly correct in your opinions? Danilocampos gave his account. Another in mentioned briefly here: http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/11/tech/innovation/black-tech-ent... . There was a linked blog post on HN not too long ago of a black woman giving her account of how she came to be in the industry, and the push-back she received from her father, who didn't feel it was a sensible career for someone like her. I cannot for the life of me manipulate the search function into turning it up for me, though.
I would actually welcome more diversity, I just don't think people should be blamed for not making the extra effort. It's nice that some people have figured out how to attract women to IT, and I am sure more and more people will learn from them. In the meantime, the people who don't know how to do it yet are not evil, they just were more concerned about other things.
And I am sorry, but laws that prefer a specific gender or race just seem unfair to me (that is what is bein pushed in Europe), so that makes me angry.
As for black parents and so on discouraging their kids to go into IT: how about educating those parents then, instead of blaming "white males"?