Black Girls Code launching in Miami
miamiherald.com
miamiherald.com
But this indeed asks the question, which as far as I can tell is completely unaddressed on their website: why create a group that excludes others by sex and race? How do they explain to a black 14-year-old that their group isn't going to help him? Or a Hispanic 14-year-old girl? Or any 14-year-old whose parents are below the poverty line, who also wants to learn to code?
Why can't we just help disadvantaged youths in general?
I mean, limiting to a certain location (Miami) is fine. Limiting the number of students who can participate is fine. But I really have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of telling a black boy that they won't help him, because of the gender he was born as.
It's not about helping black people or women or Chinese people or men, it's about helping everyone.
Helping people is never wrong.
"You didn't help everybody" is not a valid criticism of an initiative to help some people.
If you have some other people you want helped, then help them yourself rather than shooting down other people's altruism.
"Hey, wait a minute, wouldn't this time and energy be better spent helping all disadvantaged people instead of one small group to the exclusion of others?"
..is a criticism, not a "shooting down". Being altruistic does not grant you a blanket exception from criticism.
How could you type that with a straight face?
for you it is...
but not for the people behind this group.
I mean they are free to do what THEY feel is important to them.
I, personally, believe they have the wrong approach... but it's how they want to spend their time and money.
If you are looking to donate... obviously there are far better organizations to support that would accomplish just what you are alluding to...
Helping the disadvantaged.
Just not this one.
We can look at a silver lining and hope they expand into other demos, we will see i guess.
This isn't just about helping a disadvantaged group, but also signalling to them at a young age that "people like you are also programmers!"
Growing up as a minority is something that is difficult to grasp unless you are part of that group -- something as simple as having fewer role models who look like you can impact your choices and decisions to pursue specific careers.
And no, they are not refusing to help males. I'm almost 100% sure that if a male asked if he could have some help learning to code, someone would either help him out or point him in a direction where he could get help. The group is just designed in a way to signal to young girls that they should join and learn how to program when pop culture ordinarily defaults to making scientists males (e.g. Big Bang Theory).
EDIT: Here's another question: is it wrong for a church to provide support groups for its members? Is that discriminating against other religions? Or is it just an effort to improve a specific community?
You read Hacker News. Surely you understand the importance of focus to any endeavor. The same principle applies here as to a startup — it's easier to sell "Twitter for internal business teams" than "this is an app that, like, helps people communicate and stuff in various ways."
As a black kid growing up I had no tech role models to look up to.It starts to get in your head that you can't possibly have a career in tech because you see no one that looks like you. It is similar to a popular joke in black neighborhoods for decades about "ain't no way you will see a black president" or "they will shoot him the first day he is elected". If you're not exposed to it, even if it is really out there, then you will tend to doubt if you can do it. It wasn't until I was older that I learned about minorities in tech. I was exposed to the internet at 18 and from then on split my time between working security in the clubs, going to college for business management and learning how to code at night when the clubs let out.
Exposure to possibility is very important part of development. So as long as these girls are getting that exposure and it helps them achieve their dream I will worry about the ramifications later.
But then I never felt quite right about chick groups either, if only because it isn't the REAL tech scene. It's just another subculture with its own idiosyncrasies. You can stay there as long as you want, and still be intimidated by the larger tech space where all the big stuff is happening, thus making no substantial dent in anything.
So I do believe the problem they're trying to address is a real and important one; this way of dealing with it just doesn't seem ideal to me.
It's not as if now that you're exposed to racism, that you will perpetuate it, right?
The first step is to stop snarking at people who dare to ask.
Straw man argument, your 'creating further insular groups' representation of the original idea is not at all obviously equivalent, and you make no effort to support the representation.
> The first step is to stop snarking at people who dare to ask.
It's really not.
It's not a terrible opinion to have, it's just that I think it's counterproductive, for the reasons the other replier(s) are trying to point out to you.
I just think that positive energy put towards solving problems minorities are having can be a good thing. And that energy should not be tossed aside for the idealistic idea of ignoring racism to death.
Also, I think it's wildly speculative that these efforts breed animosity. I would ask you to reconsider if that idea has any base to it, perhaps a call for evidence is in place.
The only evidence I have to offer is purely anecdotal, but I've found with people I know who got involved with political activist groups in southern Africa just got more bitter and contentious on the subject the longer they were in those groups. I've had some Hispanic friends join cultural groups and then begin to focus more and more on the differences between themselves and the Americans around them. I've also noticed in some groups I've visited for South African ex-pats that people get together and just complain about all the things they miss about the culture they used to enjoy. I can think of a couple of groups I've seen (most notably, a polynesian dance group) where people genuinely just got together and had a good time celebrating the culture, and that was positive. But I think I've seen more negative results than positive ones.
Come to think of it, the polynesian dance group did a lot to invite non-polynesians to join in. It was a celebration of that culture, but it was very focused on including everyone - not just helping one group catch up to another.
Is that something to be encouraged or discouraged?
> By gathering people with the same upbringing together to work toward a common goal,
People of the same race have the same upbringing? What am I even reading?
> I'm sure you feel the same way as well when you are in an 'ethnic' neighborhood or gathering.
Are we as a society supposed to indulge that feeling? Pampering that feeling creates more racial fracturing than it fixes.
> Is that something to be encouraged or discouraged?
I think you're reading way too much into what I'm saying. I'm just stating how I think it is. Whether you like it or not, when a homogeneous group gains power anywhere, people will be suspicious, just like if a company was run solely by Republicans, the Smith family, or black people.
> People of the same race have the same upbringing? What am I even reading?
Fine, I'll be more specific, under-privileged African-Americans, 2nd generation Latinos, Southern rural white people tend to have have similar upbringings with regard to family, income, culture, and education.
> Are we as a society supposed to indulge that feeling? > Pampering that feeling creates more racial fracturing than it fixes.
I'm not offering any solutions. But for the topic at hand, when black girls come together to code, that's not saying they shouldn't hangout with white people. You're implying a false conflict. That wouldn't be the case with something like affirmative action or racial quotas which does cause conflicts.
Depending on location and neighbourhoods, or scope of the program they might actually have less success drawing anybody with a less specific target group.
Maybe you should just appreciate having that luxury rather than criticize those who do not have it.
I imagine it exists for the purpose of making programming more popular among women and particularly women of African American background because at the moment I guess it's not seen as a valid career option for them. I don't know anything about the effectiveness of these programs or anything, but I believe they have a purpose outside of making men people feel welcoming to women in programming.
The presence of this part of your comment indicates that you already know the answer to what you've asked, and are really just trolling by 'playing the innocent'. Please don't do that.
You have a very, very low bar for 'rabidly attack'.
Actually, taking you on face value, it's curious that you didn't make the same criticism to the parent comment, who is 'rabidly attacking' the group in the article who are 'challenging the status quo when it comes to sociological issues'.
Why on earth do you play off "think before you down vote" as a negative?!
Oh, please. It was 'playing the innocent'. Pandering to such trolls keeps the debate at a very low level. The troll worked, too - look at all the responses.
the parent comment, who is 'rabidly attacking' the group in the article who are 'challenging the status quo when it comes to sociological issues'
The group in the article are doing no such thing. My reading of the current societal status quo is that being discriminatory acceptable as long as you are a member of a protected class doing it for altruistic reasons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics
And seriously, how can a comment like the parent, who is explicitly aware of the expected response, be classified as 'perfectly innocent'?
Aaaand now you've stooped to insults. We're done here, and so is the thread.
Another view is that private groups should be able to do whatever they want, and discrimination is only a problem when it's a problem. If "black girls" grew to dominate the industry or significantly change things, then it's become problematic. Obviously that's a rather subjective measurement hence all the "debate".
The reason any of these kinds of initiatives exist is because the end results are skewed. That is, some population is statistically under-represented relative to major population. In this case, you might look at the number of black women in tech and wonder why its so low. The creators of this initiative must therefore think that the resources of inspiration/training/education or whatever may not be making it to enough young black girls to persuade them into technology. Hence the desire to "correct" it.
refreshmiami.com
Raising awareness and breaking down stereotypes is a good thing and it seems to me that it's hard to do without seeming like some type of segregation whilst doing it.
Empowering people isn't about making them better than others, but simply raising everyone to the same level.
Some political zealots are ruining nice things for the rest of us because all they care about is their own ideology.
But even "diversity" isn't the right moniker for this movement. I think "undiversity" or segregation, especially in tech is the result of "biased sampling" for all sorts of reasons. Hard to counter, but necessary!
(Edit: for context, when I posted this, there was 1 comment by Bsharp.)
The other side is the rest of us should see it as an opportunity, given that the effective monoculture in SV gives them a sort of blindness to certain product areas.
In SV you will find engineers, designers and managers from all over the world --Russia, China, Europe, etc., and when it comes to race you will find very large numbers of highly successful Asians and Indians. Likely more so than in other US industry.
For example, Google is quite diverse, the attendees at I/O were not.
Helping a select group could build a sense of community, or it could potentially segregate groups of individuals. But it is undeniably beneficial for the individuals that the service is targeting.
If anyone wants to take the initiative to help disadvantaged youth in general I'm sure no one would object.