No, I Am Not Lost – A Black Woman's Experience in the Stanford CS Major
theodysseyonline.com
theodysseyonline.com
We are talking about Stanford, not Hogwarts. I would expect that the floors and the rooms are numbered in a fairly straightforward way that comports with the geometry, and that geometry does not change. I'd further expect that there is a directory or some such device that tells visitors what people are in what rooms.
These should be sufficient to allow a visitor, even a first time visitor, to find their destination. So as long as the person is not gazing about confused, clearly having no idea how to proceed, isn't the natural assumption that they are fine, and so you should leave them alone? If they need help, presumably they can ask someone.
For what it's worth, I tend to tell these people apart from the people with business in the building by noting where they're looking (tourists seem to be looking all over the place like they're taking it all in; people with business at Gates seem to be looking for numbers and other navigational indicators in line with tzs's comment).
Look at the blog photo:
http://cdn1.theodysseyonline.com/files/2015/06/18/6357024594...
Purely visually speaking, that image doesn't say "I'm a computer science nerd" --- but that has nothing to do with race!
Take away the makeup, mess up the hair, add 50 pounds, add glasses with unfashionable rims, change to a ratty old T-shirt, and nobody will ask, "are you lost?"
(Stereotypes are a problem regardless; just saying that perhaps it's misidentified.)
"The term “microaggression” was used by Columbia professor Derald Sue to refer to “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color.”"
Like when they say white male. Oh, nevermind that does not qualify because it is against whites and males, so it is ok. Sorry a little confusing here... :)
EDIT: I find it also peculiar that the explanation you've cited only mentions "racial slights", despite neither "micro-" nor "-aggression" containing this meaning. But it's comforting to know that one is at least safe from committing such things across all the other social boundaries! /s
The kindest way to interpret this is that it is your opinion, and if it is, it is wrong. It is not ok to harass white males for being white males. A more likely way to interpret it is that you're putting words into other people's mouths, then sneering at those words.
I feel like this is obvious enough that it's not worth commenting about. Do these wasted words qualify me to downvote you?
Your logic is so broken I don't even know where to start.
Then I got into an interracial relationship (I'm white, she's black) and the way I was treated when with my girlfriend and alone were very noticeably different.
I noticed being physically tired after going somewhere with my girlfriend as well as many looks, weird tones people took with me I'd never experienced, and generally ruder people.
> Like when they say white male. Oh, nevermind that does not qualify because it is against whites and males, so it is ok. Sorry a little confusing here... :)
I experienced microagressions as a result of being in a relationship with a black female, so it is possible.
Walking into a restaurant in a barrio-like location gets me weird looks. It'd be better if things were not this way but these actions are not extraordinary nor typically directed personally.
Do you think if a non Latin walked into a Latin recording studio that someone would not look at it as not ordinary, or an accordion player walking into a rock studio?
The way to eliminate these tendencies is to make them not exceptional. There was time when Asians were not a majority in science majors... But now they are expected there.
In a perfect world we would not make wrong assumptions, though we'd like the right assumptions.
A fat person might not be presumed to prefer an elevator or a diet soda over a full soda. Or presume American Republicans to be bigots or democrats spendthrifts.
There is a fundamental difference between the experience of being prejudged against when you're a member of a powerful group in society vs. a member of an oppressed group. The difference is difficult for a member of a dominant group to fully understand, partly because they don't have to be aware of their position in a dominant group every single day, whereas members of oppressed groups are constantly reminded of their position.
This isn't to say that men don't have their own issues that they need support with -- issues like (I think) higher rates of unemployment, depression, suicide, drug abuse, imprisonment, lower graduation rates, problems with custody and child support payments, etc. Some people do go too far in saying that if you're a member of a dominant group then you cannot claim to suffer from discrimination in any way, and that's not what I'm trying to say.
I totally agree that the long-term goal should be to make e.g. women in CS programs unexceptional -- and to get there we need to recognize the ways that we make it harder for those women who are in CS programs today to stick it out.
This is utterly ridiculous. That description matched about 10% of my 100-strong CS class.
White and/or male, on the other hand, matched about 98% of it (so if she really wants to "fit in", gender reassignment surgery & skin lightening would be far more effective).
If it's on all points, that's a lot.
The problem is it's impossible to perfectly separate the three scenarios except for in the worst cases. People guess based on their life experiences. So it's not surprise when certain groups are less likely to think it's a race issue.
I frequently try to explain this to my mother. She's had a major house rebuilding project over the course of last year, which caused frequent interactions with various builders / contractors.
Whenever someone would try to bilk her over (or not grant the respect she feels is deserved) her automatic reaction is 'It's because they think I'm an immigrant'.
My take is that these guys would try to pull this over anybody else. But most people would feel that this happens because of something particular about their identity (black, gay, immigrant, disabled, whatever).
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11715972/Car-re...
> Both male and female mystery shoppers requested quotes to fix a common fault - a malfunctioning clutch on 2011 Ford Focus.
> The study found that only six per cent of garages gave the same quote to men and women, with the repair costing men an average of £571 compared to the £616 it cost women - an eight per cent increase.
> The female premium was highest in Birmingham, where women could be paying up to 31 per cent more than men for the same repair. This was closely followed by Manchester, where there was a 28 per cent premium for female drivers.
With two towns giving higher prices to male callers.
To me that's a 'knowledge premium'. Garages expect men to be more knowledgeable about car repair and less likely to be intimidated about going for another quote.
Likewise if I go to the market to buy veggies, a less than honorable seller might push inferior product to me as a man than a woman who he expects to be more discerning.
Student not recognizing another student? A minority in the space trying to help another minority in the space? I wouldn't be able to draw too many useful conclusions from that.
>Being a woman of color who has graduated CS107 is almost like being a unicorn, and that’s pretty f'd up.
Yes, but it's also entirely consistent with the last 200 years of western history.
In the end, yes, I can entirely imagine this happening, and understand why it's happening, and see that it's not going to change any time soon. That said, I hope it changes sooner than later and lovely little slice-of-life articles will help that happen.
edit: It also makes me kinda sad too.
I personally think its in a rut right now. Both college students and working professionals will look at the space as being male dominated and passively choose to go a different direction if they are female. When the problem gets brought up in circles like HN, many rush to defend the space as if nothing is wrong.
A cultural shift needs to happen and unfortunately that is going to be extremely difficult to do without a lot of people interested in making it happen. Why do CS when you can just as easily get into other fields that are more accepting of women and minorities?
Being treated like you don't belong sucks. When I am asked "Where are you from? Where are you born? Where are your parents from?" I have to ignore it. She needs more life experience if she thinks the average person will have sympathy because people ask us these questions.
People who haven't grown up with a computer in the house, or with good AP classes at their HS are at almost an insurmountable disadvantage IMO.
The real question is to ask "Why don't more women take CS107?" Only about 20% of the Stanford CS department is female. If I assume that a CS107 class is 100 people (it probably isn't--CS107 is not a beginner class--it has data structures as a prerequisite). 20 are women. Stanford racial data suggest that 7% of it's enrollment are African-American.
That means that you get at best 2 "women of color" per year in CS107.
Even if all of these women pass, you're still looking at 10 out of about 10,000? students, at best.
Her experiences may be completely valid, but this is hardly the fault of CS107 or its teacher.
"At Stanford, computer science is the most popular undergraduate major--220 students declared CS during the 2012-2013 academic year. The introductory CS106A class is 40% female, but that drops to 30% in the subsequent CS106B and 20% in CS107. The major is approximately 12 percent female."
It would be interesting to see real survival analysis of Stanford CS majors sticking with it.
Why?
I guess it could be a culture of exclusion, but for it to work that fast it seems like it would have to be exceedingly toxic.
I wonder if Stanford does exit interviews when people leave a major. I had to have informal talks with my advisers (at a different college) when I changed majors, explaining my reasons. I wonder if that data is collected at all? And if not, why not?
It's a failure of experience.
How many people can bake a cake? More on this later ....
My first assignment in data structures is simply: "Here is Eclipse, here is a project, here are directions for checking that project in, do it. Now use that to create a second project to print "Hello, World!" exactly."
1/3 of the class CANNOT DO THIS and drop. I'm serious. Following directions exactly appears to be a learned skill that not many learn.
Back to baking a cake. This is the same problem. Cakes have some exact directions occasionally. If you get them wrong, something goes wrong. I cannot give out several of my cake recipes because people accuse me of giving them the wrong recipe when the problem is they don't follow it.
And, yet, these recipes were directly out of women's magazines in the 40's, 50's, and 60's. So, it's not an anti-female bias to this characteristic.
It may be more of a fact that women who can follow directions exactly get pulled off into different areas/fields/hobbies before they reach computers.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotypes_of_groups_within_t...
All that said, I do enjoy being a computer scientist at Stanford. I love learning how to become self-sufficient when it comes to building out my ideas into actual products and apps. In addition, the race and gender demographic for computer science majors here appears to be slightly more balanced compared to peer institutions. And the Stanford name comes with a ridiculous amount of power. It is a luxury to be able to drop it in conversations whenever I need to immediately be taken seriously. It is my hope that, with some of the projects I am working on this summer, I can put that power to good use by creating more spaces for minorities in technology to thrive and feel welcome.
I was looking at the station map looking for how many stops until the station I had to get off at. I'm fluent in Japanese though - and don't think I was giving off a "I'm lost" look. She simply assumed I was lost because I don't look Japanese and was staring at a map.
Instead of assuming she was racist, intentionally or unintentionally, I assumed she was trying to be nice and offer me help because she thought I looked lost.
But extending hospitality or a helping hand is now seen as a microaggresion against a person.
It's gotten to the point that I let doors slam into peoples' faces less I make them think I'm being sexist for holding the door for them. After all - if they want me to hold the door they can ask me to hold it for them. Otherwise they're fully capable of opening the door themselves.
Once-upon-a-time it was polite to keep a door held open for someone. Not anymore.
It's called offering alternative points of view that are more likely than them being a victim of some form of implicit racism.
Perhaps, maybe it isn't the person is racist, but that the person is a nice person who wants to help.
God forbid someone wants to help you without you having to explicitly ask for help.
Sorry if my post came off to you as more about my feelings than about nice people not being racist. Nice people will see a person crying and ask them what's wrong?. Not wait for the crying person to ask for someone to talk to (crying people will almost never ask a stranger for someone to talk to).
Likewise - nice people will ask if you need directions if you appear lost.
The world would be a better place with more nice people willing to help others without having to be asked. I think most people, not just me, would agree with that sentiment.
But turning everyone who's just trying to help into some aggressor is exactly how to make the opposite world.
A couple of the workers who'd been there a while were having a conversation and apparently something funny came so they giggled and laughed. Their laughter coincided with the new person's struggles...
The new person took offense at the laughter asking, are you laughing at me? You all are laughing at me!
It was furthest from the truth. It was just coincidental timing but that new person fully believed they were being laughed at.
So, just because someone thinks something is being directed at them or is being malicious doesn't make it so.
Do you see how this person might mistaken that laughter for being at their expense?
On more than one occasion, I had people in front of their buildings casually spit towards me but always managing to just miss. Other times they might pump their chests up as one might walk by... Do I go ahead and write on that all so and so are a bunch of baddies, look at what I went thru?
Most people get similar or different shit from other people. We don't all feel like it's worthy of traffic driving blog posts.
Not only does she feel like she doesn't belong there, she's not even allowed to feel like she doesn't belong there because you know better than she does about how she should feel.
And this is not about asking if you can help. This about the assumption that the person you see before you must be lost because they don't belong there. It's about the fact that most white CS geeks aren't used to seeing black women in their midst. I have a feeling that you picked up on this point (she makes it pretty plain) but the implications make you too uncomfortable, so you've taken the pedantic position of 'they're just trying to help' to avoid confronting the idea that maybe, just maybe, this boys' club we've built for ourselves ends up excluding some pretty talented people.
Also, the question I asked you wasn't rhetorical: why did you read this article and immediately decide that your experience, which doesn't relate to this person's at all (she being asked several times in her school if she's lost, you being asked once in a foreign country) deserved to be heard? Why do you insist on covering up someone else's experience with yours? Why do you feel like you get to dictate whether someone's emotions are correct or not?
Luckily the concept of being lost was shared context for the given example and number of occurrences is irrelevant so long as they don't come multiple times from the same individuals.
>Not only does she feel like she doesn't belong there, she's not even allowed to feel like she doesn't belong there because you know better than she does about how she should feel.
Feelings don't change reality - and yes. I believe that the world should have more positive beliefs in one another than negative beliefs in one another. People get along better when they aren't assuming the worst in one another.
Imagine a scenario where a friend tells you they are too busy with work to go see a new movie with you. Depending on whether you believe them or not - your feelings will differ. They've been busy for weeks! The movie is now out of theaters entirely. Have your feelings changed? Sure. Most people would, at this point, suspect their friend of lying to them. So you feel like shit, you think your friend is avoiding you, and are sad. Other people have tried to convince you that your friend was busy, but you refused to listen to them because your feelings told you otherwise.
Turns out they were simply busy like they claimed to be. But now you're pissy at them for "avoiding you" and refuse to talk to them because you've convinced yourself, contrary to any evidence, that they were lying to you because your feelings told you so.
They feel like they don't belong because they feel like they don't belong. Because they feel like they don't belong they see other peoples' actions as affirming that belief. It's a matter of perspective that they feel this way. So yes, feelings can be wrong and assuming the worst will always result in the worst being visible.
The world needs less negativity - not more.
>This about the assumption that the person you see before you must be lost because they don't belong there.
Statistically true, so it's likely a safe assumption to make that will likely benefit more people than it "harms". The fact it is asked at all shows that it is true more often than not. The same reason why I'm not asked if I want a fork or chopsticks at a Chinese restaurant: more often than not, people request a fork.
Now - I could assume the Chinese restaurant is racist for giving me a fork instead of chopsticks. It's a microaggression against me! Why assume I want a fork? I'm capable of using chopsticks!
But that viewpoint is pessimistic, self-centered, self-victimizing, and feeds negativity into itself. I prefer to shift my perspective: most people ask for forks, so they gave me a fork. I don't give myself a victim-complex, I see how it benefits other people of society (less people have to ask for a fork!), and it's a rather neutral viewpoint to hold that is just as reasonable and probably more likely than the former.
So to answer your question: I don't give a shit for their feelings - because their feelings come from their pre-determined pessimistic viewpoint. They're looking for a negative reasoning behind an action and found it. They got what they were looking for, and just like their truth-telling friend, they believe their friend to be a liar.
>their feelings come from their pre-determined pessimistic viewpoint
Reach into what you know about computer science departments and the decline of women in that field. Reach into what you know about developing professionally in mathematics as a black woman. Imagine what it's like to have everyone who you meet assume you don't know what you're talking about or that you only got where you are because of affirmative action. Imagine having to prove yourself every day in your chosen field because "statistically" there aren't very many people like you in this field.
This is 'evidence' you're ignoring.
Now justify:
>their feelings come from their pre-determined pessimistic viewpoint.
You're correct in that the pessimistic viewpoint is predetermined. It's predetermined by experience.
No one's asking anyone to feel guilty about asking the woman if she's lost. We're being asked to understand the underlying implications of this recurring speech event.
Negativity feeds into itself.
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...
Its is like the social sphere is splitting into two entities: those who are approachable and those who fancy themselves so special as to not be approached.
Add the two together and there's an even higher likelihood the next person you see will think you couldn't possibly have the same major as them, are incompetent, didn't earn your way to your position, or generally don't belong.
It happens all the time when you go to a place where people like you don't usually go.
It happened to me in Asia all the time. Sure it wasn't fun, but acting like people were being racist isn't helping you at all.
She is making it into a bigger deal than it is.
It's a mild annoyance at best.
That is a load of crap along with this whole "microagression" movement.
I see a girl that seems interesting to me, screw up my courage, and try to say something that sounds helpful to start a conversation. Then you come along and classify that contact attempt like a KKK rally and I'm a racist?!? No wonder studies are showing that male students are starting to steer clear.
With all these social apps, we pretty much have destroyed anything social in person.
Now, I should say that my life experience is not white-suburbia, so save time on the name calling.
edit: because people here can't comprehend the view from the other side, maybe louis ck can help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDh4qk1Tl8k
Wat?
Do you go up to men and start random conversations? Does that sound like it might be annoying to deal with?
Also: http://kateharding.net/2009/10/08/guest-blogger-starling-sch...
> So when you, a stranger, approach me, I have to ask myself: Will this man rape me?
Does that sound like an experience the woman just has to deal with because the OP feels entitled to talk to every girl that makes his heart flutter?
I start conversations with people all the time, yeah. No, it doesn't sound annoying. Funny thing about people, they LOVE to talk about themselves. Try it sometime. Er, not talking about yourself, trying to get to know a stranger. You'll learn a lot.
> approaching women who are strangers, especially in environments where they are trapped or not expecting approaches, is high stakes for both of you, and best attempted very casually if at all, with a strong awareness that any approach may be unwelcome.
a.) Asking if someone is lost is about as "casual" and "low stakes" as you can get in a damn college lecture hall/classroom building. Are you being serious?
b.) If someone feels vulnerable and not expecting "approaches" (whatever the fuck that means) in a college building containing lecture halls, prof. offices, and classrooms, perhaps the problem is with the college or the person, not the "approaches" as you call them.
> Does that sound like an experience the woman just has to deal with because the OP feels entitled to talk to every girl that makes his heart flutter?
When anyone approaches me, I could ask myself "will this man/woman kill me?" Do I let it run my life, no.
The OP is as "entitled" to talk to someone as you are to judge them for it. Your argument is really, really weak.
Also, I didn't click your link. No context was given besides the word "also."
edit: a word
Yes, I do. I've met lifelong friends that way. In fact, I seem to get approached by a lot of strangers and told a lot of things. Learned about the history of rocks in Sioux Falls that way.
> So when you, a stranger, approach me, I have to ask myself: Will this man rape me?
If that's the first thought then society has failed this person with fear mongering and bad statistics. Crime has gone down since the 70's, but we act like the world is much more dangerous. We need to work on that instead of forcing an inhuman social isolation.
Yes, because I'm human, and yes, a women is entitled to start a conversation with anyone they want since they too are human. There are some cultural rules depending on place, but yes, this is how humans meet each other.
So, in your world, guys cannot go talk to a random girl, and since we are for equality, girls cannot go talk to a random guy. Everyone marches to class and leaves class without interacting with anyone. What kind of horrible world is this for the social creature that is human? Some of my best friends were met through random hall conversations. I can only imagine the feelings of isolation of a person in this world.
If you are not offended from time to time in college, you should ask for your money back because you didn't learn a damn thing and cannot deal with life as it happens.
From her words, she's basically feeling confirmation of being stereotyped for her race. She's talking about her feelings in this article. Read the article for how it's intended. The tone is emotional, not scientific - she says some speculative exaggerations "[not a day goes by when I'm questioned]" and doesn't back up the racism conclusion from A/B testing, or any investigation of why she is being questioned daily.
It's undeniable there exists racism, and she's apparently experienced enough of fallout from it to have the phrase on hand, "stereotype threat and feelings of isolation."
Now, should her feelings of being underrepresented in society be: A) ignored and dismissed B) accepted and discussed
B. Next step could be instead of dismissing, to reach out to her and say, "We are concerned and upset your personal experience is unpleasant in the STEM education world." Everything else, the reconciling / realizing it's "not a big deal" is up to her to decide. She's not at the point where she's publicly rationalizing yet - I guess she's rolling in the emotions currently. So join in with her. That's a first step to helping balance out the unfairness of being a minority.
Our office is pretty good, but you can see how without strong leadership and good men it might go all brogrammer and hostile.
This is pathetic Hacker News, pathetic.
No, the commenter said many of them were weeded out because the classes were hard. If you have affirmative action helping people get into university with lower test scores, isn't that exactly what you'd expect to see?
When you don't have logic on your side, just call people names, right?
Please learn to separate demographic differences from individual differences before calling someone ignorant.
And you wanted to assume "affirmative action" had some part in this without knowing a thing about this woman. Horrible.
Please learn to stop perpetuating racism by blaming the victims. It's ignorant, disgusting, and cowardly.
Ah, and here we have uncovered the elephant in the room.
Damn elephant.
I'm sure this woman has a legitimate complaint, I'm sure at least two people have asked her if she was lost before. I'm also guessing she may be bloviating a little bit. Nobody in college gives a damn if you're lost, lets be honest. If you're lost, you ask for directions. Happens all the time. Unless, of course, you actually look lost. Even then, people usually don't give a damn.
I went to UMD, College Park, and the weed-out classes were damn hard. UMDCP is only a top 15 program, I can't imagine how hard Stanford would be.
At UMDCP people asked me for directions all the time, and I was happy to help. Not once did I ever ask anyone if they were lost. Nobody gives a shit. They really, truly just don't. Anyone who "does" care actually doesn't, they're just trying to break the ice or whatever.
I do take issue with her blaming the CS107 professor for contributing to sexism. She seems to be saying that CS107 is discriminatory merely because it is difficult and many people drop out. She notes that women seem to drop out disproportionately often, but this might not be something the professor has the power to do anything about - she certainly doesn't say anything the professor does which might be part of the problem, other than just making the class hard. Watering down core classes in the name of increasing diversity doesn't help anyone.
For example - someone who has never coded before in their life - there shouldn't be some expectation that you had a computer growing up, built a website for peers in middle school and are already an expert by the time you hit your first class. There's plenty of capable people who a) never had the advantages/wealth to support some of these things b) haven't discovered their interest and "weed out" core classes don't help with that. You may take longer to get up to the same place as someone with the advantages above, but that doesn't rule you out from being an effective engineer/computer scientist.
(At least, at the good schools; this may not be true at third rate schools, I wouldn't know.)
This requires that someone spent years playing an instrument, typically with lots of instruction, both of which are very hard to do with no money.
Some may get this free in high school, but the high school I went to had performance exams to get into those high school freshman classes.
There was no music at all at my junior high.
I got 6 months of instrument training in 6th grade, and that was all that public schools offered me, and I know that some people had even less than that from the schools in their area.
The point being that it's not just computers. If we want to give an equal opportunity to students, there's a tremendous amount that needs fixing that is not at all limited to computers.
Very, very true.
> coming up with things that can happen...can get great talent
Do you mean things like the famous programs by Intel and Westinghouse or something else?
Each racial group has subsets that trend towards different desires; e.g. as a white guy I knew lots of other white guys in high school who were anti-intellectual, and thought that going to college inherently meant you were a snob.
I don't know how to change subgroup attitudes like that, but at any rate it sure would be nice to give opportunity to those who want it.
The primary way that that is hard is that it costs hard money. In my example, money for student instruments and money for music instructors (typically far more than for the instruments, although both are nontrivial).
(In my areas public libraries have been cutting hours (and days) for decades. This is part of the ridiculously negative trend that we, as a society, must stop being foolish about, like these other issues.)
Statistics, OTOH, averages together those who don't want, along with those who do want, which is clearly unfair to those who do want.
It does take some privilege to have a computer. Maybe the kids who are dropping out haven't had the time. Maybe they just need a longer runway to get up to speed.
If the professor doesn't have the responsibility to make the class accessible to a diverse group, who does?
> She seems to be saying that CS107 is discriminatory merely because it is difficult and many people drop out.
She does not say that. You implying that she says that or that that is the reason is BLATANTLY racist and sexist. The reason that there are not enough black women making it through that class is NOT because they are stupid or lazy.
I find your attitude offensive.
EDIT: I'll take your downvotes with pride. Care to actually indicate how I am wrong?
Connecting students with upperclassmen in their majors, assigning study groups, creating additional projects or courses to help newcomers learn are all ways to counteract the negative effects of study group bias without watering down the material at all.
Hacker news is open to the public last time I checked.
What is pathetic is you base the community on 'First' not on how it progresses out.
They are getting down voted atm pretty fast, this style of karma harvesting by mis-representing comments not liked by the community is pretty Reddit.
Something like, not being able to reply to the "root" of a comment tree without some paltry number of karma, like 10.
Don't get me wrong, I don't care about karma scores, but as you point out, it isn't very hard to "farm" karma if one so chooses.
Clearly there's more to comment ordering than karma - I find it hard to believe that in less than 60 seconds, a comment is posted, then the page is refreshed enough times by enough viewers to find the fresh karmaless comment, who then upvote it in time for me to load it on my pageview.
In short, stop it with these "top comment(s) = HN hivemind" whines.
Also when it's a controversial subject like diversity/racism.
Initially when I read this story I was gobsmacked. How could there be so many racist idiots at Stanford? Then I thought of other possible explanations: perhaps she was just looking around at the architecture and just looked lost?
I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt, so I don't think it's fair to automatically assume racism. Could she not just politely ask one of the people "no, I'm not lost, why do you ask?"
[edit] please a comment explaining what you disagree with, rather than just downvoting.
And yes, I myself have some personal experience of real racism. If this is the worst that is happening in the tech space then things are pretty good.
Anyway, this is an important topic, so if you do have any experiences with racism/sexism it would be good to write an article or blog post about it.
Have you ever thought you might just look lost and people are trying to help out? Why do you immediately think everyone is somehow racist by asking you this question?
"Too often, however, this means that by week six in the ten week quarter system, the class enrollment makeup drops dramatically from being optimistically diverse to being exclusively male, white and Asian."
It's because the classes are difficult. I took these classes when I went to school and if you don't really know your stuff, you will fail.
I don't know the person that wrote the article, but it seems she wants to be taken seriously immediately. Nobody gets taken seriously immediately, even if you are white or asian. Everyone has to put the work in.
"I can put that power to good use by creating more spaces for minorities in technology to thrive and feel welcome"
Why don't you just say African-american students. Asians and Hispanics are also minorities.
When I went to school, I had many African-american students that were my classmates. As the classes went from 100 level to 300 level and above (major-level and weeder classes), many dropped out.
They were never treated any differently in class. We also need to remember that many universities have quotas for minorities and give extra points on the SAT for just checking a box.
This however, does not guarantee that a person has the knowledge to actually pass the classes once they get in.
[citation needed]
The University of Michigan used a 150-point scale to rank applicants, with 100 points needed to guarantee admission. The University gave underrepresented ethnic groups, including African-Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans, an automatic 20-point bonus towards their score, while a perfect SAT score was worth 12 points.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratz_v._Bollinger
That got ruled unconstitutional, so now its implicit:
Asian Americans, Lee says, are penalized by 50 points — in other words, they had to do that much better to win admission.
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-adv-asian-race...
See graph of proportion admitted by SAT score.
Data is 1997, but if you think anything has changed, you're kidding yourself.
Also, how do you know how your African-American classmates were treated?
I find that a sometimes simple questions like this can turn into people calling me a SJW (then dismissing everything I ever say), "your the racist for accusing me of being racist", people thinking that I'm being mean to them, etc.
Also, what exactly are you saying? I can't see how "no, why do you ask" said with a smiling face in a friendly tone could be construed as either aggressive or SJW, but then maybe I don't live somewhere where people are incredibly touchy.
The evidence shows that almost all of us, including members of minorities, are conditioned to have racial prejudice.
The reason this is a problem is that it systematically puts some people at a disadvantage based on their appearance, even though the evidence also shows that within group differences are greater than between group differences.
Unconscious bias can be overcome by making it conscious.
We are all racists. We can overcome the problem if we face it.
Trying to protect people from having to consider whether their actions arise from unconscious bias is actively working to perpetuate the problem.
Have you ever thought you might just look lost and people are trying to help out? Why do you immediately think everyone is somehow racist by asking you this question?
Second-guessing lived experience (it turns out that people subject to racism are actually quite good at telling when it's happening to them), check.
It's because the classes are difficult.
Seriously, think for even one second about the implication you're making here.
Why don't you just say African-american students. Asians and Hispanics are also minorities.
"All lives matter!" It's not the author's responsibility to tackle the perfect at the expense of the good.
They were never treated any differently in class.
You have no idea how they were treated. They do. Let them speak.
> Seriously, think for even one second about the implication you're making here.
Seriously, read the article before commenting. The author said that the class in question is Stanford's CS "weed out" class.
A "weed out" class is a class designed to be (1) difficult, and (2) come early in a major. The idea is that if you can get through the weed out class, you should be able to get through the rest of the classes in that major.
The theory is that by putting one of the hardest classes first, you avoid students ending up in the terrible position of spending 3 or 4 years majoring in one field and then have to give up and either drop out or switch majors when they hit a difficult required class that they just cannot get through.
Say the course is very hard and it cuts 2/3rds of the total students. If the cuts were proportional by race, we now have 6 white, 4 asian, and 0 blacks.
There was no racism involved in the class, the fact that no blacks remain is a result of the class brutally weeding out 2/3rds of the students and that the initial number of blacks was very low.
You can quibble over numbers, but the basic idea remains that large percentage cuts in an unbalanced population can make it tend more toward homogeneity.
Or that they have some other reason to have not learned as much (say, worse primary schools? differing cultural values?).
It is very well known that affirmative action tends to take the form of lowering standards for the groups being favored. If this is in fact true, running into a non-biased filter would tend to undo some of its effects. As noted towards the end of the post you're calling offensive (We also need to remember that many universities have quotas for minorities and give extra points on the SAT for just checking a box.). If this is not true... a weed-out class would not be observed to change the class demographics.
For instance, students from wealthier backgrounds are more likely to have had serious prior exposure to computer science before coming to Stanford, such as through high school computer science classes with well equipped computer labs. Students from much poorer backgrounds might not have had these pre-college opportunities.
This can make their first CS class harder for them--especially when it is a weed out class at a top CS school.
So you might have four kinds of students.
1. Those who had significant CS experience before Stanford, and came to Stanford with the intent of majoring in CS.
2. Those who had significant CS experience before Stanford, but came intending to major in something else, but are taking the intro CS course to see what CS is like.
3. Those without a significant pre-Stanford CS background, but came intending to major in CS.
4. Those without a significant pre-Stasnford CS background, and came intending to major in something else, but are taking the intro CS course to see what it is like.
Those in group #1 will have the best chance of not getting weeded out.
Those in #2 will also have a good chance, because of their background.
#3 is more iffy. Their school background lacks CS, but they intended to be CS majors, so many of them will have self-studied CS to make up for their poor formal education.
#4...these people are going to have a seriously hard time. They are much less likely than the #3 people to have done anything to make up for their high school's inadequacies in CS.
I'd expect the distribution of minorities among these four groups to skew towards #3 and #4, and so I'd expect them to get hit more by the weed out class. This is not because they are not as smart--they are just not as well prepared coming in due to inequalities in pre-college education.
TL;DR: the pipeline problem doesn't start at college.
This is where I mainly take issue with the contemporary SJW/PC types. The fact that some minorities (for the sake of argument let's take white men v black women) are underrepresented in the number of, say, CS graduates is a bad thing, a problem that needs solving. The way to go about this, in my view, is not, and I repeat, not, by just admitting/hiring more black women to universities/companies despite being lower qualified than white men. We could do this, and pat ourselves in the back for a job well done and leave with our outstanding moral fibre confirmed, and be very politically correct. But that changes nothing.
The fact is that to solve this complex issue we need to look into the root causes of the problem that causes black people to perform statistically worse in tests, or women to be less likely to enroll in a CS degree. And that takes a whole hell lot more effort than superficially sweeping the issue under the rug with affirmative action et al. It would be a massive undertaking that would involve shakeups at the core of our society. Naturally the champions of the politically correct aren't so inclined, and prefer to simply sit and be outraged by, and offering as only solution to simply "cheat" until the statistics seem agreeable. And that, I stress, alters none of the core societal problems that caused those twisted statistics in the first place.
I don't know about you, but I would prefer to see these problems rectified and true equality of opportunity be established rather than just shrugging it off and twisting the statistics until they are "good enough".
Maybe.
If the main issue is cultural attitudes (either of the people in question, or of the people running the schools), sure.
But if it's mostly about access to resources (as suggested in another post here, time-at-keyboard), that's merely a large undertaking and doesn't need to be coordinated as well. In this case, the greatest requires resource would probably be patience.
Not always. Just have a look at the Ellen Pao trial, and the github "sexism" episode. (Sexism rather than racism in both these cases).
Sometimes people just infer a nefarious motive or bias that doesn't actually exist.
Quotas for minorities have been bright-line illegal for decades (at least since Regents v. Bakke in 1978). So, if you are going to argue that many universities are outright breaking the law, you probably should support that with something.
And contrary to your implication, people don't have to be "racist" to treat people differently. It may just be unfamiliarity, but the net effect is still to give those subject to it a feeling of not belonging.
Everyone has to put the work in.
Maybe. But the amount of work needed to prove that you are "one of the team" is certainly not the same for everyone, no matter how much you want that to be the case.
Have you ever thought you might just have difficulty emphasizing and people are trying to tell you something valuable? Why do you immediately think anybody would "look lost" in general?
"It's because the classes are difficult. I took these classes when I went to school and if you don't really know your stuff, you will fail."
Right... Actually, this is where this ends with me. Mr Hauggis, you have definitely crossed the line.
"They were never treated any differently in class."
Do you really enjoy such confidence in your own ability to observe, feel and emphasize with people? Because from my experiences in the US, this sounds like a very strong claim.
Being in a new place, looking around at the architecture, etc. That seems a pretty reasonable explanation. Why the automatic assumption of racism?
It's fairly simple. Young students are often spotted trying to find some location on campus. There aren't as many women taking CS. Even fewer black women.
Therefore people's expectations upon seeing a young black woman in the CS department is that she's lost.
That does not make those people racist and I didn't think the author was claiming any such thing. It may mean the system as a whole is racist or perpetuating older racist policies through societal inertia. When those problems are solved we would expect the percentage of black female CS students to roughly track the general population... Then they won't be unicorns and people's default expectations will change.
Yet so many Americans apparently believe that people are so fragile that a few offensive comments, or even statements meant to help (!) (albeit possibly in a clueless fashion) are ultra-damaging and a huge societal problem.
That brings up another point: if she really was lost but no one took notice of and asked her, would she also think they're racist?
Yeah, you don't. We know.
Explain to us all how you somehow magically know that she "hasn't put the work in".
Yeah, you don't. We know.
Your entire statement is bullshit designed to shrug off racism.
Also, please don't engage in personal attacks.