It's clear that the goals are extremely laudable -- to help a disadvantaged group gain experience.
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.
The problem is that it's a lot harder to execute -- if you have a "Kids Code" event, you are guaranteed to get a disproportionately larger number of white males.
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?
> 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?
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."
There's nothing wrong with helping one particular group, when that group needs it. Every charitable organization has to choose some particular problem to address, and by extension, choose NOT to address other problems. If they have too wide of a focus, then they risk losing effectiveness (particularly if their resources are small). By focusing on one distinct group, which is clearly underrepresented in the CS world, this group has a higher chance of success than one with a more vague "let's help everyone" mentality.
very good point - I imagine though that it's MAINLY to get attention from groups that would donate to such a cause... The more niche the demographic the easier it is to raise money from institutes who aim to help those demos. So short answer, money probably...
We can look at a silver lining and hope they expand into other demos, we will see i guess.
and the problem with this is that the groups have a conflict of interest, if they do solve the problem that they are addressing then no one will continue to fund them. So the only way that they can stay in business is to make sure that the problem isn't solved, gets worse or is seen to get worse. Erin Pizzey discusses how this has happened to feminist organisations in this video[1].
I think a better way to view these types of groups (and why they are so specialized) may be to view them as support groups almost entirely focused on pragmatic results and functional improvements (as opposed to psychological ones). Restricting them by defining characteristics encourages people defined by those same characteristics to participate when otherwise they might not.
Well I mean, I don't think many people are bothered by Girl Scouts focusing on girls. Perhaps that is because Boy Scouts also exists, but back in this domain there is always the developing Hacker Scouts, which is inclusive.
"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.
You're right. Actually it is sinful to help any finite number of people, if you are not helping all of humanity. The best thing to do is to never try to do anything helpful, because then you might be construed as discriminatory by people with a political agenda.
I don't care about the geopolitical implications of a group like this. I don't care what message it sends to other groups. All I care about is that it help those girls who attend the event. Why? Because I know movements like this can work.
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.
I wasn't thinking about race; now I am. I believe minority focused groups, such as this, perpetuate racial discrimination. Can't we all just be one big group of humans? Disagree with my viewpoint? Please comment before you downvote. I'm willing to rethink my views.
You may not be thinking about race, but an outsider looking at the tech industry probably is. Ideally, yes whether everyone is black or white shouldn't really matter, but I'm sure you feel the same way as well when you are in an 'ethnic' neighborhood or gathering. You don't feel the sense of belonging or at the very least, the racial apathy that everyone else feels. By gathering people with the same upbringing together to work toward a common goal, it builds camaraderie and morale, not so different from why companies care about 'culture-fit'.
I won't go into what's right and what's wrong or what the solution should be. I myself am often skeptical about the purpose of a lot of racial discussion, but I don't see anything terrible about black girls trying to come together and code. I won't ignore the basic human psychology that you will gravitate toward people you feel you have more in common with.
> 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.
This thread isn't going to resolve anything on this "issue"; just look up affirmative action. There's the logic you provide, which is solid. The counterargument is that certain groups currently have a major disadvantage and specifically targeting them improves things, despite it excluding on race or other characteristics. In this case, it may be that "black girls" wouldn't feel comfortable or would be significantly outnumbered in a general "group of humans" so excluding people provides a net benefit in this case.
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".
If black girls don't feel comfortable learning with people who aren't, how are they going to cope with a job in the currently white-male dominated industry anyway? Sheltering people doesn't seem like good preparation for reality.
Trying to join the masses of white males have often resulted in failure, should those black women that are trying to learn something wait until they might be accepted instead of starting their own safe spaces, just to please your idea of "one big group of humans"?
This is the problem exactly. As a woman, I never felt that I was welcomed and struggled to "belong" among the typical coders/programmers. There are too many contributing factors to even begin to list here, but I've spoken to enough other women about their feelings regarding tech and the tech space to know they were never individual to me.
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 more like a subculture. If people in the group already identify with the group, then I don't think this is going to hurt. It's about having fun with people you relate to. If you like participating in "black girl culture" or "gaming nerd culture" or "english-speaking perl guru culture" you're going to have a better time (on average) than "one big group of humans culture".
I tend to agree that its a cultural issue and the values that culture champions, not an explicitly racial issue. There's no law of nature keeping black females from coding, but the values traditionally promoted by the culture black females tend to identify with doesn't include coding, which Kimberly Bryant is trying to change. If they actively kept non-black females who identify with this culture from joining, I would feel a bit more concerned that it's heading down the wrong path. According to the Eventbrite link, no such requisites are stated, only that the program is intended for females aged 7-17.
When people come up to me in the middle of dinner and tell me I should not be with my fiancee due to our respective skin colors, it is pretty difficult even for me not to think about it sometimes. And I think I have a fairly sheltered position in society relative to your average young black girl.
You can't not think about race if people discriminate against you based on it. That was the point. Some people are forced to think about their identity categories.
Disagree with my viewpoint? Please comment before you downvote.
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.
Or, it indicates acknowledgement that people will rabidly attack anything even remotely resembling a challenge of the status quo when it comes to sociological issues. You just did it, too. Why on earth do you play off "think before you down vote" as a negative?!
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.
Considering this is HN, I'd call the atmosphere in this thread excessively negative, snarky, and unhelpful, and yes, rabid, relatively speaking. That being partially aided by people like you who called out a perfectly innocent comment as a troll.
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.
You and the reference comment are engaging in dog-whistle politics, where you make 'innocent' comments that you are well-aware is a coded call to like-minded people to band together. Characterising the comments as 'innocent' is a hallmark of such things.
I have no strong opinions on this but perhaps the initiative isn't meant to make you think or not think about race or gender. It's not designed to make you more racially sensitive or be more considerate towards women.
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.
Sure we can...however, as a former (post-race discussion) black man learning to program on my own, I can say that the problems of "urban black youth" (as I was once called as an undergrad by a professor) are unique and not going away with wish-think -- or -- technology. Therefore, targeted programs at the underrepresented are required in the same vein that laser surgery is targeted at the cancer cells and not the whole body (i.e., your "one big group of humans"). Long live humans... cheers
No one cares if you are thinking of race, because obviously it is not about you. It's easy to not think about racism when racism isn't an issue in your environment.
It's not as if now that you're exposed to racism, that you will perpetuate it, right?
Begging your pardon, I grew up in South Africa during apartheid and feel very much the same as the OP. I recognize that these groups have value for victims of racism and are done with good intentions. However, I also feel that if they are over-done or are started with more of a pride about one's (traditionally persecuted) race than the humble intention to serve others, they are only breeding animosity between races and keeping race as a "big deal" in our minds.
I'm sorry if my opinion offended you. It's not that I feel yours is a terrible opinion to have, I believe Morgan Freeman shares it.
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.
Your opinion did not offend me, but the phrase "It's easy to not think about racism when racism isn't an issue in your environment" strikes me as a No True Scotsman argument. "Think we should ignore race? You must not be around racists". My environment was world-famous for it's racists.
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.
Condescending maybe but GP has a point. If racism is already a big deal, ignoring it isn't going to help. Explicitly addressing it and helping out the less-privileged group will.
Doesn't really address the point at all. Maybe racism is best solved by treating all as equals instead of creating further insular groups? It does seem logically absurd on its face.
The first step is to stop snarking at people who dare to ask.
> Maybe racism is best solved by treating all as equals instead of creating further insular groups?
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 not "further insular". It's a group that already exists. Treating people as all equal is fine. Pretending that all people are treated as equal in society is not helpful.
But middle-class white men are disproportionately encouraged to be programmers. As the article points out: "There were very few women and nobody of color. I found that puzzling since the startup industry was obviously booming." So to be fair, we should either stop encouraging them, or start encouraging people who are outside that group.
Seems to be it would be more productive to try to encourage more than a minority of a minority, as it were. Female programmers are already rare, blacks more so just by statistics. What about other races? Hispanic women are out of luck? Asian? Native?
That isn't a singular problem. Helping a group is not just another way of discriminating against them. Just as slapping someone's face is not just another way of kissing them.
I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to be condescending, I was trying to make a point about what I think is wrong about his/her way of thinking.
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'm also sceptic, but if they are purposely "sampling" black girls into some social "learn to code" program with limited resources, it might not be the worst thing to do.
Depending on location and neighbourhoods, or scope of the program they might actually have less success drawing anybody with a less specific target group.
You probably have the luxury of living a life where racism is not readily visible. Not everyone does, and minority focused groups help, among many other things, bring attention to these problems that have more and more impact the further down the income scale you go.
I don't see too many black and hispanic people at startups in SV. Whether it is intentional racism or not white men dominate the space. I'm not hating on white people but this is the reality.
I really value initiatives that teach people to code, and I've taught at a few myself. But I wonder at the value of this increasing focus on certain minorities. Should we have classes focussed on teaching gay people to code?
I think they are simply trying to get an under-represented group interested in coding, with people they will likely be more comfortable around. This isn't an elite group of hackers excluding other sexes and races, it's meant to be a springboard into coding for a demographic which generally doesn't.
Being gay may make you a minority, but not an obviously visible minority that people could instantly discriminate against.
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.
While it may seem on the surface that a racially/gender motivated coding class is superfluous, I think that the founders are seeking to appeal to the complete opposite of the coder stereotype (aka white male).
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.
This is an organization started by a black woman who has learned to code for helping black girls learn to code. Can we just give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she knows more about reaching people with similar experiences than we do?
The idea is so innocuous. Nobody is being hurt by it. Maybe some people will be helped. It doesn't prevent anyone else from being helped the same way. There's no real use stirring up a shitstorm about it.
Some political zealots are ruining nice things for the rest of us because all they care about is their own ideology.
I'm a bit sceptical of initiatives that carry their ethnic and gender requirements in their name, but I guess those initiatives can't exactly hurt "diversity" either.
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!
It's very true that if you aren't based in SV but visit it regularly this is something that jars every damn time. Doing something positive about it is great.
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.
I never thought of SV as a monoculture, when it comes to nationality and race (it does suffer from a bad case of groupthink though...)
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.
I believe such group can become a subdivision of the greater coding community rather than a segregation of it. they can learn among themselves and still be part of the greater community.
This exchange of opinions is not constructive. Helping people is never wrong. The only objectionable part about this is that it isn't helping everyone, but only a select group.
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.
Why is it when we talk about gender, race, and technology together we get so bent out of shape? It’s a fact that in the US the tech scene is predominantly made up of white males. Because of that we have some people who want to add some diversity to our community. And these people have designed and built special programs to address this. Try and remember what got you interested in the tech scene may not work for the next kid.
One of my friends very young girls are black. My friend is raising them to be geeks and the girls are unhappy about how few super heroes look like them. Without programs like this, presumably their distress will extend to other areas as they grow older. Kudos to Kimberly for starting this.
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.