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In the 1970s, I witnessed the beneficiaries of "free" college education choose majors like "Mass communications" (radio station disc jockey), Sports management, and such.
Don't scream "racist!"
I didn't say what race they were... but you guessed, anyway.
Oh, and they dropped out after a semester or two.
Also,the reason asians do better in the Tech field is because they are disproportionately in it , not because they have strong math and science backgrounds.
Further more, Black people may make up 12.6% of the population nation wide, but they are only 7% of California's population, 3% of Washington and 1.6% of Oregon. Where as Asians make up 14% of the population in California, 7% in Washington and 3.7% in Oregon.
These people are going to go to Schools liked UC Berkeley or UWash or Oregon all of which have partnerships with local tech companies. So the tech Industry isnt going to mirror national Demographics, its going to mirror local Demographics of the companies.
At last a breath of sanity on this thread.
I'll add that another reason that you find Asians heavily in the tech field is that for immigrants whose first language is not English, it's easier for them to progress in their career as one is evaluated on their technical prowess and skills rather than how well they speak or are extroverted. Now of course, unless they develop the "soft skills" that are desirable in management, it's hard for them to progress in that area (this is true for all technical people, not just Asians).
Sure, it's important to diversify the tech workforce....it's silly, pointless to see all the usual nonsense when someone like Jesse Jackson says companies should do that. Otherwise it tends to perpetrate that "bro culture" in some companies that women (of any ethnicity) finds unwelcome, just as an example.
I would ask Jesse Jackson why I've never once heard him or any other "black leader" mention David Blackwell or Ronald Mickens as role models.
Per your 1 or 2 black kids in math competitions point...my aunt's 15 year old foster son is the 1st one I ever met, and he's been heavily influenced by my family's embrace of STEM geekness. To him, that's perfectly normal stuff, spending summertime at math camp.
For resources...uhm the MIT Calculus textbook has been free online for years. That's free of charge, no money, free free free. I have a copy on every computer I own, but if I didn't own a computer, I simply go to public library or other free internet spot, and visit: Textbook | Calculus Online Textbook | MIT OpenCourseWare
At the press of a button, I am reading a foundational math book used at the greatest technical college in the entire world. Newsflash - MIT isn't the only top notch college trying to give STEM knowledge away. The non-****/politics portion of the Internet has free info on every academic subject there is, just sitting there, waiting for people to go find it and read it. And it's all free. The public library has all the books you would ever need to have the same STEM knowledge as anyone with a STEM doctorate. All those books just sit there, collecting dust.
Java, ANSI C, C++, COBOL, Assembly, SQL, HTML/XML, etc....you can learn them all, with textbooks, software, all of it...FOR FREE. In fact, the best one stop IDE in existence is Eclipse, and yeah...that's free for learning, and only needs licensing for publishing and certain enterprise mods. I have a totally free Oracle install running on Oracle Linux 6 sitting on a Virtual Box on my home PC. I can't publish with it obviously, but I can sure as hell learn with it...all for free.
All anyone, black people included, has to do is WANT TO. It's all out there, right now, for free. Thing is, it would seem that given the populations in the STEM/geek world, black people just by and large aren't going after this kind of knowledge. I have no idea why, but it is what it is, and race is corollary, not causation.
I hear ya, I went to college with several brilliant black men that went into STEM fields. It's got nothing to do with pigment and everything to do with poverty and culture.
The problem is that you CANNOT FIX THE PROBLEM when kids are heading off to college or after the fact with whining about hiring in STEM when there are so few blacks getting tech degrees.
You have to start early.
Expecting some kid that hasn't taken a lot of math and science in highschool....to not get the crap kicked out of them in college STEM majors is like handing some recent highschool graduate a basketball for the first time and telling them they better practice hard because they are going to be on the college basketball team in the fall. It's not going to end well for either kid.
I'll add that another reason that you find Asians heavily in the tech field is that for immigrants whose first language is not English, it's easier for them to progress in their career as one is evaluated on their technical prowess and skills rather than how well they speak or are extroverted. Now of course, unless they develop the "soft skills" that are desirable in management, it's hard for them to progress in that area (this is true for all technical people, not just Asians).
Sure, it's important to diversify the tech workforce....it's silly, pointless to see all the usual nonsense when someone like Jesse Jackson says companies should do that. Otherwise it tends to perpetrate that "bro culture" in some companies that women (of any ethnicity) finds unwelcome, just as an example.
In tech that's what it all boils down to..skill and prowess. And it is very competitive.
The R&D departments are highly selective..skill, how many patents you filed, how many papers/books you authored, how many new ideas you've been able to get implemented, etc.
I was a minority female engineer for over 20 years. The tech industry does not perpetuate the "bro culture" at all. Neither in my company, nor in the cross company partnerships, nor in the open source community.
I used to gloat when I beat the pants off the guys playing Halo in the rec room.
Also,the reason asians do better in the Tech field is because they are disproportionately in it , not because they have strong math and science backgrounds.
Further more, Black people may make up 12.6% of the population nation wide, but they are only 7% of California's population, 3% of Washington and 1.6% of Oregon. Where as Asians make up 14% of the population in California, 7% in Washington and 3.7% in Oregon.
These people are going to go to Schools liked UC Berkeley or UWash or Oregon all of which have partnerships with local tech companies. So the tech Industry isnt going to mirror national Demographics, its going to mirror local Demographics of the companies.
LOL
LOL
LOL
The logic in this post is about as ass backwards as it can possibly get.
Of course, Asians from elsewhere would never move to CA, WA, OR to pursue tech careers. Of course not! They are just born there, so that's what they do! Pursue tech careers! It has nothing to do with their strong math and science backgrounds! Nope!
I came across an interesting stat while reading about a black kid making his way through Georgetown. I discovered that the 25th percentile for SAT scores at Georgetown is higher than the 75th percentile of SAT scores at Howard University. Howard is generally considered an elite HBCU and would be a school Silicon valley works with to look for Black talent.
There simply is a dearth of talent. The issues need to be addressed not even at the k-12 level but before.
These people are going to go to Schools liked UC Berkeley or UWash or Oregon all of which have partnerships with local tech companies. So the tech Industry isnt going to mirror national Demographics, its going to mirror local Demographics of the companies.
But focusing only on the Silicon Valley or Seattle tech giants is like saying the only manufacturing jobs are at GM. I tried to get a job with Steam in Seattle. Me and many other hardcore geeks from around the world. I wasn't up to the task, and it isn't because I didn't go to the right school or know the right people, it was because I straight up didn't have what they were looking for, and we all knew it perfectly well in about 30 minutes. I'm not going to play in the NBA anytime soon either.
But there are soooooo many tech jobs in the country. Tons and tons and tons. The ones Jackson is going after are just big, public, well known and RICH. But they aren't racist, nor are they trying to shut Americans out. They have very deep talent pools at very good colleges near them, and they have people like me coming from all over the country to compete for jobs at very good companies. Google has Berkeley and Stanford right next door.
Go all the way back to 7th grade, hell go even further back than that. Name the activities most non-Asian parents have their kids doing more than 2-3 hours per week, and I'll bet dimes to donuts it isn't practicing piano or reading math/science books. STEM jobs are global professions with a global supply pool. I can do my job from anywhere in the world, which means my job can be done anywhere in the world, thus the whole world is my competition. Huge tech giants know this. That isn't any more racist than the NBA, NFL of MLB's hiring practices. The entire basketball playing world has one league sitting on top. So every person who plays basketball at the serious level competes for one of less than 500 jobs with every serious basketball talent on the planet. Is it racist how the statistics then wash out? In what culture is basketball most popular at the very earliest ages?
It's no different with Google or Microsoft. They are the NBA of tech jobs. But unlike basketball, the legions of geeks who are cradle geeks who start STEM'ing it around age 4-5 is MASSIVE, and Americans start off outnumbered by a huge margin. That's who I compete with for jobs, and I can't can't get into Google. I have tons of experience, but I wasn't a 4.0 at Stanford who did 3 summers interning there. I never did the equivalent of playing AAU ball for Google. I didn't do the equivalent of balling for Syracuse or Kentucky to get chops.
That's not racist. It's being the top pro-league and having the ability to pick and choose from a massive pool of talent who all fight for very few open jobs.
And there's a serious shortage of geeks in the black community. Period.
Jesse should be selling the black community on the virtues of geekness, not shaking down companies to hire based on race.
I hear ya, I went to college with several brilliant black men that went into STEM fields. It's got nothing to do with pigment and everything to do with poverty and culture.
The problem is that you CANNOT FIX THE PROBLEM when kids are heading off to college or after the fact with whining about hiring in STEM when there are so few blacks getting tech degrees.
You have to start early.
Expecting some kid that hasn't taken a lot of math and science in highschool....to not get the crap kicked out of them in college STEM majors is like handing some recent highschool graduate a basketball for the first time and telling them they better practice hard because they are going to be on the college basketball team in the fall. It's not going to end well for either kid.
This.
Like I said, my aunt and uncle took in a foster kid on a part time basis. They are like additional parents to help his mom who works nights a lot. Not sure how the program works exactly, and it might be volunteer. Anyway, this summer they got him enrolled in a 4 week math camp at GW in NW D.C. So he goes to a college campus every day for 8 hours each day and does math camp stuff. Not your average summer activity for a black 15 year old, but my aunt said for every sport activity he does, he has to do an equal amount of academic activity. Good for her, good for him, but it's very very uncommon outside Asian 1st/2nd generation immigrants.
Kids play little league baseball, basketball and football to the tune of how many hundreds of hours? Let us call that tutoring for Phys Ed class. Imagine for a moment if every other subject they learned at school received the same amount of extracurricular attention. No problem kids being physically active, but look at the activities that parents fill their kids time with, and then come back and ask why more Americans aren't in STEM fields?
We are competing with people who spent their childhoods in math and science little league, probably for 3-5x as many hours as we have our kids in sports little leagues. If you care, instead of whining at Google to stop being a meritocracy pro-league, start training your kids for that league. We make them spend hundreds of hours pursuing sports careers they'll never have, and then wonder why after all that sports training they aren't tech geniuses? Do we pick the captain of the chess team based on how well they play football or field hockey?
It's a tech world with a geek future. It isn't Google's fault Americans by and large don't seem to grasp this while 2.4 billion people in Asia seem to get it. Google has a job they need done, just like any pro team. If you have the best skills and can prove it, you're hired.
Like I said, my aunt and uncle took in a foster kid on a part time basis. They are like additional parents to help his mom who works nights a lot. Not sure how the program works exactly, and it might be volunteer. Anyway, this summer they got him enrolled in a 4 week math camp at GW in NW D.C. So he goes to a college campus every day for 8 hours each day and does math camp stuff. Not your average summer activity for a black 15 year old, but my aunt said for every sport activity he does, he has to do an equal amount of academic activity. Good for her, good for him, but it's very very uncommon outside Asian 1st/2nd generation immigrants.
Kids play little league baseball, basketball and football to the tune of how many hundreds of hours? Let us call that tutoring for Phys Ed class. Imagine for a moment if every other subject they learned at school received the same amount of extracurricular attention. No problem kids being physically active, but look at the activities that parents fill their kids time with, and then come back and ask why more Americans aren't in STEM fields?
We are competing with people who spent their childhoods in math and science little league, probably for 3-5x as many hours as we have our kids in sports little leagues. If you care, instead of whining at Google to stop being a meritocracy pro-league, start training your kids for that league. We make them spend hundreds of hours pursuing sports careers they'll never have, and then wonder why after all that sports training they aren't tech geniuses? Do we pick the captain of the chess team based on how well they play football or field hockey?
It's a tech world with a geek future. It isn't Google's fault Americans by and large don't seem to grasp this while 2.4 billion people in Asia seem to get it. Google has a job they need done, just like any pro team. If you have the best skills and can prove it, you're hired.
EXACTLY.
Smart kid headed off to a top tier school, "wow you are lucky to be so smart" is a phrase they will often hear.
Kid headed off to play football for an SEC team etc....."wow you had to work so hard".
Top 10 kids the other year at the area math competition....one white kid....mine. The rest were ALL 1st generation Pakistani, Indian, Chinese.....kids of STEM and other high intelligence immigrants.
I have to laugh when you see all these pakistani and indian workers in STEM, darker skinned than most of my black friends and Jesse is crying that it racism.
What's next for Jesse, complain that MLB is getting too many latinos?
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