Has Jim Crow Moved To Silicon Valley? Racism In The Tech World (Barf Alert)

NewsOne ^ | March 13, 2012 | Terell Jermaine Starr

[lbryce]

Racial segregation is no longer staring us down on the streets of Birmingham and Jackson. But has it positioned itself in a most unlikely locale: Silicon Valley.

Related:We Must Draw More Blacks to Tech

[lbryce]

This is probably the most idiotic, moronic, ignorant claim of racism I have ever been subjected to. To blame Silicon Valley for the lack of black employees is to blame the NBA for the lack of white players. They even let on to what the problem may be in the dearth of black employees represented within Silicon Valley by alluding to the related story posted at the original link about the need to draw more blacks to tech in order to get more of them competent enough to be hired.

[Le Chien Rouge]

Minorities are still largely absent from opinion pages, senior roles and staff jobs in the MSM also.

Maybe the media should look at the tree in their eye before judging the speck in other industries eyes.

[svcw]

I am going to vomit.
Where was the vomit alert.

[Persevero]

I was just thinking about this the other day. I’ve never met a black programmer/coder/systems admin or similar.

[Political Junkie Too]

Check the racial makeup of the engineering schools first, then see who goes to silicon valley.

-PJ

[dfwgator]

What about the lack of White NBA basketball players?

[dfwgator]

HR will go out of their way to make sure a black applicant for a programming position gets hired.

[Excellence]

“Go into any inner-city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can’t teach kids to learn. They know that parents have to parent, that children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white.” —Barack Obama, Keynote Address, Democratic National Convention, 2004

http://educationnext.org/actingwhite/

[Pontiac]

Silicon Valley has a very low unemployment rate this is no secret.

So if some one wants a job in the computer technical field it is obvious that that is one place to go with a better than average chance of landing a job for some one with the skills.

The obvious question should not be are the firms in question racist it should be why are blacks not seeking jobs in the Technical fields? Perhaps they simply do not want that kind of job.

I know a black that got a degree in computer engineering who eventually became a reactor operator for an electric utility. He decided he did not want to do the computer thing.

[lbryce]

See comment #1

[KarlInOhio]

Check to see what the engineering classes look like: Indians, East Asians, whites and maybe a few Arabs thown in. I can think of one black student who was in many of my classes and he sounded Caribbean.

Just about every university would welcome an even half-qualified black student. In fact, as Dr. Sowell pointed out, they often accept black students who were not qualified for the college who then fail instead of properly matching their skills with their universities (don't take someone who would be in the middle of his class at a decent state university and expect him to prosper at MIT or Harvard).

[Persevero]

I was thinking, if I had an opportunity to mentor a black youth, I’d recommend computer science! The world would be your oyster, it seems to me.

My son has a CS major at this point, poor guy is white though, so, I guess the oyster won’t be his.

[ClearCase_guy]

Start-up companies in competitive environments cerainly need to hire the best people they can find. There is no reason why such people cannot be black. The Start-up will not care -- if you're good, they will snap you up.

Larger companies? Sure, they want quality too, but they also have on eye on statistics. In my experience, large companies are desperately hungry to hire minority engineers. You do not need to be good. They will hire you. Minority female?? My God! Offers will flood your inbox!

Racism? In the tech world? Only really stupid people think that such a thing exists.

[PGR88]

Apple alone is now worth $500 billion

there’s a lot of money there to pay for reparations!

[I Shall Endure]

There were no blacks - none - in my upper level Computer Science and Math classes.

I met two black programmers in my years of working in the industry.

Why don’t black people take math and programming classes? Obama’s half-brother has a PHD in physics, but he’s the exception that proves the rule.

[Flash Bazbeaux]

Uh, you’re playing into their hands taking their claim as true.

There is a HUGE cohort of dark-skinned industry leaders in Silicon Valley. They’re called Indians.

How Indians Conquered Silicon Valley
Release Date:
01/17/2012

Here’s an extract from the piece

The proportion of Indian-founded startups in Silicon Valley startups had increased from 7% to 15.5%, even though Indians make up just 6% of the Valley’s working population.

Indian immigrants were standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the world’s most innovative tech workers, and were matching them in entrepreneurship The Indian networking organizations learned the rules of engagement of Silicon Valley and mastered these. For a while, these were the most vibrant and active professional associations in the region.

Why were Indians so successful?

The first few who cracked the glass ceiling had open discussions about the hurdles they had faced.

They agreed that the key to uplifting their community, and fostering more entrepreneurship in general, was to teach and mentor the next generation of entrepreneurs.

They formed networking organizations to teach others about starting businesses, and to bring people together.

These organizations helped to mobilize the information, knowhow, skill, and capital needed to start technology companies. Even the newer associations had several hundred members each, and the more established associations had more than a thousand members.

The first generation of successful entrepreneurs—people like Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla—served as visible, vocal, role models and mentors. They also provided seed funding to members of their community.

[MASS-2 FAC]

lbryce, I agree with you. I work in Silicon Valley and the blacks I know in the tech world all have a technical or finance degree, like the rest of us.

I'm in a small start-up and the four founders are; one - a Chinese-American with a dual PhD from Northwestern and Stanford, two - an Indian with a Stanford PhD in Digital Signal Processors and the two of us have either CS or EE degrees.

This is not an area for social engineering. With us, results count. You not give a mulligan. We tried the social thing in the 80’s and that ended up sending almost all of our semiconductor EDA and process technology to Japan, Taiwan and China. Politicans gave our technology away in exchange for campaign contributions.

Semper Fi

[El Cid]

-cough-
I suppose the High-Tech industry's requirements of producing results is a bit 'mean-spirited'.
One might be able to play the quota game in government and academia - but when you have to execute and produce results - or go extinct, you get people who will execute and produce results.
Interesting how the graphs used a sleight of hand to shift the emphasis from 'whites' to 'others', as Silicon Valley will have a very large percentage (disproportionate to the general population) of people with an Asian heritage ... but that wouldn't fit the 'woe is me, whitey is keeping me back' meme that was being pitched.

[sten]

the tech sector isn’t like journalism or general media. members of the tech sector either know what they are doing, or get fired / washed out.

does this mean blacks can’t compete? of course they can.... if they can. all groups have the same hurdle.

hours in a classroom will NOT make you better in the tech sector. hours OUTSIDE the classroom doing self directed study / development does.

if sili valley is forced to implement quotas, you’ll just see more offshore jobs pop up.

[Clock King]

Sorry to shout, but

WHAT A LOAD OF BULL CHIPS!

I went into tech just because it WAS fair! Math don't lie and isn't subjective. This type of claim is very very very racist, and portrays black people as unable to make it.

BTW, I won't go to Silicon Valley because I don't want to get "into" the California culture, I don't care how pretty it is out there.