In anticipation of the comments we've gotten in the past:
* We hold everyone to the same admissions standard, regardless of race or gender. The grants are our way to create a more diverse applicant pool.
* Hacker School is free for everyone
* We admit everyone who applies who we think is a good fit. No man has ever been rejected because a woman was accepted, so there's no way in which this harms men.
* We auto-generate pseudonyms for applicants, so our initial application review focuses on people's code and what they write, not their race or gender
(I'm one of the founders, and I'm happy to answer any questions folks have about Hacker School.)
To my fellow straight, white males who have rushed here to complain, I find the following particularly relevant:
"I think it’s delightful that these straight white males are now engaged on issues of racism and sexism. It would be additionally delightful if they were engaged on issues of racism and sexism even when they did not feel it was being applied to them — say, for example,when it’s regarding people who historically have most often had to deal with racism and sexism (i.e., not white males). Keep at it, straight white males! You’re on the path now!"
Just wanted to say that I continue to be impressed by how seriously Hacker School is approaching diversity. Hopefully other organizations who want to diversify their communities are taking notes!
Here's my question: Do you honestly believe that a poor white person from Appalachia, who has received very few advantages in life, deserves to lose out on this opportunity because his skin happens to be the wrong color?
Does he get fewer diversity points, even though his life experiences are so far removed from that of the white person growing up in, say, southern California, that they might as well have grown up in different countries?
Try being a poor black person from Appalachia, who has received even less advantages in life (and in fact, many disadvantages).
The rub is that on average, people who aren't white have a way harder time in America, hence the need for these types of opportunities. It doesn't matter that one white person may have had a hard life, it matters that systemically, non-white people have many disadvantages that white people don't have.
The core question which you keep ducking is, "why do you insist on grouping by race/gender?" I.e., why don't you group humans into "suffered lots of disadvantage", "suffered a medium amount", "suffered none"?
Among other things, the category "people who suffered lots of disadvantage" is more disadvantaged than either women or any racial group. Why do you explicitly exclude this subgroup of humans from consideration?
Downmodding, BTW, still counts as ducking the question. Good to know that it's a difficult one.
>>The core question which you keep ducking is, "why do you insist on grouping by race/gender?" I.e., why don't you group humans into "suffered lots of disadvantage", "suffered a medium amount", "suffered none"?
Because, and honestly I think you know this, in America a disadvantaged white person is still better off than a disadvantaged black person. A disadvantaged man trying to make it in tech is still better off than a disadvantaged woman trying to make it in tech. The problem in America is race and gender, everything else being equal - race & gender become filters because of racism and sexism. Two resumes that are _exactly_ the same, but one of them has a name normally associated with a black male will get far fewer bites from companies. Same thing with matching resumes but one has "Bob" and the other "Susan". The point of efforts like this is to close the gap that is created by sexism & racism. Yes, you could keep expanding the focus of the program until you become "Organization to solve every problem ever, LLC." ...but that's silly. There are some focused on AIDS/HIV, there are some people focused on Ebola, some people focused on Cancer.... and the people in this article are focused on race/gender in the tech industry.
It sounds like you are making a universal quantification, i.e. you are asserting that the poor white kid in Appalachia is still better off than Sasha Obama. Am I reading correctly?
The problem in America is race and gender, everything else being equal...
Again, let me repeat the question: why do you hold everything else equal?
A related question. I've observed that ever since LASIK, people find me more attractive but less intelligent. I'm currently running an experiment to objectively measure this. Suppose my experiment confirms my anecdata. Should we preferentially give scholarships to people with good vision?
What makes cancer special? Ebola? AIDS/HIV? Why/how does anybody focus on anything? btw, these are the kinds of specious debates on HN that derail the main topic into oblivion. Having to redefine & rehash all kinds of things you, as an adult, should already know about society. I'm not going down this path again. You should already know racism & sexism is a serious enough problem that merits focus. Not knowing that is a symptom of arrogance/ignorance/stubborness that can't be resolved in an HN thread. It's just a waste of time and detracts from the main issue at hand that wiser(employees of hackerschool.com) people already have a grasp on and wish to address.
EDIT: And off the front page this article goes. I want that comment-endorsing system to come back.
1a) Death due to Ebola are probably easier to prevent than a random sample of death. This is because we can probably find a single procedure to prevent { ebola death 1, ebola death 2, ... }, while we cannot find a single procedure to prevent {shooting death 1, drowning death 2, ebola death 3, cancer death 4}.
1b) Thus, preventing death due to Ebola will likely be cheaper than preventing a random selection of deaths.
2) Normative claim: Death is bad.
2a) Preventing death cheaply is better than preventing death expensively.
3) Preventing ebola will reduce incidents of death by (1), and that will be good (by claim (2)). It will likely be cheaper to prevent deaths due to ebola than due to a random sampling of causes (1b). Preventing deaths cheaply is better than preventing deaths expensively, by (2a).
It's not remotely difficult to justify the normative claim that stopping Ebola is good. And you can now see my normative principles - if you believe death is good, we know why we disagree.
If we want to come to agreement, we now know we need to debate moral philosophy rather than empirical claims like "is ebola really a single disease".
Most of this conversation is me asking "what goes into slot (2)" and a bunch of people repeating to me what they put in slot (1).
You seem to be suggesting that the question is absurd but it's not. It's not only meaningful, it's completely obvious and natural. People who focus their research on a particular topic are routinely asked why. Same with company founders or even hobbyist. "Why this" has to be the most human of questions right after "how are you".
I, too, find the fixation on race/sex/class weird when there are many factors that seem much more important. I wrote about it before https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8160608
Your previous writing is simplistic rationalisation of racist attitudes. "People aren't racist, the problem is black people for not inheriting hard work nor intelligence".
How can you call my writing simplistic when next to a crude classification of people into a handful of racial categories? Anyway, the original post was about a white guy. There's even a picture[1] in the article. Which is the point: that he was a white guy didn't matter very much.
Those categories (like race or sex) seem not only arbitrary but not even very good. Yet, commenters here insist that they are obvious and the question why those and not some other doesn't even require (deserve?) an answer.
How so? For those who, like me and yummyfajitas, missed that social insight.
The Sasha Obama thing is not even close to what parent said. Parent's point was in the first sentence. Let me quote:
Because, and honestly I think you know this, in America a disadvantaged white person is still better off than a disadvantaged black person.
The point is that sexism and racism are sufficiently institutionalized in America so that members of either group will struggle solely because they belong to that group. Ideally all people of lower socioeconomic statuses could be lifted up by these types of initiatives, but minorities and women especially have the deck stacked against them.
If a non-disadvantaged black person is not better off than a disadvantaged white person, why do you want to favor them?
That's the core question and it's a normative one. If you give me a positive answer (e.g., citing statistics about group averages) you are ignoring the question. Telling me about group averages does not address this question at all.
I am asking what normative principle you are using to derive your normative claims like "it's ok to discriminate against disadvantaged white people in favor of advantaged black people".
Your attempt to create equivalencies between poor blacks and poor whites misses one crucial fact: our government did not systematically oppress and deny opportunity to the ancestors of poor whites. If the government burns down my house, then my neighborhood suffers flooding because of a hurricane, I am not made whole by the government addressing the flood damage. I am not satisfied with the government's attempts to "forget the past" and treat my case as no more important than that of every other person affected by the flooding. That makes no sense.
Do governments have persistent identity? Does it break after a revolution? What about a constitutional Monarchy like England's? If its a democratic government does having ancestors who voted for an oppressive government make them responsible for the past?
"Do governments have persistent identity?" What kind of a thing is that to say?
I could have said that in response to me looting a store... I shouldn't be handed punishment, because the rules of the government that were up 2 weeks/years/decades ago when I robbed the store don't apply today now that I've been caught.
That's a meaningless response. The fact of the matter is, injustices were once done (effects of which we still see reverberating today), now it's time to put the dollar on the line to make up for those past injustices. And, you know, it wasn't that long ago that these things were happening... it was merely a generation ago. Black folks you see walking and talking outside -- it's them, and their sons and daughters who couldn't drink from the same fountains as others. I don't think a lot of people really get this. Imagine your mother and father were subject to this kind of horror... how badly this would break them, what effects it would have on their parenting...
I understand where your coming from but "injustices were once done" is a pretty terrible reason for aid. If you go back far enough every group has committed some atrocity on another, Europe on most of the world for instance (also 2 generations ago)
Many forms of ugly are unchangeable except with extreme medical interventions - the only major exception is fatties. And it's certainly easy to measure.
Note that sex is changeable, so I guess we can take it off your list. In fact, one can also pull a michael jackson for race.
So all you've really got to stand on is the subjective "extreme" criteria. Ok.
Why don't you group humans into 'suffered lots of disadvantage', 'suffered a medium amount', 'suffered none'.
First, how does one directly measure disadvantage suffered? It's not a trivial thing to do. Hacker School doesn't have a lot of resources. Measuring race/gender/etc. is easy and correlates strongly with disadvantage. It's also a hard measure to "game" or fake.
Second, race/gender/etc. problems are (as pointed out) systemic in our society and in programmer culture specifically. That is to say, there are cultural habits, assumptions, attitudes, institutions, etc. which disadvantage people for no other reason than being nonwhite/nonmale. One thing that is enormously helpful in fixing these kinds of problems is simply having more nonwhite/nonmale people in the culture.
Helping a person who was disadvantaged by a mere quirk of fate helps only them. Helping someone disadvantaged by their race or sex helps them and helps everyone like them, in the long run. It reduces stereotype threat; it wears away at unfortunate cultural assumptions and attitudes; it provides positive role models; etc. etc.
Third, and most speculatively, I think these are the kind of problems that an organization like HS is particularly well-positioned to tackle. I believe that (e.g.) simple poverty and other forms of "brute disadvantage" are serious problems in our society (and indeed there still are some lingering class prejudices against poor people, so it's not an entirely "brute" disadvantage either). But I don't think that HS is likely to substantially help these problems by, say, merely offering grants to poor people. Poverty is too big, too general a problem to solve that way. But racism and sexism in programmer culture is a problem where HS actually has a shot at making a (small) difference.
First off, the rate of attrition among these specific minority groups is dramatically higher than it is for whites of any class. How many women who start as engineers are still engineers 10 years out? Look it up. If the disadvantages really are the same, then why is it that whites from lower income brackets do not have the same problem?
The answer -- as other users have pointed out to you repeatedly over the last few months -- is because the disadvantage is systemic and widespread.
Again: I didn't claim that whites are on average as disadvantaged as anyone. I claimed that the group { x : disadvantaged(x) == true } is more disadvantaged than { x : black(x) == true }.
To prove this fact all I need to do is find a single black person who isn't. This proves that P(disadvantage|black) < 1, whereas P(disadvantage|disadvantage)=1.
So now we have the following groups, ordered by disadvantage:
white < black < disadvantaged
Why do you attempt to remedy the disadvantage of the second most disadvantaged group, but not the most disadvantaged group?
Telling me stats about blacks and whites does not address this question. The disadvantage stats are, by definition, higher for the group I've explicitly constructed to be 100% disadvantaged.
If you don't reach out specifically to minorities (women, for example), then the outreach doesn't work. So the groups that are systematically marginalized will never apply to begin with, meaning that your set that you've "constructed" doesn't actually contain the really negative cases.
Look, we're not writing a philosophy paper or doing set theory here. We don't have room for any of this "theoretical best" philosophical stuff you're working on here. There are reasons why this shit is set up like it is.
By definition, the set D={ x : disadvantaged(x) == true } contains anyone who is "systematically marginalized" (assuming that being "systematically marginalized" is actually a disadvantage).
Concretely, are you saying my set D does not contain Sasha Obama, but it should?
Or another example - my girlfriend is an upper middle class black woman from a majority black country. The minute she steps off a plane in the US, will she suddenly become more deserving of assistance than the white son of a single mother who earned $11,000/year household income?
If you are determined to slice by race, the answer is yes. Let M represent either Sasha Obama or my girlfriend.
Your assertions about racial averages takes the following form:
1. mean(M,N,O) < mean(U,V,W)
2. M > U
3. ???
4. Therefore, we should preferentially support M over U, N over V, etc.
Step 3 is where I'm confused. Step 3 is a normative principle - you cannot derive a "should" conclusion from a fact without one. What is that principle?
Look, we're not writing a philosophy paper or doing set theory here...There are reasons why this shit is set up like it is.
How is this not a philosophical question? I'm sure there are reasons why "shit is set up like it is" - "tribal politics" fits the facts well. But I'm hoping for a more interesting explanation than that.
And I'm asking because I'm honestly interested. A lot of smart people seem to buy into stuff like this, and I try to understand it due to Chesterton's Fence.
I take it from your response that you entirely ignored my response about targeting outreach at demographics that have high attrition and low entrance rates. Specifically those groups. That's what we do when we do outreach.
I don't know what else to say. It's extremely simple. Targeted outreach works. You pick groups you want to include, and you target them for outreach.
Why are you making this so hard? Honestly, I question whether you're really interested. You do this on literally every thread where sexism comes up. It sounds to me like you really just want an argument.
EDIT: And, your insinuation that it's all tribal politics, instead of a very careful investigation of what outreach methods work for getting disadvantaged people into programs they wouldn't normally have access to is in such bad faith it's hard to even muster up the will to reply.
I'm not asking for empirics. The question cannot be resolved by empirics alone. I'm asking for your normative principle. You are ducking the question if you throw more positive statements at me.
You can't get a normative ("we should" or "it's acceptable to do") conclusion without a normative principle. The empirical claim "Ebola causes death" alone is not a justification for preventing ebola. You need the normative principle "death is bad". If I ask for a normative principle and you tell me about experiments with monkeys, you are missing the point.
I understand (a). I understand your normative conclusion (racially biased decisions in favor of women are good). I'm asking you to explain (b), and maybe (c) if it is not obvious. And I have no idea why this is such a ridiculous thing to ask.
We say we're interested in targeted outreach to demographics whose attrition rates are especially high, and whose entrance rates are especially low.
You come up with the normative claim. Because the normative claim should be obvious.
Ok, now that you've made your guess, let's see what you've written down. If you guessed that the normative claim is that "we should consider it bad to have an industry so vile that (e.g.) competent female engineers exit the field at many times the rate of male engineers", then you win your gold star.
If you did not guess that this is the normative claim, then it is time to retire all this philosophy and set theory that you have going, because you clearly don't have the basics down.
I'm asking about this because my views are very confused. I don't have a good normative principle to appeal to.
On the one hand, I lean towards "you shouldn't make racially biased decisions". On the other hand, while I'm intuitively disliking the criteria for these scholarships, I impose more or less the exact same criteria when deciding if a woman is worth dating.
Unlike most of the people here, I'm completely willing to admit that my views are rather confused. And I don't understand the resulting hostility - why does asking questions make me a villain?
You ask the same questions every single time. You make exactly the same confused bigoted points each time this subject comes up.
You don't create as much discussion going the other way - there are no posts from you askng why society accepts most corporate boards having no women or asking why society accepts discrimination against people with Arab sounding names. All your questions are about why it's okay to discriminate against white males in these kinds of programmes.
No one on HN is defending discrimination against people with Arab sounding names. If they did I'd probably ask similar questions, particularly if this viewpoint seemed common among intelligent people.
There is only one other case where people on HN will defend such discrimination - when the person being discriminated against is from Haiti or India. I do tend to ask the exact same question in that case: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6856315
As for society "accepting" some statistical fact, I can very easily recognize principles to explain that view - the normative premise is basically individual rights (if no individual has been discriminated against due to their gender, nothing is wrong). I don't think that normative premise is unreasonable, so I don't mind attributing it to people who seem to be implicitly using it. The normative conclusion logically follows from that premise plus an empirical point. I'm fully capable of reproducing the reasoning.
I simply cannot cook up a logical chain in favor of discrimination by hacker school except by using uncharitable normative premises (e.g., "black people are the master race and deserve special treatment" or "sins of the great great grandfather shall be repaid by the son and anyone who looks like him"). I don't think anyone defending hacker school's discriminatory practices will actually endorse these normative premises, so I'm curious what normative premises the defenders do use in their reasoning.
I ask the same questions because I'm attempting to be charitable. When a viewpoint is widespread among intelligent people I go to great efforts to try to understand it - this is the "Chesterton's Fence" principle. Given the complete vacuousness of the responses I receive, I am already leaning towards the view that most defenders of such practices are simply being emotional and tribal.
Now you can call me a bigot if you want. But that's very confusing - in the one case where I do make racially biased decisions (sex) my decisions are almost exactly the same as those of hacker school scholarships (4/9 African, 1/9 White, over the past year). (Note that I live in a country which is approximately 99% Asian.) I truly do not understand how you draw this conclusion.
I read the whole thread from here down, and I must say that I completely agree with you. I also think that positive discrimination is discrimination and is bad/immoral, and that we should focus on affirmative action only towards people who are actually disadvantaged. I also often get down-voted for saying so.
We might be getting somewhere. What is "systemic"? I.e., how do I determine if a disadvantage is systemic or not?
If I'm understanding right, your reasoning is:
1) Positive claim: women and minorities (including asians?) suffer systemic racism.
2) Normative claim: Victims of systemic disadvantage deserve special privileges, victims of non-systemic disadvantage do not. (I'm a bit shaky on this one - let me know if it's wrong.)
3) Normative conclusion: special privileges for women/minorities.
If that's correct, I can fully reproduce your reasoning once I know the definition of "systemic".
"Systemic" here is defined as "integrated deeply into a system." In this case, "systemic racism/sexism" refers to "the deep integration of racism/sexism in a particular institution or industry."
Also, I would amend #2 to say: "victims of systemic racism/sexism may be able to overcome those via targeted outreach."
Can you give me a concrete test I can use to determine whether something is systemic or not? And will any old system do?
Your amended (2) is a positive claim. It tells us "if X happens then Y will happen". You cannot draw a normative conclusion from a sequence of positive claims. You need a "should" or "aught" or "morally good" or "ethical" in there somewhere.
Discussions like this online are pushing me in the direction of favoring mandatory philosophical education.
Listen, it's not my responsibility to educate you on these issues. They've been covered extensively by sociological experts. Before participating in these discussions, I suggest you look around for some of the resources that cover these topics.
The uncited experts who's authority I'm fallaciously appealing to say your experts are wrong and a bunch of jerks. It's also a bit silly to participate in a discussion and suddenly declare that it's not your responsibility to participate after logic fails you.
One conclusion I have drawn from this - none of the pro-racist decisions people have a clue what the moral underpinnings of their views are beyond "liberal authorities tell me to believe this, so I do".
I honestly don't want to sit on HN and debate whether my claims about systemic racism are positive or normative with someone who believes I need a philosophical education. That's why I'm bowing out. Good luck.
How would you like a potential applicant to quantify and prove how much disadvantage they have suffered? Do you believe that race and gender might be good indicators of the level of prejudice one has experienced in life?
Well, that's fine, but do you also want to argue that women and pacific islanders, on average, have received fewer advantages than poor white people from Appalachia?
I'd argue that women, on average, have received less advantages than men. And pacific islanders, on average, have received less advantages than white people.
You're getting caught up in a taking a very specific sample and comparing it to a general population.
Yeah maybe you hold everyone at the same admissions standard but it's not true for accessibility to the grants. Will we reach a society where we hope to be born from a more "diverse" race?
That's racism... it's sad that you use racism while believing that you are solving it. Please don't help based on the race, help based on the needs.
Edit: Can anyone debate instead of downvote? That's doesn't seems like an healthy way to change opinions...
Okay so, not so long ago they were only providing grants to women. Did I think to myself oh that's sexist? No, you know why? Because I'm pretty sure they provide the grants to people with needs (at the end of the applying form you check a box that says you'd need financial aid). Yes, they're using filters like gender and race first.
But if you were a white male, you live in a society where you could probably approach any hacker space or anything else without feeling weird about it, unlike many trans*, queer or black/latin@ people. That's the way they're promoting diversity, by creating spaces where people can feel more welcome/safe, they're in no way denying white people or males.
I did find that sexist, maybe you weren't but I was. I was afraid to talk though... this is the sad part I guess.
you live in a society where you could probably approach any hacker space or anything else without feeling weird about it, unlike many trans*, queer or black/latin@ people.
That's what need to be fixed. You don't solve that by giving them money. You solve that by showing we accept them, by stopping people from making them feel weird. A strict policy against racism is what's needed and being vocal about it.
they're in no way denying white people or males.
That's making the issue here way more complicated to talk about for no reason. You need to draw a line between the school and the grant. I'm not saying they are racist for the school admission, I'm saying they are racist for their school grant. They are denying white people that school grant.
Yeah, don't worry. While I may not agree with you on this issue I'm all for your right to express your opinion. However you may have to accept the fact that your opinion may give you a negative backlash, that happens to everyone, how ever it will only give you negative internet points (at least on hn).
A strict policy against racism is what's needed and being vocal about it.
While I agree, how do you enforce that? How do you make sure that actually happens? How do you protect the groups which we agree have certain degree of disadvantage most of the time from the outside?
And even with that enforced, being in an environment where most of the people might hate you based on your gender/sex/skin color won't change your experience based on a paper/set of rules.
They are denying white people that school grant.
They're denying a group the grant. A group that as we have discussed and you seem to agree with me have more advantages, and even if they couldn't afford to go to hackerschool, could go to any other similar space near them. Because again they don't have to fear racism or sexism that can not be controlled.
While I agree, how do you enforce that? How do you make sure that actually happens? How do you protect the groups which we agree have certain degree of disadvantage most of the time from the outside? And even with that enforced, being in an environment where most of the people might hate you based on your gender/sex/skin color won't change your experience based on a paper/set of rules.
Giving them money might fix that? What you do however is punish any racist action that happens. You kick people out of the school when it happens, no second chance. You give people opportunity to talk about it, you talk about it with people. What about a class that everyone need to do which talk about racism.
Now they are saying that it's okay to care about your gender and race, you will get monetary support if there's a possibility of racism... if you are not white...
A group that as we have discussed and you seem to agree with me have more advantages
No I disagree on that part. I know multiple people that are white that have trouble with money and I know plenty of people from other gender/race that doesn't. Generalization is wrong. There's plenty of white people that couldn't afford to go and there's plenty of non-white people that could afford to go.
could go to any other similar space near them
You make me think about it. A good way to use that money would be to help hacker school to stop racism. A safe network of hacker school that fight against racism.
Because again they don't have to fear racism or sexism that can not be controlled.
I still doesn't see how giving them money fix that. I completely agree that's the issue that need to be solved.
This is getting too long and we're going around in circles about the issue.
So the only thing I'm going to reply is:
Giving them money might fix that?
No, they're not trying to battle this issue you want to tackle. Simply because is bigger than them.
I still doesn't see how giving them money fix that.
Again, this is not to fix this huge issue. This is to give other people the chance to assist this and assure them they can feel safe.
There's plenty of white people that couldn't afford to go and there's plenty of non-white people that could afford to go.
And again, they're not giving you the money simply because you're non white. They might give you the grant if you mark any of the checkbox that make you eligible but you still need to check "I'd need financial assistance to do Hacker School" which is not automatically checked as you seem to believe simply because you check that you're non white.
Again, what you propose is that non white people who want to attend to a place like hacker school:
a) wait until racism is non existent
b) deal with ugly situations/experiences because there will be rules to make sure to deal with the cause after
Instead of doing what they want/love and creating safe spaces where they don't have to deal with stuff they shouldn't deal with in the first place.
If you want to keep discussing you can shoot me an email (pcepedam92@gmail.com). I could probably even direct you to people who could answer as to why your proposal of simply solving racism is not as easy, with plenty of real life examples and historical facts.
I'd be happy to! The original post says nothing about Hacker School's desire to "solve racism." Their goal is to increase the diversity of their applicant pool. Having previously instructed at a coding school which had a similar policy, I've fielded similar criticisms. In our case, we offered a 25% (if memory serves me) discount to female applicants. The goal was to spur more gender diversity in our applicant pool, and it worked swimmingly - our first class was a 50/50 gender split.
Despite our own perception of the success of the policy, we received plenty of complaints from both men and women. Ashe Dryden helpfully pointed out to me, when I had the opportunity to ask her opinion, that women on average earn 25% less than men, so really we had just made the program cost the same for women as it did for men.
If women or minorities are discouraged from applying to Hacker School because they would have a hard time paying their living expenses, these grants will help to eliminate that hurdle, thus achieving the goal of more applicant diversity. Needs-based grants wouldn't necessarily achieve that goal. Needs-based grants would also be more difficult from an administrative standpoint as applicants would have to prove their income, which would also invite a regulatory burden.
Here's the definition of racism: prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.
How exactly does that apply to a program that's created to help groups that have a systemic disadvantage in this country?
There isn't a Terrible Racism Bandit that has stolen money from minorities, preventing them from attending Hacker School. It's the specter of racism.
The fear that, say, as a Cuban-American, your boss -- the person responsible for your professional development -- might make a whitewater rafting joke at your expense. You know this type of shit is commonplace in tech, and thus you think twice about furthering your career as an engineer by attending Hacker School.
This might seem trivial to straight white guys. This is because they have not experienced first-hand what it means to advance in a socioeconomic system that was built on centuries of slavery and over 140 years of disenfranchisement because they have never been part of that group.
I doesn't find it trivial at all, I simply fail to see how giving them money to help them attend hacker school will stop that boss from doing that joke...
Because it means hacker spaces, and (hopefully) eventually tech work places will be more diverse, which means the boss will feel less comfortable making that joke.
Comments
In anticipation of the comments we've gotten in the past:
* We hold everyone to the same admissions standard, regardless of race or gender. The grants are our way to create a more diverse applicant pool.
* Hacker School is free for everyone
* We admit everyone who applies who we think is a good fit. No man has ever been rejected because a woman was accepted, so there's no way in which this harms men.
* We auto-generate pseudonyms for applicants, so our initial application review focuses on people's code and what they write, not their race or gender
(I'm one of the founders, and I'm happy to answer any questions folks have about Hacker School.)
Really happy to see y'all doing this! Great work.
To my fellow straight, white males who have rushed here to complain, I find the following particularly relevant:
"I think it’s delightful that these straight white males are now engaged on issues of racism and sexism. It would be additionally delightful if they were engaged on issues of racism and sexism even when they did not feel it was being applied to them — say, for example,when it’s regarding people who historically have most often had to deal with racism and sexism (i.e., not white males). Keep at it, straight white males! You’re on the path now!"
from http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/17/lowest-difficulty-sett...
Just wanted to say that I continue to be impressed by how seriously Hacker School is approaching diversity. Hopefully other organizations who want to diversify their communities are taking notes!
Thank you!
Here's my question: Do you honestly believe that a poor white person from Appalachia, who has received very few advantages in life, deserves to lose out on this opportunity because his skin happens to be the wrong color?
Does he get fewer diversity points, even though his life experiences are so far removed from that of the white person growing up in, say, southern California, that they might as well have grown up in different countries?
Try being a poor black person from Appalachia, who has received even less advantages in life (and in fact, many disadvantages).
The rub is that on average, people who aren't white have a way harder time in America, hence the need for these types of opportunities. It doesn't matter that one white person may have had a hard life, it matters that systemically, non-white people have many disadvantages that white people don't have.
The core question which you keep ducking is, "why do you insist on grouping by race/gender?" I.e., why don't you group humans into "suffered lots of disadvantage", "suffered a medium amount", "suffered none"?
Among other things, the category "people who suffered lots of disadvantage" is more disadvantaged than either women or any racial group. Why do you explicitly exclude this subgroup of humans from consideration?
Downmodding, BTW, still counts as ducking the question. Good to know that it's a difficult one.
>>The core question which you keep ducking is, "why do you insist on grouping by race/gender?" I.e., why don't you group humans into "suffered lots of disadvantage", "suffered a medium amount", "suffered none"?
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-th...
Because, and honestly I think you know this, in America a disadvantaged white person is still better off than a disadvantaged black person. A disadvantaged man trying to make it in tech is still better off than a disadvantaged woman trying to make it in tech. The problem in America is race and gender, everything else being equal - race & gender become filters because of racism and sexism. Two resumes that are _exactly_ the same, but one of them has a name normally associated with a black male will get far fewer bites from companies. Same thing with matching resumes but one has "Bob" and the other "Susan". The point of efforts like this is to close the gap that is created by sexism & racism. Yes, you could keep expanding the focus of the program until you become "Organization to solve every problem ever, LLC." ...but that's silly. There are some focused on AIDS/HIV, there are some people focused on Ebola, some people focused on Cancer.... and the people in this article are focused on race/gender in the tech industry.
It sounds like you are making a universal quantification, i.e. you are asserting that the poor white kid in Appalachia is still better off than Sasha Obama. Am I reading correctly?
The problem in America is race and gender, everything else being equal...
Again, let me repeat the question: why do you hold everything else equal?
A related question. I've observed that ever since LASIK, people find me more attractive but less intelligent. I'm currently running an experiment to objectively measure this. Suppose my experiment confirms my anecdata. Should we preferentially give scholarships to people with good vision?
If not, why not? I.e., what makes race special?
>>If not, why not? I.e., what makes race special?
What makes cancer special? Ebola? AIDS/HIV? Why/how does anybody focus on anything? btw, these are the kinds of specious debates on HN that derail the main topic into oblivion. Having to redefine & rehash all kinds of things you, as an adult, should already know about society. I'm not going down this path again. You should already know racism & sexism is a serious enough problem that merits focus. Not knowing that is a symptom of arrogance/ignorance/stubborness that can't be resolved in an HN thread. It's just a waste of time and detracts from the main issue at hand that wiser(employees of hackerschool.com) people already have a grasp on and wish to address.
EDIT: And off the front page this article goes. I want that comment-endorsing system to come back.
The concrete reasoning for Ebola is:
1) Positive claim: Ebola causes death.
1a) Death due to Ebola are probably easier to prevent than a random sample of death. This is because we can probably find a single procedure to prevent { ebola death 1, ebola death 2, ... }, while we cannot find a single procedure to prevent {shooting death 1, drowning death 2, ebola death 3, cancer death 4}.
1b) Thus, preventing death due to Ebola will likely be cheaper than preventing a random selection of deaths.
2) Normative claim: Death is bad.
2a) Preventing death cheaply is better than preventing death expensively.
3) Preventing ebola will reduce incidents of death by (1), and that will be good (by claim (2)). It will likely be cheaper to prevent deaths due to ebola than due to a random sampling of causes (1b). Preventing deaths cheaply is better than preventing deaths expensively, by (2a).
It's not remotely difficult to justify the normative claim that stopping Ebola is good. And you can now see my normative principles - if you believe death is good, we know why we disagree.
If we want to come to agreement, we now know we need to debate moral philosophy rather than empirical claims like "is ebola really a single disease".
Most of this conversation is me asking "what goes into slot (2)" and a bunch of people repeating to me what they put in slot (1).
You seem to be suggesting that the question is absurd but it's not. It's not only meaningful, it's completely obvious and natural. People who focus their research on a particular topic are routinely asked why. Same with company founders or even hobbyist. "Why this" has to be the most human of questions right after "how are you".
I, too, find the fixation on race/sex/class weird when there are many factors that seem much more important. I wrote about it before https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8160608
Are you white male?
Your previous writing is simplistic rationalisation of racist attitudes. "People aren't racist, the problem is black people for not inheriting hard work nor intelligence".
How can you call my writing simplistic when next to a crude classification of people into a handful of racial categories? Anyway, the original post was about a white guy. There's even a picture[1] in the article. Which is the point: that he was a white guy didn't matter very much.
Those categories (like race or sex) seem not only arbitrary but not even very good. Yet, commenters here insist that they are obvious and the question why those and not some other doesn't even require (deserve?) an answer.
How so? For those who, like me and yummyfajitas, missed that social insight.
[1] http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/08/10/sunday-review/0810...
The Sasha Obama thing is not even close to what parent said. Parent's point was in the first sentence. Let me quote:
The point is that sexism and racism are sufficiently institutionalized in America so that members of either group will struggle solely because they belong to that group. Ideally all people of lower socioeconomic statuses could be lifted up by these types of initiatives, but minorities and women especially have the deck stacked against them.
If a non-disadvantaged black person is not better off than a disadvantaged white person, why do you want to favor them?
That's the core question and it's a normative one. If you give me a positive answer (e.g., citing statistics about group averages) you are ignoring the question. Telling me about group averages does not address this question at all.
I am asking what normative principle you are using to derive your normative claims like "it's ok to discriminate against disadvantaged white people in favor of advantaged black people".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_statement
Per rayiner's response:
Your attempt to create equivalencies between poor blacks and poor whites misses one crucial fact: our government did not systematically oppress and deny opportunity to the ancestors of poor whites. If the government burns down my house, then my neighborhood suffers flooding because of a hurricane, I am not made whole by the government addressing the flood damage. I am not satisfied with the government's attempts to "forget the past" and treat my case as no more important than that of every other person affected by the flooding. That makes no sense.
Do governments have persistent identity? Does it break after a revolution? What about a constitutional Monarchy like England's? If its a democratic government does having ancestors who voted for an oppressive government make them responsible for the past?
"Do governments have persistent identity?" What kind of a thing is that to say?
I could have said that in response to me looting a store... I shouldn't be handed punishment, because the rules of the government that were up 2 weeks/years/decades ago when I robbed the store don't apply today now that I've been caught.
That's a meaningless response. The fact of the matter is, injustices were once done (effects of which we still see reverberating today), now it's time to put the dollar on the line to make up for those past injustices. And, you know, it wasn't that long ago that these things were happening... it was merely a generation ago. Black folks you see walking and talking outside -- it's them, and their sons and daughters who couldn't drink from the same fountains as others. I don't think a lot of people really get this. Imagine your mother and father were subject to this kind of horror... how badly this would break them, what effects it would have on their parenting...
I understand where your coming from but "injustices were once done" is a pretty terrible reason for aid. If you go back far enough every group has committed some atrocity on another, Europe on most of the world for instance (also 2 generations ago)
"what makes race special?"
It's unchangable, it's easily measurable, and it has one of the most extreme biases.
There are many unchangable, easily measurable traits that result in bias by other humans. Affirmative action for short ugly people?
Ugly
[ ] Unchangable
[ ] Easily measurable
[ ] One of the most extreme biases
Short
[x] Unchangable
[x] Easily measurable
[ ] One of the most extreme biases
Many forms of ugly are unchangeable except with extreme medical interventions - the only major exception is fatties. And it's certainly easy to measure.
Note that sex is changeable, so I guess we can take it off your list. In fact, one can also pull a michael jackson for race.
So all you've really got to stand on is the subjective "extreme" criteria. Ok.
First, how does one directly measure disadvantage suffered? It's not a trivial thing to do. Hacker School doesn't have a lot of resources. Measuring race/gender/etc. is easy and correlates strongly with disadvantage. It's also a hard measure to "game" or fake.
Second, race/gender/etc. problems are (as pointed out) systemic in our society and in programmer culture specifically. That is to say, there are cultural habits, assumptions, attitudes, institutions, etc. which disadvantage people for no other reason than being nonwhite/nonmale. One thing that is enormously helpful in fixing these kinds of problems is simply having more nonwhite/nonmale people in the culture.
Helping a person who was disadvantaged by a mere quirk of fate helps only them. Helping someone disadvantaged by their race or sex helps them and helps everyone like them, in the long run. It reduces stereotype threat; it wears away at unfortunate cultural assumptions and attitudes; it provides positive role models; etc. etc.
Third, and most speculatively, I think these are the kind of problems that an organization like HS is particularly well-positioned to tackle. I believe that (e.g.) simple poverty and other forms of "brute disadvantage" are serious problems in our society (and indeed there still are some lingering class prejudices against poor people, so it's not an entirely "brute" disadvantage either). But I don't think that HS is likely to substantially help these problems by, say, merely offering grants to poor people. Poverty is too big, too general a problem to solve that way. But racism and sexism in programmer culture is a problem where HS actually has a shot at making a (small) difference.
It's _not_ a hard question.
First off, the rate of attrition among these specific minority groups is dramatically higher than it is for whites of any class. How many women who start as engineers are still engineers 10 years out? Look it up. If the disadvantages really are the same, then why is it that whites from lower income brackets do not have the same problem?
The answer -- as other users have pointed out to you repeatedly over the last few months -- is because the disadvantage is systemic and widespread.
That is why these scholarships are a good thing.
Again: I didn't claim that whites are on average as disadvantaged as anyone. I claimed that the group { x : disadvantaged(x) == true } is more disadvantaged than { x : black(x) == true }.
To prove this fact all I need to do is find a single black person who isn't. This proves that P(disadvantage|black) < 1, whereas P(disadvantage|disadvantage)=1.
So now we have the following groups, ordered by disadvantage:
white < black < disadvantaged
Why do you attempt to remedy the disadvantage of the second most disadvantaged group, but not the most disadvantaged group?
Telling me stats about blacks and whites does not address this question. The disadvantage stats are, by definition, higher for the group I've explicitly constructed to be 100% disadvantaged.
If you don't reach out specifically to minorities (women, for example), then the outreach doesn't work. So the groups that are systematically marginalized will never apply to begin with, meaning that your set that you've "constructed" doesn't actually contain the really negative cases.
Look, we're not writing a philosophy paper or doing set theory here. We don't have room for any of this "theoretical best" philosophical stuff you're working on here. There are reasons why this shit is set up like it is.
By definition, the set D={ x : disadvantaged(x) == true } contains anyone who is "systematically marginalized" (assuming that being "systematically marginalized" is actually a disadvantage).
Concretely, are you saying my set D does not contain Sasha Obama, but it should?
Or another example - my girlfriend is an upper middle class black woman from a majority black country. The minute she steps off a plane in the US, will she suddenly become more deserving of assistance than the white son of a single mother who earned $11,000/year household income?
If you are determined to slice by race, the answer is yes. Let M represent either Sasha Obama or my girlfriend.
Your assertions about racial averages takes the following form:
1. mean(M,N,O) < mean(U,V,W) 2. M > U 3. ??? 4. Therefore, we should preferentially support M over U, N over V, etc.
Step 3 is where I'm confused. Step 3 is a normative principle - you cannot derive a "should" conclusion from a fact without one. What is that principle?
Look, we're not writing a philosophy paper or doing set theory here...There are reasons why this shit is set up like it is.
How is this not a philosophical question? I'm sure there are reasons why "shit is set up like it is" - "tribal politics" fits the facts well. But I'm hoping for a more interesting explanation than that.
And I'm asking because I'm honestly interested. A lot of smart people seem to buy into stuff like this, and I try to understand it due to Chesterton's Fence.
I take it from your response that you entirely ignored my response about targeting outreach at demographics that have high attrition and low entrance rates. Specifically those groups. That's what we do when we do outreach.
I don't know what else to say. It's extremely simple. Targeted outreach works. You pick groups you want to include, and you target them for outreach.
Why are you making this so hard? Honestly, I question whether you're really interested. You do this on literally every thread where sexism comes up. It sounds to me like you really just want an argument.
EDIT: And, your insinuation that it's all tribal politics, instead of a very careful investigation of what outreach methods work for getting disadvantaged people into programs they wouldn't normally have access to is in such bad faith it's hard to even muster up the will to reply.
I'm not asking for empirics. The question cannot be resolved by empirics alone. I'm asking for your normative principle. You are ducking the question if you throw more positive statements at me.
Concretely: Empirical claim (a) + normative claim (b) + reasoning (c) = normative conclusion.
You can't get a normative ("we should" or "it's acceptable to do") conclusion without a normative principle. The empirical claim "Ebola causes death" alone is not a justification for preventing ebola. You need the normative principle "death is bad". If I ask for a normative principle and you tell me about experiments with monkeys, you are missing the point.
I understand (a). I understand your normative conclusion (racially biased decisions in favor of women are good). I'm asking you to explain (b), and maybe (c) if it is not obvious. And I have no idea why this is such a ridiculous thing to ask.
Let's do an exercise.
We say we're interested in targeted outreach to demographics whose attrition rates are especially high, and whose entrance rates are especially low.
You come up with the normative claim. Because the normative claim should be obvious.
Ok, now that you've made your guess, let's see what you've written down. If you guessed that the normative claim is that "we should consider it bad to have an industry so vile that (e.g.) competent female engineers exit the field at many times the rate of male engineers", then you win your gold star.
If you did not guess that this is the normative claim, then it is time to retire all this philosophy and set theory that you have going, because you clearly don't have the basics down.
I'm asking about this because my views are very confused. I don't have a good normative principle to appeal to.
On the one hand, I lean towards "you shouldn't make racially biased decisions". On the other hand, while I'm intuitively disliking the criteria for these scholarships, I impose more or less the exact same criteria when deciding if a woman is worth dating.
Unlike most of the people here, I'm completely willing to admit that my views are rather confused. And I don't understand the resulting hostility - why does asking questions make me a villain?
You ask the same questions every single time. You make exactly the same confused bigoted points each time this subject comes up.
You don't create as much discussion going the other way - there are no posts from you askng why society accepts most corporate boards having no women or asking why society accepts discrimination against people with Arab sounding names. All your questions are about why it's okay to discriminate against white males in these kinds of programmes.
Can you see how that skews perception of you?
No one on HN is defending discrimination against people with Arab sounding names. If they did I'd probably ask similar questions, particularly if this viewpoint seemed common among intelligent people.
There is only one other case where people on HN will defend such discrimination - when the person being discriminated against is from Haiti or India. I do tend to ask the exact same question in that case: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6856315
Interestingly, I did get a rather surprising response - the nation state is more important than humanity: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5533155#up_5533791
As for society "accepting" some statistical fact, I can very easily recognize principles to explain that view - the normative premise is basically individual rights (if no individual has been discriminated against due to their gender, nothing is wrong). I don't think that normative premise is unreasonable, so I don't mind attributing it to people who seem to be implicitly using it. The normative conclusion logically follows from that premise plus an empirical point. I'm fully capable of reproducing the reasoning.
I simply cannot cook up a logical chain in favor of discrimination by hacker school except by using uncharitable normative premises (e.g., "black people are the master race and deserve special treatment" or "sins of the great great grandfather shall be repaid by the son and anyone who looks like him"). I don't think anyone defending hacker school's discriminatory practices will actually endorse these normative premises, so I'm curious what normative premises the defenders do use in their reasoning.
I ask the same questions because I'm attempting to be charitable. When a viewpoint is widespread among intelligent people I go to great efforts to try to understand it - this is the "Chesterton's Fence" principle. Given the complete vacuousness of the responses I receive, I am already leaning towards the view that most defenders of such practices are simply being emotional and tribal.
Now you can call me a bigot if you want. But that's very confusing - in the one case where I do make racially biased decisions (sex) my decisions are almost exactly the same as those of hacker school scholarships (4/9 African, 1/9 White, over the past year). (Note that I live in a country which is approximately 99% Asian.) I truly do not understand how you draw this conclusion.
Let's take this to email.
I read the whole thread from here down, and I must say that I completely agree with you. I also think that positive discrimination is discrimination and is bad/immoral, and that we should focus on affirmative action only towards people who are actually disadvantaged. I also often get down-voted for saying so.
Your point does not distinguish between flavors of disadvantage. Minorities and women have to deal with systemic racism and/or sexism
Here's how I suggest HS reach out to women/minorities: provide them with grants if they apply to Hacker School.
Done! Effective outreach so that traditionally-marginalized groups might participate enough to overcome institutionalized racism/sexism.
We might be getting somewhere. What is "systemic"? I.e., how do I determine if a disadvantage is systemic or not?
If I'm understanding right, your reasoning is:
1) Positive claim: women and minorities (including asians?) suffer systemic racism.
2) Normative claim: Victims of systemic disadvantage deserve special privileges, victims of non-systemic disadvantage do not. (I'm a bit shaky on this one - let me know if it's wrong.)
3) Normative conclusion: special privileges for women/minorities.
If that's correct, I can fully reproduce your reasoning once I know the definition of "systemic".
"Systemic" here is defined as "integrated deeply into a system." In this case, "systemic racism/sexism" refers to "the deep integration of racism/sexism in a particular institution or industry."
Also, I would amend #2 to say: "victims of systemic racism/sexism may be able to overcome those via targeted outreach."
Can you give me a concrete test I can use to determine whether something is systemic or not? And will any old system do?
Your amended (2) is a positive claim. It tells us "if X happens then Y will happen". You cannot draw a normative conclusion from a sequence of positive claims. You need a "should" or "aught" or "morally good" or "ethical" in there somewhere.
Discussions like this online are pushing me in the direction of favoring mandatory philosophical education.
Listen, it's not my responsibility to educate you on these issues. They've been covered extensively by sociological experts. Before participating in these discussions, I suggest you look around for some of the resources that cover these topics.
The uncited experts who's authority I'm fallaciously appealing to say your experts are wrong and a bunch of jerks. It's also a bit silly to participate in a discussion and suddenly declare that it's not your responsibility to participate after logic fails you.
One conclusion I have drawn from this - none of the pro-racist decisions people have a clue what the moral underpinnings of their views are beyond "liberal authorities tell me to believe this, so I do".
I honestly don't want to sit on HN and debate whether my claims about systemic racism are positive or normative with someone who believes I need a philosophical education. That's why I'm bowing out. Good luck.
How would you like a potential applicant to quantify and prove how much disadvantage they have suffered? Do you believe that race and gender might be good indicators of the level of prejudice one has experienced in life?
"why do you insist on grouping by race/gender?"
because society does.
Well, that's fine, but do you also want to argue that women and pacific islanders, on average, have received fewer advantages than poor white people from Appalachia?
I'd argue that women, on average, have received less advantages than men. And pacific islanders, on average, have received less advantages than white people.
You're getting caught up in a taking a very specific sample and comparing it to a general population.
Yeah maybe you hold everyone at the same admissions standard but it's not true for accessibility to the grants. Will we reach a society where we hope to be born from a more "diverse" race?
That's racism... it's sad that you use racism while believing that you are solving it. Please don't help based on the race, help based on the needs.
Edit: Can anyone debate instead of downvote? That's doesn't seems like an healthy way to change opinions...
Okay so, not so long ago they were only providing grants to women. Did I think to myself oh that's sexist? No, you know why? Because I'm pretty sure they provide the grants to people with needs (at the end of the applying form you check a box that says you'd need financial aid). Yes, they're using filters like gender and race first.
But if you were a white male, you live in a society where you could probably approach any hacker space or anything else without feeling weird about it, unlike many trans*, queer or black/latin@ people. That's the way they're promoting diversity, by creating spaces where people can feel more welcome/safe, they're in no way denying white people or males.
I did find that sexist, maybe you weren't but I was. I was afraid to talk though... this is the sad part I guess.
That's what need to be fixed. You don't solve that by giving them money. You solve that by showing we accept them, by stopping people from making them feel weird. A strict policy against racism is what's needed and being vocal about it.
That's making the issue here way more complicated to talk about for no reason. You need to draw a line between the school and the grant. I'm not saying they are racist for the school admission, I'm saying they are racist for their school grant. They are denying white people that school grant.
Yeah, don't worry. While I may not agree with you on this issue I'm all for your right to express your opinion. However you may have to accept the fact that your opinion may give you a negative backlash, that happens to everyone, how ever it will only give you negative internet points (at least on hn).
While I agree, how do you enforce that? How do you make sure that actually happens? How do you protect the groups which we agree have certain degree of disadvantage most of the time from the outside? And even with that enforced, being in an environment where most of the people might hate you based on your gender/sex/skin color won't change your experience based on a paper/set of rules.
They're denying a group the grant. A group that as we have discussed and you seem to agree with me have more advantages, and even if they couldn't afford to go to hackerschool, could go to any other similar space near them. Because again they don't have to fear racism or sexism that can not be controlled.
edit: fixd typo, more space for read-ability.
Giving them money might fix that? What you do however is punish any racist action that happens. You kick people out of the school when it happens, no second chance. You give people opportunity to talk about it, you talk about it with people. What about a class that everyone need to do which talk about racism.
Now they are saying that it's okay to care about your gender and race, you will get monetary support if there's a possibility of racism... if you are not white...
No I disagree on that part. I know multiple people that are white that have trouble with money and I know plenty of people from other gender/race that doesn't. Generalization is wrong. There's plenty of white people that couldn't afford to go and there's plenty of non-white people that could afford to go.
You make me think about it. A good way to use that money would be to help hacker school to stop racism. A safe network of hacker school that fight against racism.
I still doesn't see how giving them money fix that. I completely agree that's the issue that need to be solved.
This is getting too long and we're going around in circles about the issue.
So the only thing I'm going to reply is:
No, they're not trying to battle this issue you want to tackle. Simply because is bigger than them.
Again, this is not to fix this huge issue. This is to give other people the chance to assist this and assure them they can feel safe.
And again, they're not giving you the money simply because you're non white. They might give you the grant if you mark any of the checkbox that make you eligible but you still need to check "I'd need financial assistance to do Hacker School" which is not automatically checked as you seem to believe simply because you check that you're non white.
Again, what you propose is that non white people who want to attend to a place like hacker school:
a) wait until racism is non existent
b) deal with ugly situations/experiences because there will be rules to make sure to deal with the cause after
Instead of doing what they want/love and creating safe spaces where they don't have to deal with stuff they shouldn't deal with in the first place.
If you want to keep discussing you can shoot me an email (pcepedam92@gmail.com). I could probably even direct you to people who could answer as to why your proposal of simply solving racism is not as easy, with plenty of real life examples and historical facts.
I'd be happy to! The original post says nothing about Hacker School's desire to "solve racism." Their goal is to increase the diversity of their applicant pool. Having previously instructed at a coding school which had a similar policy, I've fielded similar criticisms. In our case, we offered a 25% (if memory serves me) discount to female applicants. The goal was to spur more gender diversity in our applicant pool, and it worked swimmingly - our first class was a 50/50 gender split.
Despite our own perception of the success of the policy, we received plenty of complaints from both men and women. Ashe Dryden helpfully pointed out to me, when I had the opportunity to ask her opinion, that women on average earn 25% less than men, so really we had just made the program cost the same for women as it did for men.
If women or minorities are discouraged from applying to Hacker School because they would have a hard time paying their living expenses, these grants will help to eliminate that hurdle, thus achieving the goal of more applicant diversity. Needs-based grants wouldn't necessarily achieve that goal. Needs-based grants would also be more difficult from an administrative standpoint as applicants would have to prove their income, which would also invite a regulatory burden.
Here's the definition of racism: prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.
How exactly does that apply to a program that's created to help groups that have a systemic disadvantage in this country?
Can you describe which systemic disadvantage they have? Does giving them money will solve theses systemic disadvantages?
You're asking for examples of systemic racism and sexism in America? Really?
That affect their ability to go to that school, yeah.
There isn't a Terrible Racism Bandit that has stolen money from minorities, preventing them from attending Hacker School. It's the specter of racism.
The fear that, say, as a Cuban-American, your boss -- the person responsible for your professional development -- might make a whitewater rafting joke at your expense. You know this type of shit is commonplace in tech, and thus you think twice about furthering your career as an engineer by attending Hacker School.
This might seem trivial to straight white guys. This is because they have not experienced first-hand what it means to advance in a socioeconomic system that was built on centuries of slavery and over 140 years of disenfranchisement because they have never been part of that group.
I doesn't find it trivial at all, I simply fail to see how giving them money to help them attend hacker school will stop that boss from doing that joke...
Because it means hacker spaces, and (hopefully) eventually tech work places will be more diverse, which means the boss will feel less comfortable making that joke.