>> Where I can agree is that there are basic opportunities (e.g. networking) in the tech community that Black Americans may not take interest in. I look for pe

>> Where I can agree is that there are basic opportunities (e.g. networking) in the tech community that Black Americans may not take interest in. I look for people who don't do the job for the money but because they enjoy it and they have a passion for the work and technologies. Today I don't work with the tech directly but apply it to a particular domain but I need to keep up-to-date with the technologies and work with them on my laptop. Many of the meetups I've gone to (including Google Tech talks in NYC) are ultra cool. I don't go for the networking, but because I want to learn about the new technologies and ideas and ask questions. While attending, of course I end up networking and learning more about what other attendees are up to. In my case, I paid for 90% of my tuition and housing/living costs for undergrad by programming computers beginning in high school. I could not get a penny of loans or grants in financial aid. But because I had so much work experience, my many campus job interviews were about the interesting projects that I'd programmed and I got many offers from great firms. In summary, attending the Meetups is not about the networking per se, but that the topics are ultra-cool applying different technologies to many domains (finance, healthcare, media, urban planning, etc. etc.) and its fun to meet people with similar passions and interests. Not only do I not see blacks, but I also do not see hispanics at these events. Instead of whining about diversity, create a github account, do some interesting projects with spark and machine learning or one of the other spark libraries. Do it with Scala or use Python or R. Solve, some interesting problem with all of the data out there or do some volunteer work while in school to do such a project. Interview with that.