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You don't need a role model that has the same skin colour as you to be motivated to do stem or specifically get into programming. Stop caring about what people

You don't need a role model that has the same skin colour as you to be motivated to do stem or specifically get into programming. Stop caring about what people look like. stop trying to control how the industry hires because that's not the problem. People don't do programming or science because it's hard. Most people that go to university don't even improve or add to the field they studied. Let people choose for themself what they want to do and stop worrying about things that don't matter. Nobody is crying about the lack of diversity in nursing or finance or social work or whatever it is kids choose to study these days.

eridius 10y ago
> You don't need a role model that has the same skin colour as you to be motivated to do stem or specifically get into programming. Stop caring about what people look like. You seriously underestimate how important it is to see other people like yourself succeeding at the things you're considering. I also find it pretty interesting that you created a new account for the express purpose of making this comment. I don't know if that's because you don't want me figuring out what race/gender you are, or because you know you're making a boneheaded comment and don't want it to be visible on your main account.
- internaut 10y ago
  He is doing it because witchhunts are a thing.
  - eridius 10y ago
    You could say that about almost any comment, and yet you don't see people constantly creating brand new HN accounts to make comments (in fact, brand new accounts are often viewed with suspicion). Besides, their comment wasn't anything overly inflammatory, it was actually a point of view that a surprising number of people tend to express, it just happens to be completely wrong.
    - hyperdunc 10y ago
      Their view contains the moral high ground, whereas yours might seem pragmatic but actually reinforces identity politics.
      - eridius 10y ago
        Moral high ground? That's bullshit. Their view is "I'm privileged as fuck and have no idea what other people are going through, therefore I want to completely discount their issues and pretend they don't exist while at the same time blaming them for it". There's nothing even remotely moral about that.
        hoodedfang 10y ago
        That's a pretty big chip on your shoulder. Hiring or promoting based on a quota is immoral. Hiring or promoting based on merit and ability is moral. Moreso, hiring based on a quota is so transparent and unfair it makes the ones who are capable be at risk to completely check-out of the system and it communicates to the incompetent that their mediocrity is a virtue.
    - internaut 10y ago
      Yes. But different types of politics have different witches to be hunting. So a statement inflammatory in one place can be non-combustible in another. We all know very well that one faction involves itself in moral crusades while waving the diversity flag. That is why the term Social Justice Warrior was coined. That would be the people who unironically use the phrase 'white trash'.
  - stevenwiles 10y ago
    We should not be praising someone for being afraid to stand behind their words. That is the behavior of a coward.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> Stop caring about what people look like People, even people who actively seek not to, generally do care about this to some degree; what you care about is not something infinitely amenable to voluntary changes. The existence of a society in which gender, race, ethnicity, and other demographic factors are pervasively given weight, particularly, means that such things do matter. We might wish to have a society in which they were not given the weight they are now, and where gender-, race-, etc., specific role models were not important. But we don't live in that society, and human nature does not let people magically transform into the people they would be if they had been raised in such a society simply by wishing it so.
dang 10y ago
> Nobody is crying about the lack of diversity in nursing or That canard has been brought up and refuted so many times here that it's time to just retire it. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12221763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12221763 and marked it off-topic.

eridius 10y ago

> You don't need a role model that has the same skin colour as you to be motivated to do stem or specifically get into programming. Stop caring about what people look like. You seriously underestimate how important it is to see other people like yourself succeeding at the things you're considering. I also find it pretty interesting that you created a new account for the express purpose of making this comment. I don't know if that's because you don't want me figuring out what race/gender you are, or because you know you're making a boneheaded comment and don't want it to be visible on your main account.

internaut 10y ago
He is doing it because witchhunts are a thing.
- eridius 10y ago
  You could say that about almost any comment, and yet you don't see people constantly creating brand new HN accounts to make comments (in fact, brand new accounts are often viewed with suspicion). Besides, their comment wasn't anything overly inflammatory, it was actually a point of view that a surprising number of people tend to express, it just happens to be completely wrong.
  - hyperdunc 10y ago
    Their view contains the moral high ground, whereas yours might seem pragmatic but actually reinforces identity politics.
    - eridius 10y ago
      Moral high ground? That's bullshit. Their view is "I'm privileged as fuck and have no idea what other people are going through, therefore I want to completely discount their issues and pretend they don't exist while at the same time blaming them for it". There's nothing even remotely moral about that.
      - hoodedfang 10y ago
        That's a pretty big chip on your shoulder. Hiring or promoting based on a quota is immoral. Hiring or promoting based on merit and ability is moral. Moreso, hiring based on a quota is so transparent and unfair it makes the ones who are capable be at risk to completely check-out of the system and it communicates to the incompetent that their mediocrity is a virtue.
  - internaut 10y ago
    Yes. But different types of politics have different witches to be hunting. So a statement inflammatory in one place can be non-combustible in another. We all know very well that one faction involves itself in moral crusades while waving the diversity flag. That is why the term Social Justice Warrior was coined. That would be the people who unironically use the phrase 'white trash'.
- stevenwiles 10y ago
  We should not be praising someone for being afraid to stand behind their words. That is the behavior of a coward.

dragonwriter 10y ago

> Stop caring about what people look like People, even people who actively seek not to, generally do care about this to some degree; what you care about is not something infinitely amenable to voluntary changes. The existence of a society in which gender, race, ethnicity, and other demographic factors are pervasively given weight, particularly, means that such things do matter. We might wish to have a society in which they were not given the weight they are now, and where gender-, race-, etc., specific role models were not important. But we don't live in that society, and human nature does not let people magically transform into the people they would be if they had been raised in such a society simply by wishing it so.

dang 10y ago

> Nobody is crying about the lack of diversity in nursing or That canard has been brought up and refuted so many times here that it's time to just retire it. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12221763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12221763 and marked it off-topic.