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Google’s approach to Black schools explains why there's few Black engs in Tech

Karsteski 6y ago
I'm getting quite tired of all this grandstanding by tech companies that routinely perform highly immoral business practices. Google does not give a fuck about black people. They only care about their public image, which is degrading day by day. The idea that Google can fix "racial diversity in tech" is absurd at best. These are deeply rooted systemic issues that need to be addressed from the ground up. No amount of proselytizing about how much a company focuses on racial diversity and hiring different backgrounds is going to have any impact on that. But I'm sure now that people are capitalizing "Black" that things will change :)
- eric4smith 6y ago
  The only people who can give a french toast about black people are black people. It's not going to be: Google, Facebook, etc The Government (tm) SJW's, BLM, etc. And certainly not people on HN The fact is, it's 2021 and people should care about what they do with their themselves, their family and their community first. And stop waiting for [... some other entity ...] to fix their problems.
  - eznzt 6y ago
    >The fact is, it's 2021 and people should care about what they do with their themselves, their family and their community first. And stop waiting for [... some other entity ...] to fix their problems. From the other day: https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/city-student-passes-3-classes-in-four-years-ranks-near-top-half-of-class-with-013-gpa https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/city-student... >"He didn't fail, the school failed him. The school failed at their job. They failed. They failed, that's the problem here. They failed. They failed. He didn't deserve that."
    - tetromino_ 6y ago
      The article says that the kid was absent or late for 272 days in 3 years. That's over 50% of school days. Regardless of whether the school had made the mandated phone call about absence issues to the kid's mother, "the school failed him" would not be the first phrase I would use to describe the situation. It's possible that the school did fail him; maybe he was bullied and going to school was unbearable! But if that was the case, I am surprised that a sympathetic article about the kid and his mother failed to mention it.
      - 1shooner 6y ago
        >No one from the school told France her son was failing and not going to class. Honest question: are report cards no longer a thing?
      - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        An important reason it's a school failure story is that the 0.13 GPA all those absences earned him was 50th percentile (!!) at the school. In some sense the guy should have gone to class, but he's an impressionable high schooler, and it seems clear the school was setting an expectation that you don't really have to.
        canadianfella 6y ago
        Have to what?
  - Traster 6y ago
    Sorry I’m trying to understand, the only people to care about black people are black people- but a political organisation formed by black people to advocate for black people.... is not going to care about black people?
    - ibn_khaldun 6y ago
      "All skin folk, ain't kin folk" Black Lives Matter has been on the national stage for almost 6(!) years and has accumulated hundreds of millions of dollars, affecting zero change or influence in Black communities. A film was recently released about Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party (strangely enough, from what I gather, glorifying the man who coordinated his assassination). I bring this up to say, millions of dollars collected by Black Lives Matter and I have not even heard about them even frying a dang omelette and handing it to a Black person, let alone a Black male (whose bodies the movement continually uses as a springboard to notoriety). Nonetheless, funding alone will not solve the issues at hand in the Black community. But a few omelettes a day at least would be a better start than whatever else is going on.
      - tobobo 6y ago
        If you’d like to learn more about what the Black Lives Matter organization worked on last year, you can see their 2020 impact report, including some impressive voter turnout results [1] If you’re interested specifically in organizations that make breakfast, there are organizations like People’s Breakfast Oakland, which does great work. Not sure if they do omelettes though. [2] [1] https://blacklivesmatter.com/2020-impact-report/ https://blacklivesmatter.com/2020-impact-report/ [2] https://www.hellablackpod.com/pbo https://www.hellablackpod.com/pbo
      - Traster 6y ago
        >I have not even heard about them even frying a dang omelette It sounds a lot like you're arguing from your own ignorance. They don't report to you.
        dang 6y ago
  - mazelife 6y ago
    “Black Lives Matter's Effect on Police Lethal Use-of-Force” https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3767097 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3767097 Give it a read, maybe it will change your mind. Organizations like BLM were formed to organize concerted protest and political pressure at a community-wide level. That is to say, it’s a direct result of people doing what you suggest they do: “people should care about what they do with themselves, their family, and their community first.”
    - Dma54rhs 6y ago
      BLM is a tool for Russians, as one can read from Muellers report their social media was ran by them.
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  > The idea that Google can fix "racial diversity in tech" is absurd at best. These are deeply rooted systemic issues that need to be addressed from the ground up. I don't disagree with the substance of your comment, but it's worth pointing out that Alphabet is a company with a $1,416,000,000,000 market cap. If any non-governmental entity could be said to have the resources to address "systemic issues" at the root, it would be these giant multinationals. If Google wanted to, it could fund CS education in primary and secondary schools in black neighbourhoods, it could launch a finance wing to offer mortgages to families disadvantaged by a history of red-lining, it could endow scholarships at HBCUs, it could invest directly in infrastructure projects in majority-black cities... Obviously there's no obligation for them to do these things, but if they cared to really make a dent in America's racial issues (instead of just making white folks feel more positively about Google) they are not lacking the capital to take a stab at it. They certainly don't mind pissing away millions on internet balloons.
  - bko 6y ago
    Do you really want a giant multinationals addressing issues normally handled by the state? Do you really want google to be so involved in education and housing? Is that's whats wrong with our politics, not enough corporate influence? I just want google to provide me reasonable search results, respect my privacy and follow all applicable laws.
    - ForHackernews 6y ago
      Not necessarily. Reading this article I actually find it quite obnoxious that Google would come in and tell HBCU computer science departments to redesign their curricula to focus less on "theoretical" concerns and more on like, Python scripting that G needs from its junior engineers. But it's also worth noting what a dishonest dodge it is for these huge companies posturing like "oh we care so deeply about this issue, but it's a pipeline problem we can't fix!" - as though they can't build whatever pipeline they want to get the candidates they want to get.
      - bko 6y ago
- scruple 6y ago
  > Google does not give a fuck about black people. They care about them so long as the posturing that they engage with can make them money. In my opinion, they get away with this because the word equality, when they say that they "care" about "equality," no longer has any attachment to class consciousness. Amazon does this right in front of our faces. Nike and Apple do it but you have to peek behind the curtain a bit. Google, as well, but now you really have to dig, hence this article.
- dang 6y ago
  Would you please stop posting ideological flamewar comments to HN? You've unfortunately done it repeatedly. We ban such accounts, not just because it isn't what the site is for, but because it destroys what it is for. It leads to flamewars, which destroy curious conversation and bring out the worst from the internet. Your comments based on personal experience and curiosity are of course welcome. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - Karsteski 6y ago
    I don't even know what to say to that. What is ideological about what I said? My comment was entirely based on my experience with how companies treat people. Honestly, it feels like you simply did not like what I stated and decided to instate your vague guidelines as reason to remove my comment. I enjoy HN and the discussions that are had here, but I don't believe that curious conversation has to consist of emotionally muted statements. I do think you were wrong to remove my comment given what the guidelines state.
    - dang 6y ago
      You're asking me what is ideological about "tech companies that routinely perform highly immoral business practices", "Google does not give a fuck about black people", and "But I'm sure now that people are capitalizing "Black" that things will change"? The entire comment seems to consist of high-indignation, low-information name-calling on the ideological themes of corporatism and race. No one's saying you have to be emotionally muted! (I probably have to be, but it doesn't mean anyone else does.) There's no problem with vibrant emotion—the problem is with the sort of repetition that makes up with intensity for what it lacks in new information. It seems to be a kind of mechanism—the mind turns to indignation in the absence of anything more substantial: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=mind%20amuse%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... When you say "My comment was entirely based on my experience with how companies treat people."—it's precisely that which your comment lacked. I believe you that it was based on your experience, but it didn't actually share any of that experience; it just angrily repeated some stale tropes. Such a comment is activating rather than interesting, which is why it evokes worse discussion from others. If you had actually shared your relevant experience the comment would probably have been more interesting than activating, and that is what evokes better discussion from others. (I didn't remove your comment, but I did auto-collapse this low-quality flamewar subthread. That is one trick we use to try to jiggle the system out of its failure modes.)
ibn_khaldun 6y ago
Off topic but: > We noticed you're browsing in private mode. > Private browsing is permitted exclusively for our subscribers. Turn off private browsing to keep reading this story, or subscribe to use this feature, plus get unlimited digital access. > Try 1 month for $1 What does this even mean?! No pay/peekwall --> https://archive.is/Idmdc https://archive.is/Idmdc
rayiner 6y ago
Some more context: https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/31/business/google-hbcus/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/31/business/google-hbcus/index.h.... The allegations about Google discriminating against graduates of HBCUs are deeply troubling. For historical, cultural, and political reasons, HBCU’s are a cornerstone of both economic mobility for lower income Black people, as well as the maintenance of economic and social capital among upper income Black people: https://cmsi.gse.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/EMreport_R4_0.pdf https://cmsi.gse.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/EMreport_R4.... Companies, not just Google, seem to have a real blind spot here, insofar as they seem to think they can just wait for Harvard or Stanford to graduate more Black students with the degrees they want. A lot of the Black people they want to hire are at HBCUs. Many upper middle class Black people—the folks whose kids had access to technology to tinker with growing up, just like the upper middle class white and asian people who make up much of Google’s workforce—attended HBCUs. And their kids want to go to HBCUs, both to be in a supportive environment but also out of a sense of contributing their economic and social capital to a primarily Black college or university. (Obviously this doesn’t describe all Black people. But it describes a very large group of Black people, and is something that has no analog among white or Asian people. I myself was totally unaware of this dynamic until moving to an area with a lot of affluent Black people.) If companies cared about equity, they should be lining up to hire from HBCUs.
- yostrovs 6y ago
  I would probably be hesitant to hire someone from an HBCU because I would think that being immersed in an environment of only certain kind of persons makes you ill adapted to deal with the variety you'll find in the wider world. Also, when an institution defines itself by some characteristic like color, to me it signals that academics is not its primary concern. HBCUs had an important purpose at one time, but today black kids should be going to the same colleges as everyone else.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    I quite disagree, but it’s fair to say that the issue of how to close gaps between Black and white people is a complicated one with no clear answers. What’s more important here is that lots of affluent Black people disagree with you—and therefore attend and send their kids to HBCUs. If Google, etc., want to recruit more Black people, the answer can’t be to overlook HBCUs based on conclusions about whether “they remain necessary in 2021.”
Bostonian 6y ago
@RealAbril, a former Google diversity recruiter, tweeted that Google “Banned interview questions and feedback, as asked through mock interviews at Howard University by Google Software Engineers. Howard CS students severely struggled with basic coding, algorithms and data structures.” Is Google wrong about this? Google would not be successful if it were unable to evaluate technical competence.
eric4smith 6y ago
Why are we expecting these companies (or anyone) to fix all problems. The fix is simple. Focus on your own home and yourself first. Teach your kids more at home. Be more involved with them. Teach them to take responsibility. Don’t do silly degrees that cost huge student loans. Do more STEM. Start a small business. Eat better food. Exercise. Sure there is systemic stuff out there - but it’s 2021 and you have a choice now in what you want to do with your life. An additional 10% of the population of every race doing just the above would make a bigger difference than any company, government or organization could. Google does not owe you anything.
- rayiner 6y ago
  > Teach your kids more at home. Be more involved with them. Teach them to take responsibility. Don’t do silly degrees that cost huge student loans. Do more STEM. Start a small business. Eat better food. Exercise. This is literally the ethos of HBCUs, which graduate a disproportionate share of Black STEM majors. The point of the article is that Google is ignoring HBCU candidates.
  - vvG94KbDUtRa 6y ago
    No the point of the article is they didn't hold them in the same esteem as Harvard and Stanford. Which seems...fine?
    - ForHackernews 6y ago
      That's not what the article said: It said they considered them "long-tail" institutions (below even state schools) that they basically wouldn't hire from.
      - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        "Basically wouldn't hire from" isn't a characterization consistent with the remainder of the article. A Howard spokeswoman said that Google's hired 119 interns and 30 graduates since 2017
throw32993 6y ago
These threads often cause comments that have no clue about the reality of black people. For those who are ok with videos, here are some good but enjoyable ones. You may use 'NewPipe' from fdroid or the youtube-dl command line utility to download them: [1] How to pretend systemic racism does not exist? (with eng subtitles) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4ciwjHVHYg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4ciwjHVHYg [2] Let's talk about what it's like to be a black person in the US. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD8mWq0Hdcw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD8mWq0Hdcw [3] Let's talk about being armed and black. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL_IX8yX_JU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL_IX8yX_JU [4] How cops are trained to shoot you in your home. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuzQrbio2Qw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuzQrbio2Qw Other resources include James Baldwin's books and documentaries. His 'The Fire Next Time' is just 120 pages [5]. 'The Price of the Ticket' and 'I Am Not Your Negro' are good documentaries [6][7]. [5] https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Next-Time-James-Baldwin/dp/067974472X https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Next-Time-James-Baldwin/dp/06797... [6] https://www.amazon.com/James-Baldwin-Price-Ticket/dp/B01M25WCAS https://www.amazon.com/James-Baldwin-Price-Ticket/dp/B01M25W... [7] https://www.amazon.com/I-Am-Not-Your-Negro/dp/B01MR52U7T https://www.amazon.com/I-Am-Not-Your-Negro/dp/B01MR52U7T [8] Also the 1965 Baldwin and Buckley debate on the theme "Has the American dream been achieved at the expense of the American negro?" > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxLUbKebYvc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxLUbKebYvc
ffggvv 6y ago
lol funny to hear google get this criticism when their bias is hardcore on the other direction, significantly lowering the bar far the “right” type of applicant and raising it for the “wrong” (asian / white males) types. it just goes to show when you make your bed with an alligator, it eventually eats you too.

I'm getting quite tired of all this grandstanding by tech companies that routinely perform highly immoral business practices. Google does not give a fuck about black people. They only care about their public image, which is degrading day by day. The idea that Google can fix "racial diversity in tech" is absurd at best. These are deeply rooted systemic issues that need to be addressed from the ground up. No amount of proselytizing about how much a company focuses on racial diversity and hiring different backgrounds is going to have any impact on that. But I'm sure now that people are capitalizing "Black" that things will change :)

eric4smith 6y ago
The only people who can give a french toast about black people are black people. It's not going to be: Google, Facebook, etc The Government (tm) SJW's, BLM, etc. And certainly not people on HN The fact is, it's 2021 and people should care about what they do with their themselves, their family and their community first. And stop waiting for [... some other entity ...] to fix their problems.
- eznzt 6y ago
  >The fact is, it's 2021 and people should care about what they do with their themselves, their family and their community first. And stop waiting for [... some other entity ...] to fix their problems. From the other day: https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/city-student-passes-3-classes-in-four-years-ranks-near-top-half-of-class-with-013-gpa https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/city-student... >"He didn't fail, the school failed him. The school failed at their job. They failed. They failed, that's the problem here. They failed. They failed. He didn't deserve that."
  - tetromino_ 6y ago
    The article says that the kid was absent or late for 272 days in 3 years. That's over 50% of school days. Regardless of whether the school had made the mandated phone call about absence issues to the kid's mother, "the school failed him" would not be the first phrase I would use to describe the situation. It's possible that the school did fail him; maybe he was bullied and going to school was unbearable! But if that was the case, I am surprised that a sympathetic article about the kid and his mother failed to mention it.
    - 1shooner 6y ago
      >No one from the school told France her son was failing and not going to class. Honest question: are report cards no longer a thing?
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      An important reason it's a school failure story is that the 0.13 GPA all those absences earned him was 50th percentile (!!) at the school. In some sense the guy should have gone to class, but he's an impressionable high schooler, and it seems clear the school was setting an expectation that you don't really have to.
      - canadianfella 6y ago
        Have to what?
- Traster 6y ago
  Sorry I’m trying to understand, the only people to care about black people are black people- but a political organisation formed by black people to advocate for black people.... is not going to care about black people?
  - ibn_khaldun 6y ago
    "All skin folk, ain't kin folk" Black Lives Matter has been on the national stage for almost 6(!) years and has accumulated hundreds of millions of dollars, affecting zero change or influence in Black communities. A film was recently released about Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party (strangely enough, from what I gather, glorifying the man who coordinated his assassination). I bring this up to say, millions of dollars collected by Black Lives Matter and I have not even heard about them even frying a dang omelette and handing it to a Black person, let alone a Black male (whose bodies the movement continually uses as a springboard to notoriety). Nonetheless, funding alone will not solve the issues at hand in the Black community. But a few omelettes a day at least would be a better start than whatever else is going on.
    - tobobo 6y ago
      If you’d like to learn more about what the Black Lives Matter organization worked on last year, you can see their 2020 impact report, including some impressive voter turnout results [1] If you’re interested specifically in organizations that make breakfast, there are organizations like People’s Breakfast Oakland, which does great work. Not sure if they do omelettes though. [2] [1] https://blacklivesmatter.com/2020-impact-report/ https://blacklivesmatter.com/2020-impact-report/ [2] https://www.hellablackpod.com/pbo https://www.hellablackpod.com/pbo
    - Traster 6y ago
      >I have not even heard about them even frying a dang omelette It sounds a lot like you're arguing from your own ignorance. They don't report to you.
      - dang 6y ago
- mazelife 6y ago
  “Black Lives Matter's Effect on Police Lethal Use-of-Force” https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3767097 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3767097 Give it a read, maybe it will change your mind. Organizations like BLM were formed to organize concerted protest and political pressure at a community-wide level. That is to say, it’s a direct result of people doing what you suggest they do: “people should care about what they do with themselves, their family, and their community first.”
  - Dma54rhs 6y ago
    BLM is a tool for Russians, as one can read from Muellers report their social media was ran by them.
ForHackernews 6y ago
> The idea that Google can fix "racial diversity in tech" is absurd at best. These are deeply rooted systemic issues that need to be addressed from the ground up. I don't disagree with the substance of your comment, but it's worth pointing out that Alphabet is a company with a $1,416,000,000,000 market cap. If any non-governmental entity could be said to have the resources to address "systemic issues" at the root, it would be these giant multinationals. If Google wanted to, it could fund CS education in primary and secondary schools in black neighbourhoods, it could launch a finance wing to offer mortgages to families disadvantaged by a history of red-lining, it could endow scholarships at HBCUs, it could invest directly in infrastructure projects in majority-black cities... Obviously there's no obligation for them to do these things, but if they cared to really make a dent in America's racial issues (instead of just making white folks feel more positively about Google) they are not lacking the capital to take a stab at it. They certainly don't mind pissing away millions on internet balloons.
- bko 6y ago
  Do you really want a giant multinationals addressing issues normally handled by the state? Do you really want google to be so involved in education and housing? Is that's whats wrong with our politics, not enough corporate influence? I just want google to provide me reasonable search results, respect my privacy and follow all applicable laws.
  - ForHackernews 6y ago
    Not necessarily. Reading this article I actually find it quite obnoxious that Google would come in and tell HBCU computer science departments to redesign their curricula to focus less on "theoretical" concerns and more on like, Python scripting that G needs from its junior engineers. But it's also worth noting what a dishonest dodge it is for these huge companies posturing like "oh we care so deeply about this issue, but it's a pipeline problem we can't fix!" - as though they can't build whatever pipeline they want to get the candidates they want to get.
    - bko 6y ago
scruple 6y ago
> Google does not give a fuck about black people. They care about them so long as the posturing that they engage with can make them money. In my opinion, they get away with this because the word equality, when they say that they "care" about "equality," no longer has any attachment to class consciousness. Amazon does this right in front of our faces. Nike and Apple do it but you have to peek behind the curtain a bit. Google, as well, but now you really have to dig, hence this article.
dang 6y ago
Would you please stop posting ideological flamewar comments to HN? You've unfortunately done it repeatedly. We ban such accounts, not just because it isn't what the site is for, but because it destroys what it is for. It leads to flamewars, which destroy curious conversation and bring out the worst from the internet. Your comments based on personal experience and curiosity are of course welcome. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Karsteski 6y ago
  I don't even know what to say to that. What is ideological about what I said? My comment was entirely based on my experience with how companies treat people. Honestly, it feels like you simply did not like what I stated and decided to instate your vague guidelines as reason to remove my comment. I enjoy HN and the discussions that are had here, but I don't believe that curious conversation has to consist of emotionally muted statements. I do think you were wrong to remove my comment given what the guidelines state.
  - dang 6y ago
    You're asking me what is ideological about "tech companies that routinely perform highly immoral business practices", "Google does not give a fuck about black people", and "But I'm sure now that people are capitalizing "Black" that things will change"? The entire comment seems to consist of high-indignation, low-information name-calling on the ideological themes of corporatism and race. No one's saying you have to be emotionally muted! (I probably have to be, but it doesn't mean anyone else does.) There's no problem with vibrant emotion—the problem is with the sort of repetition that makes up with intensity for what it lacks in new information. It seems to be a kind of mechanism—the mind turns to indignation in the absence of anything more substantial: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=mind%20amuse%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... When you say "My comment was entirely based on my experience with how companies treat people."—it's precisely that which your comment lacked. I believe you that it was based on your experience, but it didn't actually share any of that experience; it just angrily repeated some stale tropes. Such a comment is activating rather than interesting, which is why it evokes worse discussion from others. If you had actually shared your relevant experience the comment would probably have been more interesting than activating, and that is what evokes better discussion from others. (I didn't remove your comment, but I did auto-collapse this low-quality flamewar subthread. That is one trick we use to try to jiggle the system out of its failure modes.)

ibn_khaldun 6y ago

Off topic but: > We noticed you're browsing in private mode. > Private browsing is permitted exclusively for our subscribers. Turn off private browsing to keep reading this story, or subscribe to use this feature, plus get unlimited digital access. > Try 1 month for $1 What does this even mean?! No pay/peekwall --> https://archive.is/Idmdc https://archive.is/Idmdc

rayiner 6y ago

Some more context: https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/31/business/google-hbcus/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/31/business/google-hbcus/index.h.... The allegations about Google discriminating against graduates of HBCUs are deeply troubling. For historical, cultural, and political reasons, HBCU’s are a cornerstone of both economic mobility for lower income Black people, as well as the maintenance of economic and social capital among upper income Black people: https://cmsi.gse.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/EMreport_R4_0.pdf https://cmsi.gse.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/EMreport_R4.... Companies, not just Google, seem to have a real blind spot here, insofar as they seem to think they can just wait for Harvard or Stanford to graduate more Black students with the degrees they want. A lot of the Black people they want to hire are at HBCUs. Many upper middle class Black people—the folks whose kids had access to technology to tinker with growing up, just like the upper middle class white and asian people who make up much of Google’s workforce—attended HBCUs. And their kids want to go to HBCUs, both to be in a supportive environment but also out of a sense of contributing their economic and social capital to a primarily Black college or university. (Obviously this doesn’t describe all Black people. But it describes a very large group of Black people, and is something that has no analog among white or Asian people. I myself was totally unaware of this dynamic until moving to an area with a lot of affluent Black people.) If companies cared about equity, they should be lining up to hire from HBCUs.

yostrovs 6y ago
I would probably be hesitant to hire someone from an HBCU because I would think that being immersed in an environment of only certain kind of persons makes you ill adapted to deal with the variety you'll find in the wider world. Also, when an institution defines itself by some characteristic like color, to me it signals that academics is not its primary concern. HBCUs had an important purpose at one time, but today black kids should be going to the same colleges as everyone else.
- rayiner 6y ago
  I quite disagree, but it’s fair to say that the issue of how to close gaps between Black and white people is a complicated one with no clear answers. What’s more important here is that lots of affluent Black people disagree with you—and therefore attend and send their kids to HBCUs. If Google, etc., want to recruit more Black people, the answer can’t be to overlook HBCUs based on conclusions about whether “they remain necessary in 2021.”

Bostonian 6y ago

@RealAbril, a former Google diversity recruiter, tweeted that Google “Banned interview questions and feedback, as asked through mock interviews at Howard University by Google Software Engineers. Howard CS students severely struggled with basic coding, algorithms and data structures.” Is Google wrong about this? Google would not be successful if it were unable to evaluate technical competence.

eric4smith 6y ago

Why are we expecting these companies (or anyone) to fix all problems. The fix is simple. Focus on your own home and yourself first. Teach your kids more at home. Be more involved with them. Teach them to take responsibility. Don’t do silly degrees that cost huge student loans. Do more STEM. Start a small business. Eat better food. Exercise. Sure there is systemic stuff out there - but it’s 2021 and you have a choice now in what you want to do with your life. An additional 10% of the population of every race doing just the above would make a bigger difference than any company, government or organization could. Google does not owe you anything.

rayiner 6y ago
> Teach your kids more at home. Be more involved with them. Teach them to take responsibility. Don’t do silly degrees that cost huge student loans. Do more STEM. Start a small business. Eat better food. Exercise. This is literally the ethos of HBCUs, which graduate a disproportionate share of Black STEM majors. The point of the article is that Google is ignoring HBCU candidates.
- vvG94KbDUtRa 6y ago
  No the point of the article is they didn't hold them in the same esteem as Harvard and Stanford. Which seems...fine?
  - ForHackernews 6y ago
    That's not what the article said: It said they considered them "long-tail" institutions (below even state schools) that they basically wouldn't hire from.
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      "Basically wouldn't hire from" isn't a characterization consistent with the remainder of the article. A Howard spokeswoman said that Google's hired 119 interns and 30 graduates since 2017

throw32993 6y ago

These threads often cause comments that have no clue about the reality of black people. For those who are ok with videos, here are some good but enjoyable ones. You may use 'NewPipe' from fdroid or the youtube-dl command line utility to download them: [1] How to pretend systemic racism does not exist? (with eng subtitles) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4ciwjHVHYg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4ciwjHVHYg [2] Let's talk about what it's like to be a black person in the US. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD8mWq0Hdcw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD8mWq0Hdcw [3] Let's talk about being armed and black. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL_IX8yX_JU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL_IX8yX_JU [4] How cops are trained to shoot you in your home. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuzQrbio2Qw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuzQrbio2Qw Other resources include James Baldwin's books and documentaries. His 'The Fire Next Time' is just 120 pages [5]. 'The Price of the Ticket' and 'I Am Not Your Negro' are good documentaries [6][7]. [5] https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Next-Time-James-Baldwin/dp/067974472X https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Next-Time-James-Baldwin/dp/06797... [6] https://www.amazon.com/James-Baldwin-Price-Ticket/dp/B01M25WCAS https://www.amazon.com/James-Baldwin-Price-Ticket/dp/B01M25W... [7] https://www.amazon.com/I-Am-Not-Your-Negro/dp/B01MR52U7T https://www.amazon.com/I-Am-Not-Your-Negro/dp/B01MR52U7T [8] Also the 1965 Baldwin and Buckley debate on the theme "Has the American dream been achieved at the expense of the American negro?" > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxLUbKebYvc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxLUbKebYvc

ffggvv 6y ago

lol funny to hear google get this criticism when their bias is hardcore on the other direction, significantly lowering the bar far the “right” type of applicant and raising it for the “wrong” (asian / white males) types. it just goes to show when you make your bed with an alligator, it eventually eats you too.