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My one data point: I used to be an IT consultant in St Louis. St Louis is roughly half white and half black. The IT departments I worked with were roughly half

by jmpman 3y ago

My one data point: I used to be an IT consultant in St Louis. St Louis is roughly half white and half black. The IT departments I worked with were roughly half white and half H1B Indian. The only black employees I saw were the security guards, or were from Africa or the Caribbean. I’m convinced that H1B provide a barrier to entry for Black Americans into the IT sector.

btilly 3y ago
You may be convinced, but I'm convinced that the barrier to entry for black Americans is that they don't go to college, and if they do go to college, they don't go into STEM. So they're by and large not qualified to enter the sector. https://dhewd.mo.gov/documents/EquityReport2020.pdf https://dhewd.mo.gov/documents/EquityReport2020.pdf It is easy to blame immigrants. But immigrants aren't involved in the bit where the disparity starts showing up in a big way.
- paulryanrogers 3y ago
  Black Americans face systemic issues keeping them out of college. It's complicated and I salute all who even attempt it considering their starting points in life are so much worse.
  - btilly 3y ago
    Everyone agrees that they face systemic issues. People don't agree on what those systemic issues are. As an example, the California math curriculum is being organized around more extreme versions of the idea of keeping grades together, even though some have not learned previous material. They point to the fact that blacks wind up staying in class to higher grade levels. Troglodytes like myself point out that if someone is missing key concepts in math, it is absolutely essential that this not be glossed over. You have to go back and fix the foundation before trying to go on. Systemically not even trying to do this allows only the pretense of an education. People like me then point to poor test scores and adult outcomes as evidence that pretending people failed to learn doesn't work. We need to have more rigorous standards, offer more support, and be willing to go more slowly at first until people "get" concepts. When you look at states by black/white disparities in the prison population, progressive states dominate the bad end of the spectrum, and conservative states dominate the better end. (No state is actually very good, but some are less bad than others.) My opinion is this. Conservative states do a lot that's obviously bad. What progressive states do is not as obviously bad, but generates worse results. Rigid ideological lectures around equity don't change that. Most people think that we live in a more progressive and tolerant society than we did under Reagan. But black/white wealth disparities have been increasing, not decreasing. Not because of old problems like redlining. Which was banned in 1968. But because CURRENT policies passed since 1980 are bad. So what would I change? First I would end the drug war. It was always a race war. Second, I would bring back school bussing. Data showed that it really worked.
vkou 3y ago
You don't think that the South's centuries of chattel slavery, and then a century of formal apartheid, and now a kind of less formal apartheid doesn't have a lot more to do with why black Americans face barriers to entry to middle-upper-class professions? No, it's the immigrants' fault... (I wonder who you blame for lack of black Americans in C-level positions, doctors, lawyers, politicians, various millionaires and billionaires, etc. Not that many folks from India in any of those, so immigration from Asia can't be it...)
- jmpman 3y ago
  There’s plenty of reasons why black American’s fail to succeed, but in IT, the availability of cheap H1B is absolutely a factor. I worked in a Fortune 500 company who hired a ton of engineers from historically black colleges and universities. Probably 30 engineers in our group of around 200. After 4 years many weren’t working out and were let go. Of the 30, I believe just 4 remain. Since then, the company has hired almost exclusively H1B for those positions. Was there a competitive problem with those newly minted engineers, yes. But, they were effectively replaced by H1Bs.
flappyeagle 3y ago
Your logic doesn’t follow. Is there more?
jmpman 3y ago
Additionally, there should be a feedback loop when the economy slows. The Visa cap should be reduced, maintaining the yearly rate. Btw, I don’t envision this visa fee to be a few thousand dollars a year, but in the 10s to 100k per year. Right now, there are American engineers who aren’t being hired, while H1B are being forced back into the office.

by jmpman 3y ago

btilly 3y ago

You may be convinced, but I'm convinced that the barrier to entry for black Americans is that they don't go to college, and if they do go to college, they don't go into STEM. So they're by and large not qualified to enter the sector. https://dhewd.mo.gov/documents/EquityReport2020.pdf https://dhewd.mo.gov/documents/EquityReport2020.pdf It is easy to blame immigrants. But immigrants aren't involved in the bit where the disparity starts showing up in a big way.

paulryanrogers 3y ago
Black Americans face systemic issues keeping them out of college. It's complicated and I salute all who even attempt it considering their starting points in life are so much worse.
- btilly 3y ago
  Everyone agrees that they face systemic issues. People don't agree on what those systemic issues are. As an example, the California math curriculum is being organized around more extreme versions of the idea of keeping grades together, even though some have not learned previous material. They point to the fact that blacks wind up staying in class to higher grade levels. Troglodytes like myself point out that if someone is missing key concepts in math, it is absolutely essential that this not be glossed over. You have to go back and fix the foundation before trying to go on. Systemically not even trying to do this allows only the pretense of an education. People like me then point to poor test scores and adult outcomes as evidence that pretending people failed to learn doesn't work. We need to have more rigorous standards, offer more support, and be willing to go more slowly at first until people "get" concepts. When you look at states by black/white disparities in the prison population, progressive states dominate the bad end of the spectrum, and conservative states dominate the better end. (No state is actually very good, but some are less bad than others.) My opinion is this. Conservative states do a lot that's obviously bad. What progressive states do is not as obviously bad, but generates worse results. Rigid ideological lectures around equity don't change that. Most people think that we live in a more progressive and tolerant society than we did under Reagan. But black/white wealth disparities have been increasing, not decreasing. Not because of old problems like redlining. Which was banned in 1968. But because CURRENT policies passed since 1980 are bad. So what would I change? First I would end the drug war. It was always a race war. Second, I would bring back school bussing. Data showed that it really worked.

vkou 3y ago

You don't think that the South's centuries of chattel slavery, and then a century of formal apartheid, and now a kind of less formal apartheid doesn't have a lot more to do with why black Americans face barriers to entry to middle-upper-class professions? No, it's the immigrants' fault... (I wonder who you blame for lack of black Americans in C-level positions, doctors, lawyers, politicians, various millionaires and billionaires, etc. Not that many folks from India in any of those, so immigration from Asia can't be it...)

jmpman 3y ago
There’s plenty of reasons why black American’s fail to succeed, but in IT, the availability of cheap H1B is absolutely a factor. I worked in a Fortune 500 company who hired a ton of engineers from historically black colleges and universities. Probably 30 engineers in our group of around 200. After 4 years many weren’t working out and were let go. Of the 30, I believe just 4 remain. Since then, the company has hired almost exclusively H1B for those positions. Was there a competitive problem with those newly minted engineers, yes. But, they were effectively replaced by H1Bs.

flappyeagle 3y ago

Your logic doesn’t follow. Is there more?

jmpman 3y ago

Additionally, there should be a feedback loop when the economy slows. The Visa cap should be reduced, maintaining the yearly rate. Btw, I don’t envision this visa fee to be a few thousand dollars a year, but in the 10s to 100k per year. Right now, there are American engineers who aren’t being hired, while H1B are being forced back into the office.