8 ms·

"Stereotype threat and feelings of isolation are huge obstacles many students of color face in my major" Have you ever thought you might just look lost and peo

"Stereotype threat and feelings of isolation are huge obstacles many students of color face in my major" Have you ever thought you might just look lost and people are trying to help out? Why do you immediately think everyone is somehow racist by asking you this question? "Too often, however, this means that by week six in the ten week quarter system, the class enrollment makeup drops dramatically from being optimistically diverse to being exclusively male, white and Asian." It's because the classes are difficult. I took these classes when I went to school and if you don't really know your stuff, you will fail. I don't know the person that wrote the article, but it seems she wants to be taken seriously immediately. Nobody gets taken seriously immediately, even if you are white or asian. Everyone has to put the work in. "I can put that power to good use by creating more spaces for minorities in technology to thrive and feel welcome" Why don't you just say African-american students. Asians and Hispanics are also minorities. When I went to school, I had many African-american students that were my classmates. As the classes went from 100 level to 300 level and above (major-level and weeder classes), many dropped out. They were never treated any differently in class. We also need to remember that many universities have quotas for minorities and give extra points on the SAT for just checking a box. This however, does not guarantee that a person has the knowledge to actually pass the classes once they get in.

geofft 11y ago
> give extra points on the SAT for just checking a box. [citation needed]
- itg 11y ago
  doesn't have to be explicit, look at the average scores required to get into a competitive university.
- skylark 11y ago
  I don't think the way the poster worded it was particularly fair, but affirmative action is definitely a thing.
- aliston 11y ago
  Up until 2003, it really was this explicit: The University of Michigan used a 150-point scale to rank applicants, with 100 points needed to guarantee admission. The University gave underrepresented ethnic groups, including African-Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans, an automatic 20-point bonus towards their score, while a perfect SAT score was worth 12 points. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratz_v._Bollinger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratz_v._Bollinger That got ruled unconstitutional, so now its implicit: Asian Americans, Lee says, are penalized by 50 points — in other words, they had to do that much better to win admission. http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-adv-asian-race-tutoring-20150222-story.html#page=1 http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-adv-asian-race...
- chernevik 11y ago
  http://priceonomics.com/post/48794283011/do-elite-colleges-discriminate-against-asians http://priceonomics.com/post/48794283011/do-elite-colleges-d... See graph of proportion admitted by SAT score. Data is 1997, but if you think anything has changed, you're kidding yourself.
gress 11y ago
Why are you trying so hard to deny that people could be responding to her based on a stereotype? Also, how do you know how your African-American classmates were treated?
- cpncrunch 11y ago
  I don't think the OP is denying that people "could" be responding to her based on a stereotype. I think it's more about giving people the benefit of the doubt rather than automatically assuming they are racist.
  - gress 11y ago
    Unfortunately 'giving people the benefit of the doubt' is likely to perpetuate whatever bias exists. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_Association_Test https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_Association_Test
    - cpncrunch 11y ago
      When I say "give the benefit of the doubt", I mean trust but verify, i.e. ask the person why they're asking if you are lost. Saying that we should just automatically assume bias is intellectual laziness and is just perpetuating the problem rather than solving it.
      - pd1 11y ago
        That seems unnecessarily aggressive to me, even though it could be meant in the best of intentions.
        codygman 11y ago
        I can confirm it comes off as aggressive even when you try to apply a lot of touch since this is how I handle these things. I find that a sometimes simple questions like this can turn into people calling me a SJW (then dismissing everything I ever say), "your the racist for accusing me of being racist", people thinking that I'm being mean to them, etc.
zorpner 11y ago
You really check all the doesn't-want-to-understand boxes with this post. It's like a textbook in attempting to discredit through non sequitur. Have you ever thought you might just look lost and people are trying to help out? Why do you immediately think everyone is somehow racist by asking you this question? Second-guessing lived experience (it turns out that people subject to racism are actually quite good at telling when it's happening to them), check. It's because the classes are difficult. Seriously, think for even one second about the implication you're making here. Why don't you just say African-american students. Asians and Hispanics are also minorities. "All lives matter!" It's not the author's responsibility to tackle the perfect at the expense of the good. They were never treated any differently in class. You have no idea how they were treated. They do. Let them speak.
- tzs 11y ago
  >> It's because the classes are difficult. > Seriously, think for even one second about the implication you're making here. Seriously, read the article before commenting. The author said that the class in question is Stanford's CS "weed out" class. A "weed out" class is a class designed to be (1) difficult, and (2) come early in a major. The idea is that if you can get through the weed out class, you should be able to get through the rest of the classes in that major. The theory is that by putting one of the hardest classes first, you avoid students ending up in the terrible position of spending 3 or 4 years majoring in one field and then have to give up and either drop out or switch majors when they hit a difficult required class that they just cannot get through.
  - zorpner 11y ago
    Despite your numerous edits, you've missed the point entirely, which is that the GP posited that the reason the class tends towards homogeneity is its difficulty. The implication is that minorities are not as smart. I really didn't feel like I had to spell this out, but here we are.
    - waterlesscloud 11y ago
      Say you have a class that starts out with 30 students. 18 white, 10 asian, 2 black. Say the course is very hard and it cuts 2/3rds of the total students. If the cuts were proportional by race, we now have 6 white, 4 asian, and 0 blacks. There was no racism involved in the class, the fact that no blacks remain is a result of the class brutally weeding out 2/3rds of the students and that the initial number of blacks was very low. You can quibble over numbers, but the basic idea remains that large percentage cuts in an unbalanced population can make it tend more toward homogeneity.
dragonwriter 11y ago
> We also need to remember that many universities have quotas for minorities Quotas for minorities have been bright-line illegal for decades (at least since Regents v. Bakke in 1978). So, if you are going to argue that many universities are outright breaking the law, you probably should support that with something.
- tedunangst 11y ago
  Public or private?
lutorm 11y ago
There are plenty of studies that show that underrepresented minorities are, in fact, treated differently. Did your African-American classmates affirmatively tell you that they didn't feel like they were treated differently, or was that your own inference? (I notice you qualified that they were never treated differently "in class".) And contrary to your implication, people don't have to be "racist" to treat people differently. It may just be unfamiliarity, but the net effect is still to give those subject to it a feeling of not belonging. Everyone has to put the work in. Maybe. But the amount of work needed to prove that you are "one of the team" is certainly not the same for everyone, no matter how much you want that to be the case.
LGBT_2000 11y ago
Racism is a fact, it's not up for debate.
- cpncrunch 11y ago
  Nobody is denying. The question is rather whether this incident is racism, and there isn't really any evidence of that apart from speculation.
yesbabyyes 11y ago
"Have you ever thought you might just look lost and people are trying to help out? Why do you immediately think everyone is somehow racist by asking you this question?" Have you ever thought you might just have difficulty emphasizing and people are trying to tell you something valuable? Why do you immediately think anybody would "look lost" in general? "It's because the classes are difficult. I took these classes when I went to school and if you don't really know your stuff, you will fail." Right... Actually, this is where this ends with me. Mr Hauggis, you have definitely crossed the line. "They were never treated any differently in class." Do you really enjoy such confidence in your own ability to observe, feel and emphasize with people? Because from my experiences in the US, this sounds like a very strong claim.
- cpncrunch 11y ago
  >Why do you immediately think anybody would "look lost" in general? Being in a new place, looking around at the architecture, etc. That seems a pretty reasonable explanation. Why the automatic assumption of racism?
xenadu02 11y ago
All I have is my personal experiences to go on but as a white guy I was never asked that question while a CS undergrad - and that was in Texas where people are extremely polite and helpful to strangers. It's fairly simple. Young students are often spotted trying to find some location on campus. There aren't as many women taking CS. Even fewer black women. Therefore people's expectations upon seeing a young black woman in the CS department is that she's lost. That does not make those people racist and I didn't think the author was claiming any such thing. It may mean the system as a whole is racist or perpetuating older racist policies through societal inertia. When those problems are solved we would expect the percentage of black female CS students to roughly track the general population... Then they won't be unicorns and people's default expectations will change.
georgeglue1 11y ago
I have been lost more or less every time I've been in Gates. As an asian male CS student, nobody's ever "tried to help me."
ElComradio 11y ago
What is amazing is that it's a mainstay in American entertainment that an underdog fights against oppression and proves the naysayers wrong and ascends to the top. Yet so many Americans apparently believe that people are so fragile that a few offensive comments, or even statements meant to help (!) (albeit possibly in a clueless fashion) are ultra-damaging and a huge societal problem.
userbinator 11y ago
Have you ever thought you might just look lost and people are trying to help out? Why do you immediately think everyone is somehow racist by asking you this question? That brings up another point: if she really was lost but no one took notice of and asked her, would she also think they're racist?
ironfilings 11y ago
Explain to us all how you somehow magically know that minorities weren't treated any differently in class, and in life. Yeah, you don't. We know. Explain to us all how you somehow magically know that she "hasn't put the work in". Yeah, you don't. We know. Your entire statement is bullshit designed to shrug off racism.
- cpncrunch 11y ago
  Just because some people are treated differently due to their skin colour doesn't automatically make this incident one of those situations. Also, please don't engage in personal attacks.

geofft 11y ago

> give extra points on the SAT for just checking a box. [citation needed]

itg 11y ago
doesn't have to be explicit, look at the average scores required to get into a competitive university.
skylark 11y ago
I don't think the way the poster worded it was particularly fair, but affirmative action is definitely a thing.
aliston 11y ago
Up until 2003, it really was this explicit: The University of Michigan used a 150-point scale to rank applicants, with 100 points needed to guarantee admission. The University gave underrepresented ethnic groups, including African-Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans, an automatic 20-point bonus towards their score, while a perfect SAT score was worth 12 points. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratz_v._Bollinger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratz_v._Bollinger That got ruled unconstitutional, so now its implicit: Asian Americans, Lee says, are penalized by 50 points — in other words, they had to do that much better to win admission. http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-adv-asian-race-tutoring-20150222-story.html#page=1 http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-adv-asian-race...
chernevik 11y ago
http://priceonomics.com/post/48794283011/do-elite-colleges-discriminate-against-asians http://priceonomics.com/post/48794283011/do-elite-colleges-d... See graph of proportion admitted by SAT score. Data is 1997, but if you think anything has changed, you're kidding yourself.

gress 11y ago

Why are you trying so hard to deny that people could be responding to her based on a stereotype? Also, how do you know how your African-American classmates were treated?

cpncrunch 11y ago
I don't think the OP is denying that people "could" be responding to her based on a stereotype. I think it's more about giving people the benefit of the doubt rather than automatically assuming they are racist.
- gress 11y ago
  Unfortunately 'giving people the benefit of the doubt' is likely to perpetuate whatever bias exists. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_Association_Test https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_Association_Test
  - cpncrunch 11y ago
    When I say "give the benefit of the doubt", I mean trust but verify, i.e. ask the person why they're asking if you are lost. Saying that we should just automatically assume bias is intellectual laziness and is just perpetuating the problem rather than solving it.
    - pd1 11y ago
      That seems unnecessarily aggressive to me, even though it could be meant in the best of intentions.
      - codygman 11y ago
        I can confirm it comes off as aggressive even when you try to apply a lot of touch since this is how I handle these things. I find that a sometimes simple questions like this can turn into people calling me a SJW (then dismissing everything I ever say), "your the racist for accusing me of being racist", people thinking that I'm being mean to them, etc.

zorpner 11y ago

You really check all the doesn't-want-to-understand boxes with this post. It's like a textbook in attempting to discredit through non sequitur. Have you ever thought you might just look lost and people are trying to help out? Why do you immediately think everyone is somehow racist by asking you this question? Second-guessing lived experience (it turns out that people subject to racism are actually quite good at telling when it's happening to them), check. It's because the classes are difficult. Seriously, think for even one second about the implication you're making here. Why don't you just say African-american students. Asians and Hispanics are also minorities. "All lives matter!" It's not the author's responsibility to tackle the perfect at the expense of the good. They were never treated any differently in class. You have no idea how they were treated. They do. Let them speak.

tzs 11y ago
>> It's because the classes are difficult. > Seriously, think for even one second about the implication you're making here. Seriously, read the article before commenting. The author said that the class in question is Stanford's CS "weed out" class. A "weed out" class is a class designed to be (1) difficult, and (2) come early in a major. The idea is that if you can get through the weed out class, you should be able to get through the rest of the classes in that major. The theory is that by putting one of the hardest classes first, you avoid students ending up in the terrible position of spending 3 or 4 years majoring in one field and then have to give up and either drop out or switch majors when they hit a difficult required class that they just cannot get through.
- zorpner 11y ago
  Despite your numerous edits, you've missed the point entirely, which is that the GP posited that the reason the class tends towards homogeneity is its difficulty. The implication is that minorities are not as smart. I really didn't feel like I had to spell this out, but here we are.
  - waterlesscloud 11y ago
    Say you have a class that starts out with 30 students. 18 white, 10 asian, 2 black. Say the course is very hard and it cuts 2/3rds of the total students. If the cuts were proportional by race, we now have 6 white, 4 asian, and 0 blacks. There was no racism involved in the class, the fact that no blacks remain is a result of the class brutally weeding out 2/3rds of the students and that the initial number of blacks was very low. You can quibble over numbers, but the basic idea remains that large percentage cuts in an unbalanced population can make it tend more toward homogeneity.

dragonwriter 11y ago

> We also need to remember that many universities have quotas for minorities Quotas for minorities have been bright-line illegal for decades (at least since Regents v. Bakke in 1978). So, if you are going to argue that many universities are outright breaking the law, you probably should support that with something.

tedunangst 11y ago
Public or private?

lutorm 11y ago

There are plenty of studies that show that underrepresented minorities are, in fact, treated differently. Did your African-American classmates affirmatively tell you that they didn't feel like they were treated differently, or was that your own inference? (I notice you qualified that they were never treated differently "in class".) And contrary to your implication, people don't have to be "racist" to treat people differently. It may just be unfamiliarity, but the net effect is still to give those subject to it a feeling of not belonging. Everyone has to put the work in. Maybe. But the amount of work needed to prove that you are "one of the team" is certainly not the same for everyone, no matter how much you want that to be the case.

LGBT_2000 11y ago

Racism is a fact, it's not up for debate.

cpncrunch 11y ago
Nobody is denying. The question is rather whether this incident is racism, and there isn't really any evidence of that apart from speculation.

yesbabyyes 11y ago

"Have you ever thought you might just look lost and people are trying to help out? Why do you immediately think everyone is somehow racist by asking you this question?" Have you ever thought you might just have difficulty emphasizing and people are trying to tell you something valuable? Why do you immediately think anybody would "look lost" in general? "It's because the classes are difficult. I took these classes when I went to school and if you don't really know your stuff, you will fail." Right... Actually, this is where this ends with me. Mr Hauggis, you have definitely crossed the line. "They were never treated any differently in class." Do you really enjoy such confidence in your own ability to observe, feel and emphasize with people? Because from my experiences in the US, this sounds like a very strong claim.

cpncrunch 11y ago
>Why do you immediately think anybody would "look lost" in general? Being in a new place, looking around at the architecture, etc. That seems a pretty reasonable explanation. Why the automatic assumption of racism?

xenadu02 11y ago

All I have is my personal experiences to go on but as a white guy I was never asked that question while a CS undergrad - and that was in Texas where people are extremely polite and helpful to strangers. It's fairly simple. Young students are often spotted trying to find some location on campus. There aren't as many women taking CS. Even fewer black women. Therefore people's expectations upon seeing a young black woman in the CS department is that she's lost. That does not make those people racist and I didn't think the author was claiming any such thing. It may mean the system as a whole is racist or perpetuating older racist policies through societal inertia. When those problems are solved we would expect the percentage of black female CS students to roughly track the general population... Then they won't be unicorns and people's default expectations will change.

georgeglue1 11y ago

I have been lost more or less every time I've been in Gates. As an asian male CS student, nobody's ever "tried to help me."

ElComradio 11y ago

What is amazing is that it's a mainstay in American entertainment that an underdog fights against oppression and proves the naysayers wrong and ascends to the top. Yet so many Americans apparently believe that people are so fragile that a few offensive comments, or even statements meant to help (!) (albeit possibly in a clueless fashion) are ultra-damaging and a huge societal problem.

userbinator 11y ago

Have you ever thought you might just look lost and people are trying to help out? Why do you immediately think everyone is somehow racist by asking you this question? That brings up another point: if she really was lost but no one took notice of and asked her, would she also think they're racist?

ironfilings 11y ago

Explain to us all how you somehow magically know that minorities weren't treated any differently in class, and in life. Yeah, you don't. We know. Explain to us all how you somehow magically know that she "hasn't put the work in". Yeah, you don't. We know. Your entire statement is bullshit designed to shrug off racism.

cpncrunch 11y ago
Just because some people are treated differently due to their skin colour doesn't automatically make this incident one of those situations. Also, please don't engage in personal attacks.