Ask HN: Why is the hacker scene so hostile to women and black people?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6878994

by jd0 • 13 years ago

32 62 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

On today the birthday of Grace Hopper, inventor of the compiler among other computer science achievements, I ask HN, why is the hacker scene and computing field in general so hostile to women and people of color? More specifically, hostile to black people.

It's my opinion that diversity spurs innovation, is the scene really so short-sighted as to ignore this long-term failure to include anyone but mostly white males? For a group that prides itself in its inventiveness, it seems to be a dangerously closed loop.

Thoughts? What can be done to change this?

thenerdfiles9• 13 years ago

Because many African languages, like Zulu, lack many linguistic distinctions sufficient to produce abstract concepts regarding Time (Past/Present) and Rules (Obligation/Promise). So descendents of Africans and people who are closer in proximity to practical use of those languages are seen as lacking subtlety, lacking conceptual grace, less capable of exploratory thought and critical intellectual maneuvering — notwithstanding the Media Machine which primes expectations for cross-racial and cross-cultural interactions.

As a Black (and Native American, mind you) person myself, I constantly battle on a personal level with criticisms such as this, and through my own limitations with language. I am but one person. At the same time, I have read from the works of Samuel Beckett to the works of Wittgenstein to Galileo, Aquinas, Maimonides, Aristotle, versed in Spinoza's Ethics, trained with a B.A. in Philosophy. And I still find myself each day pitted against the installed social strictures present in all Blacks' lives; even with my Classical education, I often find myself barking up the wrong tree more often than not.

Each day I grapple with my tools, sometimes mystified by my own capacity to become conceptually paralyzed. And this becomes a circle of a vicious nature. Language itself becomes both a fortress blocking acceptance and a prison prohibiting liberation, as constantly, despite whatever linguistic finesse I might muster, it simply falls upon deaf ears.

We call this Structural Oppression. It does not disappear over night.

One important point MLK made during his campaign is that, and I paraphrase, equality will not exist until Blacks are able to fail at the same rate as Whites. I am quite sure the same goes for women; hence, why Miley Cyrus serves as a Debordian "Spectacle".

Georges Bataille says something I believe is relevant[0]:

    A man who finds himself among others is irritated 
    because he does not know why he is not one of the others.

[0]: http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/georges-bataille-the-...

actionbrandon• 13 years ago

Thank you for providing an example of what a bigot pretending to be smart sounds like. Now we all know what to look out for and combat.

thenerdfiles9• 13 years ago

Do you actually have an argument ? Do you actually have a contribution to make to the discussion ? Can you not see the claims being made here ? Can you actually argue one way or another, or is this discussion simply off-limits because anyone has any opinion whatsoever?

Is it essential that I add "I read this from some place" ?

I deal with this issue on a personal level; the least you can acknowledge is that it hurts for me to have internalized assertions I clearly did not dream up or produce myself.

thenerdfiles9• 13 years ago

    ... sometimes mystified by my own capacity to become conceptually paralyzed.

    [...] are seen as [...]

Like, are you actually reading what I wrote ?

Who pretends to be smart by admitting their own capacity to become conceptually paralyzed by their own tools ?

What are you even talking about ?

jd018• 13 years ago

I was about to reply to the original post but thank-you for editing and clarifying a bit.

I have to say, though, even if your first paragraph is true, do you have any empirical evidence that native African language speakers have a harder time with computer science than native speakers of other non-English languages?

Secondly, when looking at those of African descent who were not specifically born and raised speaking an African language as their native language, there's no excuse besides both an ingrained societal disadvantage and perhaps a specific repulsion of black people by hacker culture.

As an example, in the USA 13.6% of Americans are African American (born in America and of African descent): (http://www.cdc.gov/minorityhealth/populations/REMP/black.htm...)

While the Computing Research Association reported that only 6.9% of the population of computer workers in the USA are black. (http://cra.org/resources/crn-archive-view-detail/expanding_t...)

Why is this group so under-represented? Existing societal disadvantages exist, but why are they so drastic for computer science - and what can we do to change that? That's what I'm asking.

thenerdfiles9• 13 years ago

I have to say, though, even if your first paragraph is true, do you have any empirical evidence that native African language speakers have a harder time with computer science than native speakers of other non-English languages?

I'm largely speaking from Gedaliah Braun's "Racism, Guilt and Self-Deceit"[0] which speaks to the lack of "abstract entities" like the Future, the Past, and things like Obligations. It would be problematic to compare horizontally across languages (Spanish, French, English, Zulu) strictly in terms of their actual evolutionary maturity. But "English" as the Mother language of programming does introduce a vertical stricture; however, evolutionarily this stricture might be negligible since English's dominance is a societal pressure.

But it must be stated that even authors/researchers like George Lakoff to Pinker and onto Physicalists believe in things like "Language Centers" of the brain, or "mentalese". I am trying my best to speak in line with racialism while still acknowledging that all humans alive today exist with roughly the same Human Potential. Environment is important; and so, socioeconomic structures are important.

My assumption is Wittgensteinian, or let's just say Constructivist-about-Cognition: If your native language lacks linguistic world building capabilities (even a world of abstractions), programming will be tougher to grok. That said, those who have mastered the conventions of the Computational World (think Mathematical Objectivities) will be less welcoming to those who have not.

Secondly, when looking at those of African descent who were not specifically born and raised speaking an African language as their native language, there's no excuse besides both an ingrained societal disadvantage and perhaps a specific repulsion of black people by hacker culture.

Yes, structural oppression is a real thing. I want to reiterate my point about MLK's biggest contribution to this debate: There's no equality until Blacks are able to fail at the same rate as Whites. Generalizing from this: There's no equality until all members of the species are able to fail at the same rate. This would be a true homeostatic structure of social norms.

Why is this group so under-represented? Existing societal disadvantages exist, but why are they so drastic for computer science - and what can we do to change that? That's what I'm asking.

My immediate naive response? Computers are less economically viable in our country. Surely Blacks could roll and build their own. But where are the parts? Re-sale shops, pawn shops, etc. — and can there be an explicit aesthetic and obvious need to engage in hardware hacking of this sort when considering the aforementioned structural oppression?

[0] http://www.amazon.com/Racism-Guilt-Self-Deceit-Gedaliah-Brau...

SamReidHughes2• 13 years ago

Stop worrying about computer science specifically -- it's no different in engineering fields, and worse in the sciences. The reasons are not specific to CS.

sanskritabelt2• 13 years ago

Regarding languages lacking certain features therefore limiting the cognitive space of their speakers, everybody should remember the English has no future tense: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005471.h... and just personally as a native speaker I have to wonder what it is I'm missing.

eboyjr2• 13 years ago

Where do you see hostility? I run an open-source organization and it just so happens that not a lot of women programmers frequent on IRC which is where we have most of our discussions. I just don't see many women in the field let alone any hostility towards them.

Edit: Your mention of women and blacks remind me of this picture: https://secure.flickr.com/photos/8212496@N06/493885707

john_whelan• 13 years ago

I wouldn't say there's a hostility toward woman and black people, but there's definitely a shortage in the hacker scene. Out of all the groups I've been a part of, the technological people I've been around seem to care the least about that kind of stuff. That being said, I'm not a woman, nor am I black, so maybe it is there and I just don't see it.

angersock4• 13 years ago

http://learncodethehardway.org/

http://ruby.railstutorial.org/

http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html

There. That should do it--for our part, we'll try to be friendly. What more do you want?

EDIT:

http://railsgirls.com/ is actually pretty great to be fair.

jd018• 13 years ago

Honestly, trying to be "friendly" isn't enough. I know nobody told you that it's your job to include others different than yourself, but personally, I feel it's a moral obligation, one that in the end increases productive output of the whole group.

I'll take a guess here and say that it's easier for a white males to find those resources you posted above. More whites have computers. Males are encouraged to explore more-so than women. I could go on and on.. it's not enough to just post something online and assume anyone with the gusto and the self-will can find it. We don't live in a utopia, less than 35% of the worlds population are active internet users.

angersock4• 13 years ago

"easier for white males to find those resources you posted above"

Yes, the Google really cares what sex, gender, or race I am when I enter "learn programming". </sarcasm>

There is a good point that you have to have access to machines in order to program them--then again, we'll ignore that most real computer science didn't have those machines when it was being developed. Even at that point, though, we need to be arguing "Hey, economic status should not be a barrier to entry for programming!" instead of "Hey, why don't you (male, white) folks open the clubhouse to everyone??"

There are enough traditional interests trying to bring those bigoted politics into our field that I'd rather we just focus on embracing and educating everyone, and let the inclusion issues sort themselves out.

krstck• 13 years ago

I decided that I wanted a new career in programming. I learned Rails through Michael Hartl's (wonderful) tutorial. Several months later, I had a job as a programmer. My being female has never, ever come up. In fact, of the five programmers in my shop, two are female.

Any interested party can learn the skills, and then all you have to do is find someone you can help. There's a huge demand for programming skills, but a lot of potential clients/employers don't necessarily know what value we can bring. You also need to be somewhat of a salesman.

(Full disclosure: I did come from a programming background, but I was self-taught. My previous job was in an unrelated field.)

angersock4• 13 years ago

Next step (providing you haven't already done so!) is to spread the good word and help train the next generation. :)

jd018• 13 years ago

Not to discredit your success, but your example is an anecdote, and it is not the usual one. Only about 10% of people in the computing industry are women. See my recent comment here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6879195

xerophtye4• 13 years ago

I am confused, where exactly do you see this hostility? I thought the hacker community is welcome to everyone. In fact, i am not a white male. Most people i know aren't white males. A very large number of visitors of HN are probably not white males. But we're all respectful towards each other here. In fact of all the forums online, I actually find HN to be the least biased/racist/sexist. Just the other day, that post by Julia Evans about writing an OS received such positive feedback. I didn't see a single comment that discredited her for being a female. In fact when one commenter accidentally called her a "he", he was put down by the others for his mistake, saying that it is very disrespectful to assume the poster of a Tech blog is a male by default.

So i don't see really what hostility you are pointing towards. Some examples would be welcome.

jd018• 13 years ago

I know discussion here is reasonable, and that's partially why I brought it up here on HN vs anywhere else, but check my recent comment for clarification:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6879195

thenerdfiles9• 13 years ago

There's a huge social network that makes up programming which exists outside of HN and networks like it. That said, what about the problems of Big Companies? These companies largely continue to allow these "hostilities" to persist. It's the problem of "mixed talent".

xerophtye4• 13 years ago

Umm... I can't think of any color-examples at the moment, but as for the females and big companies thing, well, Yahoo's CEO is a female. Google's Security head is a female (last i checked).

Apart from big companies, DefCon's team has a lot of females in it. So the "HackerScene" isn't just about males

carsongross2• 13 years ago

Well, one thing that could be done to change this would be to stop complaining about how one of the most meritocratic groups of people in the history of mankind is hostile, and get forking.

The code is thataway:

https://github.com/

jd018• 13 years ago

Your attitude is childish and short-sighted. When certain groups are -by default- disadvantaged compared to a dominant group, just saying "go do work like I did" - is meaningless.

carsongross2• 13 years ago

Answer is as question does.

waps2• 13 years ago

Really ? On systems where people are essentially identified by their email adress and/or username ?

Why don't you tell me. One of these is female (and pretty accomplished in the open source community), one of these is non-white ... which is which ?

* thegrendel.abs

* tille

* pgquilles

If you can't, obviously the reason is not just racism. On mailinglists, github and irc, skin color and sex don't exist. If there is a difference, MAYBE it's the result of companies not hiring these people to work on open source, or because sex and ethnicity influences whether and how much you work on open source (actually I think it's more about location. Open source contributors almost always live close to universities that were very involved in the creation of open source 20-30 years ago. Because those universities are effectively only in USA and northwest Europe, the ethnicity is skewed, but there are plenty of mostly white countries that are massively underrepresented in open source projects).

As to why people are hostile to other groups, a very significant portion of them are either teenagers in highschool or university students (and even then, skewed towards the younger univ students). They're not a welcoming group, no, that's true. But they are pretty universally not welcoming, asking for someone's sex/color on lkml ... is not something you want to do if you want your reputation to survive. Hell, there are flamewars that started because of statements that someone was somewhat richer in kilograms than medically advisable, when it was absolutely true.

thenerdfiles9• 13 years ago

The problem is that the hostility has no target. That's exactly the problem. It's hostility in virtue of the climb of a ficticious hierarchy, albeit a pragmatic-utilitarian one, which fails to acknowledge the socio-political and historical context in which it emerged, not to mention the outmoded economic, peculiar institution that made it possible.

To be clear? Slavery made most of America's economic infrastructure possible. The subjugation of women made America's economic infrastructure possible. The Internet was born out of those economic foundations. There is no meritocracy in a vacuum.

Not to be too reductionist, but I believe a big narrative may help here: It's like when some bully barges in on a group of kids playing a new game unknown to the bully. The bully calls its friends over, and they all demand that scores be kept and aggression be matched. Yet they fail to understand that the game could be played just as well without the contrivance.

thenerdfiles9• 13 years ago

ficticious hierarchy[0]*

[0] http://www.genderratic.com/p/1140/patriarchy-1-0-and-the-ape...

drill_sarge• 13 years ago

Seriously stop make these accusations without any proof. Where is the hostility? Just because there are a lot of white males™ doesn't mean there is hostility against other people.

jd018• 13 years ago

To clarify, check my recent comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6879195

serf• 13 years ago

you're citing statistics without proof of their relevance to this discussion.

by hostility, it seems that you actually mean "Why do blacks and women represent a minority in computer science?"

Computer science has always been an inbetween between engineering and hard sciences--because of that many laymen were employed to do menial computer tasks early in history. This was, perhaps , one of the first chances for laymen to jump onto a scientific industry which turned out to be semi-permanent.

Since we know that education paved the way for the empowerment of minorities, could it be that the statistics that you're referencing are really just moving as a function of women becoming wider dispersed and accepted within all sciences, rather than just the engineering ones?

Perhaps the statistical anomaly that you cite is really a glimmer of hope for women. Computer science is not the only field that readily accepts them now-a-days, and perhaps those numbers actually indicate a migration across a wider array of science and engineering fields that were not at one time available for them, rather than a disappearance of women all together in STEM.

jd018• 13 years ago

I'm commenting here as a response to a few posts that highlight my use of the word "hostile" - a somewhat inflammatory word but my time in the journalism world taught me to bait clicks.... c:

I wouldn't say -hostile- in the sense that there's an active conscious attempt to bar women and people of color from computer science, what I mean is that in the computer science world there's an underlying structure which is rapidly ejecting (as one example) women. A structure which is reducing the number of women in computer science every year. Let's look at reports from the Computing Research Association:

"In the United States, the number of women represented in undergraduate computer science education and the white-collar information technology workforce peaked in the mid-1980s, and has declined ever since. In 1984, 37.1% of Computer Science degrees were awarded to women; the percentage dropped to 29.9% in 1989-1990, and 26.7% in 1997-1998.[2] Figures from the Computing Research Association Taulbee Survey indicate that less than 12% of Computer Science bachelor's degrees were awarded to women at US PhD-granting institutions in 2010-11.[3]"

that's a quote from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing

which separately sources that paragraph to this study: http://www.cra.org/uploads/documents/resources/taulbee/CS_De...

eboyjr2• 13 years ago

I think the underlying question should be, "Why are fewer and fewer women are attracted to the field?"

jd018• 13 years ago

Maybe I should have thought this one out a bit... I'm pretty drunk!!

xerophtye4• 13 years ago

yep, in college, our CS programs usually had hardly 18 to 25 girls in a class of 150. And some of them even dropped out. When we graduated, there were hardly 10 girls amongst us. So it's not that we "eject" them. We just don't get many girls attracted to this field.

beat2• 13 years ago

This isn't completely representative of the industry, because it's measuring academic behavior, not professional behavior. So the problem is occurring not in the "industry", but rather in high school and early college, when students are being directed toward majors. How do we address it there? How do we convince girls going into college and African-American students to pursue programming as a profession?

This is all the more maddening to me because I think computing as a profession and as a community is far less hostile in terms of race and gender than most career paths. The meritocracy, while hardly the libertarian paradise its beneficiaries like to imagine it is, is still quite real. It's very easy to create a situation where you are truly measured by the quality of your work.

So rather than asking why the programming profession is hostile to women and minorities, you should be asking why society is hostile to women and minorities entering the profession in the first place.

cryptolect• 13 years ago

[citation required]

jd018• 13 years ago

Take a look at my most recent comment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6879195

eddyparkinson• 13 years ago

I suspect it is the "Role model" problem.

I am told, this is very well researched. And there is overwhelming evidence that role models do solve the problem. I understand UK office of statistics has the numbers that show how to solve this.

So if you are black/female and in IT let the next generation of kids know about it.

angersock4• 13 years ago

One of the irksome things in trying to show good role models in computing is that one in particular seems to show up: Ada Lovelace. Very white, very Victorian, very nerdbait.

I'd much rather see young women learning about Adm. Grace Hopper, Roberta Williams, Sophie Wilson, or anyone who has actually done something in recent enough time that they aren't given fake glamor.

jd018• 13 years ago

This post was very briefly on the top of /ask but now it's gone from that page altogether... honestly that's fucked up!

It seems like it was a moderator decision, older posts with less comments and upvotes remain, why was this post removed?

please ask info@ycombinator.com

andrewcooke• 13 years ago

it has way more comments that votes, which triggers automatic downvoting.

[and i see that you immediately assume - with no evidence or knowledge of how ranking here works - that it was excluded "actively and consciously" rather than through some automated process.... at what point do you start to question your own process of solving problems? maybe blaming everyone else is not always right?]

jd018• 13 years ago

Whoops! I now realize that it was flagged by users not removed by mods. I honestly haven't used HN in years until yesterday so I forgot how it all works. Also I was drunk when I made this post. c:

gmays2• 13 years ago

'Hostile' is quite a leap and makes more assumptions than are worth addressing. You claim hostility, but it sounds like you might mean underrepresentation?

Regardless, it's for the same reasons that the NFL and NBA are 'hostile' to Asians, Indians, and any other underrepresented group: they're not. It's just a function of what people are culturally exposed to growing up and what we're conditioned to see.

It's silly to think a community that openly accepts whites, Asians, and Indians is hostile to blacks because we're a wee bit darker. Go to a black neighborhood and ask how many startups failed or people who gave up programming because they felt the community was hostile to them. It even sounds silly, right?

I'm black and the only reason I'm involved in the tech community is because my mom started working at AT&T 40+ years ago as a punch card operator and worked her way up. If she hadn't brought her work computer home when I was a kid in the 90's I probably wouldn't have fallen in love with computers. She also set aside the money to buy me a computer on a 5-year Sears layaway plan or something crazy like that (BTW who buys a computer at Sears?! This guy). She could barely afford it, but it was important to her because she knew what it meant. And she only knew it because she unintentionally ended up in the tech world.

Culture, exposure, and financial ability are the primary factors in my experience.

Might there be some discrimination? Sure. Everybody encounters discrimination at some point, some more than others, but such is life. What's sad is when people expect discrimination so they tend to 'see' it everywhere.

I've actually never heard a woman or another black person complain about discrimination in this community and I've never seen it myself. I've also never thought about it until now, which is a good sign, but maybe I'm just lucky. YMMV.

jd018• 13 years ago

Thanks for your response. In reference to your addressing the word "hostile" check this recent comment I made to try and clarify the use of that word:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6879195

That comment only addresses women though - but hostile was more-so a trigger word than what I actually meant. I'm trying to address societal disadvantages faced by certain groups - these are not consciously hostile but they are structurally hostile.

Your mother was obviously not only intelligent but also had a lot of grit and determination that many do not have, a trait which is essential for success in any scenario - and it's clear that you did benefit from that. Most people do not have this level of skill or innate drive to succeed. many don't have the parental guidance which you had to follow that path. I'm simply asking, how can the hacker scene adjust to not only help non-white non-male groups, but to stop driving them away in increasing numbers?

"but such is life."

Yes, but it can change!

gmays2• 13 years ago

"I'm simply asking, how can the hacker scene adjust to not only help non-white non-male groups, but to stop driving them away in increasing numbers?"

How is the community driving them away? I feel like I touched on this in my original response, but I still don't see how the underrepresentation equates to being driven away. "Driving away" implies some level of hostility, which you claim only to mean "societal disadvantages." It seems in attempt to sensationalize, you end up confusing the issue because by talking about two disparate things as if they were the same.

I'm actually very surprised how accepting this community is. Not only am I black, but I came from a military background with no tech working experience, just hobby experience. Additionally, I spent two years between Iraq and Afghanistan on small teams, something this audience isn't exactly keen on. If there was anyone who would face "hostility" or be "driven away" it'd be me. I'm amazed at how welcoming the community has been. I remember after going to my first conference I told my wife (also a Marine) that I finally felt like I belonged somewhere. By the way, my wife came to the same conference with me and loved it as well. She's still a Marine, flies F/A-18's, and talked with the guys at dinner about the future of aviation, drones, etc. She thought the community was awesome despite barely being able to use her smartphone.

Sure the community may be overly critical at times, but sometimes that's the price you pay for being around bright people who value intellect. I see it as something that makes me better. Additionally, it'd be hard to find a community with bigger hearts and a greater ability (resources and skills) to make things and make things happen.

No matter who you are, if you do good work you'll fit in with this community in my experience.

P.S. By the way, I do appreciate your thoughts and I think your heart is in the right place. I just think there are more effective ways to discuss the issue. Labeling under representation as hostility seems more likely to drive a wedge between sides than improve the situation.

How did any of us get into tech? It's more about exposure and accessibility than anything, not handouts. Let's focus on that.

lolwutf• 13 years ago

This is bullshit.

There is no such hostility.

Way to generate a conversation around a topic where you provide no hard evidence of any of the claims you're making.

Here's a popular black coder: https://twitter.com/seanlilmateus

Here's a popular woman coder: https://twitter.com/ericasadun

jd018• 13 years ago

Thanks for the anecdotes - I'm looking at statistics. The hostility may not be apparent (to you) but it's structural and it's real.

see this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6879195

pistacchioso• 13 years ago

It'a not. Where I work we are usually open for programming positions. Girls simply don't show up, it's not like there are hundreds of them that we send back home because they're women. When I'm on github and I fork something from supernerdy81, i don't even know if it's a he or a she, nor I care and surely that wouldn't make any difference in using a library. Just to say. It happens that men are eventually more interested in technology than women, generally. You can see it among your friends or family. There are things that attract women's interest most. It's not that knitting community is hostile towards men, it's just that few men (me, for example) are interested in knitting.

digitalzombie• 13 years ago

Wut?

I didn't realized there were any hostility to women and/or black people.

For women, I don't see it. I have tons of female friends that are programmers.

As for black people... two of my friends are black, one of them is female. And they've never complain about racism in their work force. I've worked with one black person and that person played the victim card a lot, that's another story in itself entirely, but other than that.

I haven't see any hostility against women or black people.

edit:

What I do see is the gender imbalance in CS major in education. Also there are far less black people in education but I'm not sure what's the driving factor is. It could be population wise, economic reason, etc...

jd018• 13 years ago

All of your proofs are personal anecdotes. If you need some empirical evidence check this comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6879195

Or do some research on computer science demographics.

actsasbuffoon• 13 years ago

I think your goal with this post was to foster discussion about bringing more women and minorities into software development, which is a cause that's near and dear to my heart. Unfortunately you used some rather inflammatory language in your post, which prevented people from being able to discuss the thing you really wanted to talk about.

I'm guessing you've figured this out already, but insulting people and implying that they're sexist and/or racist makes for a very poor icebreaker. I recommend waiting a few days and posting a gentler version of the question. This topic is important to the future of our community, and we shouldn't let our emotions get in the way of improving the world.

sanskritabelt2• 13 years ago

I'm just gonna drop this here: http://programmersbeingdicks.tumblr.com for all the dudes saying 'hostile? my community?'

Ask HN: Why is the hacker scene so hostile to women and black people?

Related Stories