Black people in STEM

[Andyh2299]

Sometimes I think the social pressure that black Americans put on each other to maintain the black American tunnel vision is worse than racism.

And you get called a racist for addressing it.

 

[ttwtt78640]

I was on a "black" website a few months ago talking about science fiction making science interesting when I was a kid.

Someone responded with, "science fiction was written by White men".

Like I hadn't noticed that when I was 9 years old.

Of course all of the people writing SF in the 40s, 50s and 60s were racist white men, like Andre Norton and Leigh Brackett.

Sometimes I think the social pressure that black Americans put on each other to maintain the black American tunnel vision is worse than racism. I offered to pay some nieces and nephews to read a few books years ago and they refused.

Hmm… are you sure about that (bolded above) assertion?

Andre Alice Norton (born Alice Mary Norton, February 17, 1912 – March 17, 2005) was an American writer of science fiction and fantasy, who also wrote works of historical and contemporary fiction. She wrote primarily under the pen name Andre Norton, but also under Andrew North and Allen Weston. She was the first woman to be Gandalf Grand Master of Fantasy, to be SFWA Grand Master, and to be inducted by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

Andre Norton - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Leigh Douglass Brackett (December 7, 1915 – March 18, 1978) was an American science fiction writer known as "the Queen of Space Opera." She was also a screenwriter, known for The Big Sleep (1946), Rio Bravo (1959), and The Long Goodbye (1973). She also worked on an early draft of The Empire Strikes Back (1980), elements of which remained in the film; she died before it went into production. In 1956, her book The Long Tomorrow made her the first woman ever shortlisted for the Hugo Award for Best Novel, and, along with C. L. Moore, one of the first two women ever nominated for a Hugo Award. In 2020, she won a Retro Hugo for her novel The Nemesis From Terra, originally published as "Shadow Over Mars" (Startling Stories, Fall 1944).

Leigh Brackett - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Fearandloathing]

Many seem to assert that when black elected officials screw over black people or neighborhoods (just as white elected officials do) then their actions are (somehow) not racist.

There is a small difference between open racism and 'systemic' racism. Blacks live in a neighborhood because they have always had to.

I don't think most white Americans can appreciate just how that institutional/cultural racism affects everyone over time.

Years ago I started ignoring race questions on government documents. Nothing happened. I've since added gender questions (why does Canada Revenue Agency need to know the gender of an employee?). Nothing happened.

A few years ago I started telling people.

Now I notice some government forms still ask the question, but answering is optional. Now questions are asked 'with which race do you identify - mark as many as needed. I click all of them, including Asian, Indian, Indigenous and African. (I'm Polish/Sottish/German).

The 'because we always have' mentality has to die. If we want to change systemic anything, we need to push back. And along the way we might also accidently streamline government, but then I have oft been accuse of being a dreamer.

PS What really jams their ass is refusing to give a cell number!

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

Does anyone know how difficult this career path for Black people and those of Black American descent.

Show me how melanin affects math ability.

 

[Fearandloathing]

Show me how melanin affects math ability.

Well done!

 

[psikeyhackr]

Hmm… are you sure about that (bolded above) assertion?

Andre Norton - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Leigh Brackett - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Some people just cannot recognize sarcasm.

You think I just happened to pick those names?

Of course James Tiptree Jr would not have been as obvious.

 

[Lovebug]

Many seem to assert that when black elected officials screw over black people or neighborhoods (just as white elected officials do) then their actions are (somehow) not racist.

That is called selfish crookery.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Show me how melanin affects math ability.

White teachers can see a kid's skin color.

A white nun told me, "You will get into a good high school but you won't do well." That was in 8th grade. Reading science fiction since 4th grade helped me ignore nuns and conclude that they were idiots from jump street.

But how do you measure the effects of years of psychological sabotage? Electrical engineering never would have occurred to me without SF.

 

[ttwtt78640]

That is called selfish crookery.

Or simply a double standard - if the same policy is called racist only if the politicians in charge are white (and not demorats?).

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

White teachers can see a kid's skin color.

That kind of teacher has no business in the education field.

 

[psikeyhackr]

That kind of teacher has no business in the education field.

Where do you draw the line?

Years later a history teacher told me that the Civil War was not about slavery. It was about preserving the Union. He was looking me straight in the eyes at the time.

I remember the cover of the history book we got in 5th or 6th grade. I sat in my desk staring at that cover for a while.

It was a landscape of a flat plane with mountains in a distant background. There was a winding line of people standing in the plane and by their clothes it was possible to tell that people farther back in the line were from the past.

Of course everyone in the line was white. So I sat there thinking, "So only white people matter in history." In high school I got C's in history with my A's in math and sciences. Studying propaganda made no sense to me. I cannot say what SF book I read in grade school that best expressed the concep of propaganda but I understood it by high school.

Robert Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky was very mind expanding in communicating the thinking of the characters.

 

[NatMorton]

Some data. Despite the headline in the graphic, IMO, the numbers are not that bad for Blacks. The Hispanic #s are more troubling.




Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/science...ncreasing-gender-racial-and-ethnic-diversity/


And again we see Asians outperforming all other ethnic groups. Damn that white oppression.

 

[ChickenTendies]

How are you still making these bait threads?

 

[Binary_Digit]

I did some entry Computer science and to get in the more advanced you need a math test. You can learn the math courses in College but you might need to stay longer than 4 years

Yeah, the math requirements for a CS degree are gross. I think they need to come up with a Software Engineering degree, separate from Computer Science, that focuses on things relevant to everyday software development like databases, networking, multithreading, OOP, architectures, design patterns, etc. All that advanced math they make you take is really only needed if you're making a niche thing like a 3D engine or astrophysics simulation. High school algebra and geometry is all the math you really need for most everyday jobs. As for the non-math stuff, you can learn everything you need from books, practice, and stackoverflow.com if you get stuck on something. And many of the jobs out there call for a Bachelor's degree "or equivalent experience", so I made a bunch of personal projects for practice and put them on my resume. I started self-learning in the early 2000's and it was a little rough compared to nowadays with so many more online resources and tutorials available. But it's still not for everyone.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Yeah, the math requirements for a CS degree are gross. I think they need to come up with a Software Engineering degree, separate from Computer Science, that focuses on things relevant to everyday software development like databases, networking, multithreading, OOP, architectures, design patterns, etc. All that advanced math they make you take is really only needed if you're making a niche thing like a 3D engine or astrophysics simulation. High school algebra and geometry is all the math you really need for most everyday jobs.

I soldered together my first computer in 1978, years after I dropped out of electrical engineering. Then went to work fixing computers for IBM.

A lot of "education" seems totally arbitrary especially now that anyone can get a computer dirt cheap and put Linux on it. Companies should just create tests and ignore degrees.

 

[Felis Leo]

I worry about you sometimes @Andyh2299. You should spend less time thinking about racial issues.

Hey, he is just raising these concerns because he deeply cares about underprivileged black youth. Clearly.

 

[beefheart]

Does anyone know how difficult this career path for Black people and those of Black American descent. Do High schools in low income need neighborhoods even provide enough advanced classes for students once they go into college to get into the basic courses?

 

[psikeyhackr]

Hey, he is just raising these concerns because he deeply cares about underprivileged black youth. Clearly.

The funny thing is that STEM people should be able to figure out planned obsolescence. What if PO is really a high technology form of slavery since our brilliant economists just ignore the depreciation of durable consumer trash. What do consumers lose on the depreciation of Apple iPhones every year?

Does that qualify as macroeconomics?

 

[psikeyhackr]

I worry about you sometimes @Andyh2299. You should spend less time thinking about racial issues.

My STEM education started before "STEM education" became a thing.


Science fiction made science and technology more interesting than science teachers. No science teacher ever suggested SF to me. But now a lot of old SF is free in Project Gutenberg. My first book:

Star Surgeon by Alan E Nourse

has been in PG since 2006. And there is:

Deathworld by Harry Harrison
Cosmic Computer by H Beam Piper
Night of the Trolls by Keith Laumer
Black Man's Burden by Mack Reynolds

Some you still gotta buy:

A Fall of Moondust by Arthur C Clarke
The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven
Brainwave by Poul Anderson

Up to date stuff has to have lots of computers causing trouble though:

Daemon & Freedom by Daniel Suarez

 

[Citizen]

Does anyone know how difficult this career path for Black people and those of Black American descent. Do High schools in low income need neighborhoods even provide enough advanced classes for students once they go into college to get into the basic courses?

I think that can be called systemic racism

 

[Glitch]

My STEM education started before "STEM education" became a thing.

View attachment 67425357
Science fiction made science and technology more interesting than science teachers. No science teacher ever suggested SF to me. But now a lot of old SF is free in Project Gutenberg. My first book:

Star Surgeon by Alan E Nourse

has been in PG since 2006. And there is:

Deathworld by Harry Harrison
Cosmic Computer by H Beam Piper
Night of the Trolls by Keith Laumer
Black Man's Burden by Mack Reynolds

Some you still gotta buy:

A Fall of Moondust by Arthur C Clarke
The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven
Brainwave by Poul Anderson

Up to date stuff has to have lots of computers causing trouble though:

Daemon & Freedom by Daniel Suarez

My STEM education began with the Space Race of the 1950s and 1960s and the "New Math" controversy that created a generation of computer programmers. I didn't need science fiction, I had the real thing. Although, I did enjoy reading Arthur C. Clarke.

 

[Lisa]

Does anyone know how difficult this career path for Black people and those of Black American descent. Do High schools in low income need neighborhoods even provide enough advanced classes for students once they go into college to get into the basic courses?

Its all about your grades and your willingness to complete the required course work. Most profs are more than willing to help you with a tutor but you need to show up to class, take part in discussions and ask for help if you need it.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Although, I did enjoy reading Arthur C. Clarke.

I read Clarke's A Fall of Moondust in 7th grade.

He used Plato's Allegory of the Cave to explain reality as viewed by infrared and had an astronomic observatory at a lunar Lagrange point.

Now we have the James Webb Space Telescope at the Earth-Sun L2 point doing infrared telescopy.

The right SF is very informative about reality. Only nitwits think Star Wars is science fiction.

 

[Glitch]

I read Clarke's A Fall of Moondust in 7th grade.

He used Plato's Allegory of the Cave to explain reality as viewed by infrared and had an astronomic observatory at a lunar Lagrange point.

Now we have the James Webb Space Telescope at the Earth-Sun L2 point doing infrared telescopy.

The right SF is very informative about reality. Only nitwits think Star Wars is science fiction.

My favorite Arthur C. Clarke book was "Rendezvous with Rama" which describes a derrick alien spacecraft drifting through our solar system. That was published 44 years before the Oumuamua asteroid from another solar system drifted though our solar system.

 

[RealityNow]

Does anyone know how difficult this career path for Black people and those of Black American descent. Do High schools in low income need neighborhoods even provide enough advanced classes for students once they go into college to get into the basic courses?

Poor and Dire Poor whites had access to STEM for Centuries before black people were free from slavery and another 100 yrs during the century of racial segregation, now explain why they are not in college and why they have some decrepit areas and many have been relegated to "tornado magnet mobil homes in tornado alley", rather than homes built on a foundation with storm shelters, or tell us why across America there are so many poor and dire poor white people, who many did not perform well in high school and never even considered they had means or options to go to college.
While you are at it, explain why so many poor, working poor and dire poor whites know so little about the civics of America's Representative Democracy, and many have very poor sense of knowledge of financial literacy. Then explain why so many white people are perpetually buried in life long credit debt.

You need to come our of your racist shell and look across the reality of life in America's white society with an intent to face "truths". You are a prime example of the willfull ignorance that the ideology of white nationalist and delusions of white superiority has done to screw up so many white people with racist ignorance and self blindness.

I'm sure none of that ever crossed your bigoted white nationalist bias racist based mindset.

Black people in inner cities were prospering before white people panicked and destroyed the business and industry in those cities, because they did not want to see black people prosper.
It's no different than white people "burning down prospering black towns" in their envy and resentment of black people prospering, Read and learn about Tulsa, and Rosewood and other black communities that were damaged and destroyed by racist white people.... envious because black people were prospering better than some of the poor whites were.

Then ask yourself, why did white people spend so many centuries and decades doing everything they could to try and deny access to education and equal pay on jobs to black people.

I'm sure none of that ever crossed your bigoted white nationalist bias racist based mindset.

Your indulgence into willful ignorance... only demonstrates your ineptitude to gain an informed education based on reality truths in and of America white society and the broader society of what has been damaged by white society for both poor and working poor whites and blacks and other non white people in America.