I don't know how many poor white people you know, but this isn't true. You can't undue the effects of poverty by putting on a suit and tie.

I grew up as a poor white kid in a multicultural neighborhood and I've spent the last 20 years trying to fit into middle class white society. It is a constant struggle. I've had to work harder than every one of my peers to get to where I'm at. When I hear upper middle class white women and minorities whining about how hard it is for them my blood boils.

Your parents read to you, paid for you to go to college, talked like middle class people do about middle class things, taught you how to manage money, a growth mindset, encouraged you, teachers expected you to be something when you grew up and treated you appropriately. Poor white kids, like poor black kids don't get any of this. Putting on a suit and tie doesn't improve your vocabulary or make you think about yourself like an equal. It doesn't teach you how to write a good resume or cover letter. It doesn't put internships or solid educational credentials on that resume.

This is not true, if the person doing the interview is also black. Or are you saying a black interviewer would also be racist against another black person in a suit and a tie? The fact is that race is matter of in-group, out-group thinking, and mentioning it exacerbates the problem because we are persisting the group-think. It's true the problem won't go away if we ignore it, but we should identify behavior and hunt down people who are racist, regardless of their race, and without mentioning their race so as to not keep persisting the grouping problem.

Under most circumstances you're right and that's sad.

So what's the alternative? Systematically killing off all the old white guys who still cling to their anachronistic perceptions? Their children are still going to inherit their wealth and the 1% will continue to be the 1%.

Hand the power over to militant feminists who happen to be as -- if not more -- biased based on race and/or gender? IMHO, that's just trading one class of terrible people for another.

Tech is a the perfect place to foster a diverse working environment. I wish there were more people from varied backgrounds rather then 50/50 white/asian males in development and mostly white women and men in design.

But I don't know how to rewind the clock 10-15 years and teach inner city kids that all of their idols are frauds and that being a computer is the path to being a real success in life.

The kids I knew from the inner city who were into computers and tech didn't start in college. They got deeply involved in tech in their teens partly to stay out of trouble and fell in love with learning and creating things.

My own path wasn't much different except I grew up in thr suburbs and had more resources. I had my own bad influences to get away from and I didn't need to go to school to be taught what I was happy to learn on my own.

Yes I agree with you. And I'm not a fan of affirmative action. I'm just seeing a stunning number of people in this thread who are in denial that race is even an issue at all, or who think the best course of action is to stop talking about it.