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Re:My father was IBM’s first black software engineer by bluedino on Sunday September 22, 2019 @12:12PM (#21042076)
I was expecting stories from his father, or about his father.

Instead, the author talks about IBM's "support" of Nazi Germany and ends with statistics on the low amount of African-Americans employed in the tech industry.

Yet the percentage of blacks and non-Asian minorities in high-tech professions consistently remains under 2%. For minority women, the numbers are even more dismal. Recent studies conclude this is not a “pipeline” problem — qualified candidates can be found.

Re:My father was IBM’s first black software engineer by grawprog on Sunday September 22, 2019 @12:21PM (#21042140)
Honestly, I have to agree the title was misleading. It should have been something like 'The history of IBM's support of eugenics' or something. I too was hoping for at least some specific anecdotes of his father's time there, especially as the introduction mentioned years of racism and such towards him. Yet what followed did not elaborate on any of that or really connect to it at all. Much of that I'd read elsewhere over the years.
Re:My father was IBM’s first black software engineer by tasogare on Sunday September 22, 2019 @03:12PM (#21043252)
> and non-Asian minorities

Ah, the classical trick of excluding data points that don't fit the narrative. It's far more convenient to blame the Bad White Man for everything than to ask the real questions.

Re:My father was IBM’s first black software engineer by jakelazaroff on Sunday September 22, 2019 @05:39PM (#21044127)
Race isn’t split up into white and non-white monoliths. One subgroup can experience racism in ways that others do not.
Re:My father was IBM’s first black software engineer by rat87 on Sunday September 22, 2019 @06:40PM (#21044439)
racism is a major problem and a how to fight racism in hiring as well as society is a real question.

Asian minorities also suffer from racism but it doesn't necessarily work the same way or have the same stereotypes attached

Re:My father was IBM’s first black software engineer by 77697throw on Sunday September 22, 2019 @11:50PM (#21045786)
Exactly. Talk about affirmative action in academics, and most people will agree it’s something to consider.

Talk about affirmative action in sports, and people will laugh.

Re:My father was IBM’s first black software engineer by zapita on Sunday September 22, 2019 @05:28PM (#21044071)
And what is the real question? Say what you mean.
Re:My father was IBM’s first black software engineer by sushid on Sunday September 22, 2019 @08:46PM (#21045071)
The real question is why are Asians over represented in this field despite the fact that Asians also experience systemic racism and come from various socioeconomic backgrounds?

Look into NYC’s high school exam if you want to see the same problem in another light. Asians are over represented there as well and there’s a fight to make it capped per racial groups.

Re:My father was IBM’s first black software engineer by lallysingh on Sunday September 22, 2019 @10:03PM (#21045372)
What happens to Asians when they get pulled over by police?
[dead]
Re:My father was IBM’s first black software engineer by veidr on Monday September 23, 2019 @02:34AM (#21046435)
Fellow unavoidably privileged white man, that absolutely doesn't need further citation. It should be obvious from lived experience to any adult American, whites included.

There is only one other demographic group, other than ours, which doesn't experience systemic racism in America: white women. (For them, it's systemic sexism.)

Getting killed or physically assaulted without cause during routine traffic stops and misdemeanor arrests isn't the only kind of racism. (Although it is clearly worse than, say, being underrepresented at the top levels of management.)

Re:My father was IBM’s first black software engineer by jakelazaroff on Sunday September 22, 2019 @11:25PM (#21045702)
Here's one data point: although Asian Americans are not underrepresented in the workforce, they are underrepresented in management positions. https://hbr.org/2018/05/asian-americans-are-the-least-likely...
Re:My father was IBM’s first black software engineer by ceejayoz on Sunday September 22, 2019 @05:30PM (#21044082)
Excluding or accounting for outliers is a pretty common thing in statistics.

Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_minority

Re:My father was IBM’s first black software engineer by rolltiide on Sunday September 22, 2019 @03:22PM (#21043323)
What I gathered from that article was how all of those tangential problems would have been approached with different perspectives if there was more decision-making representation from currently underrepresented people.

Instead of taking on any government contracts because "we can't be responsible for what an administration does and can't predict how they'll be viewed in the future, and the only way we'll get any blowback for this is if that country got invaded by multiple coalitions at once and all of their administrative records are leaked, what are the odds of that!"

Its might be "hey maybe their views are also affecting our customers, and also the other people on the board and their families, here is a different way we can boost revenues"