Et Tu?
As a tall only-mildly-obese cis hetero (straight) upper-middle/lower-upper class white hyper-passing middle-aged man, I believe I am in striking distance of being the most privileged of all Americans. In case "hyper-passing" is new to you, it means that I can fit in almost anywhere caucasian. I can sit down with Italians, they think I might be Italian. Greeks, French, English, Spanish, Turkish, Argentinian, Venezuelan, various Eastern European nations, a few former Soviet ones, and I'm just naming the ones I've actually heard from folks. Jews and Arabs too tend to give me the benefit of the doubt (unless they are from the Middle East, then they know for sure which I am and which I am not). It has meant the world of difference in my life compared to someone who is decidedly in or out of a group.
But There Are!
I hear you. You see lots of Asians, Southeast Asians, and Eastern Europeans in tech. Maybe even a random European, and that one guy from South America. And if you count some of the more commoditized areas of tech, Central Americans and Caribbeans show up here and there. So let's not mince words. I mean Black people. There are probably 150,000 tech workers in the NY metro area, and I've been in rooms with hundreds of tech works multiple times, and do not need two hands to show you how many Black people I see. Clearly then, there is a problem.
Is it the same problem facing women in tech? I think in some ways, yes. Because when you're black, there's no meshing, there's no confusion. Even dark skinned Latin people are often ostracized by their lighter skinned compatriots. Which would be comical to me, if it wasn't so tragic. Something about the culture definitely turns a specific group of people away. Whether it happens as the application is made, or during initial reviews, or maybe in the interview process, it is not always clear and probably shifts, but somehow, when it is time to come to work, I don't wonder too much about the kinds of people I will see.
You're Racist!
That word gets thrown around a lot, and if you're going to sling it, I'm definitely an easy target on the outside. I probably have tons of implicit biases I still have to work through. Until I graduated high school, I never even saw more than 10 black people in the same place with my own eyes. My high school of 1000+ had five black students. Maybe I am, but I am working on it, and hope to get better. Until then, I see what I see - and what I see is that minorities in NYC do not end up in tech while H1B transplants from all over do, when they make up a smaller portion of the population.
So How Do We Fix It
Like solving the women in tech issue, it has to be multi-pronged:
- STEM interest - start it early, spend the money so the inner city public school can have robots to paly with
- Ensure students are safe at home, at school, and in between - hard to focus on tech when you're wondering if you or your family will be shot or robbed or have enough food
- Pay gap - Black women make just over HALF of what white men do for the same work. Are you kidding me?! What a joke, of course there are hardly any black women in tech. Probably won't be a ton of black men in tech either.
- Bro culture - If you're going to keep the bro culture, at least allow the black men who embrace it to get in to your creepy little club. Or better yet, get rid of the club entirely