You use words like "clearly" and "probably" but provide neither explanation nor evidence to back up your suppositions. Clearly, you expect your audience thinks exactly the way you do and will probably confirm your bias.
Do you think African American students, 15 years ago, were spending time studying how to use computers? I think it's rather likely because:
- I've never heard of this
- Such playing-with-computers is something that was confined to the somewhat richer and educated people in American society, which the african-americans were not, 15 years ago.
I doubt that my audience thinks the exact way I do, and I doubt I have any bias that needs to be confirmed.
I was, as were all of the other black computer science students who graduated with me at MIT. Do we get to question your bias now?
Good for you.
When you say you've "never heard of" black people learning how to use computers, it behooves me to refute you with the fact that not only are there are plenty of black people who know how to use computers, but there are plenty of black people graduating from the best computer science programs in the world.
OK, now you're grasping at straws.
First it was that there are no black hackers because black people didn't put in the work to learn how to use computers. Now you're claiming that black hackers from good schools may just not be the kind of hackers beneficial to starting a tech company.
When you're reduced to spouting really bad versions of No True Scotsman, you should probably move on. It's just embarrassing now.
That explains the "many african-americans and many women were not doing the steps needed to be talented enough to be able to make it big now" part of your sentence. It does not explain the "the most likely reason they did not do that, is probably because it just did not occur to them" part of your sentence. Hence the request from raganwald and myself for a source to back this up.
Maybe because it would take all of 12 seconds of Googling to confirm that this is probably (at least partially) correct? We all know what the statistics say and what they don't say, so asking other people to do your homework for you in place of actually contributing something is lame. I meant granted, the original comment was a bit simplistic, but the lack of statistics isn't the issue.
I have a great deal of personal intest in the subject of race and bias, and I assure you that in twelve seconds of Googling, I will find enough conflicting evidence and explanations to suggest that the causes for bias are complex.
If I looked at a mountain of conflicting evidence with a predetermined belief, I'm sure I could find validation for whatever I already believed. So, I don't doubt for a moment that if you already agree with these statements, twelve seconds with Google will confirm our suspicions, just as I am sure that someone who vehemently disagrees with these statements will also find confirmation of their disagreement with twelve seconds of Googling.
UPDATE: To be clear, I'm not saying that Max is wrong: I don't live in the US, much less in SV. How should I know what American women and minorities are thinking? But what I am saying is that statements like this in a forum like this suggest not only that the speaker has preconceived beliefs about this, but that he also expects evryone else to share those beliefs.
Because "I think that something bad is happening but I don't know what" does not lead to a constructive discussion at all.
To make it move you have to provide a new one.
That's how arguing works in real life when the object is vast and non-deterministic (like, population).