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Comment by punkbit | Hacker News Reader

What about letting kids choose what they want to do with their lives ? I used to be a music producer and learned everything by myself. I grown up in a white neighbourhood. I was the only emcee around, producing Hip-hop music, influenced by the Beastie Boys. I started coding really young. When I got the internet, I learned a lot about Hip-Hop, I was passionate. My first website was related about my passions, sharing my passion about football, skateboarding, drawing, etc. I wouldn't code if I didn't had a passion. What's the point of coding if it's not useful, if doesn't solve a problem ? You need a point! Let's do fun stuff, stop forcing kids with your mentoring bullshit and who cares if the kid is white and his mentor is Persian, or if he's idol is Bob Marley! There's better ways to work on our communities, families, etc.

Your `you get more black ppl in tech by having black people in tech` sounded exactly like one of those Xzibit memes: a joke!

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Firstly, I upvoted your account because you use logic and don't try to shut down discussion by whining that somebody is being to mean in a comment.

Secondly, this comment hit the nail on the head. Let kids pursue fields they are interested in, regardless of their race or sex. Don't hijack a person's career to serve your moral crusade.

First, I downvoted your comment for the excessive negativity/abuse in it. You could have made your point just as clear without them.

Second, I'm going to take your comment to point out something I've noticed when talking about sexism/racism. I'm going to call this theory of mine "Calibration". When I hear people say stuff like "What about letting [underrepresented group] choose what they want to do with their lives?", I've come to believe that most are not trolls and they're probably not actually actively racist[1]. It's a difference in calibration. Perhaps you believe by default these kids are at a neutral(zero) level and have the full power of choice right now. But, what I see is that society actually puts them at like a negative 5. You see these efforts as forcing them to go into tech, a +5 if you will. I see it as just bring them up to 0 from the -5 society put them at so they have the same sense of free choice you & I do.

This vid I think is also based on the calibration idea when it comes to "Reverse racism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw_mRaIHb-M . Basically, it talks about the underlying assumption that the current state of things is neutral for everyone so any effort to improve standings for a group is unfair to the groups not getting help. It's like how every year on Google+, when the LifeAtGoogle account posts something like Black Appreciation day during Black history month, someone always asks "When is White appreciation day?". Or when people talk about BlackGirlsCode.com, someone says "I bet everyone would exploded if we had a WhiteMenCode.com event". And of course, from there said comment turns into a multipage thread of madness. I think part of this is because schools(or parents of students) don't teach enough about the negative parts of American history and its lasting effects. So we have a bunch of people saying "Slavery ended years ago, everything is fine now. Stop complaining." Or similar, "Women can vote now and be CEOs of companies. Stop complaining". The assumption being that everything is equal now and the only thing between anyone and their goals is hardwork & discipline. While that is mostly true, some people have to work twice as hard to get the same recognition and reach those goals.

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1. One exception though, I have no idea what is going on with the HN user yummyfajitas. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8613711

He doesn't fit any model of any logical position I'm familiar with. I'm pretty sure he's __not__ racist/sexist, but he just blows my mind.

To add to your "calibration" framework: I sometimes explain the ethics of affirmative action in control theory terms as a kind of 'bang-bang' response[1]. So yes, things will be inequitable for the other side for a while, but you can't expect to efficiently correct longstanding historical inequities otherwise... Too bad it's this generation's "tag, you are it" moment to pay up for our forefathers' privilege, but that's just the way it is.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bang–bang_control

Re your footnote, I don't see how you can hold that belief.

Oh, I could be very wrong.

My own calibration settings for this is reading a bunch of comments on stormfront.org forums. While I dislike yummyfajitas's comments, they don't give me the same feeling I get from stormfront. I don't know what to think of him. Closest thing is perhaps super-insensitive, but I don't think he's oblivious to how people perceive his comments.... I dunno.

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