
Ask HN: Why is the hacker scene so hostile to women and black people? - jd0
On today the birthday of Grace Hopper, inventor of the compiler among other computer science achievements, I ask HN, why is the hacker scene and computing field in general so hostile to women and people of color? More specifically, hostile to black people.<p>It&#x27;s my opinion that diversity spurs innovation, is the scene really so short-sighted as to ignore this long-term failure to include anyone but mostly white males? For a group that prides itself in its inventiveness, it seems to be a dangerously closed loop.<p>Thoughts? What can be done to change this?
======
gmays
'Hostile' is quite a leap and makes more assumptions than are worth
addressing. You claim hostility, but it sounds like you might mean
underrepresentation?

Regardless, it's for the same reasons that the NFL and NBA are 'hostile' to
Asians, Indians, and any other underrepresented group: they're not. It's just
a function of what people are culturally exposed to growing up and what we're
conditioned to see.

It's silly to think a community that openly accepts whites, Asians, and
Indians is hostile to blacks because we're a wee bit darker. Go to a black
neighborhood and ask how many startups failed or people who gave up
programming because they felt the community was hostile to them. It even
sounds silly, right?

I'm black and the only reason I'm involved in the tech community is because my
mom started working at AT&T 40+ years ago as a punch card operator and worked
her way up. If she hadn't brought her work computer home when I was a kid in
the 90's I probably wouldn't have fallen in love with computers. She also set
aside the money to buy me a computer on a 5-year Sears layaway plan or
something crazy like that (BTW who buys a computer at Sears?! This guy). She
could barely afford it, but it was important to her because she knew what it
meant. And she only knew it because she unintentionally ended up in the tech
world.

Culture, exposure, and financial ability are the primary factors in my
experience.

Might there be some discrimination? Sure. Everybody encounters discrimination
at some point, some more than others, but such is life. What's sad is when
people expect discrimination so they tend to 'see' it everywhere.

I've actually never heard a woman or another black person complain about
discrimination in this community and I've never seen it myself. I've also
never thought about it until now, which is a good sign, but maybe I'm just
lucky. YMMV.

~~~
jd0
Thanks for your response. In reference to your addressing the word "hostile"
check this recent comment I made to try and clarify the use of that word:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6879195](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6879195)

That comment only addresses women though - but hostile was more-so a trigger
word than what I actually meant. I'm trying to address societal disadvantages
faced by certain groups - these are not consciously hostile but they are
structurally hostile.

Your mother was obviously not only intelligent but also had a lot of grit and
determination that many do not have, a trait which is essential for success in
any scenario - and it's clear that you did benefit from that. Most people do
not have this level of skill or innate drive to succeed. many don't have the
parental guidance which you had to follow that path. I'm simply asking, how
can the hacker scene adjust to not only help non-white non-male groups, but to
stop driving them away in increasing numbers?

"but such is life."

Yes, but it can change!

~~~
gmays
> "I'm simply asking, how can the hacker scene adjust to not only help non-
> white non-male groups, but to stop driving them away in increasing numbers?"

How is the community driving them away? I feel like I touched on this in my
original response, but I still don't see how the underrepresentation equates
to being driven away. "Driving away" implies some level of hostility, which
you claim only to mean "societal disadvantages." It seems in attempt to
sensationalize, you end up confusing the issue because by talking about two
disparate things as if they were the same.

I'm actually _very_ surprised how accepting this community is. Not only am I
black, but I came from a military background with no tech working experience,
just hobby experience. Additionally, I spent two years between Iraq and
Afghanistan on small teams, something this audience isn't exactly keen on. If
there was anyone who would face "hostility" or be "driven away" it'd be me.
I'm amazed at how welcoming the community has been. I remember after going to
my first conference I told my wife (also a Marine) that I finally felt like I
belonged somewhere. By the way, my wife came to the same conference with me
and loved it as well. She's still a Marine, flies F/A-18's, and talked with
the guys at dinner about the future of aviation, drones, etc. She thought the
community was awesome despite barely being able to use her smartphone.

Sure the community may be overly critical at times, but sometimes that's the
price you pay for being around bright people who value intellect. I see it as
something that makes me better. Additionally, it'd be hard to find a community
with bigger hearts and a greater ability (resources and skills) to make things
and make things happen.

No matter who you are, if you do good work you'll fit in with this community
in my experience.

P.S. By the way, I do appreciate your thoughts and I think your heart is in
the right place. I just think there are more effective ways to discuss the
issue. Labeling under representation as hostility seems more likely to drive a
wedge between sides than improve the situation.

How did any of us get into tech? It's more about exposure and accessibility
than anything, not handouts. Let's focus on that.

------
carsongross
Well, one thing that could be done to change this would be to stop complaining
about how one of the most meritocratic groups of people in the history of
mankind is hostile, and get forking.

The code is thataway:

[https://github.com/](https://github.com/)

~~~
jd0
Your attitude is childish and short-sighted. When certain groups are -by
default- disadvantaged compared to a dominant group, just saying "go do work
like I did" \- is meaningless.

~~~
waps
Really ? On systems where people are essentially identified by their email
adress and/or username ?

Why don't you tell me. One of these is female (and pretty accomplished in the
open source community), one of these is non-white ... which is which ?

* thegrendel.abs

* tille

* pgquilles

If you can't, obviously the reason is not just racism. On mailinglists, github
and irc, skin color and sex don't exist. If there is a difference, MAYBE it's
the result of companies not hiring these people to work on open source, or
because sex and ethnicity influences whether and how much you work on open
source (actually I think it's more about location. Open source contributors
almost always live close to universities that were very involved in the
creation of open source 20-30 years ago. Because those universities are
effectively only in USA and northwest Europe, the ethnicity is skewed, but
there are plenty of mostly white countries that are massively underrepresented
in open source projects).

As to why people are hostile to other groups, a very significant portion of
them are either teenagers in highschool or university students (and even then,
skewed towards the younger univ students). They're not a welcoming group, no,
that's true. But they are pretty universally not welcoming, asking for
someone's sex/color on lkml ... is not something you want to do if you want
your reputation to survive. Hell, there are flamewars that started because of
statements that someone was somewhat richer in kilograms than medically
advisable, when it was absolutely true.

~~~
jd0
If you have a harder time accessing these supposedly raceless-genderless
systems, then you can't participate. Research has shown that the utopian
vision of the internet being the ultimate equalizer was never realized..
groups still divide by socio-economic classes online as they do in the
physical world.

[http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/10/13/social.networking...](http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/10/13/social.networking.class/)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_segregation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_segregation)

~~~
ZephyrP
I can't say I understand how that demonstrates that his position is incorrect.
"We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias"...

Neither race or gender are fields that even _CAN_ be filled out on Github. An
individual's propensity to integrate into the programming community is still
their own. Your life is yours to create.

Although it may be true that existing social and economic circumstances add
obstacles to these individuals finding the endeavors of the open source
community attractive -- it straddles absurdity and comedy to address these
social and economic forces here.

------
xerophtye
I am confused, where exactly do you see this hostility? I thought the hacker
community is welcome to everyone. In fact, i am not a white male. Most people
i know aren't white males. A very large number of visitors of HN are probably
not white males. But we're all respectful towards each other here. In fact of
all the forums online, I actually find HN to be the least
biased/racist/sexist. Just the other day, that post by Julia Evans about
writing an OS received such positive feedback. I didn't see a single comment
that discredited her for being a female. In fact when one commenter
accidentally called her a "he", he was put down by the others for his mistake,
saying that it is very disrespectful to assume the poster of a Tech blog is a
male by default.

So i don't see really what hostility you are pointing towards. Some examples
would be welcome.

~~~
thenerdfiles
There's a huge social network that makes up programming which exists outside
of HN and networks like it. That said, what about the problems of Big
Companies? These companies largely continue to allow these "hostilities" to
persist. It's the problem of "mixed talent".

~~~
xerophtye
Umm... I can't think of any color-examples at the moment, but as for the
females and big companies thing, well, Yahoo's CEO is a female. Google's
Security head is a female (last i checked).

Apart from big companies, DefCon's team has a lot of females in it. So the
"HackerScene" isn't just about males

~~~
thenerdfiles
They're exceptions to the rule _of experience_ ; or else there wouldn't be
much point behind the feminist movement.

I mean, I understand your point... But it really is akin to saying we're in a
post-racial America because the American President is Black.

------
eboyjr
Where do you see hostility? I run an open-source organization and it just so
happens that not a lot of women programmers frequent on IRC which is where we
have most of our discussions. I just don't see many women in the field let
alone any hostility towards them.

Edit: Your mention of women and blacks remind me of this picture:
[https://secure.flickr.com/photos/8212496@N06/493885707](https://secure.flickr.com/photos/8212496@N06/493885707)

------
angersock
[http://learncodethehardway.org/](http://learncodethehardway.org/)

[http://ruby.railstutorial.org/](http://ruby.railstutorial.org/)

[http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-
text/book/book.html](http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html)

There. That should do it--for our part, we'll try to be friendly. What more do
you want?

EDIT:

[http://railsgirls.com/](http://railsgirls.com/) is actually pretty great to
be fair.

~~~
krstck
I decided that I wanted a new career in programming. I learned Rails through
Michael Hartl's (wonderful) tutorial. Several months later, I had a job as a
programmer. My being female has never, ever come up. In fact, of the five
programmers in my shop, two are female.

Any interested party can learn the skills, and then all you have to do is find
someone you can help. There's a huge demand for programming skills, but a lot
of potential clients/employers don't necessarily know what value we can bring.
You also need to be somewhat of a salesman.

(Full disclosure: I did come from a programming background, but I was self-
taught. My previous job was in an unrelated field.)

~~~
angersock
Next step (providing you haven't already done so!) is to spread the good word
and help train the next generation. :)

------
digitalzombie
Wut?

I didn't realized there were any hostility to women and/or black people.

For women, I don't see it. I have tons of female friends that are programmers.

As for black people... two of my friends are black, one of them is female. And
they've never complain about racism in their work force. I've worked with one
black person and that person played the victim card a lot, that's another
story in itself entirely, but other than that.

I haven't see any hostility against women or black people.

edit:

What I do see is the gender imbalance in CS major in education. Also there are
far less black people in education but I'm not sure what's the driving factor
is. It could be population wise, economic reason, etc...

~~~
jd0
All of your proofs are personal anecdotes. If you need some empirical evidence
check this comment:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6879195](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6879195)

Or do some research on computer science demographics.

------
drill_sarge
Seriously stop make these accusations without any proof. Where is the
hostility? Just because there are a lot of white males™ doesn't mean there is
hostility against other people.

~~~
jd0
To clarify, check my recent comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6879195](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6879195)

~~~
serf
you're citing statistics without proof of their relevance to this discussion.

by hostility, it seems that you actually mean "Why do blacks and women
represent a minority in computer science?"

Computer science has always been an inbetween between engineering and hard
sciences--because of that many laymen were employed to do menial computer
tasks early in history. This was, perhaps , one of the first chances for
laymen to jump onto a scientific industry which turned out to be semi-
permanent.

Since we know that education paved the way for the empowerment of minorities,
could it be that the statistics that you're referencing are really just moving
as a function of women becoming wider dispersed and accepted within all
sciences, rather than just the engineering ones?

Perhaps the statistical anomaly that you cite is really a glimmer of hope for
women. Computer science is not the only field that readily accepts them now-a-
days, and perhaps those numbers actually indicate a migration across a wider
array of science and engineering fields that were not at one time available
for them, rather than a disappearance of women all together in STEM.

~~~
jd0
Maybe you're right, (maybe) all the women statistically disappearing from the
computing field are moving to other engineering and science jobs. We could
throw any number of untested theories at that simple statistic.

Honestly though, that's irrelevant because WHERE they're going is not what I'm
addressing. It's WHY, and HOW can we reverse the trend of anti-diversification
in the computer industry? If they're leaving for other industries, even
scientific ones, there's nothing wrong with the individuals choice but there's
something less-desirable about the computer industry, and I doubt it has
anything to do with the raw content of a computer related job.

~~~
beat
"Anti-diversification"? Is the industry becoming less diverse?

I'm a big fan of doing things to improve the gender and racial balance of my
industry, but I'm not at all convinced that it's actually getting worse
instead of better.

------
john_whelan
I wouldn't say there's a hostility toward woman and black people, but there's
definitely a shortage in the hacker scene. Out of all the groups I've been a
part of, the technological people I've been around seem to care the least
about that kind of stuff. That being said, I'm not a woman, nor am I black, so
maybe it is there and I just don't see it.

------
pistacchioso
It'a not. Where I work we are usually open for programming positions. Girls
simply don't show up, it's not like there are hundreds of them that we send
back home because they're women. When I'm on github and I fork something from
supernerdy81, i don't even know if it's a he or a she, nor I care and surely
that wouldn't make any difference in using a library. Just to say. It happens
that men are eventually more interested in technology than women, generally.
You can see it among your friends or family. There are things that attract
women's interest most. It's not that knitting community is hostile towards
men, it's just that few men (me, for example) are interested in knitting.

------
lolwutf
This is bullshit.

There is no such hostility.

Way to generate a conversation around a topic where you provide no hard
evidence of any of the claims you're making.

Here's a popular black coder:
[https://twitter.com/seanlilmateus](https://twitter.com/seanlilmateus)

Here's a popular woman coder:
[https://twitter.com/ericasadun](https://twitter.com/ericasadun)

~~~
jd0
Thanks for the anecdotes - I'm looking at statistics. The hostility may not be
apparent (to you) but it's structural and it's real.

see this comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6879195](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6879195)

------
eddyparkinson
I suspect it is the "Role model" problem.

I am told, this is very well researched. And there is overwhelming evidence
that role models do solve the problem. I understand UK office of statistics
has the numbers that show how to solve this.

So if you are black/female and in IT let the next generation of kids know
about it.

~~~
angersock
One of the irksome things in trying to show good role models in computing is
that one in particular seems to show up: Ada Lovelace. Very white, very
Victorian, very nerdbait.

I'd much rather see young women learning about Adm. Grace Hopper, Roberta
Williams, Sophie Wilson, or anyone who has actually done something in recent
enough time that they aren't given fake glamor.

------
actsasbuffoon
I think your goal with this post was to foster discussion about bringing more
women and minorities into software development, which is a cause that's near
and dear to my heart. Unfortunately you used some rather inflammatory language
in your post, which prevented people from being able to discuss the thing you
really wanted to talk about.

I'm guessing you've figured this out already, but insulting people and
implying that they're sexist and/or racist makes for a very poor icebreaker. I
recommend waiting a few days and posting a gentler version of the question.
This topic is important to the future of our community, and we shouldn't let
our emotions get in the way of improving the world.

------
sanskritabelt
I'm just gonna drop this here:
[http://programmersbeingdicks.tumblr.com](http://programmersbeingdicks.tumblr.com)
for all the dudes saying 'hostile? my community?'

------
cryptolect
[citation required]

~~~
jd0
Take a look at my most recent comment.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6879195](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6879195)

------
thenerdfiles
Because many African languages, like Zulu, lack many linguistic distinctions
sufficient to produce abstract concepts regarding Time (Past/Present) and
Rules (Obligation/Promise). So descendents of Africans and people who are
closer in proximity to practical use of those languages are seen as lacking
subtlety, lacking conceptual grace, less capable of exploratory thought and
critical intellectual maneuvering — notwithstanding the Media Machine which
primes expectations for cross-racial and cross-cultural interactions.

As a Black (and Native American, mind you) person myself, I constantly battle
on a personal level with criticisms such as this, and through my own
limitations with language. I am but one person. At the same time, I have read
from the works of Samuel Beckett to the works of Wittgenstein to Galileo,
Aquinas, Maimonides, Aristotle, versed in Spinoza's Ethics, trained with a
B.A. in Philosophy. And I still find myself each day pitted against the
installed social strictures present in all Blacks' lives; even with my
Classical education, I often find myself barking up the wrong tree more often
than not.

Each day I grapple with my tools, sometimes mystified by my own capacity to
become conceptually paralyzed. And this becomes a circle of a vicious nature.
Language itself becomes both a fortress blocking acceptance and a prison
prohibiting liberation, as constantly, despite whatever linguistic finesse I
might muster, it simply falls upon deaf ears.

We call this Structural Oppression. It does not disappear over night.

One important point MLK made during his campaign is that, and I paraphrase,
equality will not exist until Blacks are able to fail at the same rate as
Whites. I am quite sure the same goes for women; hence, why Miley Cyrus serves
as a Debordian "Spectacle".

Georges Bataille says something I believe is relevant[0]:

    
    
        A man who finds himself among others is irritated 
        because he does not know why he is not one of the others. 
    

[0]: [http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/georges-bataille-
the-...](http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/georges-bataille-the-solar-
anus)

~~~
actionbrandon
Thank you for providing an example of what a bigot pretending to be smart
sounds like. Now we all know what to look out for and combat.

~~~
thenerdfiles
Do you actually have an argument ? Do you actually have a contribution to make
to the discussion ? Can you not see the _claims_ being made here ? Can you
actually argue one way or another, or is this discussion simply off-limits
because anyone has any opinion whatsoever?

Is it essential that I add "I read this from some place" ?

I deal with this issue on a personal level; the least you can acknowledge is
that it hurts for me to have internalized assertions I clearly did not dream
up or produce myself.

~~~
xerophtye
relax, calm down down. Yes, so magically you managed to provoke a troll out of
his slumber. Ignore him. Don't feed the troll.

That said, I am actually confused why someone would doubt your intellectual
brilliance based on your mother-tongue :/

------
jd0
I'm commenting here as a response to a few posts that highlight my use of the
word "hostile" \- a somewhat inflammatory word but my time in the journalism
world taught me to bait clicks.... c:

I wouldn't say -hostile- in the sense that there's an active conscious attempt
to bar women and people of color from computer science, what I mean is that in
the computer science world there's an underlying structure which is rapidly
ejecting (as one example) women. A structure which is reducing the number of
women in computer science every year. Let's look at reports from the Computing
Research Association:

"In the United States, the number of women represented in undergraduate
computer science education and the white-collar information technology
workforce peaked in the mid-1980s, and has declined ever since. In 1984, 37.1%
of Computer Science degrees were awarded to women; the percentage dropped to
29.9% in 1989-1990, and 26.7% in 1997-1998.[2] Figures from the Computing
Research Association Taulbee Survey indicate that less than 12% of Computer
Science bachelor's degrees were awarded to women at US PhD-granting
institutions in 2010-11.[3]"

that's a quote from:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing)

which separately sources that paragraph to this study:
[http://www.cra.org/uploads/documents/resources/taulbee/CS_De...](http://www.cra.org/uploads/documents/resources/taulbee/CS_Degree_and_Enrollment_Trends_2010-11.pdf)

~~~
eboyjr
I think the underlying question should be, "Why are fewer and fewer women are
attracted to the field?"

~~~
xerophtye
yep, in college, our CS programs usually had hardly 18 to 25 girls in a class
of 150. And some of them even dropped out. When we graduated, there were
hardly 10 girls amongst us. So it's not that we "eject" them. We just don't
get many girls attracted to this field.

------
jd0
This post was very briefly on the top of /ask but now it's gone from that page
altogether... honestly that's fucked up!

It seems like it was a moderator decision, older posts with less comments and
upvotes remain, why was this post removed?

please ask info@ycombinator.com

~~~
andrewcooke
it has way more comments that votes, which triggers automatic downvoting.

[and i see that you immediately assume - with no evidence or knowledge of how
ranking here works - that it was excluded "actively and consciously" rather
than through some automated process.... at what point do you start to question
your own process of solving problems? maybe blaming everyone else is not
always right?]

~~~
jd0
Whoops! I now realize that it was flagged by users not removed by mods. I
honestly haven't used HN in years until yesterday so I forgot how it all
works. Also I was drunk when I made this post. c:

