> It feels sucky, but imagine being born to a family (more likely single parent) where you didn't have the opportunity to learn how to program because you had to work and take care of your siblings and dropped out of high school as soon as you could so you could earn more to help feed your newest youngest sibling
I'm a straight white male, and I was born into such a family. Single mother, little sister to take care of while my mom was out working two jobs, and we were below the poverty line. We lived in a very small two bedroom apartment in a bad part of town, and my mother didn't even have a bedroom (she slept on the couch for years). I never dropped out of high school, though I did seriously consider it partway through sophomore year.
> And even if you had managed to learn how to program, you didn't know anybody else who coded or could give you interview advice. So you took a bad coding job that provided no personal fulfillment and didn't help you learn how to code properly so you left to find a better career....
This also nearly describes my younger self, except that 1) I did manage to learn to code properly, well before I ever got paid to do it; and 2) I kept my career, but left to find a better job.
I learned to program by reading (already a decade out-of-date at the time) library books and doing the exercises with pencil and paper. I had a friend who had an ancient box running MS-DOS 5 and Windows 3.1, and he let me type in my Basic programs on weekends. He even gave me a floppy to keep them on! When I finally got a computer, it was a 6 year-old box that someone at church gave my mom one day in late 2003 when I was 14 (I had been writing programs for over 4 years already by that time). I still have it, too... 350 MHz Pentium II; it had 32 MB of RAM when I got it, but it's been upgraded to 192 MB since. It ran Windows 95 at the time, but nowadays it happily runs OpenBSD, and I still use it occasionally, albeit via an old amber-phosphor DEC VT 520 (beautiful terminal, to say the least) rather than the old color CRT it came with, which broke during a move a few years ago :(
I'm also fortunate that my mom was always supportive and encouraging of my computing endeavors.
Anyway. My point is that straight white males can come from destitute families, too. Nearly everyone I've met has assumed otherwise -- that I've somehow grown up privileged and don't understand what need feels like. It's only been the last couple years that I'm finally in a financial position where I don't constantly feel sick to my stomach -- literally sick -- knowing that if something -- anything -- unplanned were to happen, I'd wind up homeless and hungry.
I worked two jobs while going to university on top of some loans I'd taken out, and there were still a few times, especially during the summer sessions (because there is no loan disbursement prior to the summer sessions), where I had less than $13 to my name and I was trying to figure out how to make it last for just two more weeks until pay day. Rachael Ray thinks she's so enlightened with her show, "$40 a Day". Try 90¢ a day.
I did manage to get a few grants and a tiny academic scholarship, but if you think they give white males good grants, you're mistaken. Halfway through high school, we moved from Florida to North Carolina, where cost of living is much lower and my mom was able to get a better job, but we were still right on the poverty line by the time I was applying to university. You'd think that being so poor, FAFSA would've given more aid, but nope. I still wound up with close to $30,000 of debt when I graduated.
It's not that my family is bad with money. My mom is probably the best person I know when it comes to managing finances. She always taught my sister and I to live within our means, but sometimes our means just weren't enough. The amount of stress it can put on a person is staggering. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. I'm married now, and a home owner, and things are going pretty well as of late. I want to do everything in my power to make sure my wife (and possibly kid(s) in the future) never have to experience the kind of indigence I've had to endure.
My story isn't typical, though. I got lucky. Not everyone who starts off in my position is able to make such a comeback, and there are so many people who have helped me and my family over the years. I feel like I owe them so much, but when I bring it up, they tell me that, for them, it was such a little thing and I shouldn't worry about it. Regardless, I will always be grateful to them.
I've heard people say before that "only white people can be racist", or that "only men can be sexist", etc. There seems to be this attitude (in the US, at least) that it's not discrimination when it only excludes whites and/or men. None of those things is true. Non-whites can be racist, and women can be sexist, and discrimination against white men is still discrimination.
tl;dr:
* White families can be destitute, too. Inversely, don't assume that because someone is not white that they come from a poor family.
* Discrimination against whites and/or males is still discrimination.
* Life's a bitch, but good people exist (and I owe some of those good people for where I am today).
Upvoted because I think people's concrete experiences with any kind of struggle are important to discussions about discrimination and privilege.
I think what activists and theorists who study this area would probably add, though, is that the economic struggles (which sound pretty formidable, it's a credit to you and those who helped you that you're doing OK now) are only half the equation. There's a systemic tendency at work in society towards judgments about what successful upwardly mobile people (perhaps, particularly, successful upwardly mobile engineers) look like that you probably benefited from... and that someone who's a woman or not white or asian would have to struggle against. And this is part of what the grant is meant to address.
Assuming this model of how things work is true, ideally there'd probably be grants that address economic/upbringing hardship and other structural privileges separately.
> Upvoted because I think people's concrete experiences with any kind of struggle are important to discussions about discrimination and privilege.
Thanks. I think so, too.
> There's a systemic tendency at work in society towards judgments about what successful upwardly mobile people (perhaps, particularly, successful upwardly mobile engineers) look like that you probably benefited from... and that someone who's a woman or not white or asian would have to struggle against.
I hadn't thought about that, but I can certainly see how that could be the case. As I said, nearly everyone I've met has assumed that white people don't come from poor families -- this includes a lot of white people as well (though obviously white people who likely did not come from poor families). I've always been too put-off by the assumption (when it's been made explicit) to be particularly friendly towards those who've asserted it, because, despite everything, I'm proud of where I come from and I'm proud of my family. But I can definitely see how that same principle could be at play when it comes to professional stereotypes as well. I'll be trying to pay more attention for it in the future, too.
> ... ideally there'd probably be grants that address economic/upbringing hardship and other structural privileges separately.
I'm honestly not sure there needs to be grants for other structural privileges. If you're in a financial position where you can afford to attend, you don't need a grant, period, regardless of gender, race, what-have-you. Purely need-based grants would also increase diversity: by excluding certain groups of people from the grants, you're effectively excluding subsets of those groups from participating entirely. Now, you're getting the perspectives of women, blacks, hispanics, indigenous Americans, Pacific islanders, well-off Asian men, and well-off white men. Not white and Asian men in general, just the well-off ones. I think it should be obvious why someone who's not well-off would have different experiences from someone who is, and therefore a different perspective, and that by extending the grants to anyone with financial needs you'd only be increasing the amount of diversity available (assuming that a greater number of perspectives implies greater diversity).
We should also ask ourselves: is equal opportunity desirable, and, if so, is it better for equal opportunity to apply at a group level or an individual level? That is, is equal opportunity simply a numbers game or is it a social ideal? When the computing field becomes 50% male / 50% female (and a similarly uniform distribution among races), is that enough that we can step back and confidently declare that we've achieved equal opportunity? Personally, I think that would be neither necessary nor sufficient. Furthermore, while I'm strongly in favor of equal opportunity, I'm not in favor of enforcing equal outcome (that is, I don't think there should be institutional guarantees that everyone who takes the same opportunity achieve the same outcome, because it's simply infeasible, among other reasons), and I think it's important to distinguish the two.
Hell, I say I'm doing OK now, but if it really costs $7,000 to attend Recurse, I still couldn't afford it. It would very nearly clean out my savings account. Not to mention that there's absolutely no way I would be able to take 3 straight months off from work to attend, and during that time I'd still need make mortgage payments, payments on student and auto loans, insurance payments, medical expenses, etc. This leads me to feel like me and people like me are not valued. Personally, I'm used to it by now, but I'd like to see it change for the sake of the boys coming out of high school, especially since, as I said, I'm one of the lucky ones. There are a lot of people coming from similar situations that haven't been so lucky.
Thanks for the amazing post. I didn't mean to strike a painful nerve with mine, I wanted to try to point out that the happy white family isn't the norm, and that's what these programs are about (there are disproportionately more stories like yours in the black community than the white community).
I just linked this [1] from another post, and I know that your voice is valuable in the race / discrimination conversation. Your situation was not just, and I'm touched by your story. So thanks.
> Discrimination against whites and/or males is still discrimination.
Providing grants for unrepresented groups is not "discrimination against whites", it is affirmative action --
An action or policy favoring those who tend to suffer from discrimination, especially in relation to employment or education.
Now it seems likely that you find that affirmative action is synonymous with discrimination, but that has no bearing in a discussion about the Recurse Center and it's programming community. Except it being a not-so-subtle -ism [1].
I contend that excluding a particular group of people from some benefit or assistance based on morphology rather than need and/or merit is, in fact, discrimination.
Imagine the situation were the other way around. Imagine I opened my own school and I offered financial assistance for people to attend, but had a policy that no black person would receive financial assistance regardless of need. Would you not call that discrimination? If not, I'd like to know what your definition of discrimination is.
I think that there are some benefits that make more sense for some groups than others. This goes towards the intersectionality of privilege.
Of course we should help people in poverty of any race. But class isn't the only thing that makes it easier or harder to become a programmer.
I don't have a good idea of precisely when aid should be class-based vs when it should be race- (or other category) based, but bear in mind that when programs merely try to help one group who is being discriminated against, they're not doing it because they hate other groups that are discriminated against. They're just doing what they can. They are trying to help, and even though I wish they could do more, I don't fault them for having limitations.
To your point about "no black people", that would be racist / bizarre because it's not clear that the category you've defined is discriminated against. If you defined it based on class, that would be fine - even if it disproportionately benefited white people (eg need based funding in North Dakota might help more white people, but that's okay)
I don't think financial assistance for education should be based on any sort of group membership criterion. Someone can either afford to attend or they cannot. Allocation of grant money should ideally be based on nothing other than financial need (of course, seeing that grants/scholarships are investments of sorts, good risk management practices would include only allocating grants to good performers, but I think that's better left to an admissions process -- if your application is accepted and you need financial assistance, then we'll see what we can do).
The way it stands currently, I'm not eligible to receive financial aid while Barack Obama, Kanye West, and Morgan Freeman -- all men who have far more income than I do -- are eligible. I'm not eligible, yet my wife is eligible, even though we have precisely the same household income and financial assets. What's the point of that? Do you think giving an "underprivileged" person money will somehow make them less underprivileged? That seems a non-sequitur to me, while on the other hand it's obvious how giving a poor person money would make them less poor.
> To your point about "no black people", that would be racist / bizarre because it's not clear that the category you've defined is discriminated against.
That was exactly my point. In our society, it's considered normal and acceptable to exclude white men from benefits or assistance, while at the same time withholding those same benefits or assistance from black people is considered racist and bizarre. Is that not a "double standard"?
Note that I'm in no way advocating that we stop providing assistance to the present recipients, only that we also consider others who may need assistance. The way I see it, "diversity" of some group seems to be defined roughly as the ratio of non-white/non-male members to white, male members. (In this case, it appears to be non-(white|Asian)/non-male to (white|Asian) male, but the idea is the same). Now, when attempting to increase a ratio, there are two approaches you can take (note that they're not mutually exclusive):
1) Increase the numerator.
2) Decrease the denominator.
Both of these actions will result in a larger ratio. From a purely mathematical standpoint, they're equivalent. But from a moral standpoint, when the numerator and denominator represent people, choosing to reduce the denominator over augmenting the numerator seems questionable at best, and it leads us away from justice!
Of course, from a practical standpoint, a school or other institution will have a limited amount of resources -- space, educators, funds, etc. -- and it's not feasible to always be growing. What I propose instead is to shift preference away from aid policy and toward admissions policy. If you want to give underprivileged applicants a leg up, give them an appropriate preference/priority during the admissions process such that you can make an earnest attempt to reach some well-defined goal for diversity. Then offer an appropriate amount of financial aid to as many admittants as possible -- based on need only. With such a scheme, it's possible to still foster diversity without utterly excluding any one group of people in particular. (In fact, I'd argue that such a scheme would be better at fostering diversity -- see < https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12121291 > for an explanation).
I think this kind of response reinforces the cult-like image brought up elsewhere in this thread. The social rules within the Recurse Center have little bearing on an external discussion about the Recurse Center on an independent forum. There's room to talk about it here. It's not Fight Club.
I'm a straight white male, and I was born into such a family. Single mother, little sister to take care of while my mom was out working two jobs, and we were below the poverty line. We lived in a very small two bedroom apartment in a bad part of town, and my mother didn't even have a bedroom (she slept on the couch for years). I never dropped out of high school, though I did seriously consider it partway through sophomore year.
> And even if you had managed to learn how to program, you didn't know anybody else who coded or could give you interview advice. So you took a bad coding job that provided no personal fulfillment and didn't help you learn how to code properly so you left to find a better career....
This also nearly describes my younger self, except that 1) I did manage to learn to code properly, well before I ever got paid to do it; and 2) I kept my career, but left to find a better job.
I learned to program by reading (already a decade out-of-date at the time) library books and doing the exercises with pencil and paper. I had a friend who had an ancient box running MS-DOS 5 and Windows 3.1, and he let me type in my Basic programs on weekends. He even gave me a floppy to keep them on! When I finally got a computer, it was a 6 year-old box that someone at church gave my mom one day in late 2003 when I was 14 (I had been writing programs for over 4 years already by that time). I still have it, too... 350 MHz Pentium II; it had 32 MB of RAM when I got it, but it's been upgraded to 192 MB since. It ran Windows 95 at the time, but nowadays it happily runs OpenBSD, and I still use it occasionally, albeit via an old amber-phosphor DEC VT 520 (beautiful terminal, to say the least) rather than the old color CRT it came with, which broke during a move a few years ago :(
I'm also fortunate that my mom was always supportive and encouraging of my computing endeavors.
Anyway. My point is that straight white males can come from destitute families, too. Nearly everyone I've met has assumed otherwise -- that I've somehow grown up privileged and don't understand what need feels like. It's only been the last couple years that I'm finally in a financial position where I don't constantly feel sick to my stomach -- literally sick -- knowing that if something -- anything -- unplanned were to happen, I'd wind up homeless and hungry.
I worked two jobs while going to university on top of some loans I'd taken out, and there were still a few times, especially during the summer sessions (because there is no loan disbursement prior to the summer sessions), where I had less than $13 to my name and I was trying to figure out how to make it last for just two more weeks until pay day. Rachael Ray thinks she's so enlightened with her show, "$40 a Day". Try 90¢ a day.
I did manage to get a few grants and a tiny academic scholarship, but if you think they give white males good grants, you're mistaken. Halfway through high school, we moved from Florida to North Carolina, where cost of living is much lower and my mom was able to get a better job, but we were still right on the poverty line by the time I was applying to university. You'd think that being so poor, FAFSA would've given more aid, but nope. I still wound up with close to $30,000 of debt when I graduated.
It's not that my family is bad with money. My mom is probably the best person I know when it comes to managing finances. She always taught my sister and I to live within our means, but sometimes our means just weren't enough. The amount of stress it can put on a person is staggering. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. I'm married now, and a home owner, and things are going pretty well as of late. I want to do everything in my power to make sure my wife (and possibly kid(s) in the future) never have to experience the kind of indigence I've had to endure.
My story isn't typical, though. I got lucky. Not everyone who starts off in my position is able to make such a comeback, and there are so many people who have helped me and my family over the years. I feel like I owe them so much, but when I bring it up, they tell me that, for them, it was such a little thing and I shouldn't worry about it. Regardless, I will always be grateful to them.
I've heard people say before that "only white people can be racist", or that "only men can be sexist", etc. There seems to be this attitude (in the US, at least) that it's not discrimination when it only excludes whites and/or men. None of those things is true. Non-whites can be racist, and women can be sexist, and discrimination against white men is still discrimination.
tl;dr:
* White families can be destitute, too. Inversely, don't assume that because someone is not white that they come from a poor family.
* Discrimination against whites and/or males is still discrimination.
* Life's a bitch, but good people exist (and I owe some of those good people for where I am today).