Minorities "Underrepresented" in High Tech

According to a new study, "underrepresented minorities make up a very small proportion of high technology workforces, especially in senior level," reports the EETimes.

The study, conducted by the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, found that 6.1 percent of technical men and 8.2 percent of technical women in Silicon Valley high-tech companies are underrepresented minorities.

Hmmmm. And, exactly which "underrepresented minorities" that would be? More interestingly, which minority groups would not be "underrepresented" in the tech industry?

The answer is surely no surprise.

The underrepresented minority groups are defined as African-American/Black, Latino/ Hispanic, and Native American/Native Hawaiians.

The problem is particularly acute for women of color, which represent less than 2 percent of high-level technical positions, the study finds.

Of course, not every minority group is "underepresented" in the tech industry, East Asians, Indians and Jews, though tiny minorities in the general US population, seem to do quite well indeed.

The study goes on to, naturally, recite the usual multiculturalist dogma.

The study contends that lack of diversity hurts high-tech firms. It also finds that high-tech companies are in danger of losing underrepresented minority technical talent, according to a statement released the study's authors.

Yet the study's own findings explain the problem quite well :

Women and men from underrepresented minority (URM) backgrounds are notably few in computer science and engineering disciplines.4 The proportion of African-American PhD recipients in the US and Canada has remained unchanged since 1995 at around 1-2%, and Hispanic/Latino representation dropped from 3% to 2%.5. Indeed, the underrepresentation of women and ethnic minorities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in the US has been a concern of policy makers,academics, and industry leaders.6 The US Hispanic population will triple between today and 2050 and grow proportionally from 15% to 30% of the total US population.7 Yet, only 6.7% of Computer Science bachelors’ degrees are earned by Hispanic/Latinos. Similarly, African Americans represent 13% of the US population, yet earn less than 5% of graduate degrees in computer science.

The underperformance of Latinos in virtually all academic disciplines, even after generations of assimilation, is indeed a major source of concern, especially since the US has suffered nothing short of an invasion of Latino immigrants over the past 30 years. But the study does not seek to understand why Latinos continue to underperform, economically and educationally, it simply takes such underperformance as, ipso facto, evidence of bias and racism.

The study goes on to list the usual litany of reasons for the failure of the aforementioned "underrepresented minorities" to gain a foothold in the tech industry, including but not limited to lack of mentors and role models, discouragement by teachers, isolation, bias and stereotyping and lack of access to social networks.

And then there are gems like this:

Organizations engage in “homosocial reproductions” and tend to evaluate people on thesame criteria as the existing senior managers — thus minorities and women become evaluated in terms of “white upper-middleclass men” criteria.37 Similarly, the criteria used in hiring and retaining workers is heavily dependent on existing organizationalcomposition.38 Discrimination is often subtly built in organizations — for example, leadership and power are often construed in terms of one’s ability to direct other’s behavior, a trait that people usually associate with white men, as opposed to construing leadershipin terms of one’s ability to achieve consensus or to listen, a trait that is most often associated with women and minorities.

Yes, it's the white power structure - all the Klansmen running Silcon Valley companies - that are responsible for some minorities being underrepresented.

The consequences of this underrepresenting of some minorities can be, well, just staggering, according to the report:

The level of under-representation of African-American/Black, Latino/Hispanic, and Native American/Native Hawaiians in technical positions in leading high-technology companies in SiliconValley is alarming. This is likely to limit companies’ ability to innovate and create new products for a significant portion of the user population.

This assertion is made point blank with absolutely no evidence advanced to support it. It is part of multiculturalist dogma, not to be questioned, simply to be venerated as true. The assertion rests on the idea that the minority populations in question are just bursting with talented innovators that the high tech industry is ignoring. If only we could liberate that pool of talent! Yet, the high tech industry is, actually, one of the industries most open to innovation from unknown innovators. Many of the leading high tech firms were founded by people who never even finished college.

The study also carefully avoids the question of why these specific minorities - "African-American/Black, Latino/ Hispanic, and Native American/Native Hawaiians" - are "underrepresented" as compared to other minorities including East Asians, Indians and Jews. If the white power structure is so suffocating toward the former, why not the latter? The study never asks itself if the reason certain minorities find themselves underrepresented might be due to some attribute of the minorities themselves and not the result of, wait for it, racism.

Naturally, there is no discussion of IQ in the study, since that is a topic never, ever to be discussed by the multiculturalist faithful, unless to unilaterally condemn the concept. Which is sad, because an ethnic breakdown of IQ scores does go a long way toward explaining why some minorities are underrepresented and some are overrepresented in the high tech commmunity, and why those same minorities occupy reverse representation in fields that require less cognition-heavy activity.

But don't expect that sort of analysis from the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology.

Surprise, Surprise...

In Arkansas, a gunman opens fire at two young soldiers standing outside a military recruiting center. Both are soldiers wounded; tragically, one dies. And what of the shooter?

The gunman, identified by the police as Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad of Little Rock, fled the scene and was arrested minutes later a short distance from the recruiting station, in a bustling suburban shopping center. The police confiscated a Russian-made SKS semiautomatic rifle, a .22-caliber rifle and a handgun from his black pickup truck.

Anyone surprised? But Mr. Muhammed wasn't always called by that name.

In a lengthy interview with the police, Mr. Muhammad said he was angry about the killing of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan, Chief Thomas said. Previously known as Carlos Bledsoe, Mr. Muhammad told investigators that he had converted to Islam as a teenager, Chief Thomas said.

By all means, let's permit Muslims to recruit freely in our prisons, schools and communities, and immigrate to this country by the tens of thousands. Because that could never lead to anything bad happening...

The Latin Boom

If you are wondering why Latino power is growing in the U.S., you need only look at the numbers. Aside from the millions who have crossed into the U.S., in defiance of American law, Latinos living in the U.S. are busy making sure that the Latino population is skyrocketing.

According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, 53 percent of Latinas get pregnant in their teens, about twice the national average.

After a period of decline, the birth rate for U.S. teenagers 15 to 19 years rose in 2007 by about 1 percent, to 42.5 births per 1,000, according to preliminary data in a March 2009 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics.

In 2007, the birth rate among non-Hispanic whites ages 15 to 19 was 27.2 per 1,000, and 64.3 per 1,000 for non-Hispanic black teens in the same age range. The teen birth rate among Hispanic teens ages 15 to 19 was 81.7 per 1,000.

And, as you know, children are the future...

Middle-Class Genes

In Britain, a Chris Woodhead, former school chief has caused an uproar by suggesting that the children of middle class parents might, on average, be smarter than the offspring of poor parents.

Mr Woodhead called for a return to selection by ability at 11.

He suggested that grammar school pupils were more likely to be middle-class because 'the genes are likely to be better if your parents are teachers, academics, lawyers, whatever, and the nurture is likely to be better'.

In an interview with the Guardian, he argued that Labour had betrayed a generation by refusing to accept that some children were not suited to formal secondary education.

The Government had tried to make education 'accessible' rather than ' rigorous', he said.

Ministers should accept that some youngsters are simply born 'not very bright' and allow them to pursue practical training instead of forcing them into the classroom.

'I've taught, and I can still remember trying to interest children who had no interest whatsoever in English,' he said. 'They didn't want to be in the classroom.

'If I'm honest I didn't want them to be there either - because they were disruptive to children who did want to learn. What was the point?'

Naturally, this bit of common sense sent the Blank-Slaters into full panic mode.

But political scientist Alan Ryan, who is the warden of New College, Oxford, criticised Mr Woodhead's views on genes as 'garbage'.

'All the evidence is that initial genetic endowment is pretty much random across social classes, and everything depends on a nurturing environment,' he said.
'The idea that you look for some genetic underpinning to go with it seems crazy.'

The Department for Children, Schools and Families also rejected Mr Woodhead's arguments. 'We do not accept the inevitability of pupils' socio-economic backgrounds shaping their attainment and their futures,' a spokesman said.

Well, they would say that wouldn't they, given the ideological agenda they have implemented using the taxpayers' money. But does anyone actually believe that British schools are producing better educated students today than they did decades ago?

Surprisingly, the Daily Mail bothered to find someone who actually understands the findings of modern genetics.

However, there was support from Dr Bruce Charlton, an expert in evolutionary psychiatry from Newcastle University.

'Chris Woodhead is basically correct, and there's nothing new about it,' he said.

Dr Charlton insisted that intelligence was 'mostly inherited', adding that family background and education 'probably makes a small difference but nothing like as much as people think'.

Dr. Charlton's support notwithstanding, Mr. Woodhead can expect to be pilloried, denounced as a Nazi, and roundly ignored. And Britain's schools, like their American counterparts, will continue to sink into the mud.

We All Share This One Earth, Unfortunately...

Multiculturalists are always telling us that all cultures and peoples are equal in innate abilities, cultural achievements and moral sentiments. Any perceived differences in said qualities between different races and cultures is simple racism (that is, when white Western people dare to notice). So, when reading the following, remember that all cultures are equal and you are a bad, bad person if you think otherwise.

GOVERNMENT troops sodomised pygmies in March in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, believing they would gain supernatural powers, a regional rights group said.

"Some soldiers from the 85th Brigade sodomised three male pygmies to gain supernatural powers and protection in Kisa village in Walikale territory,'' the Human Rights League of the Great Lakes said.

"The village chief was stripped and (sodomised) in the presence of his wife, his children and daughter in-law.

"The children in turn were stripped and raped in front of their father."

It said armed groups in the region also abused the pygmies.

Elderly citizens and children were also being raped by the armed groups and wayward FARDC soldiers in eastern DRC, it added.

Not to worry, though. The US is currently annually admitting thousands of immigrants from all the better parts of Africa.

The Swan Song

In what was hopefully his last major appearance in front of the Washington press corps, a relatively animated President Bush yesterday offered a vocal defense of his administration and its policies. Just like the policies he enacted, Bush's arguments remain completely divorced from reality. His rhetoric ignores the actual facts, in favor of that which he wishes were true. Reflecting on Bush's press conference, Pat Buchanan easily spots the numerous delusions:

He denounced protectionism, as he has with dismissive contempt since he went to New Hampshire a decade ago. But nowhere in his defense of free trade was there any explanation for how Middle America lost 3 million manufacturing jobs in his first term and a million more in the last year.

Nowhere does there seem an awareness that the ideas he absorbed at his father’s knee and the Harvard Business School had resulted in the de-industrialization of his country, an enormous and growing dependency on Japan, China and Asia for the essentials of our national life, and, now, for the borrowed money to pay for them.

Someone once defined tragedy as what happens when a beautiful theory collides with a fact. And this is what has happened every time a great empire—be it the Spanish, British or American—embraced free trade as its salvation.

President Bush says it was freedom that prevailed when he rejected the pleas of weak-sister Republicans and backed the surge. But what spared us a debacle in Iraq was an infusion of 30,000 combat troops, an uprising against the murderers of al-Qaida and a U.S. decision to buy off the Sunni tribes, a strategy besieged empires have pursued for centuries.

Nor does there appear in Bush’s self-assurance any awareness of the cost of his Freedom Agenda. In Iraq, it is 4,000 U.S. dead, 30,000 wounded, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead, millions of refugees, a pogrom against an ancient Christian community, and a strategic victory for Iran and its Shia allies across the Middle East. When last heard from, the Ayatollah Sistani—the chief Shia cleric in Iraq, who has welcomed Iranian but not American visitors—was calling for Muslims to stand up against Israeli criminality in Gaza.

Like Woodrow Wilson before him, Bush appears to believe that the nobility of his goals—expanding freedom and bringing an end to tyranny in our world—validates and will sanctify his decisions.

George W. Bush's presidency will not be judged on the supposed "nobility" of his goals, but rather on the actual outcome of his policies, and the overall health of the nation during and at the end of his term. By these standards, he will be judged harshly, not merely as a failure, but as a disaster.

Are Britons Beginning to Realize the Truth?

Writing in the Telegraph, Alasdair Palmer, voices hope that Britain's ruling Labor party might just have come to the startling realization that its mass immigration policies are eviscerating its political base: native English people.

The Labour leadership seems finally to be waking up to the fact that the party's immigration policy has not been popular with what has traditionally been seen as its core vote: Britain's white working class. The development appears to have taken Hazel Blears, the Communities Secretary, by surprise. She reacted to a report commissioned by her department that found that many working class whites feel "betrayed" by saying that "the report shows there are real complexities around perceptions [of Government] held by the white working class."

"Real complexities?" The reasons why the working class feels betrayed actually reduce to one fairly simple fact: they have paid the costs of increased immigration without reaping any of the benefits. They compete for low-skilled, poorly-paid jobs with immigrants who are willing to work longer hours for less money. The white working class is not affluent, so can't take advantage of the opportunities to eat at ethnic restaurants or to employ nannies, plumbers and builders at low wages that delight those who are better off (such as, for instance, Labour ministers and MPs). They are the ones who find that, because many immigrants are even poorer and more in need of services such as council housing and medical care than they are, there is a longer queue for those benefits. The better-off already own their homes, and they don't live in the poor neighbourhoods into which immigrants settle, so their children do not have to go to schools where many of their class-mates do not speak English.

The Telegraph captures the metaphysical dilemma faced by most Western nations when Enlightenment values are applied to political policies like immigration:

Advocates of unrestricted or very high levels of immigration into Britain often seem simply to have deluded themselves into portraying what is actually a piece of economic self-interest as high-minded philanthropy. Still, underlying the question of how many people from developing economies we should welcome into Britain, there is a very fundamental issue about the basis of rights, and who owes how much to whom.

On one side, there is the rationalist, universalist view, which says that the basis of rights and entitlements is "human-ness" – and that morally, every government should treat every human being in exactly the same way. On the other, there is the view that governments can never be more than the guardians of the interests of the particular group of people who elect them and contribute to them. That is why, as a member of a particular nation, you have a right to a voice in deciding what laws govern your society, but outsiders do not. It is also why you also have an entitlement to benefits that is not universally shared.

Labour's policy on immigration has been based on the rationalist, universalist view. That is why its immigration policy, with its insistence that every immigrant has exactly the same rights as long-standing members of British society, has come into such sharp collision with the views of the white working class. They think that the Government should recognise that it has special obligations to its own citizens which it does not have to humanity in general. They, along with most of the rest of us, are sceptical of any politician who claims to be following "universal reason", especially when the "rational policy" requires sacrifices from people who are not politicians. Most British citizens think that the British Government has no obligation whatever to extend to arrivals from Third World countries the benefits to which only being a citizen entitles you.

The corrosive creep of universalist sentiments has led Western intellectuals from the proposition that all persons should have the same basic human liberties, to the very wrong conclusion that all persons are inherently equal in capabilities, and are, in fact, interchangeable. Hence the U.S. belief that setting up a democratic government in Iraq will turn Baghdad into a swarthier version of Minneapolis. Or the idea that importing millions of Mexicans into the US - or hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis into Briton - will have no negative effect on nation. Since all people are, as we are told, equal, there are no real differences and any evidence to the contrary is intrinsically racist and must be suppressed. The cold hard facts visible to our naked eyes, must never be acknowledged.