Reader Charles Rackoff sends word of an interesting article about the surprisingly high percentage of blacks involved, as faculty and students, with the computer science program at Auburn. Only about 150 blacks are enrolled in computer science doctoral programs in the United States, for example, and 8 of them are at Auburn.
The most intriguing question about Auburn’s computer science “diversity,” I think, is, what difference does it make? According to Juan Gilbert, one of Auburn’s black computer science professors, it makes a big difference.
Gilbert said he believes creating a more diverse pool of computer science research won’t just keep enrollment up or advance some societal goal. It ultimately will yield better technology.
“If all of our technology is created by the same people, then our solutions will be limited and they will only serve those people. Diversity is the key,” Gilbert said. “Diverse backgrounds yield diverse minds, which yield diverse solutions.”
This is a provocative assertion, and it would be good to have some evidence of the results of this “difference.” In what sense, or in what sense related to computer science, are all non-blacks “the same people”? “Same” how? How are black minds different from white or Asian or Hispanic minds? Have there been any black “solutions” that could only have been produced by someone with a black background?
Discriminating minds want to know….
Such assertions pass by unchallenged in the media everyday. But if a conservative implied that “black minds” were somehow different (esp. intellectually) from “white minds”, there’d be hell to pay.
I’ve been in IT for over 25 years. I am currently a director of software development for a major financial company. I have a very diverse staff, Ukranian, Chinese (mainland & Taiwanese), Indians (from 3 distinct ethnic groups, one a muslim), and European American. They are diverse not so much due to their ethnicity as to their individualality!
Dear Nobody, your staff is not “diverse.” It has no blacks. Perhaps your post was meant as satire.
The real issue is not one of black minds, but black experiences. To the extent that one wants to create a cohesive society in a diverse world one needs to train people with diverse experiences that can produce computer programs that are responsive to the diverse needs of different elements in that society. So how does one identify those diverse elements. Black is a short hand that we use. Asian is a shorthand that we use. What shorthands do you propose?
Best wishes David
The real issue is, actually, individual minds and experiences. Do all blacks have the same experiences? Do all whites have the same experiences? No. They have individual experiences. I propose no shorthands. I don’t want to hire black programmers, or Asian programmers, or anything programmers. I want to hire programmers (who might just happen to be black).
What do you want, John, facts and reasoning? You really should know better than to ask such Eurocentric questions. ;-)
David-Would the products produced by Hewlett and Packard in that famous garage have been better simply because someone else with different life experiences had worked with those two guys? In what ways would an individual black experience among the geeks at Apple in the 1970’s or at Microsoft in the 80’s have enhanced the products those companies produced? How does one quantify the value of diverse life experiences in the business model? Which is the most effective way to get a venture capitalist to back a start-up: A photo album filled with the faces of a variety of ethnic groups in your workforce, an anthology of autobiographical essays reflecting the diverse experiences of that workforce or a demonstration of the product/explication of the concept behind it? What do blacks as a group need in computer software that whites and Asians as groups don’t?
David,
The only thing I can conclude from your post is that you are a racist.
And if all our technology ends up being created by people who needed “special help” to get into college in the first place, then our solutions will be extremely limited indeed…
David: I write software for a living. We determine what the “diverse needs” of people are by customer feedback. Not by finding someone with a given ethnic/class/cultural background to work with us. (The latter is fine, but not necessary to fulfill customer desires.)
Then again, people doing graduate CS work aren’t likely to be writing code for a living (or at least not code that end-users interact with. Compilers, maybe). People who do that for a living stop after undergrad; Comp Sci is not a computer programming degree (much to many an undergrad’s chagrin, I’m sure!).
Hi David, Thanks for posting. (You regulars: don’t give David too hard of a time. He’s actually a good friend, and we’ve been having this conversation in real life a long time.
I give myself, however, permission to give David a hard time. (If this seems unfair, just recall A.J. Liebling’s famous comment: freedom of the press belongs to the man who owns one….) So here goes.
Wherever racial preferences are given, race is always described as a proxy for other characteristics. Even the most extreme preferentialists do not argue that black (or brown but not yellow, since Asians are usually excluded from diversity-justified preferences)skin itself provides any diversity. Black/brown-ness is always seen, in short, as a proxy.
We anti-preferentialist reply that in addition to being morally reprehensible, this racial essentialism, i.e., attributing certain qualities to individuals based on their race or ethnicity is inefficient because it is not accurate. People in fact do not share very much that should be rewarded or punished simply because of their race or ethnicity. If better computer stuff can be produced by a team that represents different experiences, then look for those experiences in individuals.
Etc.
We anti-preferentialist reply that in addition to being morally reprehensible, this racial essentialism, i.e., attributing certain qualities to individuals based on their race or ethnicity is inefficient because it is not accurate. People in fact do not share very much that should be rewarded or punished simply because of their race or ethnicity. If better computer stuff can be produced by a team that represents different experiences, then look for those experiences in individuals.
Perhaps if we anti-preferentialists would call this reasoning “racial profiling” — since it is, in fact, the same logic which suggests that minorities should be stopped by the police (race as a proxy for criminal tendencies) — it would begin to lose support.
I wouldn’t give David F. too hard a time, basically because I have no idea what he’s saying. I mean, I know what he really saying — he’s supporting racial profiling, and using the current euphemisms for it — but taking his words at face value, I have no idea what he means. What “diverse needs?” Why would black people have different needs in computer programs than white people? Even if they did, how would this contribute to a “cohesive society”? Do people really believe strings of buzzwords have informational content?
This fuzzy logic is wonderful. I want to see some hard facts. How many solutions to what kind of problems have been created by what kinds of minds? How do youmeasure difference?
Hmmm. Quite a bit has changed in public health work since women entered medicine in proportionate numbers, don’t you think? Even before that, we got lucky from a little diversity at the FDA: that’s why thalidomide didn’t get approval here. (A woman doctor held it up because of her sole concern that it needed more testing before being approved for use on pregnant women, and, no, while a male doctor could have said the same thing, I think it’s a lot more likely that a woman would.) So I think the claim science marches on irrespective of the genetic makeup of the scientists isn’t going to work as a universal claim. (Note: I am emphatically not endorsing any relativist claims about scientific epistemology. Even the most hidebound philosophers of science would agree that extra-scientific factors enter into questions of priorities and funding.)
I wouldn’t expect a “diverse” computer science program to make any more progress on whether P=NP, if that’s what the question is. But if Auburn’s department also has, say, people working in computer-assisted learning, I could see that members coming from diverse previous educational experience would be valuable.
“. . . I could see that members coming from diverse previous educational experience would be valuable.”
Indeed. And that requires classifying people by their color how, exactly?
to find evidence of his assertion you only have to remember a time when you had to take a break from a difficult problem to gain a new perspective. bringing in new minds with differing perspectives is along the same lines.
if race is your only problem, you could find minds with backgrounds and perspectives that differ from most of the minds being turned out by educational institutions by selecting from different economic backgrounds: pick students from poor families living in poor neighborhoods. luckily, we have established poverty lines to make this job easy.
and who knows? since race wouldn’t be a factor, this possible program could put some poor white student’s minds on the problems, which may make you happy.