Why write about race and tech

This is one of those interminable blog posts about the blog posts. Someone asked. So, I’m going to explain. I’m going to make the post read little more strident by listing some of the reasons why race and tech, and why writing about my experiences with race and tech, is important to me. Hopefully this rambling pre-list explanation will soften it, without, that is, making anything in it less direct. Here goes:

Because it interests me.

Because tech (programming, website design and development, UNIX systems administration) is what I do.

Because my son is bi-racial.

Because I want my son to have access to the opportunities that I, as a white male, have had.

Because there is a misconception, if not an outright myth, that bias doesn’t exist, or that bias is less pronounced, in tech.

Because access to tech doesn’t strictly mean the ability to buy an iPhone or to subscribe to a broadband service.

Because equal access to broadband service is an important component of tech too.

Because access to tech means education, including accessible, affordable, early childhood education.

Because access to tech means public school education that teaches the methodologies of tech, like OO software development, or designing network topologies, as opposed to just a language, like Python, or how to configure a Cisco router.

Because access to tech means economic independence and mobility.

Because increasing economic inequality based on racist systems and racist thinking continues to be problem in the United States.

Because race and tech are bigger than my son.

Because I still want my son to have all the opportunities I have had.

Because I want my son to live in a better country, in a better world.

Now an anecdote — not to worry, it’ll be a brief one — to demonstrate that I know, and that I have experienced, a bit about what I write here:

I new and I did a lot of work with a guy once designing and programming websites — working in tech. Again, there’s that misconception that tech is somehow less racist a line-of-work than, say, construction. I was talking with this guy, a tech professional like me, about some recent news story showing how the United States was still racist. This guy, who I thought I knew, who I thought at one time shared my own values, told me:

“I’m racist. I can’t help it. That’s just the way I am.”

He said this without saying, or apologizing, or even suggesting, that this thing —the racist views he admitted he had — represented an area in need of improvement. The unambiguous gist of this guy’s statement was:

I’m racist, that’s who I am, no regrets, no apologies.

It is a weird experience to be talking to someone you thought you knew, who tells you that he has bigoted views, and who lays it out there like he is not going to do anything about it. It drives me more crazy to think that I missed that my values were not the sames as this guy’s — but that’s stuff for a blog post for another time. For this one let us agree that people strive to change — for the better. Which provides a segue into the last item in my list, which I hope turned out to be not too strident-sounding:

Because endeavoring to change for the better is a good thing.

Thank you.