Comment As a Hispanic Compute Scientist, my answer is (Score 2) 612
Is Computer Science Education Racist and Sexist?
No. No. No. Fucking no!
It is not. As a Hispanic, no one prevented me from getting into Computer Science, graduating from that field and making a good career out of it just based on my race, ethnicity or whatever. It was just me, myself and my efforts. My sister, being a Hispanic woman, she did not have a "racial" problem getting into Math (and graduating). There are no Jim-Crow-like establishments that prevents people like me from getting into STEM. So, no, Computer Science education is not racist.
Saying so is just bullshit race baiting designed to distract people from the actual social problems that pervade the African American and Hispanic communities. It is a lot easier to race bait than to actually fix shit. This is pretty much what this whole endeavor amounts to.
People choose STEM (and in particular Computer Science) based on a variety of social factors. In the US, women shy away to go into STEM, but you see this as less of an issue with the many Chinese and Indian female colleagues I have had the honor to work with. The same occurs with African American and Hispanic students.
To begin with (and I say this from the POV of a minority) our African American and Hispanic cultures have significant problems that lead students away from certain subjects and careers. This is in parallel with American society at large where women are conditioned to stay away from STEM fields.
Consider the following: it is well known that many African American kids (and Hispanic kids to a lesser) degree do not know how to swim. But we know that the causes are cultural as well as economical: African American and Hispanic neighborhoods are on average of a lower income than Non-Hispanic Caucasian and Asian communities, with poorer infrastructure and less amenities: that include pools. Furthermore, lower income means lesser variety of extra-curricular activities (including swimming.)
But we don't go and ask "is swimming racist"? It would be a stupid question for obvious reasons. But why is it then that when people ask the same about Computer Science (and STEM in general) we do not see this as a stupid question?
"Including culturally relevant instructional materials represented a driving focus of our course development," explained ECS Team members who now advise Code.org. "Cultural design tools encourage students to artistically express computing design concepts from Latino/a, African American, or Native American history as well as cultural activities in dance, skateboarding, graffiti art, and more. These types of lessons are important for students to build personal relationships with computer science concepts and applications – an important process for discovering the relevance of computer science for their own life." And — ironically for Code.org — it could mean less coding."
Computer Science is the field of computing, an off shot of Discrete Mathematics. This is not about artistic expression, but hard science of numbers and computing. We could also propose the same for Math and Physics because not that many Hispanics and African Americans and American-born women go into those fields.
The solution is not to plaster Computer Science education with multicultural trivia and singing kumbaya and shit. The solution involves solving the economic gaps that pervade in the African American and Hispanic communities (and let's be honest, to have those communities solve the systemic cultural issues that keep *us* from partaking in process of fostering technology and science.)
Anything less than that is lipstick-on-a-pig, sugar-coating bullshit.