“We get scared because we don’t see anybody like us. We do see people at the top in entertainment, in sports, but we don’t see people at the top of technology.”
a posh members-only club in Atlanta that serves a diverse set of entrepreneurs and innovators, Travis and Troy Nunnally—better known as the Tech Twins—are holding court.
But as two black men on the forefront of the machine-learning revolution, they are also concerned about the readiness of black tech talent: Machine learning requires knowledge of Python coding, algorithmic optimization techniques, and advanced math like calculus. “The first step into the pipeline is a developer,” Troy says. “Once you have that base, you can add on the skill set. In the African American community, [the funnel] gets narrow and even more narrow.
Coca-Cola, Home Depot, and UPS are all headquartered in Atlanta, and tech standouts like Jewel Burks Solomon and Tristan Walker call the city home. As a grad student at Georgia Tech, Betsy DiSalvo noticed African American males dropping out at high rates from undergraduate Introduction to Computer Science classes. She wondered why strong interest in other realms of technology, like playing videogames, didn’t translate to success in computer science.
Participants repeatedly told us that they tried not to talk about the CS aspect of the program with their family. Most suggested that it was because their families would ask too many questions, but more subtle fears of knowing more than one’s parents or having parents look foolish were also put forth as reasons for avoiding these conversations.The takeaway is that culture is key to understanding the issues of belonging that face African Americans entering advanced technology fields.
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