Ted Talk: Racism And Sexism In The Technology Industry

In this week’s engineering community of practice, we had the same attendance of people: David, Shoun, Claire, Esther, and myself. Since we already know each other, there was no need for introductions again, so we hopped right into what we had prepared for this week. We were to watch one Ted Talk about the concept of inspiring the next generation of female engineers then read several online articles concerning racism and sexism in the technology industry, and how they relate to the shortcomings of our field. On one hand, the Ted Talk was especially interesting as it revealed new statistics and analysis that I have not exactly heard before. For starters, the speaker began the Ted Talk by asking the question, “Close your eyes and picture an engineer. What do you see?” I never asked myself this question before, so I never realized just how broad the term “engineer” can be; the crowd revealed that they imagined a nerdy man behind a computer, or a train conductor, but barely anyone imagined the female speaker right in front of them. Furthermore, she brought up statistics on standardized testing among male and females, revealing that women fare better than men in other countries compared to the US, proving that the discourse in technology is not a biological factor.

One article stated that there was a specific building constructed for minorities, but Esther pointed out that this would be creating another form of discrimination, creating something that would probably not be preferred. Shoun pointed out a strange discrepancy – at the location he interned last year, he noticed that there were only male Asians and Whites working alongside. However, currently on their website holds two testimonials of interns – a white woman and a black man of which Shoun did not even