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From: gds@sri-spam.ARPA (The lost Bostonian)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.sci
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Why are there so few [female|black] physicists?
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Date: Thu, 7-Aug-86 16:17:57 EDT
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Posted: Thu Aug  7 16:17:57 1986
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What Cheryl did reminds me of some things some of my college classmates
used to tell me, that computer science was too hard, the professors were
prejudiced and favored white males, that white males had access to old
exams, that computer science was too nebulous a subject (and best to
stick to something more tangible, like EE).  The strange thing was that
it was coming from other blacks!  Their attitude came from a lack of
understanding what makes a person want to go into computer science (most
of my black friends who liked math in high school became EE's) and a
lack of information on the CS curriculum (the first few classes are
weed-out types and lots of blacks at my undergrad got weeded out,
scared, and tried to talk their classmates out of it also, to *save*
them from suffering).  (One of the sad things about this situation was
that the minority education office did little to encourage more blacks
to go into computer science, and were in part responsible for the
discouragement.)

I was foolish enough to listen for three years, including once when I
switched majors to EE (actually I never took anything like a
semiconductor or E&M course so I don't know how much I wouldn't have
liked it, but a semester without my hands on computers was enough to
make me realize what I was missing).

I did my best while an undergraduate to encourage other black students I
knew who were interested in computer science but unsure about studying
it.  I also tried to get black women interested also.  One of them
became the president of our black EE/CS society.  

In general, I think I did a lot to promote good feelings in blacks about
the undergraduate major in computer science.  If I had had that kind of
encouragement in my earlier undergrad years I could have turned out a
much better student.

--gregbo