Civility is good.
I think maybe we should back up into semantics for a moment. Perhaps we could agree that racist behavior is defined by any action taken, either with positive or negative consequences, where the most significant factor in deciding how to act was the race of the people involved. So, I might decide to give Sally a sticker for the sole reason that she was asian, or I might decide to slap Sally for the sole reason that she was not asian. Both are racist actions.
If that definition is OK, then perhaps we could make an assertion- racist behavior is bad. It's bad because it is not based on an honest appraisal of the other person's individual merits, but on a superficial quality that they have no control over.
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I am explaining to you, who apparently never wanted for a peer group, why they would want others like them.
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Peers are generally fine. "Peers" as defined by skin color are not. Again, I just need to know how defining a group by its skin color isn't racist. Someone may define their peers as other people from the same area, city, or social strata, but defining them only on skin color is racist, period.
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The Society of Black Engineers exists solely to form a protective barrier of brothas against the crackers.
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So much for civility. My point was this: creating a Black Engineers Society creates a solid, tangible delimitation between black engineers and non-black engineers (not just the crackers). This is exactly identical to constructing a conceptual "us" defined by the same skin color and a "them" defined by any other skin color. Doing so enforces the conceit that black people are somehow different than the rest of us. This only perpetuates the racial divide in our society. How could it not?
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And in order to fix it at the source, we need more female/minority role models such as the bevy you listed so that people could look up to them.
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This is an assertion, not a fact. Please back this up in some way. By your logic, the fact that my advising professor is Chinese, my undergraduate boss was black, and the most skilled professor was a woman, not to mention the fact that not one of my friends, neighbors, or relatives have Ph.D.s, should make me feel discouraged about being an engineering graduate student. How does it give you confidence to do something just because someone with similar physical traits has already done it? If you're sitting around, waiting for someone to inspire you to do something, rather than being self-motivated and doing it because you want to, you're not going to have a successful life.
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I wonder if you would do me the favor of giving me numbers, that we might both be edified.
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According to the Women in Engineering Program, it's 22%. I would have guessed 25%, but I guess I should have factored in the dearth of ladies in Electrical Engineering. I'm not sure how that proves that women are being discouraged from enrolling at the college level. As long as all women have the free choice to apply and an equal opportunity with respect to every other applicant to be accepted to the college of engineering, then I say the system is good. Even if the percentage of women enrolled was 5%, as long as they had the exact same opportunity and odds of getting in, the system is not broken at the college level. If you want to say that more women SHOULD WANT to be engineers, you've slipped into social engineering, which I believe is beyond the scope of this topic.
In 2003, there were 51.2% women in the entire university. As there are less than that in the college of engineering, there must be another college that has a less than 48.8% men. Should we not find that college and try to boost male enrollment? Or does that sound stupid?