Why are most programmers white males?
Why are people asking more and more of these basically racist &#x2F; &#x27;genderist&#x27; &#x2F; <i>whatever</i>ist questions? Why is it that it is nearly impossible to open a newspage or magazine without being confronted with &#x27;...blah blah blah <i>white males</i> blah blah ...&#x27; or &#x27;... blah blah blah <i>women wearing hijab</i> blah blah ...&#x27; or &#x27;...blah blah <i>LGBT people</i> blah blah ...&#x27;?<p>I live in Sweden, one of the most egalitarian countries in the world, but if you were to believe the media we&#x27;re about as bad as it can get when it comes to &#x27;discrimination&#x27; and &#x27;privilege&#x27; and such. Strangely enough those claims are mostly made by people from the &#x27;upper class&#x27;, living in the most comfortable (and, need I say it, &#x27;white&#x27;...) areas of the capital and other big cities. People who send their children to remarkably homogeneous schools while they promote diversity everywhere.<p>This whole thing with identity politics better stop soon or we&#x27;ll be back in the 18th century before you know it, with segregation everywhere. Because that is what this mostly leads to. The more people identify themselves with some special interest - be it based on skin colour, gender, religion, sexual preference, country of origin or any other factor - the more society will fall apart into disparate camps.<p>Back to the question, why is the majority of people in IT of a specific gender and a specific skin colour? Well, I can ask the same question about, say, horse riding: why is the majority of people of a specific gender and skin colour, at least in this country? Or let&#x27;s take another profession, veterinarians, why are they mostly of a specific gender?<p>The answer to these questions is mostly that, for some reason, more males than females are interested in computer-related stuff. On the other hand, more females than males are interested in working with pets. Is this a problem? If so, what should be done about it? Should there be a mandatory stop on veterinary college for women to combat the female domination of the field? Should girls be forced to play football and boys be lifted in the saddle?<p>If so, why? What would be achieved by this, other than increasing the level of injustice - men who want to work in IT can not due to quota, women who want to work as vets can not due to quota...<p>If racism is bad, stop drawing attention to race. If gender is a social construction (...), why decry the lack of a specific gender (...) in a given field. Just... stop. No more identity politics, please.