I'm from Europe, and let me say we had very little money in our family. Software devs in the US are apparently well paid and in high demand - are people that racist they they wouldn't hire black devs? Of all lines of work, I have the impression that IT is one of the most open and socially conscious fields there is.
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> Software devs in the US are apparently well paid and in high demand - are people that racist they they wouldn't hire black devs? Of all lines of work, I have the impression that IT is one of the most open and socially conscious fields there is.
The problem would be two fold: there are numerically few black developers due to problems with the pipeline for education, which disproportionately affects black people, and in general hiring practices have a bias against black people.
The impression that IT is more open and socially conscious is just that, an impression. There is nothing that demonstrates IT as a profession or as individuals are more socially conscious than any other group of people. In fact, many of the current problems with regards to IT culture mirror the same problems in other aspects of business in society.
I also have the impression that "IT is one of the most open and socially conscious fields there is", but I think it's only a temporary situation that is happening only because the field can't afford to be less open.
IT sector is in a golden age, the times where there's more demand for programmers than people available for the job. The field so desperate for even mediocre workers that it gets its recruiters to keep cold-calling and spamming people in hope someone will change a job. It's extremely hard to find talent, even harder to retain it, so companies just can't afford stupidities like discrimination. Being socially conscious is actually a signalling method - "yes, we don't discriminate; yes, we're that awesome! yes; you should come to work at our place".
But wait a generation or two, when there will be more talent than jobs available - IT will start looking like every other sector. Recruiters will stop calling and we'll all be subject to the same amount of discrimination, politics and overall workplace-abuse as everyone else.
Based on my impression (as an outsider) of the tech scene in Silicon Valley you are probably more likely to be discriminated against for having socially conservative views than liberal ones.