A great post by Jamelle Bouie gives a very detailed explanation of how tech writing works, how people break into the business, and how all of these things maintain the status quo of white male writers. You can read the entire post here, in the meantime here are a few choice excerpts:
…minority students may not have the resources to afford unpaid internships and other jobs that provide a valuable path to jobs in media. “Minority students on campus — whom I’ve talked to about this — always claim that they simply can’t afford to not get paid for a whole summer,” he says.
Of course, there are plenty of blacks and Hispanics who come from middle-class families. But even they face obstacles unseen by their white counterparts. Many college graduates of color are the first from their families to obtain degrees. There is perceived and real pressure to enter more traditional professions, like law and medicine. In addition to not providing income, unpaid jobs carry a lot of risk: There’s no guarantee they will lead to something greater. This combination of familial and financial pressure means that some kids of color — even if they can afford to — don’t feel that they have the freedom to apply to unpaid media jobs and internships…
“Most of the dominant tech blogs are run by a very small number of men, and they’ve tended to hire from their familiar circle of connections to staff their teams,” says Anil Dash, tech entrepreneur-cum-writer. Insofar that they take an open approach to recruiting, he explains, it can “take the form of ‘we found a great writer in our own comments!’” Which is a problem, given how many people are turned away by the endemic racism and sexism of Internet comment threads.
Read the rest of the post here.
[Image Via Ministerio TIC Colombia]
Sara Inés Calderón is a journalist and writer who lives between Texas and California. Follow her on Twitter @SaraChicaD.
