[MrRoboSteve]

These threads will be particularly scary to people, because they combine nervousness about posting to CD with nervousness about talking the wrong way about racial issues. Many people think it's better to keep their mouth shut than be criticized for using the wrong term or framing an issue the wrong way. If you're tempted to react negatively to subtleties of terminology, please try to look past it and focus on the poster's intent.

One thing I like about FIRST is that youth participants seem to be more reflective of society as a whole than other, older programs for youth in the US. Part of that, I'm sure, comes from the technology industry's strong orientation toward merit in hiring, compensation, and promotion. Not saying tech is perfect in that regard, just better.

At the same time, the mentor base I see at events is largely white. That's probably because mentors of a certain age come from a time* when Minnesota's racial composition was very white.

That said, our team isn't reflective of our school's racial diversity. Most kids on our FRC teams in Bloomington are guided to the team by involved parents who see that their child has an aptitude for what we do. In our school that means mostly white kids on the team.

Our near-term plan to help that is to build out a FLL/FTC infrastructure at Bloomington elementary/middle schools, so that we can develop a pipeline of inspired kids who want to be part of the FRC high school program.

* there was roughly one black student, and a handful of Asian students, in my graduating class of 600. Pretty reflective of Minnesota outside of the inner city around 1980.