math is racis cuz it's hard to comprehend for the black community, y'know what I'm sayin'?

Well… Stumbled across this and I just had to answer this.

A little background here. I’m Kenyan(as African as I can be) and I’ve been fortunate to interact with ninjas(other African programmers) out there who are quite good. Here’s what I have to say:

Perception. The media has been doing a really good job at portraying us Africans as incapable at some things. Close your eyes and imagine a hacker. You’ve probably(at least if you’re from my country) imagined a typical white kid behind a laptop. Why so? We’ve grown up watching films that portray tech enthusiasts as white people, very rarely black. This idea has been compounded in other media.
Access to relevant material. Getting a computer with working internet is a challenge for a majority of African people. That coupled with the lack of interest in tech will not produce any African Programmers.
Racism. I’m skeptical to talk about this last bit as its a bit controversial but here goes. I’ve come to accept that the color of my skin will prevent me from working at a certain capacity(moreso senior positions) in certain organisations despite my qualifications. Racism is real. Some of my friends who are quite experienced have emphasized this.

Finally, I’d like to say that there are quite a number of black programmers out there. Thing is, you’ll never quite hear about them. I too thought there were so few till I went out of my way to find ’em, which I did FYI(e.g. through NAILUG here). There are more African programmers at this day and age courtesy of this thing called the internet. I don’t need some person’s approval to learn how to program. I can teach myself and be goddamn good at it. This realisation is something you’ll find from so many other Africans out there.