Tech Pipeline Is Alarmingly White: No African-Americans, Hispanics or girls took the AP computer science exam in some states, meaning a majority of The Next America has little familiarity with tech.

The National Journal reports:

The pipeline of students who will be tomorrow's tech leaders is alarmingly vanilla.

According to a new analysis of test-takers, not a single girl, African-American or Hispanic student took the computer science Advanced Placement test in Mississippi or Montana last year. More than a third of the population in Mississippi is black.

In other words, a hugely disproportionate bunch of white guys took the test.

The lack of diversity is disconcerting because computer science is an industry hurting for qualified workers. That's not to say that a student must take AP computer science to pursue a computer science career, but it's an indicator of which young people have a degree of familiarity with the field. Tech companies have long lamented that they've had to look outside the domestic pool of students to find employees. Encouraging largely untapped demographics—girls, African-Americans and Hispanics—in high school to enter the field would only help. But that's not happening, at least successfully, right now.

There are 11 states where not a single African-American took the test, and eight states where no Hispanics sat for the exam.

We're not talking here about people who passed or didn't pass, either. We're talking about people who simply took the test, which means African-Americans, Hispanics and girls aren't enrolling in AP computer science classes in the first place.

Of the approximately 30,000 students who took the exam in 2013, only around 20 percent were female, according to the analysis, and a tiny 3 percent were African-American. Just 8 percent were Hispanic.

The "diversity experts" tell us a companies can't succeed without diversity in gender and skin color: so someone will have to program those computers even if they are "alarmingly white". No word yet on whether the National Journal feels that public school teachers are "alarmingly female". Since, we all know registered Republicans control inner city public education: this must be a plot by Republicans to steer minorities away from the computer science field. ( This last sentence is a joke for those who don't know who's in control of public education in the big cities.)