14 ms·

I’m Not “Black Enough” for Inc. Magazine

345 points by bootload 10y ago

BadassFractal 10y ago
The guy doesn't fit the narrative that's currently oh-so-trendy, thus he is not deemed valuable to the media. Makes you realize how much intentional selective bias there is in these publications' portrayals of the world. "Can we cause outrage with this? Nope? Ok, discard this dude, find someone who supports our hypothesis so we get more page views" Remember, the media are not in the business of keeping the public informed, they're first and foremost interested in putting bread on their own tables, like any other business out there. They like having a job, and these days, given how high our tolerance for absurdity has become, their job requires they come up with the most dramatic and outrageous content they can in order to keep people hooked.
- tomlock 10y ago
  Similarly - when reading an article that has a single-line quote from a magazine - people can read all sorts of nefarious motivations into it which conveniently fit their worldview.
- abandonliberty 10y ago
  It's natural selection, regrettably. Things that won't rile people up display poor fitness. Technically, I think it's a human problem.
  - BadassFractal 10y ago
    Indeed. They need to be at that sweet spot where they're maximizing outrage, but the content is still plausibly true vs say.. tabloids, where a ton of content is completely fabricated and people know it.
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      A classic about this very phenomenon: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage....
  - Banthum 10y ago
    It's an artifact of the article-by-article payment/consumption model. It used to be that people would have to buy a whole issue or subscription to a publication. So you'd choose based on the overall reputation of the publication. So that's what the media maximized. Now, on the Internet, people consume articles for free from many sites based on links. They don't care (and often don't know) anything about the reputation of the publication they're reading. And sites get paid based on views (through ads served). So now the sites are optimizing for getting people to read this article, without much concern about the overall image of the site, which most people won't know anyway. It's an obvious, huge, and very impactful change in incentives for media people.
    - cortesoft 10y ago
      Are you sure that is true? I mean, we had the whole Yellow Journalism phenomenon at the turn of the last century, and they weren't selling on an article by article basis. The publications had reputations, but they still got people to read their paper by sensationalizing everything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism
      - pillowkusis 10y ago
        >they weren't selling on an article by article basis there were literally newspaper boys on the streets yelling an outrageous headline and making you pay two cents to read the article itself. I don't think subscription papers existed in large amounts during that time.
        nerfhammer 10y ago
        > newspaper boys on the streets yelling an outrageous headline it's weirdly hilarious to me to think that urban sidewalks used to be analogous to facebook...
      - jdietrich 10y ago
        When you paid for a newspaper, you paid for the lurid headlines, the coverage of local politics, the funny pages, the investigative journalism, the sports reporting, the crossword etc etc. Nobody in management was entirely sure what part of that mix actually sold newspapers; editors had a large degree of discretion over what went in the paper and who got paid. Ad-supported online journalism has unbundled news and precisely quantified each part. Management know exactly what each piece of "content" earns. Editors can no longer pretend that the prestige of serious reporting is a worthwhile investment. Ad-supported online journalism is now almost entirely dependent on traffic from social media. As we have learned from the "fake news" imbroglio, reputation means almost nothing in this arena. You're only as good as your next clickbait headline. As I see it, the only future for quality journalism is subscription-based, one way or another. Adsense is killing journalism.
  - JBReefer 10y ago
    There's an incredible write-up on this effect by Scott Alexander, that goes into depth about the cultural propagation on the internet of exactly the phenomena you're describing. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage...
- threeseed 10y ago
  You are talking drivel. The "media" is not some cabal of shadowy figures engaged in a conspiracy to trick the public and control the narrative. In fact they are a collection of thousands of organisations across the political spectrum in every country of the world. Some are one person blogs, others are multinational entities and others are state owned. And they all make money in vastly different ways. This guy is not interesting specifically to Inc. Magazine not to the media at large. All you are doing is showing your own bias and paranoia by criticising a straw man situation you invented in your head. I am sure much of the media would love to interview this guy.
  - BadassFractal 10y ago
    Nobody is talking about a cabal, I don't see how you extracted that from my post, that's a straw man. I explicitly said that these people follow a very basic desire to be successful in their jobs, make a living, and keep their companies growing. Unfortunately the way they accomplish that is at the cost of objectivity for their readers.
    - threeseed 10y ago
      "Remember, the media are not in the business of keeping the public informed". This is a factually baseless statement that you invented and then decided to make an entire point around. The media is not a cohesive entity. It's the equivalent of saying "all people are murderers".
      - SAI_Peregrinus 10y ago
        It's nothing like that. It's clarifying the definition of a group. The set of people involved in "the media" are, by definition, in the business of creating and publishing media (news, opinion pieces, entertainment, etc). Success in this business does not require keeping the public informed, but it does require selling content. Thus, the group as a whole is in the business of selling content, and not necessarily in the business of keeping the public informed.
  - deleted 10y ago
- TorKlingberg 10y ago
  On the other hand, this article is on HN because it fits an other narrative. There is never just one "the narrative". There are always two or more competing narratives and people publish, share and upvote stories that fit the one they prefer.
  - BadassFractal 10y ago
    Conflicting narratives is pretty much how news work, that's just a fact of life, no denying that. Don't know if I would claim that HN has a particular interest in suppressing a certain narrative though, can you explain? Who is to gain here?
    - tomlock 10y ago
      If discrimination is a real barrier to entrepreneurship - that contradicts the narrative that entrepreneurship is an objective meritocracy.
      - BadassFractal 10y ago
        I'd be surprised if people here actually believed that to be a successful entrepreneur your starting conditions do not matter. Your race, your country, your culture, your health, your finances, your dependents, your family all have a massive impact on whether you can stop doing whatever you're doing and focus fully on turning an idea into a high growth business. Maybe it's just me, but I personally believe that it is a huge privilege to have the ability to pursue entrepreneurship. I could be a coal miner in war-torn sub-Saharan Africa trying to make ends meet to pay for my sick child's care, instead I'm sitting in a comfortable air conditioned office in the Bay, able to complain that the snack selection is not sufficiently locally sourced.
        tomlock 10y ago
        What narrative do you think this guy isn't fitting, then?
        10y ago
- alaskamiller 10y ago
  This is such a juvenile view of how things work. Remember, the media are not in the business of keeping the public informed, they're first and foremost interested in putting bread on their own tables, like any other business out there Short circuit logic, here you conflate things to make it disregard the first statement and push your own agenda. 1. A media business is not necessarily the same as a news business. 2. Either way both a media business and a news business are in the business of creating and selling stories. 3. Both a media business and a news business can have objectives of both selling stories that inform the public and sell junk to the public. 4. Stating like any other business doesn't serve any credibility to your argument, rather you're trying to slant a profit motive as evil. Would non-profits providing news services be the only good people in your head? They like having a job, and these days, given how high our tolerance for absurdity has become, their job requires they come up with the most dramatic and outrageous content they can in order to keep people hooked. Because they like jobs therefore they must be willing to take the low road to whatever they can to earn the duckets those jobs? So they create sensationalized and dramatized results, to use generalities to gloss over nuanced matters? Kind of like this post here? Good job. Everyone's in the business of selling stories. You tried to sell yours but I'm not buying it.
- logicallee 10y ago
  [I've decided to delete this comment as it didn't generate good discussion. The reply it got was a complete non-sequitur.]
  - fav_collector 10y ago
    So what you're saying is that I can get into all ivies with a 2200 SAT score and 3.8 GPA? And get internships at top companies based on my race? And have parents and family who can speak proper english and understands American culture? Sign me up.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- yongjik 10y ago
  On the other hand, the narrative of a successful black entrepreneur who made it against odds is also the narrative favored by conservatives: "You can overcome discrimination if you work hard. Instead of complaining, just show what you're capable of! If these guys made it you could, too." It all depends on how you view the story.
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    That is a good point. This is the kind of story they'd cherry pick out to claim the victim or discrimination narratives are either fabricated or just biased research. That they told him he wasn't a fit for what they're looking for would be evidence of conspiracy to push a false narrative.
- MarkMc 10y ago
  I think the selective bias is simply to choose interesting stories, not push a narrative. The guy who was 'Not Black Enough' simply did not have a particularly interesting story to tell. Although there is a focus on black urban poverty, the media will sometimes also tell the other side of the story. For example, here [1] is a New York Times from last year: "Poverty is far more prevalent in black households than the general population, but the vast majority of African-Americans do not live in poverty. According to census data released last year, 26 percent of blacks live in poverty, compared with 15 percent of the country as a whole" That sounds like a pretty balanced statement to me. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/us/politics/donald-trump-black-voters.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/us/politics/donald-trump-...
sidlls 10y ago
This sort of "all blacks must be poor and perpetually victims of racism" narrative was exploited very well during the Democratic Primary by the Hillary campaign. And then Trump happened. It was and is shameful. And yet, the fact is that among those 75% of blacks who aren't poor, a much higher ratio of them as compared with whites (even poorer whites) will fall victim to a great many life-impacting negatives, from poorer quality of treatment by medical professionals to discrimination in finance. The difference is definitely related to racism. Also, his anecdote certainly isn't typical for poor folks or black folks, and especially not poor black folks. Overall he has a decent point regarding the "poor, racism beaten" stereotype, but it's not very well argued, in my view.
- pvg 10y ago
  I think you have this a little backwards. It's Trump who portrayed black communities like that. http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/20/politics/donald-trump-african-americans-election-2016/ http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/20/politics/donald-trump-african-...
  - wonderflpancake 10y ago
    > I think you have this a little backwards. It's Trump who portrayed black communities like that. lol no. But as you are pointing to a CNN article it makes sense you would think that, if thats where you were getting your news. They were trying to influence the election just as much anyone (aka the Russians), but apparently that doesn't bother anyone.
    - dcole2929 10y ago
      Trumps literal argument for why blacks should vote for him was "What do you have to lose?". Independent source - AP https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-jasg-_E5M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-jasg-_E5M
      - jpttsn 10y ago
        Did it work?
neveroffensive 10y ago
Seems like society works like a pendulum. People spend decades fighting discrimination based on race. But, in the end, their focus on race makes it a defining characteristic. We try and fix one imbalance, and end up just shifting it around. Still I guess we're better off today than in the 1960's.
- greglindahl 10y ago
  When and where has race not been a defining characteristic?
  - neveroffensive 10y ago
    Nowhere, but wouldn't it be nice if it wasn't? EDIT: I guess I meant we kept it a defining characteristic, just changed the definition
  - jbmorgado 10y ago
    In many places. Ancient Rome for instance.
  - rdtsc 10y ago
    > When and where has race not been a defining characteristic? When the individual doesn't want to make it their defining characteristic. Same thing with other "characteristics". Not all gay people make it their defining characteristic, maybe they are parents, athletes, engineers etc who happen to be gay. Same with immigrants (I am one) and so on. Assuming otherwise and forcing "defining characteristics" onto others is the problem here and what the article at hand is about.
    - jakelazaroff 10y ago
      > When the individual doesn't want to make it their defining characteristic. How do you not make the color of your skin a "defining characteristic"? People see you and make a judgement based on that. Are you denying that racial discrimination exists?
djrogers 10y ago
Wow - here's what I found most telling about the article: The top Highlight was this: "The real problems are things like unanimous votes at Venture Capital firms. There is always someone who “can’t get comfortable” with the Black guy’s deal. It’s grey, and blurred, and subtle, and can always be substantiated by some facts." And the rest of the paragraph is: "And though this type of discrimination exists, it certainly does not leave Black entrepreneurs completely under funded and out in the cold. For example, Black women are the fastest growing group of entrepreneurs in the country — outpacing all other startups by six times the national average. This is significant, yet woefully under reported." So the thing people want to highlight in his article are the only two sentences which fit the narrative he's trying to counter. SMH...
- frgtpsswrdlame 10y ago
  Similarly, I read this really great article about the decline in black business just this morning: http://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/marchaprilmay-2017/the-decline-of-black-business/ http://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/marchaprilmay-2017/the... Over the same period, tens of thousands of black-owned retail establishments and local service companies also have disappeared, having gone out of business or been acquired by larger companies. Reflecting these developments, working-age black Americans have become far less likely to be their own boss than in the 1990s. The per capita number of black employers, for example, declined by some 12 percent just between 1997 and 2014. EDIT: After rereading, I realize my comment is NOT similar to the parent, actually contrary to it. I'm gonna leave it though because the Washington Monthly article actually is really good!
- tomlock 10y ago
  Conversely, this article is one of the thousands written by black entrepreneurs that this website has chosen to upvote.
  - menacingly 10y ago
    This is a great point that challenges the views I brought to this thread with me.
threeseed 10y ago
He accepted an interview from Inc. Magazine specifically because he was a "black entrepreneur" and then complains when they found his back story not all that interesting. News flash: you can't blame writers for wanting a compelling narrative. Rags to riches is the angle what they were after. Being black is merely the cherry on top. Anyway if he had any intellectual integrity he wouldn't have accepted in the first place. But he gets a bit of a publicity for playing the victim card so that's something.
throwaway_45 10y ago
67% of black kids have a single parent so if you randomly picked a black person they would likely have been raised by a single parent home. He states that he came from a dual parent household from the suburbs. So he isn't an average black person just from statistical point of view. He got really lucky. I think if you give black kids two parents some money and a good school they would probably do as well as everyone else.
- dcole2929 10y ago
  Serious question. What is the average black person? You can't just pick a single statistic and use that to define what average is. You certainly can't pick something as benign as coming from a dual family home. The average AA male is 5'10. Is he not an average black person if he is shorter or taller? I think overall you missed his entire point, which is basically that it is at best disingenuous to categorize every black person in America as having lived a life of struggle and hardship and at worst racist. His being an entrepreneur is certainly exceptional but his upbringing really isn't. Yet the publication in question basically made the decision that his "blackness" wasn't good material because it didn't contain that element of struggle. That's fine from a narrative perspective I guess but I think he is certainly within his rights to be offended by it.
- merpnderp 10y ago
  They're no thinking about it. Black kids with two parents who finished high school do statistically slighter better than similar white parents. There's a lot to being said to finishing high school, hopefully going to college, and definitely getting married, to ensure your kids do as well or better than yourself.
- ptaipale 10y ago
  That 67% number seemed shocking so I tried to dig up a source. Only found this: http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/107-children-in-single-parent-families-by http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/107-children-in-... And it says: "In this definition, single-parent families may include cohabiting couples ..." So it may not be quite that bad - co-habiting couples sharing children are not a particular risk setup even if they are not married. Where I live - north Europe - they are entirely normal. But what is the proportion of kids, and black kids, actually living with just one parent in the US?
joseantoniovr 10y ago
Well to be honest there are blacker guys than you, black as a car wheel, no kidding, you have white ancestors African are blacker than you. But do not worry, you are still black somehow
joseantoniovr 10y ago
There are blacker guys than you, you I am sure have white ancestors. Some Africans are black as a car wheel compared to you, but still you are black, do not worry
balls187 10y ago
I want to point out a couple things from the article: > In fact, nearly 75% of Blacks are not poor. ~75% of African Americans live above the poverty line, however ~45% of young African American children live below the poverty line. Also African Americans are the largest ethnic group living in poverty. Poor in this case is defined as $22,314 for a family of four. Where do the numbers go if you raise that to $37,000 for a family of four, which is still arguably not a lot of money. While I understand the basis of the authors argument, I did find that 75% statistic to be misleading.
- notdonspaulding 10y ago
  It's not as misleading as you suggest. I read that statistic and thought to myself "I would've assumed it was closer to 50%". He's challenging the popular notion in white America's mind that most blacks are poor. He's not wrong either in restating the figure to emphasize the non-poverty percentage, or in his assessment that Inc. magazine is only interested in furthering the notion that most blacks are poor. The statistic (even as you restated it) supports his general thesis of the perceptions of black people that media outlets want to promulgate really well.
- uncletaco 10y ago
  The author definitely cherry picked that number. He also completely ignored the fact sheet on African Americans. http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/fact-sheets/african-americans/ http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/fact-sheets/african-ame...
- jpttsn 10y ago
  It's the difference between "how poor are blacks" and "how black are paupers." Two different questions with two different answers. OP is refusing to be reductive, and isn't misleading.
throwaway6845 10y ago
Inc Magazine is very identity politics, very much written by privileged Silicon Valley kids with preconceived notions of diversity. I gave up reading it a long while ago and I'm as liberal-left as they come.
- throwaway6845 10y ago
  ...ok, I goofed. Getting confused between Inc and Mic (three letters, two of which are I and C, very similar logos). Apologies, please ignore above comment.
  - uncletaco 10y ago
    The weird thing about Mic.com though, now that I'm thinking about it, is they have the best breaking news app I've ever used on iOS. It literally exists in the notifications so when something happens you can read the story from the notifications screen and be done with it. I wish more media companies would offer that.
danso 10y ago
That's a shame. It's not just narrative that's important, and well-off African-Americans can still be impacted by the effects of systemic bias.
- lern_too_spel 10y ago
  If he feels he didn't suffer for being black, why should he get any preferential story treatment from Inc. over anybody else who didn't suffer for their race or background? His point is very poorly argued.
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    If they're presenting the truth, they should be looking at what many types of black people are doing in multiple places with what results. If something made many succeed, then that should become part of a Reality-Based Narrative. If there's racism holding them back, there should be evidence of that. Any personality traits or tactics that successful ones use would be game. And so on. A media group only interested in evidence for one hypothesis while suppressing counter-evidence is showing its bias in favor of promoting that hypothesis even if it's incorrect. They're lying for ratings/revenue. Typical in media with biases/narratives varying based on their customers' demographic.
    - lern_too_spel 10y ago
      Nonsense. Inc. wasn't writing an academic article about race and entrepreneurship. They were specifically looking for a feel good rags to riches story to highlight. He didn't fit the story that they want to tell, so he has no more reason to complain than you do as an upper middle class or wealthy white man.
      - nickpsecurity 10y ago
        That's another one. The narratives blend in his case where they expected him to start in one then end up in another.
    - deleted 10y ago
jolux 10y ago
Inarguably the best reply: https://medium.com/@mr.ed.dunn/please-dont-use-supposition-or-create-fake-news-on-a-serious-subject-regarding-tech-media-racism-ceea96c8876b https://medium.com/@mr.ed.dunn/please-dont-use-supposition-o...
- int_19h 10y ago
  Is it? It doesn't seem to address any of the points in the original article - it just repeats the accusation that he is, indeed, "not black enough".
  - jolux 10y ago
    No, it's because it explains how he is misusing the term "not Black enough" (used originally for dealing with colorism in the Black community) and accuses him instead of being a boring person. I can't call him out on the former but the latter I wholeheartedly agree with. If a journalist wants to write a story about overcoming adversity and you respond that you haven't had any adversity to overcome, if they reject you it's pretty silly to complain about it and also pretty plainly because you're too privileged to understand why this is important and his reaction makes it pretty clear that he is indeed too privileged to understand why talking about adversity is critical to overcoming it. (Also mentioned in the reply)
    - int_19h 10y ago
      It is not clear to me that the magazine was actually explicitly trying to write a story about adversity, or whether they are just trying to write a story about being black, and implied that this should include adversity (which is what the Brian had a problem with, if it's a racially-based implication). Indeed, it does seem to be more of the latter, at least if his words are taken at face value: "I was approached by Inc. Magazine for a feature on the life of a successful Black entrepreneur."
      - jolux 10y ago
        >and implied that this should include adversity (which is what the Brian had a problem with, if it's a racially-based implication) What, so we're not allowed to imply that racism exists anymore?
uncletaco 10y ago
There's something that always bothers me when someone sees a statistic that says "Among racial and ethnic groups, African Americans had the highest poverty rate, 27.4 percent, followed by Hispanics at 26.6 percent and whites at 9.9 percent." and flips it to say "almost 75% of blacks are not poor!" Yes, that's true, but if I were to go further and look at the source he cited's fact sheet on African Americans then I'd see some interesting factoids about wealth. For instance: > In 2010, the median wealth, or net worth, for black families was $4,900, compared to median wealth for whites of $97,000. > Blacks are nearly twice as likely as whites to have zero or negative net worth—33.9 percent compared to 18.6 percent. So yes, we can say "nearly 75% of Blacks are not poor" but that doesn't really work as a jumping off point for any argument about black wealth, at least in my opinion. It looks to me like this guy has taken his suburban upper class experience (he called his living situation "Huxtable-esque") and assumed that all black people who are living above the poverty line are somehow doing just as well as he is. Therefore the media is going out of its way to find the "archetypal" black entrepreneur who comes from that ~25% of blacks who grew up in poverty. I don't really buy that argument, especially because being above the poverty line doesn't really speak to matters of wealth, class, and social mobility. I'm not saying any of this to diminish his success, I'm happy he's made it, but I think he's failed to recognize his (sadly) exceptional situation that doesn't really speak for the rest of the 75%. EDIT: cleaned up some grammar.
- 5thaccount 10y ago
  > It looks to me like this guy ... assumed that all black people Thus is the heart of the matter - in reverse. I'm not trying to be pointed, but there is no other way to say it, so here it is: it is you who have assumed, not the author. This extrapolation of the one to the many is at the heart of modern identity politics. It is the core of what the article gets at - to be identified as a thing you have to fit the stereotype. And anything the one does is instantly assumed to be a comment on the many or, in some cases, the all, and any way the one varies from the many doesn't change the definition, it is merely discarded. I despair at this, I really do. Why do we breakdown the individual homo sapiens in a story to their base elements of race, gender, sexuality, religion, rather than celebrate their unqiueness? I had a 23andme DNA test years ago, and I shared my racial profile (X% Scndanavian, y% norther european etc) and someone made a comment about the last line: "100% 5thaccount - you are 100% you". I still think about that comment a lot. These elements that make us up don't define us, as we are not the sum of these elements the way water is two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen. We are our own selves, who are more than, or sometimes less than, the sum of these things. Rather than reduce our experiences to the net sum of these simple elements, I think we should praise the unique - an unique implies not generalisable to the many or all - outcomes we each create.
redsummer 10y ago
The culture has an ideology about race which is shared and fed by the media. It's almost a nostalgia for the sixties where people want to pin halos on themselves by pretending its the 60s and that they are fighting against segregated buses etc. The demand for stories which fit this narrative outstrip the supply. The same thing can be seen with various 'hate crimes' which are eventually revealed as hoaxes. The media - and the public - are strangely desperate for this bigoted world to exist - because they can feel more noble fighting it. I'm guessing it has something to do with all the ideological refugees, in academia and the media, from the 60s and 70s who are fighting battles that are long over.
- lern_too_spel 10y ago
  There is a Virginia gubernatorial candidate encouraging supporters to fly the Confederate battle flag, there are several states that celebrate Confederate History Month (and one more introducing legislation to that effect), there are multiple states with a Confederate Heroes Day or holiday for the birth of the CSA's President, and the POTUS himself has well-documented housing discrimination against blacks, but you believe we live in a post-racial society? Give me a break.
  - ykler 10y ago
    The person you are responding to never said we live in a post-racial society.
    - foldr 10y ago
      They didn't use those exact words, but the comment clearly suggests that racial discrimination no longer exists, and that there are few if any real instances of hate crimes.
      - jpttsn 10y ago
        I think you have enemies that believe racial discrimination doesn't exist, and then you too eagerly fit random internet commenters into that pattern of your enemies.
olleromam91 10y ago
So how do I share this with my black friends that feel the same way, without offending them?
JabavuAdams 10y ago
1) Silly black-person. In the US, "black" means "loser", so if you are successful, you are ipso facto not black. Uh, unless you're an athlete, or other entertainer. 2) I grew up in a prosperous white neighbourhood and spent a lot of time at University of Toronto, as a kid. My dad was a math-teacher and programmer. I recently met a developer -- a young woman of colour at a conference, who came from a stereotypical deprived background. I could barely understand her experiences or the language she used about identity, inclusion, and diversity, because I have never felt excluded. Ambitious, envious at times, but never excluded. 3) I've just realised in the last few months that it's probably harder to be a woman in tech, of whatever skin shade, than to be a 6'3" half-black guy from a scholarly middle-class background. As far as I can tell I've faced no discrimination. I've been sexually harassed once, but it started as a joke and the woman had no power over me. One time outlier. Caveat: I have not sought VC funding, nor have I progressed to leadership roles in someone else's organisation. 4) At one small company I worked at, we were approached to do a TV segment. Two of the four founders are white Africans. The reporter seemed really intent on pushing a rags-to-riches story. The guys had to keep reminding her that they had started the company from their basement while they both had well-paying jobs. They were the sons of a professor. This was really eye-opening with regards to reporters pursuing pre-conceived narratives.
- arximboldi 10y ago
  > 1) Silly black-person. In the US, "black" means "loser", so if you are successful, you are ipso facto not black. Uh, unless you're an athlete, or other entertainer. I an not from the US, but I guess the impression that in the US race is a proxy for talking about class. The latter word is such a taboo as much as anything coming from Marxism or economic left. You even go to say "losers" instead of working class, which is so insulting. This keeps the left running in circles in identity issues. And keeps the poor fighting against each other (see poor whites supporting Trump).
  - JabavuAdams 10y ago
    You raise some valid points, but as recently as 60 years ago (in living memory) there were laws on the books that ensured that blacks were on-average a lower class. Race, specifically African American race is tied to class in the US in ways that it's not in other countries.
jakobegger 10y ago
If the people from the magazine really threw away all their work because the guy wasn't the "archetypal Black entrepreneur to hang the story around".... that's quite sad? I mean, they have a journalist shadow the guy for two months, and then they decide that the material doesn't fit their story and they toss it? Shouldn't it be the other way around? Do the research first, write the story afterwards? I worry that a lot of journalism really suffers from this. The magazine has an idea what kind of story they want to write, and then they look for sources / people / material that corroborates their story. That won't lead to stories representative of the real world...
- jpttsn 10y ago
  It's almost like magazines aren't trying to educate people.
- PeterisP 10y ago
  The magazine has an idea of what kind of story their audience wants to read, and then they look for sources / people / material that would work for that. If some story represents the real world but isn't particularly interesting for their audience, then there's no place for it in the magazine; just as the classic example of why "dog bites man" isn't a good story but "man bites dog" is, exactly because it's not representative of the real world.
- paulajohnson 10y ago
  There is a reason why the things we read in magazines and newspapers are called "stories".
bambax 10y ago
The problem is not only prejudice, it's journalism: journalists write stories first, and then go look for "facts" to support or illustrate their narrative.
- mehaveaccount 10y ago
  Yes, journalism is just stage writing where the play is strung together by selectively taking quotes from people and putting them out of context into a sequential order that makes it look as if it were caused by a preconceived narrative.
_pmf_ 10y ago
Read about black Trump supporters' experiences in "coming out". As soon as you slightly deviate from the media's narrative about how a black person should be, you run a high risk of being ostracized and verbally abused. The media don't want stories about self-made successful black people, the want stories about how the establishment helps black people being successful (preventing them from their inevitable fate of becoming drug addicts and criminals). Look at how Ben Carson has been treated by the Democrats and main stream media since he joined the Trump administration.
Freak_NL 10y ago
What is the difference between the adverb 'black' (or its US synonym 'African American' when used for skin colour) and the capitalised adverb 'Black' used here?
- mehaveaccount 10y ago
  They are the same.
column 10y ago
> We are facial recognition for .com's, as opposed to .gov's. WTF does that mean?
- uncletaco 10y ago
  Corporate surveillance is ok, government surveillance is not ok, I'd imagine.
adamjleonard 10y ago
I love Brian Brackeen. Very smart guy!

345 points by bootload 10y ago

The guy doesn't fit the narrative that's currently oh-so-trendy, thus he is not deemed valuable to the media. Makes you realize how much intentional selective bias there is in these publications' portrayals of the world. "Can we cause outrage with this? Nope? Ok, discard this dude, find someone who supports our hypothesis so we get more page views" Remember, the media are not in the business of keeping the public informed, they're first and foremost interested in putting bread on their own tables, like any other business out there. They like having a job, and these days, given how high our tolerance for absurdity has become, their job requires they come up with the most dramatic and outrageous content they can in order to keep people hooked.

tomlock 10y ago
Similarly - when reading an article that has a single-line quote from a magazine - people can read all sorts of nefarious motivations into it which conveniently fit their worldview.
abandonliberty 10y ago
It's natural selection, regrettably. Things that won't rile people up display poor fitness. Technically, I think it's a human problem.
- BadassFractal 10y ago
  Indeed. They need to be at that sweet spot where they're maximizing outrage, but the content is still plausibly true vs say.. tabloids, where a ton of content is completely fabricated and people know it.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    A classic about this very phenomenon: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage....
- Banthum 10y ago
  It's an artifact of the article-by-article payment/consumption model. It used to be that people would have to buy a whole issue or subscription to a publication. So you'd choose based on the overall reputation of the publication. So that's what the media maximized. Now, on the Internet, people consume articles for free from many sites based on links. They don't care (and often don't know) anything about the reputation of the publication they're reading. And sites get paid based on views (through ads served). So now the sites are optimizing for getting people to read this article, without much concern about the overall image of the site, which most people won't know anyway. It's an obvious, huge, and very impactful change in incentives for media people.
  - cortesoft 10y ago
    Are you sure that is true? I mean, we had the whole Yellow Journalism phenomenon at the turn of the last century, and they weren't selling on an article by article basis. The publications had reputations, but they still got people to read their paper by sensationalizing everything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism
    - pillowkusis 10y ago
      >they weren't selling on an article by article basis there were literally newspaper boys on the streets yelling an outrageous headline and making you pay two cents to read the article itself. I don't think subscription papers existed in large amounts during that time.
      - nerfhammer 10y ago
        > newspaper boys on the streets yelling an outrageous headline it's weirdly hilarious to me to think that urban sidewalks used to be analogous to facebook...
    - jdietrich 10y ago
      When you paid for a newspaper, you paid for the lurid headlines, the coverage of local politics, the funny pages, the investigative journalism, the sports reporting, the crossword etc etc. Nobody in management was entirely sure what part of that mix actually sold newspapers; editors had a large degree of discretion over what went in the paper and who got paid. Ad-supported online journalism has unbundled news and precisely quantified each part. Management know exactly what each piece of "content" earns. Editors can no longer pretend that the prestige of serious reporting is a worthwhile investment. Ad-supported online journalism is now almost entirely dependent on traffic from social media. As we have learned from the "fake news" imbroglio, reputation means almost nothing in this arena. You're only as good as your next clickbait headline. As I see it, the only future for quality journalism is subscription-based, one way or another. Adsense is killing journalism.
- JBReefer 10y ago
  There's an incredible write-up on this effect by Scott Alexander, that goes into depth about the cultural propagation on the internet of exactly the phenomena you're describing. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage...
threeseed 10y ago
You are talking drivel. The "media" is not some cabal of shadowy figures engaged in a conspiracy to trick the public and control the narrative. In fact they are a collection of thousands of organisations across the political spectrum in every country of the world. Some are one person blogs, others are multinational entities and others are state owned. And they all make money in vastly different ways. This guy is not interesting specifically to Inc. Magazine not to the media at large. All you are doing is showing your own bias and paranoia by criticising a straw man situation you invented in your head. I am sure much of the media would love to interview this guy.
- BadassFractal 10y ago
  Nobody is talking about a cabal, I don't see how you extracted that from my post, that's a straw man. I explicitly said that these people follow a very basic desire to be successful in their jobs, make a living, and keep their companies growing. Unfortunately the way they accomplish that is at the cost of objectivity for their readers.
  - threeseed 10y ago
    "Remember, the media are not in the business of keeping the public informed". This is a factually baseless statement that you invented and then decided to make an entire point around. The media is not a cohesive entity. It's the equivalent of saying "all people are murderers".
    - SAI_Peregrinus 10y ago
      It's nothing like that. It's clarifying the definition of a group. The set of people involved in "the media" are, by definition, in the business of creating and publishing media (news, opinion pieces, entertainment, etc). Success in this business does not require keeping the public informed, but it does require selling content. Thus, the group as a whole is in the business of selling content, and not necessarily in the business of keeping the public informed.
- deleted 10y ago
TorKlingberg 10y ago
On the other hand, this article is on HN because it fits an other narrative. There is never just one "the narrative". There are always two or more competing narratives and people publish, share and upvote stories that fit the one they prefer.
- BadassFractal 10y ago
  Conflicting narratives is pretty much how news work, that's just a fact of life, no denying that. Don't know if I would claim that HN has a particular interest in suppressing a certain narrative though, can you explain? Who is to gain here?
  - tomlock 10y ago
    If discrimination is a real barrier to entrepreneurship - that contradicts the narrative that entrepreneurship is an objective meritocracy.
    - BadassFractal 10y ago
      I'd be surprised if people here actually believed that to be a successful entrepreneur your starting conditions do not matter. Your race, your country, your culture, your health, your finances, your dependents, your family all have a massive impact on whether you can stop doing whatever you're doing and focus fully on turning an idea into a high growth business. Maybe it's just me, but I personally believe that it is a huge privilege to have the ability to pursue entrepreneurship. I could be a coal miner in war-torn sub-Saharan Africa trying to make ends meet to pay for my sick child's care, instead I'm sitting in a comfortable air conditioned office in the Bay, able to complain that the snack selection is not sufficiently locally sourced.
      - tomlock 10y ago
        What narrative do you think this guy isn't fitting, then?
      - 10y ago
alaskamiller 10y ago
This is such a juvenile view of how things work. Remember, the media are not in the business of keeping the public informed, they're first and foremost interested in putting bread on their own tables, like any other business out there Short circuit logic, here you conflate things to make it disregard the first statement and push your own agenda. 1. A media business is not necessarily the same as a news business. 2. Either way both a media business and a news business are in the business of creating and selling stories. 3. Both a media business and a news business can have objectives of both selling stories that inform the public and sell junk to the public. 4. Stating like any other business doesn't serve any credibility to your argument, rather you're trying to slant a profit motive as evil. Would non-profits providing news services be the only good people in your head? They like having a job, and these days, given how high our tolerance for absurdity has become, their job requires they come up with the most dramatic and outrageous content they can in order to keep people hooked. Because they like jobs therefore they must be willing to take the low road to whatever they can to earn the duckets those jobs? So they create sensationalized and dramatized results, to use generalities to gloss over nuanced matters? Kind of like this post here? Good job. Everyone's in the business of selling stories. You tried to sell yours but I'm not buying it.
logicallee 10y ago
[I've decided to delete this comment as it didn't generate good discussion. The reply it got was a complete non-sequitur.]
- fav_collector 10y ago
  So what you're saying is that I can get into all ivies with a 2200 SAT score and 3.8 GPA? And get internships at top companies based on my race? And have parents and family who can speak proper english and understands American culture? Sign me up.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
yongjik 10y ago
On the other hand, the narrative of a successful black entrepreneur who made it against odds is also the narrative favored by conservatives: "You can overcome discrimination if you work hard. Instead of complaining, just show what you're capable of! If these guys made it you could, too." It all depends on how you view the story.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  That is a good point. This is the kind of story they'd cherry pick out to claim the victim or discrimination narratives are either fabricated or just biased research. That they told him he wasn't a fit for what they're looking for would be evidence of conspiracy to push a false narrative.
MarkMc 10y ago
I think the selective bias is simply to choose interesting stories, not push a narrative. The guy who was 'Not Black Enough' simply did not have a particularly interesting story to tell. Although there is a focus on black urban poverty, the media will sometimes also tell the other side of the story. For example, here [1] is a New York Times from last year: "Poverty is far more prevalent in black households than the general population, but the vast majority of African-Americans do not live in poverty. According to census data released last year, 26 percent of blacks live in poverty, compared with 15 percent of the country as a whole" That sounds like a pretty balanced statement to me. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/us/politics/donald-trump-black-voters.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/us/politics/donald-trump-...

sidlls 10y ago

This sort of "all blacks must be poor and perpetually victims of racism" narrative was exploited very well during the Democratic Primary by the Hillary campaign. And then Trump happened. It was and is shameful. And yet, the fact is that among those 75% of blacks who aren't poor, a much higher ratio of them as compared with whites (even poorer whites) will fall victim to a great many life-impacting negatives, from poorer quality of treatment by medical professionals to discrimination in finance. The difference is definitely related to racism. Also, his anecdote certainly isn't typical for poor folks or black folks, and especially not poor black folks. Overall he has a decent point regarding the "poor, racism beaten" stereotype, but it's not very well argued, in my view.

pvg 10y ago
I think you have this a little backwards. It's Trump who portrayed black communities like that. http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/20/politics/donald-trump-african-americans-election-2016/ http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/20/politics/donald-trump-african-...
- wonderflpancake 10y ago
  > I think you have this a little backwards. It's Trump who portrayed black communities like that. lol no. But as you are pointing to a CNN article it makes sense you would think that, if thats where you were getting your news. They were trying to influence the election just as much anyone (aka the Russians), but apparently that doesn't bother anyone.
  - dcole2929 10y ago
    Trumps literal argument for why blacks should vote for him was "What do you have to lose?". Independent source - AP https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-jasg-_E5M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-jasg-_E5M
    - jpttsn 10y ago
      Did it work?

neveroffensive 10y ago

Seems like society works like a pendulum. People spend decades fighting discrimination based on race. But, in the end, their focus on race makes it a defining characteristic. We try and fix one imbalance, and end up just shifting it around. Still I guess we're better off today than in the 1960's.

greglindahl 10y ago
When and where has race not been a defining characteristic?
- neveroffensive 10y ago
  Nowhere, but wouldn't it be nice if it wasn't? EDIT: I guess I meant we kept it a defining characteristic, just changed the definition
- jbmorgado 10y ago
  In many places. Ancient Rome for instance.
- rdtsc 10y ago
  > When and where has race not been a defining characteristic? When the individual doesn't want to make it their defining characteristic. Same thing with other "characteristics". Not all gay people make it their defining characteristic, maybe they are parents, athletes, engineers etc who happen to be gay. Same with immigrants (I am one) and so on. Assuming otherwise and forcing "defining characteristics" onto others is the problem here and what the article at hand is about.
  - jakelazaroff 10y ago
    > When the individual doesn't want to make it their defining characteristic. How do you not make the color of your skin a "defining characteristic"? People see you and make a judgement based on that. Are you denying that racial discrimination exists?

djrogers 10y ago

Wow - here's what I found most telling about the article: The top Highlight was this: "The real problems are things like unanimous votes at Venture Capital firms. There is always someone who “can’t get comfortable” with the Black guy’s deal. It’s grey, and blurred, and subtle, and can always be substantiated by some facts." And the rest of the paragraph is: "And though this type of discrimination exists, it certainly does not leave Black entrepreneurs completely under funded and out in the cold. For example, Black women are the fastest growing group of entrepreneurs in the country — outpacing all other startups by six times the national average. This is significant, yet woefully under reported." So the thing people want to highlight in his article are the only two sentences which fit the narrative he's trying to counter. SMH...

frgtpsswrdlame 10y ago
Similarly, I read this really great article about the decline in black business just this morning: http://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/marchaprilmay-2017/the-decline-of-black-business/ http://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/marchaprilmay-2017/the... Over the same period, tens of thousands of black-owned retail establishments and local service companies also have disappeared, having gone out of business or been acquired by larger companies. Reflecting these developments, working-age black Americans have become far less likely to be their own boss than in the 1990s. The per capita number of black employers, for example, declined by some 12 percent just between 1997 and 2014. EDIT: After rereading, I realize my comment is NOT similar to the parent, actually contrary to it. I'm gonna leave it though because the Washington Monthly article actually is really good!
tomlock 10y ago
Conversely, this article is one of the thousands written by black entrepreneurs that this website has chosen to upvote.
- menacingly 10y ago
  This is a great point that challenges the views I brought to this thread with me.

threeseed 10y ago

He accepted an interview from Inc. Magazine specifically because he was a "black entrepreneur" and then complains when they found his back story not all that interesting. News flash: you can't blame writers for wanting a compelling narrative. Rags to riches is the angle what they were after. Being black is merely the cherry on top. Anyway if he had any intellectual integrity he wouldn't have accepted in the first place. But he gets a bit of a publicity for playing the victim card so that's something.

throwaway_45 10y ago

67% of black kids have a single parent so if you randomly picked a black person they would likely have been raised by a single parent home. He states that he came from a dual parent household from the suburbs. So he isn't an average black person just from statistical point of view. He got really lucky. I think if you give black kids two parents some money and a good school they would probably do as well as everyone else.

dcole2929 10y ago
Serious question. What is the average black person? You can't just pick a single statistic and use that to define what average is. You certainly can't pick something as benign as coming from a dual family home. The average AA male is 5'10. Is he not an average black person if he is shorter or taller? I think overall you missed his entire point, which is basically that it is at best disingenuous to categorize every black person in America as having lived a life of struggle and hardship and at worst racist. His being an entrepreneur is certainly exceptional but his upbringing really isn't. Yet the publication in question basically made the decision that his "blackness" wasn't good material because it didn't contain that element of struggle. That's fine from a narrative perspective I guess but I think he is certainly within his rights to be offended by it.
merpnderp 10y ago
They're no thinking about it. Black kids with two parents who finished high school do statistically slighter better than similar white parents. There's a lot to being said to finishing high school, hopefully going to college, and definitely getting married, to ensure your kids do as well or better than yourself.
ptaipale 10y ago
That 67% number seemed shocking so I tried to dig up a source. Only found this: http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/107-children-in-single-parent-families-by http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/107-children-in-... And it says: "In this definition, single-parent families may include cohabiting couples ..." So it may not be quite that bad - co-habiting couples sharing children are not a particular risk setup even if they are not married. Where I live - north Europe - they are entirely normal. But what is the proportion of kids, and black kids, actually living with just one parent in the US?

joseantoniovr 10y ago

Well to be honest there are blacker guys than you, black as a car wheel, no kidding, you have white ancestors African are blacker than you. But do not worry, you are still black somehow

joseantoniovr 10y ago

There are blacker guys than you, you I am sure have white ancestors. Some Africans are black as a car wheel compared to you, but still you are black, do not worry

balls187 10y ago

I want to point out a couple things from the article: > In fact, nearly 75% of Blacks are not poor. ~75% of African Americans live above the poverty line, however ~45% of young African American children live below the poverty line. Also African Americans are the largest ethnic group living in poverty. Poor in this case is defined as $22,314 for a family of four. Where do the numbers go if you raise that to $37,000 for a family of four, which is still arguably not a lot of money. While I understand the basis of the authors argument, I did find that 75% statistic to be misleading.

notdonspaulding 10y ago
It's not as misleading as you suggest. I read that statistic and thought to myself "I would've assumed it was closer to 50%". He's challenging the popular notion in white America's mind that most blacks are poor. He's not wrong either in restating the figure to emphasize the non-poverty percentage, or in his assessment that Inc. magazine is only interested in furthering the notion that most blacks are poor. The statistic (even as you restated it) supports his general thesis of the perceptions of black people that media outlets want to promulgate really well.
uncletaco 10y ago
The author definitely cherry picked that number. He also completely ignored the fact sheet on African Americans. http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/fact-sheets/african-americans/ http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/fact-sheets/african-ame...
jpttsn 10y ago
It's the difference between "how poor are blacks" and "how black are paupers." Two different questions with two different answers. OP is refusing to be reductive, and isn't misleading.

throwaway6845 10y ago

Inc Magazine is very identity politics, very much written by privileged Silicon Valley kids with preconceived notions of diversity. I gave up reading it a long while ago and I'm as liberal-left as they come.

throwaway6845 10y ago
...ok, I goofed. Getting confused between Inc and Mic (three letters, two of which are I and C, very similar logos). Apologies, please ignore above comment.
- uncletaco 10y ago
  The weird thing about Mic.com though, now that I'm thinking about it, is they have the best breaking news app I've ever used on iOS. It literally exists in the notifications so when something happens you can read the story from the notifications screen and be done with it. I wish more media companies would offer that.

danso 10y ago

That's a shame. It's not just narrative that's important, and well-off African-Americans can still be impacted by the effects of systemic bias.

lern_too_spel 10y ago
If he feels he didn't suffer for being black, why should he get any preferential story treatment from Inc. over anybody else who didn't suffer for their race or background? His point is very poorly argued.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  If they're presenting the truth, they should be looking at what many types of black people are doing in multiple places with what results. If something made many succeed, then that should become part of a Reality-Based Narrative. If there's racism holding them back, there should be evidence of that. Any personality traits or tactics that successful ones use would be game. And so on. A media group only interested in evidence for one hypothesis while suppressing counter-evidence is showing its bias in favor of promoting that hypothesis even if it's incorrect. They're lying for ratings/revenue. Typical in media with biases/narratives varying based on their customers' demographic.
  - lern_too_spel 10y ago
    Nonsense. Inc. wasn't writing an academic article about race and entrepreneurship. They were specifically looking for a feel good rags to riches story to highlight. He didn't fit the story that they want to tell, so he has no more reason to complain than you do as an upper middle class or wealthy white man.
    - nickpsecurity 10y ago
      That's another one. The narratives blend in his case where they expected him to start in one then end up in another.
  - deleted 10y ago

jolux 10y ago

Inarguably the best reply: https://medium.com/@mr.ed.dunn/please-dont-use-supposition-or-create-fake-news-on-a-serious-subject-regarding-tech-media-racism-ceea96c8876b https://medium.com/@mr.ed.dunn/please-dont-use-supposition-o...

int_19h 10y ago
Is it? It doesn't seem to address any of the points in the original article - it just repeats the accusation that he is, indeed, "not black enough".
- jolux 10y ago
  No, it's because it explains how he is misusing the term "not Black enough" (used originally for dealing with colorism in the Black community) and accuses him instead of being a boring person. I can't call him out on the former but the latter I wholeheartedly agree with. If a journalist wants to write a story about overcoming adversity and you respond that you haven't had any adversity to overcome, if they reject you it's pretty silly to complain about it and also pretty plainly because you're too privileged to understand why this is important and his reaction makes it pretty clear that he is indeed too privileged to understand why talking about adversity is critical to overcoming it. (Also mentioned in the reply)
  - int_19h 10y ago
    It is not clear to me that the magazine was actually explicitly trying to write a story about adversity, or whether they are just trying to write a story about being black, and implied that this should include adversity (which is what the Brian had a problem with, if it's a racially-based implication). Indeed, it does seem to be more of the latter, at least if his words are taken at face value: "I was approached by Inc. Magazine for a feature on the life of a successful Black entrepreneur."
    - jolux 10y ago
      >and implied that this should include adversity (which is what the Brian had a problem with, if it's a racially-based implication) What, so we're not allowed to imply that racism exists anymore?

uncletaco 10y ago

There's something that always bothers me when someone sees a statistic that says "Among racial and ethnic groups, African Americans had the highest poverty rate, 27.4 percent, followed by Hispanics at 26.6 percent and whites at 9.9 percent." and flips it to say "almost 75% of blacks are not poor!" Yes, that's true, but if I were to go further and look at the source he cited's fact sheet on African Americans then I'd see some interesting factoids about wealth. For instance: > In 2010, the median wealth, or net worth, for black families was $4,900, compared to median wealth for whites of $97,000. > Blacks are nearly twice as likely as whites to have zero or negative net worth—33.9 percent compared to 18.6 percent. So yes, we can say "nearly 75% of Blacks are not poor" but that doesn't really work as a jumping off point for any argument about black wealth, at least in my opinion. It looks to me like this guy has taken his suburban upper class experience (he called his living situation "Huxtable-esque") and assumed that all black people who are living above the poverty line are somehow doing just as well as he is. Therefore the media is going out of its way to find the "archetypal" black entrepreneur who comes from that ~25% of blacks who grew up in poverty. I don't really buy that argument, especially because being above the poverty line doesn't really speak to matters of wealth, class, and social mobility. I'm not saying any of this to diminish his success, I'm happy he's made it, but I think he's failed to recognize his (sadly) exceptional situation that doesn't really speak for the rest of the 75%. EDIT: cleaned up some grammar.

5thaccount 10y ago
> It looks to me like this guy ... assumed that all black people Thus is the heart of the matter - in reverse. I'm not trying to be pointed, but there is no other way to say it, so here it is: it is you who have assumed, not the author. This extrapolation of the one to the many is at the heart of modern identity politics. It is the core of what the article gets at - to be identified as a thing you have to fit the stereotype. And anything the one does is instantly assumed to be a comment on the many or, in some cases, the all, and any way the one varies from the many doesn't change the definition, it is merely discarded. I despair at this, I really do. Why do we breakdown the individual homo sapiens in a story to their base elements of race, gender, sexuality, religion, rather than celebrate their unqiueness? I had a 23andme DNA test years ago, and I shared my racial profile (X% Scndanavian, y% norther european etc) and someone made a comment about the last line: "100% 5thaccount - you are 100% you". I still think about that comment a lot. These elements that make us up don't define us, as we are not the sum of these elements the way water is two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen. We are our own selves, who are more than, or sometimes less than, the sum of these things. Rather than reduce our experiences to the net sum of these simple elements, I think we should praise the unique - an unique implies not generalisable to the many or all - outcomes we each create.

redsummer 10y ago

The culture has an ideology about race which is shared and fed by the media. It's almost a nostalgia for the sixties where people want to pin halos on themselves by pretending its the 60s and that they are fighting against segregated buses etc. The demand for stories which fit this narrative outstrip the supply. The same thing can be seen with various 'hate crimes' which are eventually revealed as hoaxes. The media - and the public - are strangely desperate for this bigoted world to exist - because they can feel more noble fighting it. I'm guessing it has something to do with all the ideological refugees, in academia and the media, from the 60s and 70s who are fighting battles that are long over.

lern_too_spel 10y ago
There is a Virginia gubernatorial candidate encouraging supporters to fly the Confederate battle flag, there are several states that celebrate Confederate History Month (and one more introducing legislation to that effect), there are multiple states with a Confederate Heroes Day or holiday for the birth of the CSA's President, and the POTUS himself has well-documented housing discrimination against blacks, but you believe we live in a post-racial society? Give me a break.
- ykler 10y ago
  The person you are responding to never said we live in a post-racial society.
  - foldr 10y ago
    They didn't use those exact words, but the comment clearly suggests that racial discrimination no longer exists, and that there are few if any real instances of hate crimes.
    - jpttsn 10y ago
      I think you have enemies that believe racial discrimination doesn't exist, and then you too eagerly fit random internet commenters into that pattern of your enemies.

olleromam91 10y ago

So how do I share this with my black friends that feel the same way, without offending them?

JabavuAdams 10y ago

1) Silly black-person. In the US, "black" means "loser", so if you are successful, you are ipso facto not black. Uh, unless you're an athlete, or other entertainer. 2) I grew up in a prosperous white neighbourhood and spent a lot of time at University of Toronto, as a kid. My dad was a math-teacher and programmer. I recently met a developer -- a young woman of colour at a conference, who came from a stereotypical deprived background. I could barely understand her experiences or the language she used about identity, inclusion, and diversity, because I have never felt excluded. Ambitious, envious at times, but never excluded. 3) I've just realised in the last few months that it's probably harder to be a woman in tech, of whatever skin shade, than to be a 6'3" half-black guy from a scholarly middle-class background. As far as I can tell I've faced no discrimination. I've been sexually harassed once, but it started as a joke and the woman had no power over me. One time outlier. Caveat: I have not sought VC funding, nor have I progressed to leadership roles in someone else's organisation. 4) At one small company I worked at, we were approached to do a TV segment. Two of the four founders are white Africans. The reporter seemed really intent on pushing a rags-to-riches story. The guys had to keep reminding her that they had started the company from their basement while they both had well-paying jobs. They were the sons of a professor. This was really eye-opening with regards to reporters pursuing pre-conceived narratives.

arximboldi 10y ago
> 1) Silly black-person. In the US, "black" means "loser", so if you are successful, you are ipso facto not black. Uh, unless you're an athlete, or other entertainer. I an not from the US, but I guess the impression that in the US race is a proxy for talking about class. The latter word is such a taboo as much as anything coming from Marxism or economic left. You even go to say "losers" instead of working class, which is so insulting. This keeps the left running in circles in identity issues. And keeps the poor fighting against each other (see poor whites supporting Trump).
- JabavuAdams 10y ago
  You raise some valid points, but as recently as 60 years ago (in living memory) there were laws on the books that ensured that blacks were on-average a lower class. Race, specifically African American race is tied to class in the US in ways that it's not in other countries.

jakobegger 10y ago

If the people from the magazine really threw away all their work because the guy wasn't the "archetypal Black entrepreneur to hang the story around".... that's quite sad? I mean, they have a journalist shadow the guy for two months, and then they decide that the material doesn't fit their story and they toss it? Shouldn't it be the other way around? Do the research first, write the story afterwards? I worry that a lot of journalism really suffers from this. The magazine has an idea what kind of story they want to write, and then they look for sources / people / material that corroborates their story. That won't lead to stories representative of the real world...

jpttsn 10y ago
It's almost like magazines aren't trying to educate people.
PeterisP 10y ago
The magazine has an idea of what kind of story their audience wants to read, and then they look for sources / people / material that would work for that. If some story represents the real world but isn't particularly interesting for their audience, then there's no place for it in the magazine; just as the classic example of why "dog bites man" isn't a good story but "man bites dog" is, exactly because it's not representative of the real world.
paulajohnson 10y ago
There is a reason why the things we read in magazines and newspapers are called "stories".

bambax 10y ago

The problem is not only prejudice, it's journalism: journalists write stories first, and then go look for "facts" to support or illustrate their narrative.

mehaveaccount 10y ago
Yes, journalism is just stage writing where the play is strung together by selectively taking quotes from people and putting them out of context into a sequential order that makes it look as if it were caused by a preconceived narrative.

_pmf_ 10y ago

Read about black Trump supporters' experiences in "coming out". As soon as you slightly deviate from the media's narrative about how a black person should be, you run a high risk of being ostracized and verbally abused. The media don't want stories about self-made successful black people, the want stories about how the establishment helps black people being successful (preventing them from their inevitable fate of becoming drug addicts and criminals). Look at how Ben Carson has been treated by the Democrats and main stream media since he joined the Trump administration.

Freak_NL 10y ago

What is the difference between the adverb 'black' (or its US synonym 'African American' when used for skin colour) and the capitalised adverb 'Black' used here?

mehaveaccount 10y ago
They are the same.

column 10y ago

> We are facial recognition for .com's, as opposed to .gov's. WTF does that mean?

uncletaco 10y ago
Corporate surveillance is ok, government surveillance is not ok, I'd imagine.

adamjleonard 10y ago

I love Brian Brackeen. Very smart guy!