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For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business
- blueadept111 6y agowow, it sure is fashionable these days to point your finger and call people racist. Had a rough day? Been confused with someone else? racism.
- api 6y ago> Guest after guest walked past the pair of executives to greet their White employee, offer their congratulations and ask how he got the idea for the product. This sort of thing has never, ever happened to me. Nobody has ever suggested that I hire a wingman of a different ethnicity or gender or anything similarly asinine either.
- badrabbit 6y agoNot sure about silicon valley but this sort of a thing is common in international businees. Depending on who you are meeting with, ethnicity can help or hurt impressions and negotiations.
- commandlinefan 6y ago> This sort of thing has never, ever happened to me Hm - I have had people look past me to talk to my Indian co-workers when asking technical questions: they just assume the Indian guy is the technical one and the white guy is the business manager.
- Pfhreak 6y agoIt doesn't happen to me, so it doesn't exist is fallacious. (Or at the very least, anecdotal and not useful.) There are plenty of things that have never happened to me, despite it being possible/probable that they should. In 20 years I've never been called for Jury duty. It's never, ever happened to me. Does that mean I should disregard the experiences of people who have experienced jury duty?
- api 6y agoThat was what I meant, but re-reading I realize it wasn't clear in my comment whether or not I was agreeing with the parent. I meant that I'm a white male founder and have experienced maybe 5% of the crap described in the article.
- scarface74 6y agoI was a dev lead at my former company. I’m Black. One of the guys I hired was an older white dude. I was taking my team out to lunch - I was the only Black guy. The server came up and asked the table in general was it together or separate. I said it was together and preceded to get my corporate card out of my wallet. No one else reached for their card. She still handed the check to the white guy.
- mmsimanga 6y agoAfrican here, this is common in Africa but in a different way. Often by fellow black Africans will trust a foreign white person over me. The big global consulting companies are making a killing sending over specialists in different fields.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dang 6y agoCould you please stop posting flamebait and unsubstantive comments to HN? We ban accounts that do that, and you've unfortunately been doing it for months now. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dang 6y agoThis is an interesting and in-depth article that was inappropriately flagged. I've switched off the flags. I understand the impulse to flag follow-up stories [1], especially on the hottest controversies of the moment, which always produce a flood of articles, most of which aren't very good. Curiosity and repetition don't go together [2]. But it's important to recognize the articles that are higher than median quality and not simply flag an entire category mechanically. Curiosity isn't mechanical either. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20follow-up&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20repetition&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... [3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22significant%20new%20information%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- luckylion 6y ago> This is an interesting and in-depth article that was inappropriately flagged. I've switched off the flags. Consider that people are not flagging it because "it's a follow up article", but because a) it's Bloomberg, ergo hard to believe b) it's the seven billionth "minorities in tech" story in the past month c) it's not going to create an interesting comment section d) they don't find it as interesting as you do. It's your site of course, but if "moderators build the front page" is the new modus operandi, I'll be disappointed.
- dang 6y agoI don't think any of these arguments works in this case. (a) HN has had many good submissions from bloomberg.com (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=bloomberg.com%20points%3E30&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). We go by article quality, not site quality (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%20%22article%20quality%22%20%22site%20quality%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). There's nothing hard to believe about this article. If there were, the solution would be to provide correct information or specific counterarguments. Obviously we're not going to ban bloomberg.com. (b) I addressed this point thoroughly in the comment you're replying to. (c) You probably shouldn't complain about the comment section's interestingness while contributing to lowering it. It remains to be seen how interesting this thread will end up being. One reason we try to focus on the most substantive articles is that they usually lead to better comments. (d) Plenty of users, to judge by upvotes, find this article interesting. Those who flagged it presumably didn't. The tug of war between upvotes and flags is one of the axes around which HN turns. It works surprisingly well, but it's not perfect. It has failure modes, and human intervention is the only way to address them. (e) HN is a moderated/curated/however you want to call it kind of site. It always has been. HN's system is built out of three subsystems: the community, the software, and moderation. They interact in complex feedback loops. All three are necessary and all three have their limits.
- neonate 6y agohttps://archive.vn/nFx3E https://archive.vn/nFx3E
- gamblor956 6y agoMy boss did this to a client once. He was not amused and soon thereafter became a former client.
- exhilaration 6y agoIf the ONLY thing readers take away from this article is to stop assuming who's who when walking into meetings, then that alone is a valuable lesson.
- giancarlostoro 6y agoThis is what shocks me the most about this whole thing. You should ask your clients to introduce themselves and their roles so that you can better communicate and work with them, no matter if they're all the same ethnicity, or completely diverse or anywhere in between.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y agoI thought this was a great article. One of the most interesting things to me was how the embarrassment/defensiveness of the white people involved was one of the biggest blocks to the black CEOs in their advancement, e.g. the VCs who "just wanted to get the hell out of there" after mistaking a white subordinate for the CEO. I've recently been reading/watching some videos and writings by Robin Diangelo on systemic racism - here's a great starting point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7mzj0cVL0Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7mzj0cVL0Q. She also wrote the book "White Fragility". Thinking about that, I'm just wondering how different it would be if one of those people who mistook the employee for the CEO instead turned to the CEO and said "I'm sorry, please excuse me for the instance of racism I just perpetrated against you, I promise it won't happen again." I realize how outlandish that may sound writing that out, but I'd propose that the fact that it does sound outlandish is the main problem. Everyone in the US was raised in an environment that inculcated certain racial ideas, subconsciously or not. We can't address them if we're so embarrassed by their existence as to pretend they don't exist.
- quadrifoliate 6y ago> I realize how outlandish that may sound writing that out, but I'd propose that the fact that it does sound outlandish is the main problem. That doesn't sound outlandish to me at all. For what it's worth, it doesn't have to phrased in a stilted manner like that. A quiet "That was racist and I have no excuse. I am sorry, and will do better in the future." is fine. I suspect that most people who want to "get the hell out" rather than apologize for racism have little to no experience with making sincere apologies and trying to genuinely mend fences in general. This probably has a significant overlap with people who claim that you should immediately leave your employer rather than speak out about any of their policies that you disagree with.
- cortesoft 6y agoI think this follows a general rule I have found in my professional life.... people react WAY more forgiving when you admit a fuckup than you think they will before you admit it. It is amazing how quickly people want to forgive you and help when you admit failure openly and without excuse.
- JumpCrisscross 6y agoStylistic question. I noticed Black and White capitalized in this article. Is that an emerging convention?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- stevenbedrick 6y agoIt's a really interesting story, actually! The question of whether and when to capitalize has been an active one since at least the early 20th century. Here's a (very) recent Columbia Journalism Review article that discusses it from a stylistic perspective: https://www.cjr.org/analysis/capital-b-black-styleguide.php https://www.cjr.org/analysis/capital-b-black-styleguide.php And I also thought that this article, about the Brookings Institution's decision to capitalize Black in their reports, had some interesting historical context: https://www.brookings.edu/research/brookingscapitalizesblack/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/brookingscapitalizesblack...
- neonate 6y agoCapitalizing White seems extremely weird, though, and somehow emblematic of how we're sliding backwards into a racialized consciousness even while trying (and hopefully succeeding) to step forwards toward equality.
- erik_seaberg 6y agoThis. The words "white" and "black" are not proper names of places, and they aren't honorifics. To say I'm "White" would be like saying I'm "Fat" or "Tired".
- neonate 6y agoI'm not sure that argument works grammatically because we capitalize things that aren't names of places, but I agree with you in the sense that it's the feeling I got while reading the article, and it was strangely creepy.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- remote_phone 6y agoThere was a presentation from the Black Diversity group in my company where they described an incident where they gathered for an ERG meeting. They were a collection of engineers, managers, legal, etc from across the company. The front desk security, who also was black, assumed they were cafeteria staff and directed them to the cafeteria without even asking. It was eye opening how deeply unconscious bias occurs. My Asian friends say that especially Asian women have problems being taken as authority figures as well. My friend was a senior manager at an accounting firm and went to visit a client with a fresh grad who was a tall white male. The client instantly greeted the fresh grad first and assumed he was the manager and she was the subordinate.
- scarface74 6y agoAsian women being taken as an authority figure? Heck, anecdotally they can’t even be seen as developers. I have an Asian friend/former coworker. Anytime that we would all go to a local conference they would assume she was QA.
- cheez 6y agoI have a friend who runs a team and hires according to these lines: - Management: Europeans - Coding: Russians - QA: Indians He will not consider that he might be wrong here.
- shrubble 6y agoHow successful is his team? He might be suffering from confirmation bias if he is good at interviews/choosing people.
- gowld 6y agoIt's not that hard to hire. Most roles don't need amazing candidates.
- cutemonster 6y ago
- throwaway713 6y agoWhoa! I didn’t realize Leland Stanford was racist. And blatantly so. Makes you wonder if the university should be renamed.
- contemporary343 6y agoIt's named after his only son, who passed away from Typhoid at 15: https://facts.stanford.edu/about/ https://facts.stanford.edu/about/
- mynameishere 6y agoDid you realize that Abraham Lincoln was a racist? Did you realize that almost everyone who hasn't undergone a lifetime of "anti-racist" propaganda is a racist? Anyway, as to the subject of the article, I think it was covered in an episode of "The Jeffersons".
- triceratops 6y ago> Did you realize that Abraham Lincoln was a racist? I think signing the Emancipation Proclamation, prosecuting the Civil War, and ultimately paying for it all with his life, give him a pass for his personal views that would be considered "racist" by today's standards. In Lincoln's case, actions really spoke far louder than words.
- atom-morgan 6y agoWasn't one of his primary motives to cripple the Confederacy by signing the Emancipation Proclamation? In other words, he didn't simply do it because it was the right thing to do.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y agoI will say that being an older techie has also had its share of humiliation. It's just assumed that I have no idea what "all the kids are into," these days. I guess they think that I'm being "Lenny Wosniak." I grew up in Africa. I was quite used to black people running things, from a very early age.
- Grustaf 6y agoI didn’t understand the first bit, why did they think people confused the black man with his white colleague, and how could that possibly be “racist”?
- totetsu 6y agopresumably because they looked from one to the other, and decided the colleague with the lest melanin was the CEO.
- analyst74 6y ago> the simple phrase ‘Black Lives Matter’ is seen as a political dog whistle, rather than a desperate cry to bring attention to a dire situation that many people choose not to see.” A little off-topic, but I notice a lot of the "All Lives Matter" people are mistaking the term "Black Lives Matter" as valuing black lives over others. I wonder if "Black Lives Matter Too" would convey its message better.
- remote_phone 6y ago50% of the US has below 100 IQ. There is literally nothing you can do if some people can’t understand the meaning that “Black Lives Matter” doesn’t mean “Only Black Lives Matter”. I think it’s a small but loud percentage of the people believe this.
- math_denial 6y agoMore than a response this seems a rhetorical fallacy: "If they don't agree with me they're stupid". Maybe some of these people want to resolve racism but disliske the BLM methods? Are they stupid?
- remote_phone 6y agoThere’s nothing to disagree with. It’s been explained that “Black Lives Matter” doesn’t mean “Only Black Lives Matter” ad nauseum. If you still choose to say “All Lives Matter” then you’re being purposefully stupid. And that’s well explained by the fact that there are 150 million people with below average intelligence in the US. Of those 150M, there tens of millions that are one standard deviation lower than average. This explains the overreaction to the name.
- Larrikin 6y agoThis has been discussed to death since the group started. The name was intentionally chosen and too was purposefully left off. If the phrase invokes a negative reaction but phrases like "Save the rainforest" or events like breast cancer awareness month don't invoke a similar reaction then it's meant to be introspective. I saw it translated with too in parenthesis in foreign newspapers in the beginning but not recently. Several years in people constantly arguing all lives matter and disingenuously arguing the point after correction are also a good filter for trolls.
- wottamap 6y agoThe messages that need to be said right now are very difficult to say because people have steeled themselves. But they need to be said. This is not meant to be flamebait, I truly deeply believe these messages need to be heard and understood, so please understand that I'm speaking in good faith here. If you feel strongly that I am wrong, please reply with well thought out reasons why. I will listen. Articles like this do the black community a disservice. Society pretending that there is massive racism when there isn't is itself structural racism. If you believe you cannot succeed due to all this racism, that will be sulf-fulfilling. Blacks that believe in widespread racism will be less likely to go to university and get a job. Blacks that believe cops are out to kill them will be more likely to resist arrest and get killed. I'm not saying there isn't any racism. But I am saying that the level of racism is low, and the remaining racism is probably impossible to eliminate. The way to improve the lives of blacks is to stop focusing on and zooming in on racism, which makes it look a lot bigger of a problem than it really is. Lived experience is not the way to determine why people do what they do. The hearer is not the expert on what the speaker means when he/she speaks. Like hanlon's razor, don't attribute to racism that which can be attributed to a simple embarrasing mistake. If you're holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The recent protests due to police behavior is justified to call attention to a real problem, and police need to be less militarized and better trained. However, the belief that they are systematically hunting down black people for extermination is untrue and only harms the black community, because if you believe that, you are more likely to consider lawful persuits hopeless, more likely to engage in crime instead, and more likely to resist arrest which means you'll be much more likely to be killed by the police. It's self-fulfilling.
- jgwil2 6y ago> Blacks that believe in widespread racism will be less likely to go to university and get a job. > Blacks that believe cops are out to kill them will be more likely to resist arrest and get killed. Do you have any evidence for these assertions? I would be surprised if so, particularly with respect to the second, since police killings are notoriously difficult to gather data on, but I would certainly be interested to hear it.
- 6y ago
- leoc 6y agoHere's a recent Twitter thread by Timothy Jones https://twitter.com/timbeejones/ https://twitter.com/timbeejones/ which seems relevant: https://twitter.com/timbeejones/status/1268665921364770816 https://twitter.com/timbeejones/status/1268665921364770816 . I can't vouch for it as I have zero experience of SV or being black, let alone the specifics here, but the author seems to be someone worth hearing on the subject. Someone always complains about reading Twitter threads, so here's a thread unroll https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1268665921364770816.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1268665921364770816.html while I have also cut and pasted it here (again, this is Timothy Jones not me): > I’m glad there’s now a vibrant discussion about black tech entrepreneurs and VC. Now might be a good time to discuss an elephant in the room: the systematic pushing aside of Black founders to make way for a White CEO who is “bankable”. Happens more often than not. I’ve seen this happen in two tech bull mkts; I hope those who have newfound interest in Black founders don’t repeat this same mistake Here's the way it goes: Black Founder has an idea they're passionate about; could be demographically anchored, or just a great idea and they're Black. By some Miracle they raise a seed. They go off, build product, get some revenue even... Now it's Series A time. Again, by some Miracle they raise a VC Series A. They're now part of the rate 1% of VC backed founders who are black. They add to their board 1-2 VC's from the usual suspects. They start to build a team... Here's where the move is made. Somewhere between A and going for a B, the VC's on the board call the founder for a "chat". They "strongly suggest" that the founder get some "help" in order to get the company to the next stage. And they know just the guy... 'Cause it's always a guy. I call him "Business Biff". He looks like he's stepped out of central casting for "White Dude CEO". The Board VC's explain that Biff can "help" raise the next round, and "you two should really work together". Black Founder says: "Ok, cool. Will reach out to Biff on a few things if I need him". VC's give the puzzled, RCA Dog-watching-TV-Look. "You know, we think Biff should really come on board the company to help you out ". "As What?" asks the Black Founder. "I already have a head of Sales/Finance/Marketing/etc"..."Well, we were thinking Biff should become CEO, and you become Chairman" "Sayyyyy whaaaa?" says Black Founder. "Am I being fired?". "Oh, No!" say the VC's. "We want you to stay and guide the strategy, Biff will be responsible for the day to day, and putting together the fundraise" Not going to go into the details but here's essentially what happens:. 1. VC's realize that having a Black CEO creates financing RISK for the next round. 2. Best way to reduce the risk is to bring in a CEO who "pattern matches" 3. The problem is they still need the Founder. They still need the Founder for (a) mkt knowledge (b) passion so he/she doesn't get fired. But the bump to Chairman is designed to "keep them working, but not in control". It's straight out of the unopened letter in "Invisible Man". There's a lot more here, but I'm raising the point now so that people realize that downstream of funding, there are still a ton of practices which need reforming. The kicker: The VC's decided to bring Biff in when they did the A. In fact, the seed investors may have suggested it, and backchanneled it to the A rounders. The bottom line is that even the investors realized blackness as a "risk" that needs to be managed down/out.
- m0zg 6y agoI would have never even guessed Hayes is black. He looks Middle Eastern to me. He doesn't look like a CEO in these pictures: a constantly worried facial expression sends the wrong message IMO. Givens does project calm confidence, and therefore looks like a boss. I think his experience is more illustrative of the problem here.
- tashi 6y agoThat's funny, I'm black too and I used to have white people misread my facial expression a lot. I ended up training myself to use a different, more "neutral-looking" resting face in public.
- m0zg 6y agoI'm white and people think I'm angry and unapproachable. It is uncommon in my country of origin to smile for no reason, and if one doesn't do it here in the US, people mistake what I consider my "neutral" face as hostility. I'm still working on it. Worse yet, it's also not common in the Russian culture to maintain constant eye contact with strangers, not doing which in the US means that one is trying to mislead and they're not trustworthy.
- ipnon 6y agoAs an American, I often find myself in trouble for smiling pointlessly.
- whydoyoucare 6y agoI am not convinced about the argument the authors try to make about Silicon Valley, and VCs'. I also see cherry-picking of data to make the point ("...0.4% of people who received venture capital were Black..."), okay so how many Black people applied? How many other races? How many white? Etc. We cannot form the full picture since other critical variables have been ommitted without providing cross-references to the study. That reduces credibility of the article. As for where should a VC invest, I think it is his/her decision alone, and nobody else has any say that. Including the article's author.
- ahominid 6y agoIs it possible that when put in unfamiliar situations, people will by default direct themselves toward others who are most like themselves? A hypothetical: Reverse all the races in the VC/CEO situation. Who would the black VC assume was the CEO? Repeat the experiment with whichever combination of race/sex you like.
- neonate 6y agoPerhaps the answer is obvious, but what's the point of such a thought experiment? The issue is how to deal with the world we actually live in. "It would be just as bad in an opposite world" does not sound like a useful finding.
- ViViDboarder 6y agoDefinitely possible, but unlikely. You’ll find that people of all minority groups make similar assumptions. There were even a few examples in this thread and the article. That’s a part of why there is such a big push for better minority representation on all fields. VC partnerships, boards, upper management, etc. More diversity means more models of what a successful VC, CEO, Entrepreneur, etc looks like.
- TrackerFF 6y agoPeople base their beliefs on prior probabilities, before any new evidence is provided. If all you've ever seen are white CEOs, then it's probably very reasonable to assume that the white guy in a meeting also is the CEO. It's not racist, but just how your brain works on the priors. I know that people should strive to not be assuming, but in the end, the brain is an exceptional pattern recognizer, and very much works in subconscious ways. edit: And before anyone starts claiming racism; I'm just saying that this is how humans work. You collect data all the time, and (hopefully) update your beliefs on said new evidence.
- ibudiallo 6y agoI usually choose to believe in "the honest mistake". It happens, two people walk in, one of them is the CEO, you assume it is the one on the right. And then when you realize it is a mistake, you apologize. We are only human. But when it happens over and over and over, you can't help but feel frustrated. You realize that people natural instinct is to think you are the subordinate. One second your are on stage at Techcrunch (I was in 2017), where you have clearly introduced yourself. You get off-stage, they greet your colleague and ask him the questions as if he was on stage. I was often in the interview room waiting for my interviewer, only to have him show up, and tell me I must be in the wrong room. A simple "Hey are you XYZ?" could have avoided this frustration. I've written an article about my experience working as a black developer, I'll post it here in the near future. You wouldn't believe how lonely it is. In my team of 150 people, we were two black people.
- bsder 6y agoDear lord, do people not just simply say: "Hi, I'm <my name>. And you are?" What is wrong with people? That's just basic courtesy.
- mc32 6y agoWhen I’m not sure who is who, I’ll ask “Which one of you is so and so” as I scan the multiple of people. People should use blank slates in more situations than they do. It’s not all upside as some people take you to be slow for “not making connections,” but on the other hand you don’t make bad assumptions.
- steve_taylor 6y agoSolid advice. I always lookup people on LinkedIn before meeting them for the first time, so I usually don’t even have to ask.
- js2 6y agoI am Jewish. This gives me no insight into what it is to be black in America. But it does give me some insight into what it is to be a minority in America. I have an inkling of your loneliness and you have my profound sympathy. I wish everyone could experience what it is to be a minority in some, any, aspect of their identity to the extent that it might provide them some empathy for others. (I also never realized what it must feel like to be a Christian in America until I visited Israel for the first time and had a sense of being among "my people", which didn't really make any sense because I'm not Israeli, but at the same time it felt comforting being among so many Jews in a greater way than when I'm at temple.) Of course, unless I announce I am Jewish, I know I'm not being judged by it. I can only imagine how difficult it is that whenever you are slighted, you don't know for certain whether it is due to being black. It must be very hard not to start assuming that it's always the reason. I'll watch for your future post. I look forward to reading it.
- DevX101 6y agoSome of the most successful blacks in tech had to 'hide' their blackness to achieve success. Robert Smith, the wealthiest black man in America, specifically didn't put up a photo on his investment firm's site to avoid any possibility of bias (now that he's a multi-billionaire who's "made it", this is no longer a concern). Calendly, who's CEO is black, and is one of the top performing black led tech startups curiously doesn't have an about us page (and though I don't know the exact reason, I can only suspect why). A very good friend of mine, a black woman in finance, had to have drinks with and entertain obnoxiously racist jokes from a potential white client to close the deal. Black folks don't get the presumption of competence. You're assumed to be mediocre (or worse) until you can prove yourself exceptional.
- pessimizer 6y ago> You're assumed to be mediocre (or worse) until you can prove yourself exceptional. And to make this personal, feeling like you have to be the best in every group in order to be respected enough that you can't be ignored leads to overwork and burnout.
- root_axis 6y agoVery true. There is less tolerance for middling black people in general, I jokingly refer to it as the Obama effect. Mediocrity in black people is often viewed as a function of their race rather than as the quality of an individual with flaws. If you aren't living up to the Obama standard you're sometimes thought to be a net negative compared to what might have been if there was a white person in your place. Mediocre white people are just assumed to be the best available option for the organization at the time. I've heard coworkers literally refer to other black people as "the price of diversity" (and just to be clear, their point was that the price was "worth it" in the name of diveristy). It sucks.
- armonraphiel 6y agoGrowing up, my grandmother would often tell me I needed to be "twice as good as the next best white person" to be taken seriously. I resented the premise behind that statement but she was not wrong. It's a feeling that doesn't go away & often compounds on imposter syndrome.
- gumby 6y agoI believe, and often comment, that there's a different culture between Silicon Valley and SF, though they are often conflated in the press. Regrettably, this is an area where both regions are equally terrible.
- Thorentis 6y agoHow is it racist to assume that in a country of mostly white people, the CEO would be white? That isn't racist. Unless you consciously thought the black person in the room was less competent just because they were black, it isn't racism. If I was in India, and walked into a company meeting with a diverse set of people, I would assume the Indian looking person is the CEO. If I was in Japan, I would assume the Japanese looking person was the CEO. This isn't racism. This is the human brain using pattern recognition to evaluate a situation and infer information as best it can under the circumstances.
- jessaustin 6y agoThis is the human brain using pattern recognition to evaluate a situation and infer information as best it can under the circumstances. That isn't a different thing than "racism". When you don't know, don't assume.
- Thorentis 6y agoEasy to say that, but the human brain does this - to its advantage - multiple times daily. It's how humans learn and adapt. It is a central part of what makes humans better than other species as adapting to environments and performing well in unfamiliar situations. There is nothing racist about making an unintentional mistake. This whole premise assumes that being a CEO equals competence and a higher level of ability - a claim which I thoroughly reject anyway.
- jessaustin 6y agoIf it makes it easier for you to understand, think of it as small-r "racism" rather than capital-R "Racism". It's not equivalent to lynching somebody, but it's still an assumption based on race that harms someone. One doesn't have to harbor ill intent in order to exhibit racist behavior. One shouldn't think of oneself as the center of this situation. Your dubious appeals to evopysch relate to what's going on (or not) in one's brain, while one's behavior that is observable to others just says "black people are subordinate".
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- RunAwayFast 6y agoI wonder if the whole protests thing is going to make things better or worse as I have friends who are now terrified of having a future black co-worker because they might get in trouble so they are now basically saying they would veto. I’ll admit that I’m not sure which direction I will go in hiring recommendations for my team on that. If I were a VC I am not sure I would want black CEOs pitching me because the social costs of error are far higher. This entire few weeks has been an exercise in either copying other people’s LinkedIn posts or just hiding until it all blows over.
- darth_avocado 6y agoFor everyone arguing "honest mistake" or "just chance", think about the person at the receiving end. For the person making that mistake, it could be their first, but for the person at the receiving end it could be the hundredth, and that too, not without consequences. The first 3-4 times I got "randomly selected" for additional screening at the airport, I was like whatever. But years later after my probably 100th "random selection", I am mostly just upset. Watching traveler after traveler go around you, staring at you, while you're being subjected to additional search, your baggage laid out open in front of everyone, while being asked questions like "have you recently been in contact with any chemicals?" and so on. It is humiliating. And this is just one aspect of their life. Imagine having to face "honest mistakes" everyday in all kinds of different aspects of your life.
- DenisM 6y agoHave you tried applying for Global Entry? That may end your torment. Just a thought.
- charlesu 6y agoSo he should pay to be treated with dignity at the airport?
- AaronFriel 6y agoThere is sadly nothing more American.
- newen 6y agoIf I could pay some money to not be subjected to that, I would do it instead of waiting for systemic racism to end.
- sfj 6y agoDid you ever think it might be the way you dress or your demeanor? Obviously, it could be racial also, but how could you know that?
- 0zymandias 6y agoIt seems like people from other ethnicities/countries have done well in Silicon Valley, e.g. India, China, Iran. Notably, CEOs of Google, Microsoft, Uber and others are brown-skinned. Would they have done even better without the racism? Or what accounts for the difference?
- charlesu 6y agoThe difference is hundreds of years of slavery and institutional discrimination specifically target toward blacks and all the accompanying cultural baggage. Part of that baggage is a deeply ingrained suggestion that black people are intellectually inferior but innately athletic. That isn't to say that other ethnic groups don't deal with racism too. But it's different. An African American executive in a suit may be mistaken for being a waiter, but he's unlikely to be asked where he's "really from" like an Asian American.
- sfj 6y ago> The difference is hundreds of years of slavery and institutional discrimination specifically target toward blacks and all the accompanying cultural baggage. Part of that baggage is a deeply ingrained suggestion that black people are intellectually inferior but innately athletic. How can you say this with complete certainty? How could you ever be sure?
- charlesu 6y agoMy argument is that history matters. You're welcome to argue otherwise.
- sfj 6y agoWhere is your evidence? I think the null hypotheses, i.e. we don't know, is more probable then what a appears to be an unsubstantiated conclusion that you wrote.
- nitwit005 6y agoThat's kind of a non-response isn't it? The way things are is always determined by the events that came before. It doesn't mean you've correctly identified the right events. I think it's easy to point at something like slavery as the underlying cause, but Europeans had no issue looking down on blacks before they had the idea to import them to the new world as slaves, and Europe adopted similar attitudes toward blacks with no slaves present.
- js2 6y agoBy my back-of-the-napkin math, white America owes black America about 10 trillion dollars in stolen wealth. The are roughly 50 million black Americans out of a population of 330M. Americans own roughly $100T in wealth. So black Americans should own about 50 / 330 * 100T or $15T. But they currently only own about $5.5T. We could start by allocating some our our Federal tax dollars to making black Americans whole. Sources: - https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/06/25/six-facts-about-wealth-in-the-united-states/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/06/25/six-facts... - https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/02/27/examining-the-black-white-wealth-gap/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/02/27/examining... - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/racial-wealth-gap.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/raci... - https://www.economist.com/united-states/2019/04/06/the-black-white-wealth-gap-is-unchanged-after-half-a-century https://www.economist.com/united-states/2019/04/06/the-black... Edit: downvotes but no replies.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cylinder 6y agoI believe in reparations but not your methodology (I did not downvote you).
- haecceity 6y agoIn this thread hacker news proves the article right. Head desk.
- dang 6y agoHN reflects the society at large, so of course it proves the article right in that sense. Otherwise the article wouldn't be about the world. Any divisive topic is going to show up as divisive in any large-enough population sample. But there are at least as many comments pointing the opposite way—more, in fact, but we tend to notice the ones we dislike, and to weight them more heavily: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20notice%20dislike&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... You're probably experiencing the problem I wrote about here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098. The fact that HN is a non-siloed site causes people to run into things here that they don't run into elsewhere, and it creates a shock reaction. I bet you're particularly running into the international aspect, which is so much more influential on these perceptions than anybody realizes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23438403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23438403. The way people approach this topic in other countries is not at all the way Americans approach it. In particular, arguments that would make Americans wince (or "head desk", as you put it) are obliviously unobjectionable to users in other places, and those users have zero idea about the conventions they're breaking in an American context, or how inflammatory they are. It pains me to see these misunderstandings, but what can we do. "Excuse me, but the person you're disagreeing with is actually posting from $country, to judge by their IP"? Out of the question.
- adjkant 6y agoWould HN ever consider possibly adding location as an optional profile field? That may actually be useful in a lot of discussions and avoiding misunderstanding. I realize you can easily add this in your bio, but the explicit field will encourage more people to add it who may not yet understand the reasoning. I'd say a tooltip could be added for context, but that seems even farther from the HN profile philosophy that exists currently.
- brentis 6y agoSo I get there are not a lot of black CEOs. Unsure what this means or the cause. As a board member I want the smartest and most talented person to run my business with low risk. Quantify that. Also, I'm confused when I hear that only 7% of tech jobs are black people, but 70% of basketball and football teams are black. Yet regardless 10% of population is black. Scientifically speaking... Given facts on IQ, we are probably most racist against Asian CEOs in US as they have the highest IQs on avg (106), followed by Jewish people, then Caucasian (97). This group is supposedly enlightened and factual - so...
- brentis 6y agoQuoted the IQs Incorrectly. Reference: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://openpsychologyjournal.com/VOLUME/3/PAGE/9/PDF/&ved=2ahUKEwjzzYmSxIfqAhWJSjABHbmrCB8QFjADegQIAxAB&usg=AOvVaw31wjZnFFpA2bBwSFKHm496&cshid=1592351878885 https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...
- ipnon 6y agoEven assuming mean IQ is significantly variable among different populations, it would still be normally distributed. We would thus expect to find many millions of geniuses from all corners of the globe, with powers of reasoning possibly far exceeding your own.
- brentis 6y agoYou are not making an argument here. Regardless of what you are trying to say, proven test results and would not skew percentages to have a larger black workforce for technical jobs.
- busterarm 6y agoI used to work for a regional ILEC and everyone in the company was required to do regular ridealongs with the installers to get a better understanding of the customer base and their needs. Me (a white guy) would frequently do ridealongs with some of our black installers and I would see this kind of treatment from customers regularly. I wasn't dressed like I was doing install work (business casual) and was clearly younger and would tell the customer in advance that I worked in X department and was just learning from the installer. People would talk to me like the installer wasn't there. It really didn't matter what demographic either, it was pretty universal. Except for one older lady. She didn't even want me in her house if I wasn't there to physically work on her service. I liked her.
- gowld 6y agoDid you learn anything from the customers? Isn't it obvious what phone customers want when they ask for phone service? It's not a complicated custom product for the user.
- busterarm 6y agoIt's not about learning from the customers. It's about learning the disconnect between what the customers report and what the actual problem is. It's about learning what the field technicians have to deal with and how the service actually works. Cable, DSL & Fiber internet are much more complicated services than anyone gives them credit for.
- charliebrownau 6y agoMost of Silcon Valley and Holywood so called "elite" are jewish, not white
- kps 6y agoAs a non-American non-SV resident, every time I visit there I feel like I've stepped into the '60s. All the developers and managers are white or asian, and all the janitors, cooks, security guards, bus drivers, etc. are black or hispanic. Silly Valley talks the talk, very loudly, but they don't walk the walk.
- FilterSweep 6y agoThis entire story reminded me a lot of the story of the inventor of the gas mask[1] who had to hire a white actor to play as the inventor during presentations Scary things don’t change and little progress has been made. [1] https://www.biography.com/.amp/inventor/garrett-morgan https://www.biography.com/.amp/inventor/garrett-morgan
- sabujp 6y agoI was once working at a startup in the south bay area, where "white developer" was not one of the people who was able to do what we wanted, as an engineer, for a startup which had a tech foundation. This was a big problem for most companies. The thing is, this group had really terrible problems in the first place. Most startups are very different from the valley because of the nature of technical talent. But the people who come from the valley are pretty good at what they do. The problem is the lack of culture. In most companies there are only a few minorities: * There are enough great tech people that want to start their own companies. * Some have to get a job as a software developer, because there's a strong market saturation of smart people right in the first place. * There are few places a tech founder can get to start a startup.
- cycomanic 6y agoThis is somewhat tangential to the article, but I've written about this previously. I think a big first step would be to stop talking about race for different skin colours. I'm always surprised that "race" is so commonly adopted in conversations even by campaigners against racism, as a European I always cringe. The term implies a genetic difference where there isn't any and thus contributes to systematic racism/discrimination IMO, words do matter.
- read_if_gay_ 6y agoWell, there’s at least gotta be the genetic difference that makes black people’s skin black, or Asian people’s eyes narrower. For a biologist, it probably makes sense. In common situations though I agree race is kind of a “strong word” to describe this. How do you avoid it?
- hayez1 6y agoThere IS a genetic difference between races though. Diseases cluster in different races. Different races have different phenotypes. Different races have different brain sizes (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S016028960200137X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602...). You people are just as bad as the creationists who think the world is 6000 years old. Of course different groups who have been isolated from each other for thousands of years are going to have some micro-evolutionary divergence. THAT IS BASIC EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY! If an 8 year old can understand it, why can't you?
- charliebrownau 6y agoMaybe blacks should start a black only town with black business's with black farming with black manfactoring with black offices This way they cant play the victim and blame non black people for failing
- ur-whale 6y agohttp://archive.is/nFx3E http://archive.is/nFx3E
- chewz 6y agoCouple of years ago me and few other guys (highly qualified and paid SAP engineers all) have been sitting in beer garden in Dusseldorf. The waiter had been friendly and asks: - Where are you guys from? - From Poland - Oh, you have came here to purchase some old cars, right?
- mundu_wa_hinya 6y agoI joined a growing team in South Africa as the only black in ~40; and a foreigner to boot. When I left 3 years later we were only 2 out of 120. In the years that I was there, I probably participated in about 100+ interviews. In that whole time, I never got a single black South African interviewee. Not even for an internship! To be clear, I had phone screens with folks from Egypt, Pakistan, UK, Nigeria etc. I think the black community in South Africa is in a wedge. My 2 cents: Systemic issues probably cause them to rarely progress to white collar jobs. The kids in the education system don't see any benefit in progressing to higher education because, they don't know anyone in their family/neighborhood who made it. Compound it with schools that have gangs in them [1] and an easy choice appears. 1. Slog through education with probably no chance of a good job (from a young person's view point) or 2. Join this gang, make money, drive fast cars and belong. 1. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u6eb6fNVfmo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u6eb6fNVfmo
- PanosJee 6y agoI think these titles just discourage black/female/diverse founders. Reads like: don't even try, it's not your game
- dsign 6y agoWhere I live, it's not that uncommon to found a tech company and step down as the "nominal" CEO a few months later to put in place a white guy—the right shade of white—who fits the expectations of customers and partners. The original founder may still be the one making executive decisions, but he/she is not the public face anymore.
- bulgagoo 6y agothis article title is so racist. stop normalizing it and represent the success stories. the whole, "X is so marginalized and victimized," narrative represents negative stereotypes and reinforce a victimhood identity that only disempowers X, and reinforces to the dominant ethnic groups' superiority narrative few would believe that such psyop propaganda is part of systemic racism, lured instead by the virtue signaling and fake "solidarity" parroting such victimization narratives would seem to yield. but it is. you'll resist the idea I propose by saying, highlighting how bad everything is, is doing something about it, while pretending there's no problem is part of the problem. viewing another way you'll see that editorializing to consistently represent a problem is a problem. but such psyop propaganda is so embedded in the politically corrected social discourse programming that few will be able to escape you'll most likely dismiss this idea by pretending this idea is just apologizing for racism. it will be very hard for you to see beyond that but you should try, it's worth it.
- abustamam 6y agoNon-paywall link: https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/06/16/for-black-ceos-in-silicon-valley-humiliation-is-a-part-of-doing-business/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/06/16/for-black-ceos-in-sil... (Published by Bloomberg news so no copyright issues)
- abustamam 6y agoSerious question: is it legal for someone not to correct an incorrect assumption? Let's say a black CEO invites his white friend to a pitch meeting as a wingman, VC says "oh great to meet you Will" assuming the white man is the CEO. And no one ever corrects him. In this way, perhaps the company would be able to access funds not normally provided to black folks. The white man would probably need to be an executive of some sort (CFO maybe) and both would need to sign whatever paperwork, and only then would it become apparent to the VC who's who. It's ridiculous that I even need to ask this question, and doing this literally just steps aside the racism problem rather than addressing it, so it might cause more harm than good, but until racism is solved (possibly a multi generational shift) something like this might help some people out. I feel like this should be the plot of a short film; where the black man is revealed to be the CEO and the viewer is challenged to rethink their assumptions. If I had an ounce of creativity I'd totally make it if it doesn't already exist.
- brenschluss 6y agoThe thing is, it’s things like this that would actively hinder racism from going away - actively concealing black CEOs to VC firms would continue to have destructive consequences.
- wilsonfiifi 6y ago“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” - Buckminster Fuller.
- jmeister 6y agoAre you arguing for segregation/secession?
- KorematsuFred 6y agoThis is the sort of issues that some kind of "unconscious bias" training should help you overcome. It is really frustrating for the victim but those who are perpetuating are not racists or evil. It is a social mental conditioning that they will overcome if they realize how much damage they are doing. My wife joined an ecomm company recently. Since entire joining was remote, it was little hard for her to get onboarded with the team and her manager would assign her documentation and testing issues. Few weeks later when she told her manager that she would like to write some real code he was surprised. Because of her gender he had thought she was a tester.
- sky_rw 6y agoIt's always fascinating to me how the most liberal and progressive areas of our society are the ones who exhibit the most functional racism. This is the manifestation of the bigotry of low expectations that is so engrained in Silicon Valley. When you live your life grouping people of a certain skin color into a protected class that you the hero white person need to save, you automatically assume that every person you see of that class is of diminished status.
- danharaj 6y agoYou're sorely mistaken.
- gerland 6y agoI don't think we "need" to do anything. You are projecting some arbitral expectations on the world. Why do we need some quotas? Why people cannot be free to chose whatever they want to do with their lives? You assume that everyone is equal, that's your mistake. Once you take that out of the equasion, you might realize that people have different goals and aspirations. The male/female ratio is skewed very far in favor of women in IT. You could not possibly do anything more to give women unfair advantage in recruitment, maybe except outright banning male applicants (which a few of the major players were accused of). As a guy who had to scrape by to live through college I find it sexist and racist when someone makes claims like that. I was erning aroung 500$ per month getting every possible scholarship and benefit I could, while you could get 1000$ for having a vagina alone. Bonus points if you were born with some additional melatonin in your skin. I'm looking at the generation of white males in their 30 and it is just sad. What was done to their dreams and opportunities was a crime. Years of promoting every possible minority and imaginary gender possible lead to nothing but a waste of intellectual potential. People that otherwise would contribute something meaningful to the society are doing manual labor instead. It is truly a lost generation. I'm strongly rooting for China, because even a communist regime knows better than to do something like that. It is just inhuman.
- wwright 6y agoSo you are saying that although black people are around 1/8 of the US population, we should hire only around 2% black people, because otherwise we would be wasting more intelligent people on manual labor? You realize the implicit argument there, right?
- gerland 6y agoI say you should hire the people who hve the skills and do the work, not trying to hire 1/8 blacks just because. If I would guess, I would say that the reason for that disparity is the average economical status and environment. I've lived among the white trash long enough to know that most of them won't go anywhere, and it's not entirely their own fault. Why should a struggling white kid have it any different than a black kid? That's just pure racism. Trying to make every poverty stricken black successful will have the same effect that trying to elevate all the poor in every other race. Why should it be reserved for some special priviledge group? Don't put words in my mouth, you sound like CNN "journalist".
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]