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This entire issue is crap. I am a black programmer... I have no college education, came from single family home blah blah womp womp. I have launched 10+ proj

• watty 15y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if racism in the tech industry was more towards Indians.
  • notauser 15y ago
    There's certainly a lot of dislike for working with people who have strong accents, and the most commercially successful Indian technologists I have met have been the ones with the most westernised mode of speech. Unfortunately some people take a fairly legitimate gripe (lack of easy communication) and pre-judge an entire group rather than investigating the skills and attributes of a specific individual.
    • dholowiski 15y ago
      I worked for 13 years doing phone based technical support. I can tell you that people with a strong accent are often seen as 'stupid'. I worked with several Indian co-workers and it wasn't unusual to have calls transferred to me (no accent) because people didn't want to talk to them. As a team lead I got to listen in to those calls, and it's amazing how badly one human being can treat another. There's the passive aggressive person who just keeps saying "i don't understand you". There's the person who says things like "Where am I talking to" "are you in india?" "Can I speak to someone from Canada" (we were all in Canada, same country as the callers). Then there's the people who would just rip in to the agent, questioning their intelligence, yelling at them and much more. On the other hand, we would often have people call in who had strong accents, and the tech support agents would often judge the callers as 'dumb'. I earned a reputation of being a genius, not because I was a genius but because I'd actually listen to people and try to understand them (sometimes they were hard to understand) rather than being an asshole to them. In short - it was very common for people on both ends of the phone to rationalize racisim with a hard to understand accent.
      • tibbon 15y ago
        To a certain degree, what you're saying is even true among people in the US from different regions here. Put someone with a deep southern mountain accent and someone with a Brooklyn accent on the phone and they'll feel at odd with each other. Surveyed afterward, they will both probably feel the other is stupid and didn't understand them on simple things. I myself remember my first experience with someone at a call center, who I can only assume wasn't in the US. I was calling Network Solutions in high school about a domain registration. The person on the phone I recall as having an Indian accent, which I didn't mind so much, but I did feel at odd with them when I needed to spell my first name (David) out to them using the NATO phonetic alphabet. It just struck me as so incredibly odd at the time that someone would potentially mishear or misspell the name David. However, I quickly realized that it was simply a cultural difference. I myself would probably get a common Indian name like "Sita" wrong. Was that Seeta? Seta? Seata? Site? Its only 4 letters, but I could screw it up for sure. I've since been more understanding of people at support lines. Just as people often say that racism is ignorance, I do have to feel that this wasn't me being against anyone from India (as I actually knew very few people who maintained much Indian culture, language or accent where I lived at the time), but being ignorant and impatient with what was normal for them vs what was normal for me. Thankfully I learned.
    • jhamburger 15y ago
      I'm not blaming them, racism is always unfair to the recipient but on projects I've worked on Indians have done absolutely nothing to combat it. By that I mean, they hang out together, they go to lunch together, they basically avoid any unnecessary communication with non-Indians. I ask them to go to lunch and I get a reaction like "um, we kinda go to lunch together." I understand that there are a lot of cultural barriers there, but people are naturally very social and fair or not, they aren't going to have as much trust and faith in people that they don't have a social relationship with.
      • FraaJad 15y ago
        Well, I can see that happening. Even within "Indian" groups, people tend to group themselves with people from same state/language. People from some states are known for almost hostile exclusion of people from other states, including neighbouring ones. I speak this from experience as an Indian living in the US. As regards to lunch, many Indians are very selective about eating habits (for religious reasons). That prevents them from eating in meat-'contaminated' areas. None of this excuses them from socialising however.. But, socialising with people you already know is easier than making new connections. Which is just lazy, IMO.
      • JoeAltmaier 15y ago
        I've taken the care to invite foreign engineers to dinner at my home at each job I take. In each case the comment is the same - "This is the first American home I've been invited into." Never mind they were 2, 5 or 10 years working in America. So don't blame them entirely.
        • Kuiper 15y ago
          I think that this may in part be due to the fact that the idea of "inviting someone over for dinner" is beginning to erode away culturally. Some of my best friends have never been inside my home, and visa versa. I think this is a large part of why establishments like bars, skating rinks, coffee houses, LAN cafes, and court clubs are so big in most of the cities I've lived in: a lot of their business is driven (I suspect) by the fact that they provide a neutral socializing ground, more than the actual service that they provide. When I think of the idea of "taking someone to dinner," the idea of bringing them to my house never really crosses my mind. I've never lived out of a city with a population of less than 100,000 so I suspect that the social dynamic might be somewhat different there.
• Causification 15y ago
  Agreed. Unless it's supported by a legal framework, racism is a self-defeating phenomenon. Racist individuals deprive themselves of the benefits offered by the group toward which they are racist, therefore making themselves less likely to succeed. If anything, a person or group of people being racist should alert you, the observant seizer of the day, to an under-utilized resource and/or market niche. So long as big brother isn't enforcing it; another person's stupidity can always be turned to your advantage.
  • phillmv 15y ago
    >Unless it's supported by a legal framework, racism is a self-defeating phenomenon. It's more complicated than that. Substitute legal framework with 'cultural normative behaviour' and we end up at a different position. I just highly doubt there's a lack of women or black people physically capable of being engineers.
    • Symmetry 15y ago
      Companies doing discrimination arbitrage unfortunately don't do anything to help minorities who are discouraged from going into certain professions in the first place.
    • qeorge 15y ago
      I think the GP's point still stands. Smart companies will have an advantage recruiting these engineers, because they have less competition, and so they will win. (Corollary: the quality of the team is the strongest predictor of success). I agree. Anyone who would hire a worse employee because they don't like the other's {race,color,nationality,gender,sexual preference,...} is an idiot, and I wouldn't bet on their success. That said, we definitely need some short term solutions too. "Evolution" isn't particularly helpful to those being discriminated against right now.
    • adrianN 15y ago
      The lack of women or black people in engineering isn't proof for their discrimination though. It could be that they simply choose to pursue different professions because their upbringing is different.
• swah 15y ago
  This would make a nice blog post...
• ww 15y ago
  The racism that I've come in contact with (in corporate settings at least) is towards people from India. Not people born here and of Indian descent, but people from India with Indian culture. It would probably be better to call it "culturism" or bias against a culture instead of racism. When you go on a contract and you see 20 employees 50-80% of them being from India and 0% of them in management or even team lead positions, that's an indicator. It's an even bigger indicator when all of said employees have been there for 5-10 years or longer and are willing to manage. The absolute smoking gun is when current the managers bring zero to the table (completely incompetent). These positions in large companies are often obviously filled with friends with no merit, technical know how, or leadership ability. As a side note I'm black as well, and I feel I know these biases when I see them.
  • beachgeek 15y ago
    I am speechless. This has been the story of my life, and I am stunned that you know exactly whats going on.
  • rorrr 15y ago
    Extremely precise description of every large old company I've worked at.
  • iuguy 15y ago
    It's like you've just described every major government contract site I've been on in the past 3 years.
  • Retric 15y ago
    I work at a large 20+K consulting firm and there is exactly one Indian on my current project, the female Indian project manager. None on the one before that, and before that one the project manager. It's a diverse world out there and while people blame persistent racism my first boss was a black man with a degree from standard and there is simple not a lot of people in that category. Not just for economic reasons but also because your talking about a smaller overall population. There are many funnels in immigration and education but talking about them like they shape people is missing the point. It's a selection process and the kind of people that can jump though the right hoops are the people that make it to the other side. In 20 years you will see plenty of Indian middle management but you can expect to see yet another round of 'glass sealing' debate not because people can't get their but because so few parents knew how to set that trajectory in motion.
• deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
• technoslut 15y ago
  This is about the article which, if true, is about racism. If you're alluding that there is no racism, I disagree with you. I will, however, say that there is far less in the tech community than the world at large. >I have no college education, came from single family home blah blah womp womp. If you have no college education, I do respect your will power. But just because someone is willing to pay you because your work is superior to others does not mean racism does not exist. I am OK with what NewME is doing. It is giving young black entrepreneurs a chance that was never afforded to them. There isn't enough coders who're black so I would like them start at a younger age than a mature adult. As an aside, I grew up being of mixed ethnicity (primarily black/white) while going to an all-boy mostly white Catholic school while living in a mostly black neighborhood, growing up poor, and had racist comments thrown at me constantly from both blacks and whites.
• shareme 15y ago
  In corporate settings some of them banks I have come into contact with racism, sexism and age-ism against Blacks, Indians(both from India and from Native America), Jews, Mexicans, etc..the point of Feld's piece was that its alive in the infrastructure and only by shining the light of day on it will make it go away..
  • ww 15y ago
    Banks are another subject entirely: www.dartmouth.edu/~blnchflr/papers/finalrestat.pdf "We conduct an econometric analysis of loan outcomes by race and find that black- owned small businesses are about twice as likely to be denied credit even after controlling for differences in credit-worthiness and other factors."
• Rariel 15y ago
  You are the exception and not the rule. It's great when things work out as they did for you but it's not the norm. Just because this has been your experience as a black programmer doesn't mean it is that of all others. I also don't think its true that "This entire issue is being exploited to get attention for Angela Benton and her new accelerator." This issue would exist regardless of whether the NewMe accelerator existed, Benton is just bringing some press to the subject.
  • eddie_the_head 15y ago
    Hardly, I am another black programmer and I've had the fortune of working with other black programmers, whites, Asians, Polynesians, Hispanics and more. He is not the exception. Racism is just not a thing in the high-tech industry. If there are any negative vibes towards a person because of their background, it's only ever because of their "foreign-ness"; if for example they might have an accent. Even this is quickly brushed off wherever I've worked. High-tech doesn't care what color your skin is or where you grew up. The best hackers I've been honored to share a repository with have been from countries I've never been to in the former USSR and South America, all of varying ethnicities. This is a false issue that is being propagated by someone to garner attention to their accelerator. This whole idea of a race-based fund for high-tech is repulsive to me. If there are black entrepreneurs out there in high-tech, what is wrong with applying through YCombinator and other established incubator programs if they need the coaching and funding to go to market? It's insulting to think that blacks cannot compete for whatever reason in a normal fund and have to go make their own one and then blame it on perceived "racism". Big cop-out card there.
    • j45 15y ago
      Maybe, brown / "arab" are the new blacks to get stares and all that.
      • eddie_the_head 15y ago
        I'm actually one of these brown / "arab" new blacks you speak of incidentally (I'm from Algeria) and I haven't had this problem. But I do not have an accent and I've sort of "integrated" well within American culture. I can see where someone who is not so well-integrated and comes with an accent might see some trouble, but if they can code with quality and work in teams well, all that goes out the window.
• JoeAltmaier 15y ago
  ...and there is a terrible corrosive effect when perceived minorities are given a 'leg up' - that they are not really deserving/talented. Whether part of the hidden neurological bias mentioned, or even true, it means other capable people who happen to belong to that minority get a shadow cast on their accomplishments. {German-austrian 4th-generation Iowan.}
• joebadmo 15y ago
  I have never encountered racism, therefore there is no racism. And anyone who thinks they're being discriminated against is a lazy whiner.
  • ellyagg 15y ago
    Of course that's not the claim being made by your parent. The argument is about how widespread it is and its effects. I'm pretty sure most people would find his story strong evidence for one side of the argument, assuming they believe it. I'm also pretty sure most people will choose to believe it exactly to the extent it agrees with their predetermined bias. As a white male living in a rural area as a kid and in metropolitan areas as an adult, and having a black best friend, my anecdotal evidence supports a more limited effect than is commonly claimed in pop culture. That is, to the extent that there is willful, systemic, malicious racism, an individual's self-reliance (why this is becoming a dirty word in our culture, I do not know) is significantly more powerful. I respect people who think the system is flawed and want to dedicate their lives to making it more ideal, but otherwise I think it's healthier to believe your success comes from your own decisions. That's not literally true for ANY of us, but it's best to believe it. It's similar to the recent study which showed that children do best when they believe success is more dependent on how hard you work rather than what your IQ is...which is not the same as it actually being true that success is more dependent on how hard you work rather than what your IQ is.
    • joebadmo 15y ago
      This entire issue is crap. ...some BS issue that has no value. My only advice to "black" and other entrepreneurs is shut up, go code and make something awesome. This entire issue is being exploited to get attention for Angela Benton and her new accelerator. It's easy to tout self-reliance when you're a white male. It's easy to overlook all the tiny advantages you get that accumulate in an invisible, insidious way. It's easy to see people bringing up the issue as whining. It's hard to understand what it is to be someone else, what it means to struggle with others' perceptions every waking moment of every day in such a pervasive manner as to be incorporated into your very identity. It's hard. But we should all try. Sometimes, self-reliance means putting your head down and doing the best work that you can do. Other times, it means finding other people with a common experience and taking collective action to actively change your circumstances. Sometimes it looks like a minority-focused startup accelerator. Sometimes it looks like the Civil Rights Movement. If it looks like whining, probably the best thing to do is to try to refrain from meta-whining, and deeply consider whether the issue could be a real one, even though your own experience is different.
• tuxidomasx 15y ago
  I would say that there could very well be strategic advantages to being part of a "black" incubator. Peer encouragement/validation, communication, shared experiences, etc. As I understand it, culture is a big part of any startup, and a culturally-oriented incubator could attract people who mesh well together. I am also a black programmer, yet my experience has likely been a bit different. I've found considerable social and professional benefits to working and networking with people who look like me.
  • wickedchicken 15y ago
    > culture is a big part of any startup, and a culturally-oriented incubator could attract people who mesh well together. This reminds me of Ellen Spertus's argument that certain women might get a better CS education from an all-girls school. The idea is an all-girl environment completely removes such impulses as "I don't want to answer this question and be 'that girl'" or any external signals that link being female with being non-technical.
• loso 15y ago
  Because you have never experienced any racial problems in the high tech field means that there are none? Everyone else is lying about it? Projects like the NewME accelerator exists because even if you "make something awesome" in a normal environment, getting attention is hard. You add to that being a minority and the road gets a little rougher. Not in every case but in a lot of them. This isn't about black and white. This is about humans having natural prejudices even if they don't intend to. Nobody is claiming that the valley or the high tech field in general is full of racists. In fact the opposite is true. It is probably one of the more progressive job fields you will find. But that does not mean there is not a problem. There are biases in the field and one of them includes racial. Pointing it out does not mean everyone in the field is racist. They are just presenting one more problem for geeks to try and solve.
• JulianMiller520 15y ago
  The sheer arrogance. "It is ok people. I'm black and, speaking for all minorities, I haven't experienced it so every other minority is a lazy liar" I'm black as well and though I haven't experienced racism in tech directly I understand why NewMe is a great option for some people. To the poster I would say respect other people's journeys and experiences.