
Navigating the Venture World as a Black VC - ericzass
https://dot.la/black-venture-capital-2646196848.html
======
aphextron
>'I Don't Live in a World Where Fairness is an Option'

This sums it up perfectly. So many times I am asked what I think of all this
as a black person in tech. I don't think anything of it. It simply is how
things are. You can either live with that chip on your shoulder, or learn the
skills to navigate life with the cards you were dealt and deal with it. There
is no other option, and how you feel about it is irrelevant. Some people are
born with physical disabilities or mental handicaps. It's no different. Should
we live in a world without racism? Of course. But we should also live in a
world without war, poverty, and disease as well. It's a part of the human
condition.

~~~
cal5k
Well said.

I'm not black, but I always frame it this way when I think about the problem:
if I had children, what message would I want to convey to them to maximize
their chances of success in life?

Life is difficult, there are lots of injustices in the world, but there is
zero sense obsessing over that which you cannot control. Focus on being the
best human possible and the world will take notice.

~~~
gns24
So you're basically saying black people should just accept racism is a thing
and move on?

If people can, good for them. If not, I don't feel in any position to tell
people that obsessing over injustices that I'm not experiencing makes zero
sense.

~~~
aphextron
>"So you're basically saying black people should just accept racism is a thing
and move on?"

What is the alternative?

That's the point. I, as a single individual, can't spend my extremely finite
time and resources howling at the moon and railing against a monolithic
machine that cares nothing for justice or humanity. I can only try to live my
life as effectively as possible within the bounds of our current reality. The
civil rights movement won us equality under the law. But expecting the same
tactics to result in social equality is a pipe dream.

~~~
munchbunny
> But expecting the same tactics to result in social equality is a pipe dream.

Someone had to try, and someone has to try. Same tactics, or different
tactics, whatever. Try things, do more of what works. We have to split our
time between ourselves and our communities.

Growing up as an immigrant Chinese person, "life is unfair, so you have to try
harder than the white person" was what I was taught and what I did. It worked
for my parents, to an incomplete extent, and it worked for my cohort of
immigrants/ABC's, to a somewhat greater extent.

However, that same community today is wrestling with the problem that without
unified political action in local/state/national politics, it won't get much
better than being a model minority, which is to say it's a more privileged
existence than being black is (sorry for the bluntness), but you're still
acutely aware of your Asian-ness in other people's eyes and when it works
against you, such as being co-opted into the message of "well why don't
[minority group] just work harder like [model minority group]?" as a
distraction from actually talking about addressing root causes.

~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
> it won't get much better than being a model minority, which is to say it's a
> more privileged existence than being black is (sorry for the bluntness),

As an Asian, I actually think that Asians are more privileged than White
people. As a group we earn more, have better life expectancy, and have to deal
with less historical baggage. If you search for it, any group can find areas
where they feel they are being mistreated, but on the whole, your parents’
strategy has succeeded spectacularly. I think this is in part, because it was
a win-win strategy. We were able to make our lives better without making
another race feel bad or making their lives worse. Nobody had to lose for us
to win.

~~~
rovolo
US Immigration policy prefers high socioeconomic migrants (after the 1965
immigration reform bill). Since most Asians have immigrated to the US since
1965, of course Asians as a group will have higher economic status than the
average American. The question is whether you have better outcomes
_controlling for parental socioeconomic status_.

Census Date: Total US Asian population

1970: 1.5M

1980: 3.5M

1990: 7.2M

2000: 10.6M

2010: 15.2M

2020 (proj): 19.7M

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_d...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_demographics_of_the_United_States#Historical_data_for_all_races_and_for_Hispanic_origin_\(1610%E2%80%932010\))

~~~
analyst74
I remember there was an Soc119 class discussed that after controlling for
education, asians actually make less than both whites and blacks.

If you pick the cream of the crop from Asia, they are going to do well even if
you kick them down a peg.

------
vmception
> Some black people assimilate into white culture while others push toward
> perfectionism in order to overcome negative stereotypes. Others ignore the
> microaggressions, despite the sting believing the merit of their work is the
> most important metric of success.

This has been my experience, balancing everything that is happening with
"maybe these microaggressions had nothing to do with race, like all the people
on hackernews and linkedin would say" or maybe thats naivete as this is the
exact experience other people that look like me are saying happens

"Kind of odd how these mormon investors never look at me during this entire
meeting of three people"

"Kind of odd how I keep finding out that my business partners wrote themselves
large stakes of newly formed companies, and I have to perform an arbitrary set
of work over an arbitrary set of time to maybe get diluted in later"

 _maybe its just me [and a predictable experience echoed by people that look
like me]_

On another note, which I think this article gets wrong or doesn't factor in
well with the acknowledgement of assimilation, it assumes people of color in
the space are trying to service "communities of color". It isn't factoring in
the idea that they are playing the same world-changing moonshot game as
everyone else, a game that doesn't care about nuances of any particular
country's demographics. People are the same and want the spoils of this
industry, thats the key thing to remember. Some people have their own idea of
addressing underserved communities or paying it forward to people that look
like them, but most people are aiming to perpetuate the industry itself.

~~~
qPM9l3XJrF
I don't mean to minimize your experiences at all. But since you mentioned eye
contact, I thought I might as well mention that as someone who suffers from
social awkwardness and mild OCD, one result of all the societal discussion
around racism is that being around black people often makes me feel very
awkward. Like, I have compulsive thoughts about whether I am thinking any
racist thoughts right now, or saying racist things, or doing some other
microaggression, and that results in some mild social awkwardness / difficulty
with eye contact, and difficulty relaxing socially. Which ironically might
very well be interpreted as racism :( Again, I don't mean to say that racism
is not a thing or anything like that (or even that I myself am never actually
racist haha--that's hard to know, that's the issue). Just wanted to add this
to your list of hypotheses to consider when you're trying to explain whatever
it is that you see.

~~~
vmception
Sure, thanks for responding, so I didn't say racist or racism or make any
conclusion, and that was on purpose!

I left it as open ended as my actual thoughts are, but acknowledge that it
would be beneficial to factor in what so many people that look like me are
saying are shared experiences.

Yes, I can tell when people are consciously trying to patch their behavior
around black people (or other groups), distinct from being actually
insensitive and distinct from treating them like people they are actually
comfortable around.

You really don't have to feel like you are stepping on eggshells, even in your
explanation here. I would call that awkwardness you described as a
microaggression because it is an experience that shouldn't be a part of my
daily experience, and it shouldn't be something you have to worry about, but
in this case it would come from you towards me. So I wouldn't interpret that
as "racism", but a _peculiarity_ that is definitely an unnecessary part of the
black experience. These kinds of things affect the group decision on whether a
candidate passed the "culture fit", and a whole host of other things that
ultimately prevent that qualified person from being around everyone else more,
or getting into a position over them, simply because the people approving it
are uncomfortable for meta reasons. So I think it is important for you to
address that and notice it in others as well.

~~~
qPM9l3XJrF
>You really don't have to feel like you are stepping on eggshells, even in
your explanation here.

Thanks, that's reassuring.

>I would call that awkwardness you described as a microaggression because it
is an experience that shouldn't be a part of my daily experience, and it
shouldn't be something you have to worry about, but in this case it would come
from you towards me.

I agree that it isn't fair to you, and that causes me to develop meta-OCD
about it, lol. I feel kinda bad even writing these comments, because I don't
wanna be in a position where I'm unfairly making it into your problem to an
even greater degree.

You can call it a microaggression if you like, but I think that will make the
problem worse on my end, because I'll obsess over it even more. I read a self-
help book by a psychologist on this OCD stuff, and one of the things it
mentioned is that it is helpful for other people to make light of your
condition, even cracking jokes about it. If they act really concerned, that
ends up validating the compulsive behavior, according to the author.

My secret wish would be to make a deal with the black people I meet that they
will agree to privately bring it up with me if they feel I'm actually being
racist so we can have a (hopefully two-way) discussion about that, and then
knowing that I trust them to do that, that might help me relax and not worry
as much. I think a big part of the problem is the fear that I'm being racist
without knowing it. Of course, privately confronting people about their racism
may not always be the optimal strategy. But it could be an interesting
experiment to offer to make that deal, if you sense the other person would
want it.

The reason I think it's better for the discussion to be two-way is because
like a lot of engineers, I also have something of a compulsive need for the
world to make sense and be a logical place. So if you were to tell me that I
said X racist thing, but I don't initially see how it was racist, I feel a
need to understand the root of our disagreement the same way I try to
understand why there's a bug in a program. If I don't feel like I can do that,
then that comes back to the original thing of me not feeling like I can be my
authentic self. We don't necessarily need to see eye-to-eye on everything, but
in an ideal world I'd like to get to the point where whatever disagreements
remain are ones where you find my authentic opinion on the subject to be
tolerable.

>These kinds of things affect the group decision on whether a candidate passed
the "culture fit"

For what it's worth, back when my company was hiring a lot, I was very
conscious of this kinda thing. I'm almost certain I ended up giving women and
underrepresented minorities higher culture fit ratings overall. Partially
because I wanted to account for any biases on my end, but it also gives me
warm fuzzy feelings to have an (almost always positive) recruiting interaction
with someone when there is so much BS on the internet saying that it should be
hard for us to get along due to demographic characteristics. As cheesy as it
may sound, at the end of the day we are all human beings, and if we can just
see that in each other, I think it goes a long way. And once I've gotten past
this kinda stuff with someone, it frequently forms the basis for a great
friendship, in my experience.

\---

This is more of a side note, but as I was writing the above it occurred to me
that in some cases there might be a useful analogy to be made between racism
and mental illness. The traditional view of mental illness has been that if
you suffered from some kind of mental illness, that represented a moral
defect, and it was your responsibility to suck it up and do better. But
recently there has been a more progressive view of mental illness that says we
should treat mental illness as a disease just like any other disease, making
use of evidence-based treatments, and only frame it as a moral defect if this
framing has been shown to be an effective evidence-based treatment. (I don't
know if moralizing actually ever ends up being an effective treatment--the one
thing that comes to mind is Alcoholics Anonymous for addiction, but I don't
know how evidence-based it is.) In any case, it might be useful / productive
to separate out the question of whether racism is morally acceptable from the
question of whether framing it as a moral defect will be a productive
treatment for a particular person or situation. This is probably very person /
situation-dependent, but as I tried to communicate above, at least for me, I
suspect this kinda "moral defect" framing, especially when applied forcefully,
can sometimes make the problem worse.

~~~
vmception
These are good points, I really want to break down everything one by one here,
but you identified the root of it which is that people don't want to be
treated differently. Black people, like everyone in America, want to exchange
time for food and shelter, accumulate wealth and resources, contribute to the
growth of the infrastructure.

The only reason you should be concerned that you have to patch your behavior
is because your normal banter with friends includes insensitive stuff! If
there is a genuine interest in being actively anti-racist, then call out your
peers that want to bee-line conversations into frustrations about minorities.
Or that are always looking for excuses to use the N word because it sounds
cool (or trying to be actually racist). When - logic aside - you know
normalizing that grammar would require constant patching around other people.

Another thing that underlies this code switching, for a lot of people, is an
irrational fear of being beat up any black person in the vicinity, or _even
worse_ "cancelled". For the former, I consider that an entirely racist
assumption, people don't want a record or a ruined day over some slip up in
grammar or a troll. For the latter, try not to do it on twitter, you'll be
fine.

So if you need to, you should consider patching your default conversational
behavior so that you don't have to patch it around black people. If you don't
need to that, then just assume it's all in your head, just like I assume its
all in my head when different mormons are being awkward to me specifically
despite knowing what their religion teaches about people of color. Everyone is
just trying to go about their day without wondering why anyone is being
awkward around them exclusively.

~~~
qPM9l3XJrF
>Black people, like everyone in America, want to exchange time for food and
shelter, accumulate wealth and resources, contribute to the growth of the
infrastructure.

Right on.

As to the rest... I don't use the n word and I can't remember the last time I
heard a friend of mine use it (if they ever have). I'm not afraid of being
beat up by black people--certainly not in a professional context! And yes, I'm
aware that in-person interactions are much less likely to result in
cancellation haha. So I guess I'll take your advice of just assuming that it's
in my head. It usually goes away when I spend enough time around someone
regardless.

Anyway, take it easy.

------
est31
> "I have been at network events where people don't know who I am, they
> assumed I was a random moron," he said. "They treat you like you are not in
> the room or you are some wait staff."

This reminds me of an article I read soon after Pichai became CEO of Google.
It mentioned him, freshly made CEO, attending a tech conference/fair. Despite
the Alphabet reorg and him becoming CEO going through tech news world wide a
while prior, most people didn't recognize him.

Can't find the article any more, otherwise I'd link it here.

------
thanatropism
Americans have some weird identity hangups.

I have what is now called "invisible disability". I wonder how I'd feel if my
kind had some visible mark in their face. Would I feel awkward being the only
QWERTY in the room? Would I feel especially succesful?

As it stands now I kind of feel the latter. It's a little secret, I have this
disadvantage at the starting point of the race where the referee shoots his
little gun at the sky, and yet here I am in the peloton with all the non-
disadvantaged guys.

Of course, maybe if everyone _knew_ I'd be hyper-aware of the stereotypes that
will inevitably play a part in the mental models of people with the best
intentions. But are wealthy Americans really going for stereotypes when they
see a fellow wealthy black person?

I know that the world of "invisible disability" activism is a self-defeating
whirlpool of victimization.

~~~
dang
I appreciate that you're sharing your own experience, but you can do that
without nationalistic and racial flamebait, which your comments in this
subthread unfortunately contain. I'm sure that was unintentional, but those
are the things that people are going to react to, and when that happens, we
won't end up anywhere interesting or good.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
thanatropism
Hi.

I'm willing to edit my comment (or outright delete it on my own initiative). I
can remove the "Americans...", but much of the rest of it is a comment on the
posted link, which is very much about race.

I like the way this place is run, which is to say, I trust the guidance of the
moderator team. I'm just not sure how to proceed right now. Also because
there's a downthread discussion that could be left without a referent.

Please advise.

~~~
dang
I think it's ok to leave it. The primary thing is to be more careful in the
future. When a topic is divisive, it's important to edit out provocations,
including unintentional ones, because otherwise people will react to the
provocation rather than to the substantive part of the comment, and that's how
we end up with flamewars instead of curious conversations. But I'm repeating
myself now.

~~~
pmiller2
Rather than repeating yourself, I think you need to dial down your threshold
for paternalistically stepping in to chide commenters for benign statements. I
am American, and I took no offense to the commenter's criticism of American
culture. I saw nothing nationalistic in the comment, nor was there anything
that looked remotely flamebait.

Unless I missed the initial edit that was full of swastika emojis and telling
people to "go back to their countries," or something, I'm pretty sure you just
pushed someone who was posting in good faith off this site over nothing. While
I didn't see the second or any subsequent comments, I found the initial
comment worth upvoting. I'm pretty sure you also just marginalized someone in
a vulnerable group (those with invisible disabilities) to which I also belong,
and, to which you probably do not.

As I have stated in the past, IMO, this site was far, far better when there
was little to no active moderation beyond downvoting and flagging by the
community.

------
ikeyany
The problem with keeping your head down and getting things done without
"raising a fuss" is that people will see that and assume racism isn't a
serious problem. You'll even see people here wondering what all the fuss is
about, or wondering how being black in America is any different than being
Vietnamese.

------
dang
There was a large related thread, but about CEOs rather than investors, two
days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23540162](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23540162).

------
conductr
Firstly, assume positive intent, I am not undermining the topic of racism and
rather like that we are giving the issue the proper attention and hope to see
real change.

That said, has anyone seen stats that say what is the right balance of POC
based on market realities? I work in finance, not VC, but still as a hiring
manager it’s every difficult to force diversity when the overwhelming majority
of candidates are white males. It’s a similar issue as women in tech, you have
to take a step back and look at the university systems and how a more diverse
set can be encouraged to take a finance track. Likely, there is an issue with
college in general and we need focus on why white have higher attendance rate
(no data, pure assumption). And so on. It’s a systemic issue that needs to be
addressed. You can’t always just rebalance the current diversity mix because
the inventory of qualifying candidates may not support it.

I read recently that 13% of America is black. I googled that the average BOD
is 9.2 members. To me, 1 black person in the room is about right. Granted
there are probably high number of boards with 0 blacks. But I’d be interested
to know if this is due to the above mentioned market realities. There are
certainly racism impacting the micro but maybe the macro is better than we
think?

~~~
vmception
everything you said happens and should also be a focus which I'll reply to in
another comment, the only lack of awareness here is using singular noun for
plural form

when plural you want to use color descriptors as adjectives. black people, not
"blacks", white people, not "whites".

nobody can say why, but they are not synonyms to be used interchangeably
between sentences, and will undermine your positive intent.

~~~
conductr
I'm perfect by no means and willing to learn how to change my vocabulary if
it's an issue. Grammar has always been a weakness of mine.

Why is this preferred and how would I know it's preferred (absent this
conversation)? Is it a well known faux pas or something one person on the
internet is nagging about (no offense)? In my mind, "people" is inferred. I
think this is how people talk where I live, pretty sure I hear it on the local
news/media. When I think of terms like "black college" it's inferred to be a
college that is predominately attended by black people. The college is not
literally the color black like with phrases like "white house".

Reminds me of when I was a kid and my grandpa would use the word "oriental" to
describe Chinese, Korean, Japanese. He would use worse words at times but this
was his version of the politically correct vocabulary. It was very commonly
used as a PC phrase. As I got older, I learned it wasn't really the best word
and reasons why. But it never would have been obvious to me that it was a
racist term and seen as negative to those it was meant to described.

~~~
vmception
People don't say "the gays" or "gays" or "a gay" anymore, they use it as an
adjective before a noun, and it is the same concept.

I am not sure there is any etymology to follow here, aside from the common
theme of being recognized as people.

Regarding consensus, you can try blackpeopletwitter reddit on a throwaway. you
can look at comment threads and see the reactions and facepalms when people
use the adjective as a plural noun.

People definitely say it, but not people considered aware.

------
idoby
So he gets to take other people's money, invest it and take a cut without
actually, like, having to do any actual work, but he's getting ignored at
parties?

Damn it, where the hell do I sign up?

~~~
dang
Please see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23565658](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23565658).

~~~
idoby
How is this a tangent, or flamebait? I'm just pointing out that he's literally
whining about a job I'd love to have and not seeing how lucky he is.

~~~
dang
It's a generic tangent because it changes the subject to VCs in general. It's
flamebait because it's snarky, inflammatory, and arguably also a personal
attack. Everything I said in the other comment applies to your post as well,
which is why I linked to it.

Posts like that aren't acceptable on HN, so if you'd please review
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
and stick to the rules from now on, we'd be grateful.

------
S-E-P
The idea that a VC is experiencing unfairness is a shocking revelation...

Not like a large majority of VCs are completely selfish or anything.

~~~
dang
Please don't take HN threads on generic tangents. That's in the site
guidelines: " _Eschew flamebait. Don 't introduce flamewar topics unless you
have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic
tangents._"

Nothing interesting's going to come from changing the topic to VC in general,
and certainly not if you do it snarkily and with a shallow dismissal—both of
which are also in the site guidelines, so this comment is a sort of trifecta.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
k33n
> "I have been at network events where people don't know who I am, they
> assumed I was a random moron,"

Poor millionaire. Turns out you still have to be interesting to have a good
time at a party.

