
For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business - saeedjabbar
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-16/black-lives-matter-highlights-adversity-facing-black-tech-ceos
======
ibudiallo
I 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.

~~~
js2
I 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.

~~~
freddie_mercury
> 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.

You would be surprised at how pervasive and long-lasting majority privilege
can be. I live in Southeast Asia where foreigners are a very distinct minority
and they experience all kinds of hardships. Difficulties making (local)
friends, difficulties dealing with government bureaucracies, difficulties
finding "their" food. Very few of them ever gain any empathy from it.

On one occasion I was at a bar talking with a German guy telling me about how
there are some areas in Germany where you get off the train and it "doesn't
even feel like Germany". All the immigrants dress differently, talk
differently, eat different food. They don't even try to fit in!

Meanwhile, he hasn't learned the local language, has no local friends, lives
in an apartment building that is mostly German expats. He actually said "I
love my building because there are so many Germans." He doesn't even like the
local food; I've never seen him eat it.

You'd think the entire experience would build empathy. "Hey, living in a
foreign country as a minority is really tough. No wonder they like to hang out
around their own people. I did it too!" But nope. Completely oblivious.

~~~
nicolas_t
Anecdotal but I've lived in different Asian countries for the last 15 years
and my experience is that expats who live in compounds geared toward their
nationality, never eat local food and never bothered to learn the local
language tend to also be very racist. You'll hear them non-stop complaining
about the locals or making sarcastic comments about them, about them having no
manners, not speaking English properly (ironic considering) etc...

And often enough, they'll say things like, "you know how
Chinese/Malaysians/... are" as if that statement actually made sense...

I've even heard one express profound admiration for a British family that had
been involved in the Opium war and had been in HK for a long time. He admired
them for staying "pure" despite staying so long in HK...

It's really anecdotal but I've rarely seen a more toxic and racist culture
than the Western expat communities in countries I've lived in...

~~~
christophilus
Why were they living there, if they despised those cultures? (Genuine
question, not rhetorical.)

~~~
pawelk
There are many possible reasons. For example lower cost of living, retiring in
a place that has both lower costs and perfect weather or moving for business
reasons only etc etc.

It happens even on a very micro scale when people move from cities to villages
or the other way around. I quit a city life and moved to a village (~1200
inhabitants) but I also changed as many habits as I could to enjoy this life
style. I met a lot of people early on and got to know them, developed some
friendships, helped out and got some help. They are (edit: I would dare to
say: we are, I feel part f the community now) very open, honest and inviting
if you are as well. However there are people who move purely because property
is way cheaper, but they want to maintain their city lifestyle and then try to
contest the aspects of rural living that interfere with their idyllic vision
of peaceful and silent sanctuary away from all civilization. There are noises
and smells, tractors and cattle. Infrastructure is not up to par. Shops close
early. And, worst of all, some treat the locals as uneducated dirty mass that
is below their middle-class level. They tend to isolate and only seek company
of other "expats". And in consequence are treated as suspicious, or even
unwanted, element by the locals. It builds tensions and happens on the scale
of ~50km between a village and the nearest city. On international or
intercontinental scale it is probably amplified by orders of magnitude.

------
darth_avocado
For 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.

~~~
sfj
Did 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?

~~~
isatty
His clothes or demeanor can’t possible be the same for n > 100, but his race
sure is.

Let’s face it, the TSA blatantly discriminates against race and it’s not a
secret.

~~~
Kiro
Oh, but it can. I used to have dreadlocks and wear saggy clothes and I was
randomly selected each and every time.

------
DevX101
Some 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
> 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
Very 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.

------
busterarm
I 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
Did 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
It'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.

------
remote_phone
There 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
Asian 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
I 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.

~~~
1123581321
There is a somewhat popular, entirely legal version of that created by western
companies hiring outsourcing companies for different functions.

~~~
cheez
haha you're 100% right.

------
hn_throwaway_99
I 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.

~~~
GaryNumanVevo
I'm skeptical about Robin Diangelo, I read her book a few months ago, and it
only seems to be an advertisement for her services as an anti-racist
instructor. Her entire argument frames race relations within the context of
the workplace which is problematic because her approach is coercive, not
educational. It's more a guide on "how not to get fired for being racist" than
anything. There are much better books for foundational education about race.

Even within her book she claims that no amount of training will solve the
issue, it seems that "White Fragility" is just another way for White people to
tamp down the anxiety of race relations in the United States, rather than take
any meaningful action towards changing it.

If your goal is to truly understand the Black american experience, it's best
to start with actual Black authors. The House That Race Built by Wahneema
Lubiano is a great set of essays about race and class structures.

~~~
greenhatglack
There's a lot of money to be made in "anti-racism" and "gender-science",
especially in tax-heavy countries. No one ever dares to question it, and it's
"good" causes that could use some of the workers income.

I'll be contrarian and recommend Thomas Sowell's "Black Rednecks and White
Liberals" instead.

~~~
jakelazaroff
_> No one ever dares to question it, and it's "good" causes that could use
some of the workers income._

Questioning those things is basically mainstream conservative discourse.
You’re questioning them _right now_.

~~~
greenhatglack
Right, the last guy to do that, got fired from Google.

~~~
tropdrop
Damore worked at Google, i.e. in the Bay Area. The Bay Area has a certain
political bent (left), and running counter to it has real consequences.

But other places in the country have a different political bent (right).
Chick-fil-A's anti-LGBT stance _actually increased its sales_ (for a time,
anyway). [1]

You can see this effect play out similarly when Trump says something that
rankles the Twitters of Silicon Valley and New York, but which gets him even
bigger approval ratings in the red states. All this to say - your points might
feel like activism in the Bay Area, but that doesn't make the above poster's
claim that it's mainstream conservative discourse false.

1 - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick-fil-
A_and_LGBT_people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick-fil-A_and_LGBT_people)

------
ChrisMarshallNY
I 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.

------
FilterSweep
This 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)

------
0zymandias
It 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
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.

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
> 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
My argument is that history matters. You're welcome to argue otherwise.

~~~
nitwit005
That'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.

~~~
charlesu
> That'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.

Then name the events.

I happen to think that slavery shaped American culture and American history. I
find it improbable that a country would have race-based chattel slavery for
several centuries but no significant cultural baggage. If that were the case,
why then did the South fight Reconstruction? What was the purpose of Jim Crow?
Those were concerted efforts to undermine the freedom of black people in
particular. If there were no baggage, why didn't everyone just let bygones be
bygones?

> Europeans had no issue looking down on blacks before they had the idea to
> import them to the new world as slaves

Even if that were true, it would not negate my claim. Europeans could have
generally "looked down on blacks" before and then created specific slavery-
justifying stereotypes about blacks as slavery became profitable.

> Europe adopted similar attitudes toward blacks with no slaves present

There were slaves in Europe. In fact, the British empire didn't abolish
slavery until 1833. But even if there weren't slaves in Europe, that would not
have precluded intercultural transmission of negative stereotypes about black
people. There was little black slavery in Asia, but you'll find many of the
same stereotypes about black people there. Countries don't exist in a vacuum.

~~~
nitwit005
> Then name the events.

I didn't claim to know the answer, just that your claims lacked support.

Of course slavery shaped American history, and thus its culture, but step back
and imagine it never happened. Let's say the first blacks arrived in the US in
1990.

I'd still expect a similar level of racism toward blacks, because that's true
globally. Even people in somewhere like rural China who have never met a black
person are likely to look down on them.

Some of the Southern goofiness would be gone like you point out, but overall
I'd unfortunately expect a remarkable similar situation.

------
dang
This 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&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20follow-
up&sort=byDate&type=comment)

[2]
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20repetition&sort=byDate&type=comment)

[3]
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22significant%20new%20information%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)

~~~
luckylion
> 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.

~~~
wbronitsky
> b) it's the seven billionth "minorities in tech" story in the past month

I would urge people to stop and question that if they are tired of the
"billion"s of stories about BIPOC, what must BIPOC be feeling about their
systemic erasure from many facets of our society, including journalism and
entrepreneurship. This article allows us to think about and discuss those
issues.

The article is not hard to believe, is one of substance that I find
interesting, and the content of the comment section is not the only arbiter of
what should go on Hacker News.

I would suggest that Occam's Razor is a better tool here; a small number of
people who want to silence the idea the article presents are trying to silence
it.

~~~
olivermarks
What's BIPOC?

~~~
quadrifoliate
As a less rhetorical answer, that might help some people if not the OP – as an
Asian man in America, I have to worry about people making stupid jokes about
my perceived culture, but usually not about getting the police called on me
and being shot dead because I'm examining a BB gun that is _on sale at
Walmart_ [1] (sometimes, there are exceptions [2]).

BIPOC puts this group of people (Black and Indigenous) as a separate group
before POC, since they face these challenges of simply surviving in society
while doing what most of the "rest of us" consider normal activities. At first
I was puzzled about why indigenous people were included, but then realized,
for example, that Native Americans are killed in police encounters at a higher
rate than any other ethnic group [3].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_John_Crawford_III](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_John_Crawford_III)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sureshbhai_Patel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sureshbhai_Patel)
(it's sobering to note that even in this case, Patel had the police called on
him because someone thought he was Black)

[3] [https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/10/us/native-lives-
matter/index....](https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/10/us/native-lives-
matter/index.html)

~~~
throwaway711477
Doesn't the "POC" term promote the idea that "people of color" have some sort
of shared interests? Yet, is that always true?

Person A is an upper-middle class Indian. They study software engineering at
university in India. They immigrate to the United States and get a job working
as a software engineer in Silicon Valley.

Person B is a working class African-American. Nobody in their family has ever
been to university. They work in a service job and live in the suburbs of
Atlanta.

What do A and B actually have in common? It seems to me, probably not very
much. Their life experiences are very different. A lives a much more
privileged life than B. Probably, A actually has more in common with, and more
commonality of interests, with their Caucasian American colleagues than with
B. Given that, doesn't labelling them both as "POC" obscure more than it
reveals?

It also completely ignores the problem that India has with anti-African racism
and violence, see e.g – [https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/24/the-harsh-
reality-of-be...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/24/the-harsh-reality-of-
being-african-in-india-race-violence-college-students/) – something of which
person A may of course be personally entirely innocent, but then again maybe
not. If anything, I think the term "POC" is deeply Western-centric (and even
US-centric), and presumes that racism and racial conflict is always whites-
against-everyone else, when in the wider world it often isn't. (Africans in
India, Uighurs and Tibetans in China–and, I think the case of China shows,
trying to blame European colonialism for non-Western racism doesn't always
work. Or, again, consider how Japan treated Koreans.)

I think the term BIPOC is potentially problematic in that it presents African-
American and Native American interests as being more aligned than maybe they
actually are. What is the foundational story of US history? The New York
Times' 1619 Project presents it as being the Atlantic slave trade. Why that,
and not the dispossession of Native Americans? Many African-Americans (and
even many Caucasian Americans) seem to want to privilege the African-American
narrative over the Native American narrative. Are Native Americans okay with
that? I'm sure at least some are not. But lumping them together as "BIPOC"
serves to obscure, even erase, these tensions.

(Throwaway because, I hope people can appreciate my comments are an attempt to
approach these issues thoughtfully, but in today's climate one has to be very
careful what one says.)

~~~
thex10
> Doesn't the "POC" term promote the idea that "people of color" have some
> sort of shared interests?

Think highlight rather than promote. Think shared experience rather than
shared interest. No, not identical experience, but think overlapping parts of
a venn diagram. A relevant example in that overlap, assumed criminality, is
mentioned in the very comment you are replying to.

And sure, it's probably very Western-centric and doesn't encapsulate the
complicated relations amongst many different races, nationalities, and
ethnicities. Not sure why one would expect a single phrase to accomplish such.

> I think the term BIPOC is potentially problematic in that it presents
> African-American and Native American interests as being more aligned than
> maybe they actually are.

Do you have a similar issue with the LGBT framing?

~~~
throwaway711477
> Think highlight rather than promote. Think shared experience rather than
> shared interest. No, not identical experience, but think overlapping parts
> of a venn diagram. A relevant example in that overlap, assumed criminality,
> is mentioned in the very comment you are replying to.

How much shared experience does a professional class recent immigrant from
Asia actually have with a working class African-American? For very many of the
former, the "assumed criminality" is largely a non-issue. (Even the example
mentioned in quadrifoliate's comment was presented as an exception rather than
the norm.)

And, might not recent immigrants from Asian countries have shared experiences
in common with immigrants from Europe? quadrifoliate mentioned experiencing
stupid jokes about his perceived culture, but dumb ethnic jokes and
stereotypes are something that European-descended ethnic minorities have to
put up with too. At school, my half-Italian friend had to put up with jokes
about his dad being in the mafia; there is a long tradition of jokes
presenting Irish people as stupid; etc. Yet the Italians/Irish/Greeks/etc who
have to put up with these dumb jokes and stereotypes are not classified as
"people of color", while the same experience had by an Asian person is put
forward as justification for classifying them as such.

> Do you have a similar issue with the LGBT framing?

Yes. To give just one example, a number of lesbian feminists have criticised
that framing as over-emphasising the commonality of interests between gay men
and lesbian women and under-emphasising the extent to which their interests
conflict with each other. see e.g.
[https://we.riseup.net/assets/168538/Sheila%20Jeffreys%20The%...](https://we.riseup.net/assets/168538/Sheila%20Jeffreys%20The%20Queer%20Disappearance%20of%20lesbians.pdf)

~~~
quadrifoliate
> How much shared experience does a professional class recent immigrant from
> Asia actually have with a working class African-American?

Not much, but the shared experience they have is _as a basis of the color of
their skin_ is what is visualized when calling them a person of color. And
historically, that has been a big deal (e.g. anti-miscegnation laws in the US
and huge amounts of racial discrimination in India's colonized past) – big
enough that a lot of people think it's important enough to have a shared
label.

> And, might not recent immigrants from Asian countries have shared
> experiences in common with immigrants from Europe?

Sure! And using the term "immigrant", we would classify their shared
experience as such. A recent "professional class immigrant" could be a person
of color having something in common with a working class African American,
_and_ something in common with the Italian immigrant.

It's like Gmail v/s traditional mailboxes with folders. An email can have
multiple labels in Gmail. So can a person in real life.

~~~
throwaway711477
> Not much, but the shared experience they have is as a basis of the color of
> their skin is what is visualized when calling them a person of color. And
> historically, that has been a big deal (e.g. anti-miscegnation laws in the
> US and huge amounts of racial discrimination in India's colonized past) –
> big enough that a lot of people think it's important enough to have a shared
> label.

Suppose a new, professional class / university-educated immigrant, arrives in
the US from China tomorrow. Should they expect to be discriminated against in
the US because of their color of skin specifically? I can imagine they might
have good reason to fear being discriminated against becasue of concerns they
might have links with the Chinese government – but, suppose they were instead
a Taiwanese immigrant, or Singaporean or Malaysian Chinese? In any event,
being discriminated against because of concerns about foreign government links
is not discrimination on the basis of skin color specifically, any more than
the Russian-American refused a security clearance because her brother has a
job in the Kremlin is such a case. And, I'm sure they might be exposed to
various stereotypes and misunderstandings that immigrants have to endure, dumb
jokes, people mocking their accent or infelicities with the English language –
but an immigrant from a European country might endure just as many stereotypes
and misunderstandings – which suggests that none of those issues are due to
their skin color specifically either. And how much relevance will anti-
miscegenation laws, that were overturned over 50 years ago, have to the lived
experience of a new immigrant arriving tomorrow?

Does a new Chinese immigrant have the same skin color as an African-American?
Do Xi Jinping and Barack Obama have the same skin color? Do all "white" people
have the same skin color? A Southern Italian and a Norwegian can look as far
apart in skin tone as Xi and Obama do.

------
mundu_wa_hinya
I 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)

------
gamblor956
My boss did this to a client once. He was not amused and soon thereafter
became a former client.

~~~
exhilaration
If 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
This 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.

------
sky_rw
It'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
You're sorely mistaken.

------
kps
As 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.

------
neonate
[https://archive.vn/nFx3E](https://archive.vn/nFx3E)

------
ahominid
Is 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
Perhaps 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.

------
gumby
I 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.

------
dsign
Where 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.

------
sabujp
I 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.

------
chewz
Couple 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?

------
throwaway713
Whoa! I didn’t realize Leland Stanford was racist. And blatantly so. Makes you
wonder if the university should be renamed.

~~~
contemporary343
It's named after his only son, who passed away from Typhoid at 15:
[https://facts.stanford.edu/about/](https://facts.stanford.edu/about/)

~~~
refurb
There are plenty of statues and a mausoleum for Leland Sr. on campus.

------
leoc
Here'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.

~~~
goodoldbiff
Bringing in Biff is what VCs always do. Or at least always used to do. I've
encountered it personally. The term they used was "seasoned executive". Biff
is a better name.

I'm not doubting Timothy's experience, but if he's right, the point would have
to be that VCs bring-in-Biff more often with black founders than they do white
ones. Which seems entirely plausible, but that's not the argument I think I'm
reading here.

~~~
tqi
Even if they weren't bringing in Biff more often with black founders than
white founders, if the pool from which they select Biff is overwhelmingly
white men, the effect is still that black founders get pushed aside in favor
of white men.

Even if their selection process for Biff was completely gender / race blind,
as long as the primary qualification for Biff is "has previously been CEO"
then the next generation of companies will continue to inherit the previous
generation of companies' demographics.

~~~
gowld
If all Biffs are white, but not all whites are Biffs, does it make sense to
lump the non-Biff whites in Biff's race, for purposes of stereotype/bias
analysis? Maybe "white" is too vague.

------
abustamam
Serious 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
The 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.

------
JumpCrisscross
Stylistic question. I noticed Black and White capitalized in this article. Is
that an emerging convention?

~~~
rectang
It's something which is developing and being debated. The Root had a rundown
earlier today:

[https://www.theroot.com/capitalizing-the-b-in-black-is-
nice-...](https://www.theroot.com/capitalizing-the-b-in-black-is-nice-but-
actually-hir-1844051820)

> _At The Root, we’ve had a long-standing debate over capitalizing the “B” in
> black. Some of us are adamantly for it, while others (myself included) are
> grammar freaks who think that if we capitalize “black” we would also have to
> capitalize “white,” and I, personally, have no interest in that as it would
> continue to center whiteness._

~~~
jpxw
That quote really sums up the ridiculousness of this imo.

~~~
cmdshiftf4
The Root, from my experience over the years, tends to err on the side of being
extremely racist. So take it with a grain of salt.

------
cycomanic
This 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_
Well, 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?

------
wilsonfiifi
“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
Are you arguing for segregation/secession?

------
whydoyoucare
I 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.

------
ur-whale
[http://archive.is/nFx3E](http://archive.is/nFx3E)

------
abustamam
Non-paywall link: [https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/06/16/for-black-ceos-in-
sil...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/06/16/for-black-ceos-in-silicon-
valley-humiliation-is-a-part-of-doing-business/)

(Published by Bloomberg news so no copyright issues)

------
analyst74
> 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
50% 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
More 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
There’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.

------
bulgagoo
this 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.

------
haecceity
In this thread hacker news proves the article right. Head desk.

~~~
dang
HN 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&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20notice%20dislike&sort=byDate&type=comment).

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
Would 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.

~~~
dang
Sure, we'd consider it. But in a community that cares a lot about privacy and
getting more so, I wonder if enough people would turn such a feature on to
make it worthwhile. Also, would we show it by default on every comment? I
think probably not, but then it would be less useful for preventing
misunderstandings, since most readers won't click through to a profile.

------
PanosJee
I think these titles just discourage black/female/diverse founders.

Reads like: don't even try, it's not your game

------
Grustaf
I 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
presumably because they looked from one to the other, and decided the
colleague with the lest melanin was the CEO.

------
KorematsuFred
This 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.

------
Thorentis
How 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
_This 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
Easy 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
If 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".

------
brentis
So 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...

~~~
ipnon
Even 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
You 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.

------
m0zg
I 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
That'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
I'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
As an American, I often find myself in trouble for smiling pointlessly.

------
js2
By 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...](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/2020/02/27/examining...](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-
front/2020/02/27/examining-the-black-white-wealth-gap/)

\-
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/raci...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/racial-
wealth-gap.html)

\- [https://www.economist.com/united-states/2019/04/06/the-
black...](https://www.economist.com/united-states/2019/04/06/the-black-white-
wealth-gap-is-unchanged-after-half-a-century)

Edit: downvotes but no replies.

~~~
cylinder
I believe in reparations but not your methodology (I did not downvote you).

