SoftBank launches $100m minorities startup fund

But I also understand what you mean about people ignoring socioeconomic status or other issues when they are not at the center of the spotlight. I think it's quite clear most companies doing this just for PR. BLM movement has been going on for years, yet these companies never care to actively support it, until now that they've seen "oh shit, people actually care - better get on it now." Let's see whether this is truly a wake-up call for people to address injustices of all kind, starting with racial problem, or simply a 'trend'.

I've never understood this argument in the context of investing. If there was an opportunity to get outsized returns by investing in the people this targets, then investors would already be going after these opportunities, motivated by the returns alone. They wouldn't even need the social signaling aspect of announcing a fund like this. If anything, they'd probably keep such details of these good deals to themselves to avoid having too much money chase after such deals and raise the price of the deals and make their investing terms worse.

Asians used to face a lot of discrimination in the US and very institutionalized one, not just of the "making fun of them by calling them Ching Chong" variety. There is a long and storied history, but it is never brought up because it provides some rather uncomfortable cognitive dissonances when trying to explain how Asian-Americans today are so much better off but other discriminated-against groups aren't. So you see the common trope where Asian-Americans and Indian-Americans are just passed over when talking about historical injustices because they don't fit the narrative.

The link below has a full history but, one of many points—

In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act—the only United States Iaw to prevent immigration and naturalization on the basis of race—which restricted Chinese immigration for the next sixty years. The "Chinese Must Go" movement was so strong that Chinese immigration to the United States declined from 39,500 in 1882 to only 10 in 1887.

https://asiasociety.org/education/asian-americans-then-and-n...

And what happens when a black-founder VC fund underperforms an Asian-founder VC fund?

Will we need another level of VC funds to fix that?

But primarily, right? Bias plays a role, so everything else being equal, a black applicant will receive fewer callbacks than a white or asian one, but (and that's a big but) the primary issue is that usually not all other things are equal.

The average black person comes from a different socioeconomic background than the average white or asian person, so they'll usually not have the same level of education, but less so because of being discriminated against because of their race, but because of their class. More single-parent households, lower household income, their parents can't simply afford to hire tutors and put them through college etc etc.

That's what makes these things somewhat weird. Yeah, sure, a black guy from a rich family that attended MIT will have a harder time finding funding than his white or asian friends from the same background ... but he'll have a much easier time than some white kid from a broken home.

I believe two things to be true: class is the primary factor, not race. And it's more convenient to focus on race because it's much easier and feels less threatening to the (usually upper middle class and beyond) proponents. "We (as white people) need to share more" puts them in a group with (for the US) 60% of the population and is pretty abstract. Great for virtue signalling, terrible for concrete actions. "We (as rich people) need to share more" puts them in a much, much smaller group and suggests they could actually do something besides yelling at people to check their privilege: share some of the money they inherit. Great for doing something, terrible for virtue signalling because "well, put your money where your mouth is" is so obvious.