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For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

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Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#41

Post by oh_sigh »

wbronitsky wrote: post #38
oh_sigh wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also somehow places black and indigenous people as not "people of color"(I assume they aren't counting white indigenous people like the Sami).

I'm trying to be as inclusive as I can be, and I have been told that BIPOC is an inclusive term. If there is a better term here, please let me know so I can use it. I was discussing American society in particular, so the Sami might not be relevant. Either way, it would be nice if we could look at my comment as doing what I can to not be offensive, instead of nitpicking an argument that is clearly trying. Instead of t…

I'm not saying I have a problem with you using the term, I'm saying I don't understand why it isn't just "PoCs" any more and what was lacking with that.

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#44

Post by mlpgx »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #28
dang wrote: post #5

This is an interesting and in-depth article that was inappropriately flagged. I've turned 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 a…

For me, the discussion of your action here confirms, even more strongly, that not only is the bias real, but also it is sometimes completely opaque to people who hold that bias. Thanks for unflagging it, otherwise I would have missed it I'm sure.

The problem is that everyone has his own personal experiences. In my surroundings I've seen black women get funding where white men did not. I've seen minorities preferred in hiring.

The world has changed drastically in the last five years. It is white men who feel silenced in the tech industry, by HR, the press, CEOs and activists.

So the article can be true of course, but it aligns less and less with what we see in the field.

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#45

Post by kube-system »

olivermarks wrote: post #26
olivermarks wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's BIPOC?

I looked it up - according to the NYT 'black, indigenous people of color'. Based on this shouldn't the correct wording for 'black lives matter' be 'BIPOC lives matter'? Surely people of color and indigenous people are taking offense at this?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think that non-black people of color are disproportionately experiencing police violence at the same rates?

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#46

Post by claudeganon »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #21

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 raci…

Robin Diangelo’s work doesn’t seem to me very good or well informed on what anti-racism actually constitutes. It seems mostly like a schtick to sell to HR managers. The way that she essentializes race seems like a bizarre, inverted reification of whiteness (and by extension white supremacy), than any deconstruction or attack on it.

Anti-racism is about taking on the powers and material structures that reproduce racism in our society to put an end to that reproduction. It’s what the multiracial coalition is doing right now, in the streets, forcing changes to laws and policing.

All of this has little to do with your boss paying someone to lecture you about why you’re bad/biased/ignorant. In fact, it’s contrary to anti-racism, because it positions your boss, who controls your life and buys her classes, as the arbiter of what is and isn’t racism.

People would be better off studying the life and work of Fred Hampton.

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#47

Post by quadrifoliate »

olivermarks wrote: post #22
wbronitsky wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

What's BIPOC?

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

[2] 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....

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#48

Post by ordinaryradical »

olivermarks wrote: post #26
olivermarks wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's BIPOC?

I looked it up - according to the NYT 'black, indigenous people of color'. Based on this shouldn't the correct wording for 'black lives matter' be 'BIPOC lives matter'? Surely people of color and indigenous people are taking offense at this?

Black Lives Matter was a movement started specifically about the policing of black people and black communities. I haven’t read about any people groups taking offense at this terminology except for white people who cannot come to accept that, for instance, “save the rainforest” does not mean you don’t care about deforestation generally but rather is meant to draw attention to a very real issue even if you happen to care about the longevity of all forests.

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#49

Post by stevenbedrick »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #32

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

It's a really interesting story, actually! The question of whether and when to capitalize has been an active one since at least the early 20th century. Here's a (very) recent Columbia Journalism Review article that discusses it from a stylistic perspective:

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/capital-b-black-styleguide.php

And I also thought that this article, about the Brookings Institution's decision to capitalize Black in their reports, had some interesting historical context:

https://www.brookings.edu/research/brookingscapitalizesblack...

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#50

Post by crazygringo »

tomp wrote: post #35
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #21

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 raci…

That's stereotyping, not racism. People make inferences. Like, if there's two folks, one dressed in a suit, the other in baggy clothes with thick glasses, most people (including VCs) would default to the former as the MBA CEO, and the latter as geek CTO Even though it might be the exact opposite! If you make a wrong inference, just accept the correction and move on, no hurt feelings. Similar for old vs. young.

Some inferences are perfectly fine. If someone shows up in your office wearing the outfit of a cleaning company, you're fine in assuming they're a cleaning person.

In some circumstances, it's not harmful to assume the person wearing a suit is the CEO, though you might not always be right. The person in the suit might also be head of sales, while baggy clothes is CEO. Generally, it's better not to assume at all unless you're forced to. Just ask.

But inferring that someone isn't the CEO because they're black? I'm sorry, but that's racism pure and simple. Stereotyping is one form of racism (not the only one). You have no reason to make the inference, and it's highly insulting if you make a mistake. And to assume that feelings wouldn't be hurt is... tremendously naive and blind to the reality of racism.

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