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

bloomberg.com

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

#51

Post by Pfhreak »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #32

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

Chicago Manual of Style says either is ok. It's pretty typical to capitalize, e.g. Hispanic, Arab, Asian, but Black and White have a slightly different use and capitalization history.

The AP, I believe, prefers lowercasing both. Some publications will capitalize just Black. Discussions of casing these words go back at least a decade, but I don't believe there's a strong consensus yet?

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

#52

Post by dhosek »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #32

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

It is. I forget which news outlet has recently made it a standard to capitalize Black which is in contradiction to the AP Style Guide.

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

#53

Post by dang »

kgraves wrote: post #14
luckylion wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/hackernews/dangnews/

I understand the impression, but the truth is that no one knows how to make a forum that runs without moderation/curation while remaining interesting and surviving growth. I wish we did; it would be awesome. I could work on the code instead of writing tedious comments and getting accused of opposite things by angry people.

If it makes you feel any better, I'm always looking for ways to relax control and intervene less, partly because control and intervention are work, and partly because I like the Tao Te Ching.

I wrote about this point upthread too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23543970, particularly the last bit.

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

#54

Post by rvz »

gamblor956 wrote: post #30
anewdirection wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I flagged it because it is an article written to promote further bias, while under the guise of 'exposing racism'. If you think promoting race politics is the goal of HN, I will find a different forum. My time in SV could not have been more different than what this boased article proports. Fuck identity politics and fuck bloomberg, and fuck you for promoting this drivel.

Bye. This article discusses a real issue that black CEOs face in Silicon Valley. It's similar to the problem that female CEOs also face almost daily. It's not race politics or gender politics. It's simply a fact of life for people who aren't white males.

> It's not race politics or gender politics. It's simply a fact of life for people who aren't white males.

Or you can simply find a viable business model and remain bootstrapped without running to VCs for capital all the time, which is just like begging to have another boss, when in reality, they're creating a gigantic exit scam IPO or may pull out with their cash at anytime. [0][1]

Nothing stopping them and no excuses here.

[0] https://basecamp.com/bootstrapped

[1] https://twitter.com/chetanp/status/1205907182396395525

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

#55

Post by Pfhreak »

mlpgx wrote: post #44
ChuckMcM wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't believe the data aligns with your anecdotes. While you may feel that is the experience today, I would be surprised if it represented the wider system as a whole.

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

#56

Post by JPKab »

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…

I've read "White Fragility".

While I completely agree that the stories in this article are hugely problematic and represent issues that need to be solved, I think books like "White Fragility" are not helpful in solving them. This is due to a focus on group identity, and describing "White" as if it's a monolithic group of people, all with the same culture, emotions, and reactions.

Another interesting aspect I identified while reading the book was it's description of the emotions that one can expect to see when confronting white people about race issues: the description could have been used to describe any human being you will ever meet when you accuse/blame them for something that they did not personally do. It really does read like a horoscope in that sense.

I find it ironic that people on HN, who are typically super data driven, get on board with works like "White Fragility". Diangelo is one of many academics from the humanities departments who are incredibly pseudo-scientific. Data is incredibly scarce, measurements and studies even less so. Statistical knowledge isn't present in the vast majority of these folks. Typically, the "scientific method" is reading and writing essays/novels. When you don't attempt to quantify a problem, you can't propose solutions and then measure their results. You instead just keep yourself busy finding ever more ways to describe the water to the drowning person.

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

#57

Post by GaryNumanVevo »

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…

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.

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

#58

Post by 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.

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

#59

Post by screye »

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.

It makes me think about how we as a people decide to communicate discrimination.

If a certain type of discrimination of perception arises due to stereotypes, but by and large affects certain racial groups, then is it racism ? It also affects women as it does those who do not abide by personality traits of the valley's cargo cult or the Ivy MBA.

> just accept the correction and move on

Yeah. I think in such cases a sincere apology is at the minimum warranted.

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

#60

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #29
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…

> 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. That doesn't sound outlandish to me at all. For what it's worth, it doesn't have to phrased in a stilted manner like that. A quiet "That was racist and I have no excuse. I am sorry, and will do better in the future." is fine. I suspect that most people who want to "get the hell…

> I suspect that most people who want to "get the hell out" rather than apologize for racism have little to no experience with making sincere apologies and trying to genuinely mend fences in general.

I would honestly suggest watching the video I linked by Robin Diangelo. I think that level of embarrassment/defensiveness would be common to the vast, vast majority of white people of a particular social class in the US, regardless of their broader experience making sincere apologies. Putting the frame of reference of "Look, only people so inexperienced with socialization that they can't make sincere apologies" in my opinion takes away from the more likely reality that the belief that "only bad people can be racist" is what is limiting forward progress in these areas.

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