For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business • Hacker News Board

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

#691

Post by commandlinefan » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 2:52 PM UTC

jakelazaroff wrote: post #451

greenhatglack wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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 .

> You’re questioning them right now.

... very cautiously, very anonymously.

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

#692

Post by joshuaissac » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 2:55 PM UTC

buran77 wrote: post #672

eythian wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's certainly not my experience, as someone who relocated to a European capital for work. I work with people from all over with various skin colours, and pretty much everyone everyone self-identifies as an expat. The main difference seems to be whether they're people moving there to make a new life in a new place, and the work is secondary vs. it's the work that gets them to move (and if you move for work, it's pr…

> everyone self-identifies as an expat Of course they do. The question is how does everyone around you see you. It does make a bit of a difference if the job lead to switching countries (mostly "expat"), or switching country lead to getting a job (mostly "immigrant"). But this detail is buried pretty deep, people will most likely first find out where you're from (by asking, or accent, etc.) and that will determine th…

> It does make a bit of a difference if the job lead to switching countries (mostly "expat"), or switching country lead to getting a job (mostly "immigrant").

Does this distinction actually exist in how people use the words "expat" and "immigrant"? A lot of the time, immigrants will have accepted their job offers already before entering the country, and if they did not switch countries, they would have the same kind of job in their home country anyway (e.g. immigrant nurses recruited by the NHS).

The dictionary definition (OED) talks about the immigrant being a person who enters a country to live there permanently, but in reality, even those who enter with the intention of leaving after a few years are considered immigrants by everyone around them if they are from a third-world country.

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

#693

Post by historyremade » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 2:55 PM UTC

eloisant wrote: post #557

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a huge part of the problem isn't it? I think this is the problem. Say a black guy with gold teeth, tons of tattoos and colorful dreadlocks and a middle aged white guy walk in. One of them is a rapper. Who is it? Based on experience, most people will certainly assume the black guy is. What if it turns out it’s the white guy? Are they unconsciously racist against white people or are they just following experi…

It certainly makes sense to assume (in your head) the black guy is a rapper, and the white guy is a tech CEO. But when you know how it makes people feel when you make your assumption visible, you understand the need to act like anyone could be the CEO, the developer, etc. Same goes for women devs who at tech conferences who are too often "assumed" to be girlfriends, recruiters or other non-tech participants. Yes, the…

That white guy is Pitbull.

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

#694

Post by historyremade » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 2:57 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #581

peteretep wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe these painful interactions would be much less common if tech culture were more diverse in the first place. I have this bias that people who get into programming as kids tend to end up as the strongest developers. My own personal effort to try and help tech diversify is support and promotion of https://www.blackgirlscode.com/ When I've worked in London I've been often surprised at how diverse QA teams are,…

> I have this bias that people who get into programming as kids tend to end up as the strongest developers. I don't think this is true. I think that this bias is pushing away a lot of people who could be those strong developers, but think it is already too late for them.

Early exposure has some impact.

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

#695

Post by textgel » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 3:03 PM UTC

DagAgren wrote: post #689

textgel wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yes if you purely limit yourself to a single college of liberal arts list of definitions then you won't, however search engines are your friend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies And desperately clinging to any page-not-found of whatever website you can find to display it isn't exactly the most secure display of debate.

Ah yes, Wikipedia, with one source form a libertarian propaganda rag. Very reputable. Nobody but libertarians looking for excuses for racism use that term, deal with it.

And at last you've taken my advice

> Using a kafkatrap against an opponent you can't beat in debate when they have just pointed out the tactic is probably ill advised; perhaps try something else; Ad hominem or motte and bailey for example.

Allow my to quote from one your trusted sources: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/...

> Ad hominem: This is an attack on the character of a person rather than his or her opinions or arguments.

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

#696

Post by api » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 3:04 PM UTC

Pfhreak wrote: post #34

api wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Guest after guest walked past the pair of executives to greet their White employee, offer their congratulations and ask how he got the idea for the product. This sort of thing has never, ever happened to me. Nobody has ever suggested that I hire a wingman of a different ethnicity or gender or anything similarly asinine either.

It doesn't happen to me, so it doesn't exist is fallacious. (Or at the very least, anecdotal and not useful.) There are plenty of things that have never happened to me, despite it being possible/probable that they should. In 20 years I've never been called for Jury duty. It's never, ever happened to me. Does that mean I should disregard the experiences of people who have experienced jury duty?

That was what I meant, but re-reading I realize it wasn't clear in my comment whether or not I was agreeing with the parent.

I meant that I'm a white male founder and have experienced maybe 5% of the crap described in the article.

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

#697

Post by DagAgren » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 3:05 PM UTC

textgel wrote: post #695

DagAgren wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, Wikipedia, with one source form a libertarian propaganda rag. Very reputable. Nobody but libertarians looking for excuses for racism use that term, deal with it.

And at last you've taken my advice > Using a kafkatrap against an opponent you can't beat in debate when they have just pointed out the tactic is probably ill advised; perhaps try something else; Ad hominem or motte and bailey for example. Allow my to quote from one your trusted sources: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/... > Ad hominem: This is an attack on the character of a person rather…

Feel free to provide me wrong by showing a non-libertarian source that takes this term seriously.

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

#698

Post by eyelidlessness » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 3:05 PM UTC

RonanTheGrey wrote: post #501

eyelidlessness wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow you proposed a "double meaning" of racism and missed the actual meaning that's being addressed by our society. Racism isn't about personal prejudice, although it's certainly a participation trophy for them. Racism is not about who is burning crosses, or about who is born into privilege. Racism is a system , a set of rules, rites, privileges and laws that puts 100% of POC at a disadvantage, and 100% of white p…

> Racism isn't about personal prejudice, although it's certainly a participation trophy for them. Racism is not about who is burning crosses, or about who is born into privilege. Racism is a system, a set of rules, rites, privileges and laws that puts 100% of POC at a disadvantage, and 100% of white people at an advantage, regardless of the rest of their social status. Nope. Alot of people keep attempting to change a…

> Nope. Alot of people keep attempting to change a definition that is older than any of us alive, and nope. You have to make up a new word. I don't mind "Institutional racism" or "systemic racism" so much, because they're more descriptive expressions, and lead to useful discussion, but to infantilize whole groups of people by making them incapable of a part of the human experience (to be personally racist towards people whose skin is a different color than theirs) is simply absurd.

It's not a change of definition. It has always been systemic. Slavery abolitionists and civil rights activists were not fighting to get white people to stop calling black people the n-word, they were fighting to end institutions that treated black people as subhuman. Black Lives Matter isn't trying to end people's personal prejudices, it's trying to end an endless stream of black lives being taken.

Racism is, and always has been, about power and control. It certainly intersects with, and is bolstered by, individual feelings of racial prejudice. We can certainly call those individuals racists. But they are invariably helping to reinforce a system, not atomically expressing personal hate in a vacuum.

> You can identify the problem without making your language a personal attack on every individual. And attempting to accuse every individual, DOESN'T solve the problem does it? It doesn't unmake the laws. It doesn't unbuild the institutions. It doesn't drive people to talk about how laws unfairly target blacks, like the "war on drugs". But it most certainly makes enemies. It's a useless and impractical approach.

> There is NO statement you can make that is true of all humans, nor even any particular "group" of humans, for whatever that means, because NO "group" of humans is remotely meaningfully homogeneous. Except for very broad strokes like "humans must breathe to live", no universal statements are true.

I'm not sure what you're talking about, but it sounds like you were predisposed to treat me as an enemy already. I didn't personally attack any individual. Describing a system, and who is disadvantaged or advantaged by it, is not a statement about any of the people affected by it.

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

#699

Post by Throwsfnabf04 » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 3:08 PM UTC

forgot_user1234 wrote: post #552

churchillracist wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It happened to Sundar. There was an incident at a tech conference where he was walking through the booths and some people started asking for selfies with him. The "booth guy" who had condescending look grabbed Sundar's nametag slightly tugging on his neck without requesting his permission to see who he was. People were shocked at how rude the physical contact was. More ought to have been made of that. That booth guy…

I haven't heard about this incident BUT it still doesn't shows why there are so many indian CEOs. I really doubt that it's the norm. Look at the numbers not the anecdotes. There are disproportionate number of Indian CEOs. It would have been impossible with racism and what not.

STOP. This is so racist, you generalized all Indians into once category. Kashmiri's who faced genocide? What about the Punjabis for faced a genocide?

You don't realize it, but all indians in one category is a white thing, created by WHITE people.

So stop with "so many Indians", it's not equivalent.

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

#700

Post by Pfhreak » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 3:12 PM UTC

stormdennis wrote: post #464

Pfhreak wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are asking is a diversion -- he's not a minority, he's part of the dominant social group (at least from my reading). I'm not saying his experiences didn't happen, I'm saying they contradict the wider view. It has nothing to do with whether I agree or not -- his feelings are absolutely his feelings, likewise his experiences. They just aren't representative of the wider whole.

You didn't answer my question, I notice. Perhaps he's a person who has been or felt he has been, hard done by? Is he not allowed to voice "his truth"?

> You didn't answer my question, I notice.

Correct. It was a bad faith strawman question (I called it diversive above).

> Is he not allowed to voice "his truth"

I then immediately said he's free to voice his experiences.

Maybe you are trying to engage in good faith, if so, you should know it reads as concern trolling.