Viewpoint: 'I feel like I was accidentally hired'

If black people want to be more in tech they should just change their preference, I don't think that tech people are inherently less accepting than lawyers or the oh so racist police where there is much larger black representation. The first Indian who was in tech was also a bit of rarity, they just kept coming and it is fine now. To summarise, it is all on black people to fix if they choose to, the rest of us can't do much about it.

For e.g., White non-hispanics make up ~62% of the US population. At Google they make up 65.9% of leadership representation.

Black non-hispanics make up ~12% of US population and only 2.6% of Google leadership representation.

I grew up in a south european racist country and I had some fun times. Nothing serious, kids making fun of me, cops stopping me to check if I was dealing drugs, if I had a passport or a knife. I started working when I was 14 as a developer online, mainly because I wanted to get out of there and stop being surrounded by idiots. That country was terrible for jobs anyway and by 16 I was getting a decent pay for the country, just by making a few ad supported website and by freelancing with the rest of the world. At 22, after getting my dose of almost free university, I ran to London, where I never experienced any form of racism. I raised some money for my startup (which failed) without particular problems and after that I started contracting. Given my provable experience, I got senior level jobs pretty much immediately and got a nice pay for Europe at 23-24 (90k+£) which increased and become a remote half eng half manager job in the following years. All those racist kids back in my home country are still stuck in jobs paying less than a barista in the UK.

It doesn't matter what other people think. Your perceived "race" doesn't matter, it's just one of the characteristics that define you and some people will react positively and give you free scholarships or quota jobs. Some people will react negatively and think you're a criminal, some won't give you a job. That's life. Probably something similar happens to you because of your height, because you're attractive / ugly, because of your gender, because you dress well / bad. If you were to think of all the possible positive and negative characteristics that influence how someone is perceived, you could partition people in so many different groups, you wouldn't even know who you should "positively discriminate" which means negatively discriminate everyone else. But there are so many other things you can do to improve yourself and compensate with words and skills whatever bias may someone else hold.

I had some insecurities linked to my skin color and to some physical defects but, as part of training to become a better leader, I learned to embrace them and to use them to to surround yourself with people who can be positive for you.

I don't like how this issue has been politicised recently and I think it reflects incredibly poorly on us. One of the stigma I have to fight is that of scaring someone if we're walking in the same street at night. I hope the situation will not get worse and that we won't raise a generation of kids that think that black people = violent riots to steal tv and get money.

Acknowledging the personhood of people of color is not synonymous with supporting BLM. One might broadly support the ends of BLM while being uncomfortable with the means.