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Arrington, Race, and Silicon Valley

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51–60 of 126 posts

Re: Arrington, Race, and Silicon Valley

#51
post #31

Silicon Valley is chum-tactic, so if you really care about the differential access problem for X, regardless of the value of X, make extra special effort to both tell X that Silicon Valley is chum-tactic and to introduce them to the right people. Chum-tactic: the first filter applied to you, for press or investment or anything, is "Who sent you to me?" Some people think "Silicon Valley is a meritocracy" implies that…

Outside of closed environments with pre-screening (students in a class, for instance), what systems don't work this way?

Re: Arrington, Race, and Silicon Valley

#52
Of cause a socio political minefield. Maybe I am too pragmatic about that -

BUT: If I were a founder that would feel being discriminated against in any form (sex, gender, color, your name it) why should I not pare up with a co-founder whom I regard as being not discriminated? If I have no biases within my own friend circle this should be not problem at all. Or would it?

Re: Arrington, Race, and Silicon Valley

#54
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is pretty clear from the context of his comment that Indian refers to people from India.

I think we are arguing the "unique" part and are aware of what group he was referring too.

Ah, since OP's example groups were Chinese and Indian, and your examples were Chinese and (American) Indian, was pretty easy to get confused! :)

Re: Arrington, Race, and Silicon Valley

#55

Having read many threads on HN about race, gender and other -isms, I can predict what this comment section will look like at around 100 comments. It will be equal parts denial of other peoples' experiences and dogged insistence on the existence of a magical leveling force ensuring that justice has been perfectly delivered. There will be some gems among all that, but it's mostly going to be sweeping, questionable asse…

I would argue a "the world is INjust" (fallacy?). Humans are and will always be biased in some form or another. Any form of "just" is more or less socially constructed by those who invested their efforts into shaping the accepted perception of "just" and moved the public perception towards what they perceive as what "just" should be.

So the two alternative are that one can either work within the current status quo (e.g. be pragmatic about it) or, if the situation is presumed by many as unbearable, actively work together to change the situation.

Re: Arrington, Race, and Silicon Valley

#56

It's not surprising NewMe didn't get coverage. Taking part in a race-selected accelerator, instead of a quality-selected accelerator, reflects badly. "If their product is so good, why couldn't they get into YC or TechStars?".

Hmm...two curious assumptions here:

1) that a "race-selected" accelerator is not a "quality-selected" one and 2) that the NewME companies are all YC and TechStars rejects

Curious what led you to them.

Re: Arrington, Race, and Silicon Valley

#57
post #45

I skimmed through the comments and was surprised to not see anything about Project Implicit being done at Harvard. This is a research project that is being done using actual, real science. We don't need to armchair speculate about this stuff; we have science for a reason. The researchers have found that our minds make subconscious judgements of people base on their appearance. No shock here, of course. It turns out t…

If you're going to raise science on a pedestal, you should write a comment other than "Oh it's science, we should trust whatever those scientists are doing." (C.f. the Milgram experiment.) We don't need to mindlessly praise research; we have peer review for a reason.

This seems to be the original Implicit Association Test or IAT paper (from 1998). It's quite accessible and should provide a better justification for why this research is rigorous and novel.

http://faculty.fortlewis.edu/burke_b/Senior/BLINK%20replicat...

Re: Arrington, Race, and Silicon Valley

#58
post #49

Arrington's response > this post. He may or may not be wrong for saying he bends over backwards for black entrepreneurs. You're saying he's wrong because of one instance, I'm sure he can point out times he has lived up to that statement. You should be mad at Soledad, not Arrington. And what was the point of this post? If you're going to raise an issue, do it in a constructive way and talk about how to fix it, don't f…

You may want to read Angela Benton's post again:

"I wholeheartedly agree with what Hank Williams, a participant in NewME this summer recently wrote (Note: Hank has seen the doc)[...] Please read Hank’s full commentary, it’s a great read."

Re: Arrington, Race, and Silicon Valley

#59
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese were effectively imported as a mass of slave labor, and American Indians were subjected to slavery and genocide. (The European colonies in America joined the African slave trade because the supply of American Indian slaves was being exhausted, as a matter of fact.)

Are you seriously saying that Native Americans were the go-to slaves? Have you heard of a little country called Brazil? Do you know about the trans-Atlantic slave trade? It doesn't seem you do.

If you actually read my comment, you would know that it said. And it said none of that. Hint: the part that's in parentheses is part of my comment too.

Let me flesh it out for you. I said, "The European colonies in America joined the African slave trade because the supply of American Indian slaves was being exhausted, as a matter of fact." Which means I'm not only aware of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, but I even outlined the specific reason why slavery of American Indians wasn't sustainable and why the North American colonies had to engage in the trans-Atlantic slave trade to begin with. The fact is, west Africa had more slaves to sell.

Speaking of Brazil, if you start at the end of the second paragraph of Wikipedia's article about slavery in Brazil, it says the exact same thing happened in Brazil:

    Starting around 1550, the Portuguese began to trade   
    enslaved Africans due to two main reasons:

    * The unenculturated indigenous peoples deteriorated 
      rapidly, and became increasingly wary of the 
      Portuguese, thus, obtaining new indigenous slaves was 
      becoming harder and harder.
I try to play nice on Hacker News, but when people don't even read and comprehend what I write, and then accuse me of saying the exact opposite of what I said, I get a little annoyed. Part of common courtesy is to understand and respond honestly to others, and frankly, you've failed to do that.

Re: Arrington, Race, and Silicon Valley

#60
Excellent read. I specially liked this part:

"In fact some people get far more support than others. For example, I’m not going to name any names, but when a top tier VC writes a five million dollar check to a 19 year-old with a barely-beyond-napkin-stage idea, no customers and a fragile technology because they “present well” then clearly something else is at work."

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