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Y Combinator to recruit more black entrepreneurs

usatoday.com

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Re: Y Combinator to recruit more black entrepreneurs

#41

Post by Jun8 »

owenmarshall wrote: post #30
thedaveoflife wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your question is answered in the article: YC is interested in making money and they seem to believe that having more diverse founders will help them do that.

From a "cold hard cash" standpoint, it's a really good idea . For example: Africa is currently going through a mobile phone revolution. Want to see staggering growth numbers? Look at mobile banking in Nigeria and Kenya. Look at what Sproxil is doing to combat counterfeit prescriptions. Hell, in lots of places mobile phone air time is becoming as important as local currencies. Think a lily-white Stanford graduate woul…

"Think a lily-white Stanford graduate would see a market in top up cards? I bet you they wouldn't!"

Maybe you don't realize but your comment is quite racist. So, you think by virtue of being black, every African-American somehow has an inherent understanding of African nations.

Here's a excerpt from Jumpa Lahiri's book The Namesake about similar sentiments for a second generation Indian-American man talking to friends of his white girlfriend about getting sick while visiting India:

  "But you must be lucky that way"
  "What do you mean?"
  "I mean, you must never get sick."
"Actually that's not true," he says, slightly annoyed... "We get sick all the time. We have to get shots before we go. My parents devote the better part of a suitcase to medicine."

"But you're Indian," Pamela says frowning, "I'd think the climate wouldn't affect yo, given your heritage."

"Pamela, Nick's American," Lydia says ... "He was born here."

Re: Y Combinator to recruit more black entrepreneurs

#42

Post by wutbrodo »

bellerocky wrote: post #23
gordjw wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, as someone who is a privileged class of the majority (white, male, 25-49), what are the roadblocks? If there's discrimination, isn't that purely the fault of the Y Combinator organisers (in this instance), and is this article then an admission that they've discriminated in the past?

I don't have good answers for you, but discrimination isn't always done intentionally. Maybe more often than not it's ignorance or simply institutional. I am also a white male. It took a long time for me to figure out my own biases and honestly I am still learning about them. I recommend this movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0484384/ (The Color of Fear) There are pieces of it on YouTube apparently: https://www.yout…

Oh man, black women's hair is a HUGE under-the-radar discrimination issue. It's one of those issues that get dismissed because of how silly it sounds (and a prime candidate for people saying "for fuck's sake is everything discrimination now?!?!"). But seriously, the natural hairstyles of many black women aren't considered "professional" in a lot of contexts, and spending a pretty-large amount of money and time at salons torturing your hair into looking white is pretty much the only option in some circumstances. AFAICT, the solution is "easy" per se, but difficult considering how slow culture changes: don't define "different" as unprofessional. Thankfully this is one of the problems that tech is better about than other places in general (because seriously, who gives a fuck about your appearance unless you're a model/actor/customer-facing/etc).

Re: Y Combinator to recruit more black entrepreneurs

#43

Post by sheri »

coffeemug wrote: post #39
viiralvx wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Black male here, aged 18-25, Computer Science and Design student in my final semester of University. The roadblocks from a racial perspective is lack of resources and education, there is a fair amount of poverty within black America. Did you have access to a computer growing up? Maybe you had one or two in your house? Then you may have been able to learn more about programming from a younger age, or maybe you had a c…

I'm a white startup founder in SV. Systematic discrimination due to unequal access to infrastructure really, really sucks for the black community as a whole, but if you managed to overcome it as an individual there are multiple interrelated reasons why you have a massive advantage in startups/tech that you probably aren't aware of yet. Firstly, the market is ruthless. You can't lie to yourself or others in a startup…

> Now, white well educated people with well-padded resumes will probably have easier access to venture capital, but that brings me to my next point.

Isn't this really the key here? I agree with your other arguments about ultimately needing to have fluid intelligence etc. But assuming two people (one white, one black) have the same amount of intelligence, smarts etc, but one raises $10 million from Sequoia and the other doesn't. That pretty much makes the difference between succeeding and failing. There are ideas which are so world-changing or brilliant that the market and VC's just can't ignore their eventual prominence (Google maybe?). There are other ideas which need lots of capital and talent injection in order to nurture them to the point where they are big.

Re: Y Combinator to recruit more black entrepreneurs

#44

Post by owenmarshall »

Jun8 wrote: post #41
owenmarshall wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a "cold hard cash" standpoint, it's a really good idea . For example: Africa is currently going through a mobile phone revolution. Want to see staggering growth numbers? Look at mobile banking in Nigeria and Kenya. Look at what Sproxil is doing to combat counterfeit prescriptions. Hell, in lots of places mobile phone air time is becoming as important as local currencies. Think a lily-white Stanford graduate woul…

"Think a lily-white Stanford graduate would see a market in top up cards? I bet you they wouldn't!" Maybe you don't realize but your comment is quite racist. So, you think by virtue of being black, every African-American somehow has an inherent understanding of African nations. Here's a excerpt from Jumpa Lahiri's book The Namesake about similar sentiments for a second generation Indian-American man talking to friend…

> So, you think by virtue of being black, every African-American somehow has an inherent understanding of African nations.

I never mentioned African Americans in my comment. It seems that you're taking "black" to mean "African American", but that's not what my comment said. Nor the article, for that matter.

Re: Y Combinator to recruit more black entrepreneurs

#45

Post by robg »

J_adjip wrote: post #27

As a young black entrepreneur that has known about YC for years now and have followed them and their large portfolio, I think they are making a smart move toward reaching out to a community where people aren't aware of programs like YC and the opportunities they provide.

Can you explain how this happens?

Re: Y Combinator to recruit more black entrepreneurs

#46

Post by wutbrodo »

ErikRogneby wrote: post #18
lulzwat1111 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>It shouldn't (and often doesn't) matter what you look like, where you came from, or who you are. Then why are they giving black people preferential treatment? Mind blowing.

Because white people get preferential treatment every god damn day. Either you acknowledge race and gender or you go through great pains to take it out of the equation. A good friend of mine is a female french horn player. Orchestras sometimes do auditions behind a screen with the applicants names anonymous to the jury. This is to counteract the sexism that exists in classical music, particularly in the brass section…

While I'm more in agreement with your line of thinking than lulzwat's, you're not really addressing the part he's disagreeing with. His proposition was that you counteract preferential treatment by trying to remove it, not by trying to balance it out with other preferential treatment. Even the example you gave supports that (_everyone_ is behind a screen).

Like I said, I do agree with your general sentiment because the situation is way more complicated and a given entity (YC in this case) doesn't have control of all upstream sources of preferential treatment to try and remove preferential treatment. It just seems like the way you phrased it didn't address the actual problem lulzwat perceived. As much as people like to pretend it isn't so they can sit on their high horse, this stuff can be complicated to get your head around (at first glance, it's 110% reasonable to say giving preferential treatment to black people seems just as racist as doing so for white people). It serves no-one to ignore someone's complaint and respond with genericism when they don't understand (or agree with) the nuances of this kinda stuff.

Re: Y Combinator to recruit more black entrepreneurs

#47

Post by [deleted] »

owenmarshall wrote: post #44
Jun8 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Think a lily-white Stanford graduate would see a market in top up cards? I bet you they wouldn't!" Maybe you don't realize but your comment is quite racist. So, you think by virtue of being black, every African-American somehow has an inherent understanding of African nations. Here's a excerpt from Jumpa Lahiri's book The Namesake about similar sentiments for a second generation Indian-American man talking to friend…

> So, you think by virtue of being black, every African-American somehow has an inherent understanding of African nations. I never mentioned African Americans in my comment. It seems that you're taking "black" to mean "African American", but that's not what my comment said. Nor the article, for that matter.

[deleted]

Re: Y Combinator to recruit more black entrepreneurs

#48

Post by gordjw »

viiralvx wrote: post #22
gordjw wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, as someone who is a privileged class of the majority (white, male, 25-49), what are the roadblocks? If there's discrimination, isn't that purely the fault of the Y Combinator organisers (in this instance), and is this article then an admission that they've discriminated in the past?

Black male here, aged 18-25, Computer Science and Design student in my final semester of University. The roadblocks from a racial perspective is lack of resources and education, there is a fair amount of poverty within black America. Did you have access to a computer growing up? Maybe you had one or two in your house? Then you may have been able to learn more about programming from a younger age, or maybe you had a c…

Thanks for your response mate. I'm not American, so it's hard for me to tell what's going on in your society. My parents were fairly poor, although they never really let us kids feel like it at the time. But yes we did have a computer at home.

I had some other comments, but the way you put this has really made me rethink them. I'll just say that if you make it to YC, then you're clearly doing something right.

Re: Y Combinator to recruit more black entrepreneurs

#49

Post by Cakez0r »

dethstar wrote: post #8
Stefanrio wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It shouldn't (and often doesn't) matter what you look like So why exactly do they need to recruit more black people? Instead of like, everyone?

Because "like, everyone" (aka people in the demographic they have supported as of now) often have had more chances/advantages in their lives. Listening to some ideas from people with different backgrounds couldn't hurt.

Black is not a background, though.

Re: Y Combinator to recruit more black entrepreneurs

#50

Post by Jun8 »

owenmarshall wrote: post #44
Jun8 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Think a lily-white Stanford graduate would see a market in top up cards? I bet you they wouldn't!" Maybe you don't realize but your comment is quite racist. So, you think by virtue of being black, every African-American somehow has an inherent understanding of African nations. Here's a excerpt from Jumpa Lahiri's book The Namesake about similar sentiments for a second generation Indian-American man talking to friend…

> So, you think by virtue of being black, every African-American somehow has an inherent understanding of African nations. I never mentioned African Americans in my comment. It seems that you're taking "black" to mean "African American", but that's not what my comment said. Nor the article, for that matter.

So what group do you use the word black to refer to? It is commonly used to refer to African-Americans in the US. Since YC's target is predominantly US applicants the intended group is understood to be African-Americans.

The article says:

"It's adding black colleges to its recruiting swing this fall, as well as reaching out to groups with strong ties to the black community to increase the pool of applicants, Altman said."

I very much doubt that when Altman said "the black community" and "black colleges" he had in mind people from African countries or black skinned people from India.

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