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Racism and Meritocracy

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Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#21
post #3

http://www.google.com/search?q=railsconf+audience&hl=en&...

Eric is not suggesting that the applicant pool is diverse and the selection process biased. Instead, I think he's suggesting that different selection processes can result in different applicant pools: "Imagine that you were a professional musician thinking about which orchestra to audition for. You have a choice between an all-male orchestra that conducts interviews out in the open, and a mixed-gender orchestra that…

The Railsconf audience images refute that explanation too. Since there is no screening process at all, potential attendees can't be deterred by biases in it.

Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#22

One of the problems with racism in particular is that it has effects on people from birth. Past racism may have hurt their parents' socioeconomic prospects, forcing them to be born in an economically depressed ghetto with poor schools and gang violence. Even if there's no racism past that point, if their parents were prevented from ascending to the middle class, they won't pass on middle-class virtues emphasizing the…

Exactly! Maybe this is a small minority being extra loud. Thank you for saving me a lot of typing.

Diversity for the sake of diversity hurts us all. You really do need to fix the underlying problems. I believe that there really are few qualified minority candidates for these jobs out there and there would be a lot more if we could fix some of the poverty and segregation that exists out there.

Black people in this country live in a separate America. They have their own culture as a result of past racism. So many black youth are living in these poor neighborhoods where they're learning that the only way to get ahead is to hussle in the bad sense of the word. Take a look at hip hop and the ideals being broadcast with that music. Make that money (however you can), trust no one, the world is against you. And it really is against them. Violence, crime, gangs, drugs, poverty. This is what a lot of minorities have to deal with growing up. If they manage to avoid the pitfalls of growing up that way they then have to adjust to a whole different world in college and beyond. If we can fix this issue then we'll have a lot more qualified minority candidates.

Look at pro sports. Why are so many star athletes black? Because they had no other way out. Meanwhile the suburban white kids have the luxury of living in a safe cul de sac where they can sit quietly and study or save up an allowance to pay the smart kid I'm the block to take his SAT.

Women are brought up to be these frail creatures and have heavy emphasis on things that won't help them become the career women we see in movies. There's a lot of talk about women's rights and equality but it isn't practiced as much as rhetoric is thrown around about it.

We as white males benefit greatly from White Privilege. It isn't our fault and we shouldn't feel guilty about it but we should recognize it and try to change it. The fact of the matter is that our culture and society is heaviily biased toward helping white men succeed with the ideals we're taught, the opportunities we're given, and just the way we're generally raised.

If we can extend White Privilege to everyone then we will have more diversity. There really is just less qualified minorities than whites in this industry and going out of our way to find a minority isn't helping anything. It just covers up a problem and leaves behind the greater issue. This needs to be addressed at the root.

Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#23

I really fail to see how anyone can see racism in this. The current people trying to make it big in silicon valley now did not start the process now, they started 10 or 15 years ago when they started fiddling around with computers or learning to code or reading business books. And it's at that stage that the current audience was created, and not right now. The people applying and the selection is just a result of tha…

>The most likely reason they did not do that, is probably because it just did not occur to them.

Is your stated reason ("it just did not occur to them") more likely than "they didn't have the opportunity to take those steps because of (economics/insert reason)"? A quick Google search give this link: http://www.brookings.edu/articles/1998/spring_education_darl... which indicated that in the 1990's, minority students generally had access to fewer or lower-quality resources than white students.

Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#24
When thinking about this, imagine what would have to happen for a child born to a black, single, crackhead mother to have a fighting chance in life.

And then take a look at what the Harlem Children's Zone has been doing lately: http://www.hcz.org/books/HCZ%202011%20Biennial/files/assets/...

And send them a few bucks, so they can do some more of it.

Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#25
post #6

The main problem with this article that meritocracies are a mythological construct and not something that empirically exist. This probably shouldn't be much of a surprise, considering that merit is literally a religious concept. Try replacing every instance of the word merit with the word Jesus, and you'll see there is essentially no loss of meaning. Figuring out how to reduce bias in startup funding is important, bu…

"I attempt to hire based on merit in order to increase the probability that my startup will succeed and make me rich."

"I attempt to hire based on Jesus in order to increase the probability that my startup will succeed and make me rich." "The guy I hired based on merit has certainly brought my startup closer to success - he's built several useful apps, caught plenty of bugs, and has kept our India operation running smoothly in my absence."

"The guy I hired based on Jesus has certainly brought my startup closer to success - he's built several useful apps, caught plenty of bugs, and has kept our India operation running smoothly in my absence." <- Doesn't make so much sense. What does Jesus have to do with building useful apps, fixing bugs and keeping our worker's pipelines full?

Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#26

Isn't it possible that it has nothing to do with race, but with culture. From my experience most people who end up working in technology are or were at one point part of the geek subculture. You can't just look at Tech fields and say look it's all white and asian. It's not, it's predominantly a particular subset of white and asian men. That subset has it's own culture. Maybe there is some cultural reason that white a…

This has everything to do with culture. This becomes a big deal because of white guilt which is a result of White Privilege.

Fact: there are far fewer minority hires working in our industry

Fiction: the previous fact is a result of racism

If that were the case maybe there's reverse racism in pro sports?

Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#27
Fascinating discussion. In fact, the reasons people do or don't rock certain fields are (like people themselves) incredibly complex. The blind orchestra auditions to which Eric refers are just one drop in a sea of quantitative data about the effects of unconscious bias.

There's Robert Rosenthal's study that showed that others' belief that you are "gifted" actually results in an IQ increase. There's the famous "McKay" study, in which test subjects evaluated identical academic papers by "John" and "Joan" McKay. And on and on.

What's really interesting is the experience of post-op transsexuals, like biologist Ben Barres (who was Barbara Barres until he was in his 40s). These folks are the true secret shoppers of gender-- and the ultimate control group in terms of understanding how gender affects one's experience of the world. It would be really interesting to find a comparable race test case (an updated "Black Like Me").

A few years ago I wrote about this phenomenon in Slate-- I looked at women and ambition in general. Check out the piece if you're interested in a more generalized analysis: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_gist/200...

Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#28
post #19

One of the problems with racism in particular is that it has effects on people from birth. Past racism may have hurt their parents' socioeconomic prospects, forcing them to be born in an economically depressed ghetto with poor schools and gang violence. Even if there's no racism past that point, if their parents were prevented from ascending to the middle class, they won't pass on middle-class virtues emphasizing the…

I think this train of thought would be considered a violation of the author's "No hand-wringing" rule. The last half of this article is dedicated towards debunking the "pipeline problem" which you are describing. Now whether or not he effectively debunked it is up to debate, but at least in the case of women entrepreneurs he offers some compelling data: "...women receive only about 30% of degrees in CS. But 30% is a…

Restricting things to gender makes it vary obvious that it's not a single stage pipeline, because YC get's much closer to 4% women applicants than 30%. The simple fact is for a variety of reasons a lower percentage of female graduates with a CS degree are interested in moving to the valley or joining / starting a start-up. That's not to say there is no discrimination just that discrimination does not account for the massive differences by it's self.

If we really want to understand what's going on we need to look at areas that attract more women than men. It turns out that the northern Virginia area has a significant female bias where there are far more young well educated females than you would expect based on graduation rates etc. Perhaps the prospect of a safe 80+k job in a good area acts a golden handcuffs that prevents many young capable women from 'seeking their fortune'. But, good or bad, cultural or biological, it's not simply a question of employer bias, people chose the areas they want to live in far more than they are force into or out of a specific region.

Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#29
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eric is not suggesting that the applicant pool is diverse and the selection process biased. Instead, I think he's suggesting that different selection processes can result in different applicant pools: "Imagine that you were a professional musician thinking about which orchestra to audition for. You have a choice between an all-male orchestra that conducts interviews out in the open, and a mixed-gender orchestra that…

The Railsconf audience images refute that explanation too. Since there is no screening process at all, potential attendees can't be deterred by biases in it.

I'm not sure I understand your point. Are you saying that since a conference without a screening process has a non-diverse audience, Y Combinator's screening process has no effect on your diversity?

Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#30
One thing that bothered me about this article was the way it called out YC's selection process implying it is part of the problem. Actually the Valley has never been more accessible to 'outsiders' because of the rise of YC, AngelList, and many more angel investors.
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