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Venture capital firms to include “diversity riders” in term sheets

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Re: Venture capital firms to include “diversity riders” in term sheets

#31

Post by skitout »

seibelj wrote: post #28
tdeck wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MLK explicitly advocated for policies that gave preferential treatment to Black people, so it's a bit surprising to see such a fan of his taking this stance by invoking King. For example, here's a quote from his book "Why We Can't Wait": > Whenever the issue of compensatory or preferential treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he…

My father in law is a Vietnamese immigrant, came here after communists destroyed his country on a fishing boat. He’s now a retired millionaire! My neighbor is black, and she drives a $100k+ Mercedes! Country club golfing and sailing type. My point is, arbitrary assumptions based on race are totally meaningless in 2020. There are people in all social strata of every race. Giving a leg up to someone for being XYZ is du…

"My point is, arbitrary assumptions based on race are totally meaningless in 2020."

Well, unfortunately race and gender are still important in 2020, and in the VC world there are still important negative discrimination against woman, against black people... and positive discrimination for White and Asian men... [1] [2] and that is a serious problem.

(This comes on the top of existing other problems linked eg. to poverty, that is touching disproportionately the people negatively discriminated by VC and investors)

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesnonprofitcouncil/2018/02/... [2] https://hbr.org/2017/05/we-recorded-vcs-conversations-and-an...

Re: Venture capital firms to include “diversity riders” in term sheets

#32

Post by seibelj »

skitout wrote: post #31
seibelj wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My father in law is a Vietnamese immigrant, came here after communists destroyed his country on a fishing boat. He’s now a retired millionaire! My neighbor is black, and she drives a $100k+ Mercedes! Country club golfing and sailing type. My point is, arbitrary assumptions based on race are totally meaningless in 2020. There are people in all social strata of every race. Giving a leg up to someone for being XYZ is du…

"My point is, arbitrary assumptions based on race are totally meaningless in 2020." Well, unfortunately race and gender are still important in 2020, and in the VC world there are still important negative discrimination against woman, against black people... and positive discrimination for White and Asian men... [1] [2] and that is a serious problem. (This comes on the top of existing other problems linked eg. to pove…

I still hire the best person for the job, which over the years has included men, women, and people of many races. Like I said in the original post, I am an old fashioned type that believes we are not restricted by superficial and unimportant details like our race - all people can succeed and thrive based on their character. It’s crazy that this is now old school, but this is 2020 and I don’t read any critical race theory pseudoscience.

My view is a much more optimistic, forward-looking attitude than one that constantly analyzes how hard society has screwed each person based on their labels. Rather than see ourselves as victims who can’t succeed because of XYZ, we should encourage people to thrive despite XYZ. If you wait your entire life for society / the government / other people to save you, you’ll never be happy and you will never be saved.

Re: Venture capital firms to include “diversity riders” in term sheets

#34

Post by [deleted] »

seibelj wrote: post #28
tdeck wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MLK explicitly advocated for policies that gave preferential treatment to Black people, so it's a bit surprising to see such a fan of his taking this stance by invoking King. For example, here's a quote from his book "Why We Can't Wait": > Whenever the issue of compensatory or preferential treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he…

My father in law is a Vietnamese immigrant, came here after communists destroyed his country on a fishing boat. He’s now a retired millionaire! My neighbor is black, and she drives a $100k+ Mercedes! Country club golfing and sailing type. My point is, arbitrary assumptions based on race are totally meaningless in 2020. There are people in all social strata of every race. Giving a leg up to someone for being XYZ is du…

[deleted]

Re: Venture capital firms to include “diversity riders” in term sheets

#35

Post by baskire »

skitout wrote: post #26
baskire wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what is racism? To me giving someone a benefit due to their skin color is racist. Affirmative action is racist in nature. A good test is to replace the race with “white European”. And if the statement offends it’s racist.

Do we agree that current VC, mostly because of unconscious bias, are racist and sexist ? Then what do you suggest to change this situation ? I am not super comfortable with counsious positive discrimination as a momentary tool to correct a discriminatory situation (with negative impact on the whole society), but it is hard to imagine solutions without using this tool.

My belief comes from personal experience. That social mobility is alive and well but can take multiple generations.

There’s Plenty of VCs who came from poverty, who’s parents came from poverty, or who’s grandparents came from poverty.

When looking at that Kind of timescale from 1920s till now, I don’t believe the system has had enough time. Civil rights, racial rights, and gender rights are relatively new concepts.

My belief is over the next 30-50 years the forces of market capitalism will address the issue.

Re: Venture capital firms to include “diversity riders” in term sheets

#36

Post by skitout »

seibelj wrote: post #32
skitout wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"My point is, arbitrary assumptions based on race are totally meaningless in 2020." Well, unfortunately race and gender are still important in 2020, and in the VC world there are still important negative discrimination against woman, against black people... and positive discrimination for White and Asian men... [1] [2] and that is a serious problem. (This comes on the top of existing other problems linked eg. to pove…

I still hire the best person for the job, which over the years has included men, women, and people of many races. Like I said in the original post, I am an old fashioned type that believes we are not restricted by superficial and unimportant details like our race - all people can succeed and thrive based on their character. It’s crazy that this is now old school, but this is 2020 and I don’t read any critical race th…

You think you hire the best person for the job... Just like the Swedish in the HBR article I quoted were sure they invest in the best project/person while they were discriminating negatively women (the discriminating positively men).

Re: Venture capital firms to include “diversity riders” in term sheets

#37

Post by skitout »

baskire wrote: post #35
skitout wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we agree that current VC, mostly because of unconscious bias, are racist and sexist ? Then what do you suggest to change this situation ? I am not super comfortable with counsious positive discrimination as a momentary tool to correct a discriminatory situation (with negative impact on the whole society), but it is hard to imagine solutions without using this tool.

My belief comes from personal experience. That social mobility is alive and well but can take multiple generations. There’s Plenty of VCs who came from poverty, who’s parents came from poverty, or who’s grandparents came from poverty. When looking at that Kind of timescale from 1920s till now, I don’t believe the system has had enough time. Civil rights, racial rights, and gender rights are relatively new concepts. M…

So to you this is not a problem that VC and investors discriminate negatively people based on their gender of race ?

Re: Venture capital firms to include “diversity riders” in term sheets

#38

Post by Nasrudith »

Taikonerd wrote: post #3

Huh. Looking at the headline, I had thought that this would mean, "we'll fund your startup, if you agree to meet these diversity hiring targets." But if I'm reading the article correctly, it actually means, "we, the VCs, will try to have more diversity among the people writing the checks."

The real beneficiary is that they will reap the benefits from the success but well, VCs are either well off already or reckless. It may technically sway the statistics of the upper ends distribution ans shows it isn't a defacto ethnic segregation but means about as much as Queen Victoria to the status of women. Technically a good thing but not very relevant to most of the minority.

Re: Venture capital firms to include “diversity riders” in term sheets

#39

Post by dang »

pbiggar wrote: post #18
seibelj wrote: post #5

I love how everyone uses throwaways in these comments because they know any deviation from the progressive-left line will get them cancelled! I’ll say it under my name - I’m completely old fashioned and probably racist / sexist / *-phobic whatever because I still agree with Martin Luther King that it is morally correct to judge someone by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. I’m so tota…

If you're going to try to be contrarian, at least do the research to do it well. You think you're being clever but you're showing no understanding of the positions you're trying to make fun of. As a result, you come across like a moron. You should have used a throwaway, not because you have non-politically-correct views, but rather because you hold extremely strong opinions about something you can't even articulate c…

Personal attacks are not ok on HN, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are.

Digging up details from someone's history and bringing them in here as ammunition in an argument is particularly not ok. That's a practice of the online callout/shaming culture, and we're trying to avoid that on HN. Not that the callouts are always wrong, but callout/shaming culture has toxic systemic effects that are incompatible with the intended spirit of this site.

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=online%20shaming%20by%3Adang&s...

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Venture capital firms to include “diversity riders” in term sheets

#40

Post by dang »

seibelj wrote: post #20
pbiggar wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to try to be contrarian, at least do the research to do it well. You think you're being clever but you're showing no understanding of the positions you're trying to make fun of. As a result, you come across like a moron. You should have used a throwaway, not because you have non-politically-correct views, but rather because you hold extremely strong opinions about something you can't even articulate c…

A whole lot of words about how I’m a “moron” without refuting anything in the argument! A very typical stance to take from the progressive left. You clearly feel that you are morally superior to me! Once again, I will state loudly and clearly - I view all people as what they are: people. You are not a series of identities to me. All people have their own agency and cannot be reduced to a set of labels.

Please don't do this, and please stop using HN for generic ideological battle. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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