Take an Ancestry DNA test and the idea of races quickly goes out the window. Most people can then credibly claim to be black and/or Hispanic.
That test may be the highest returning investment of your life.
Beat the system with tech.
SoftBank launches $100m minorities startup fund
61–70 of 111 posts
Re: SoftBank launches $100m minorities startup fund
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a valid stance. But reflect on why it matters to you. So what if someone is giving special opportunities to someone based on their skin color, or their gender? There are plenty of special opportunities to go around for all of us. I think you'll get a lot of flak for this sentiment. But I used to feel the same way as you. What helped me change my mind was to realize that no one is taking away opportunities from…
> So what if someone is giving special opportunities to someone based on their skin color, or their gender? Because if it is done for white people, or to men, it would be heavily criticised for being racist/sexist. I am purely advocating for consistency, and for tackling the real problems (education, socio-economic, familial, etc.). I am sick of the corporate hypocrisy during COVID (we really care about you!), and we…
This is precisely how you achieve consistency, by adjusting for well-established differences in how different groups of people are treated. How else would you suggest achieving consistency, given that the status quo is not consistent? Surely by definition you need to depart from the status quo.
Re: SoftBank launches $100m minorities startup fund
#63Take an Ancestry DNA test and the idea of races quickly goes out the window. Most people can then credibly claim to be black and/or Hispanic. That test may be the highest returning investment of your life. Beat the system with tech.
All that shows is that race is not strictly biological or genetic, which is already widely recognized.
Re: SoftBank launches $100m minorities startup fund
#64> SoftBank also runs the $100 billion Vision Fund, which is headed by Rajeev Misra and invests amounts larger than the entire new fund in startups around the world. Neither Rajeev Misra nor Masayoshi Son sound like “white” names. I find it fascinating how Asians in general are excluded from the term “people of color”.
Asians do not have a historical baggage in USA. Do they face similar racism/bias in general (ignore temporary surge like now by Corona)?
Re: SoftBank launches $100m minorities startup fund
#65Limiting initiatives like this based on skin color, implies that the reason for them needing help is their skin color. What about white people that come from low-socioeconomic backgrounds? Broken families? Didn't finish high-school? Abused as a child/teenager? Single parent family? Aren't these the real reasons why people are disadvantaged? People of all colors come from these backgrounds. I'm sick of the hypocrisy o…
I personally hate these initiatives because they don't deal with problem at the core. They should have policies that address every fund they manage, not some 100m, which is peanuts for them. I really like how YC does it. Yes, there are problems with YC, but their main program is really good at taking people from different economic/social/racial backgrounds. Have tonnes of friends from disadvantaged backgrounds and de…
it is completely wrong. Investments should be made on possible outcome and the background of the founders is one of them but not the decisive one.
but softbank has already lost billions of cash due to the we work debacle. This does not really matter in the end just politcs
Re: SoftBank launches $100m minorities startup fund
#66Heh is there a better canary to do a 180 and run away than SoftBank investing in something?
Re: SoftBank launches $100m minorities startup fund
#67> SoftBank also runs the $100 billion Vision Fund, which is headed by Rajeev Misra and invests amounts larger than the entire new fund in startups around the world. Neither Rajeev Misra nor Masayoshi Son sound like “white” names. I find it fascinating how Asians in general are excluded from the term “people of color”.
Because the term "[free] people of colour" is a direct translation of the French phrase "gens de couleur [libres]" used in the French West Indies during slavery times to refer to free people of mixed African and European ancestry.
Of course its now its just virtue signalling to describe some imagined unified faction of the rest of the planet opposing white people.
IMHO, it will end once American-born Chinese and Indian mothers realise they aren't part of it and that their kids bear the largest brunt of the interventions.
Re: SoftBank launches $100m minorities startup fund
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Aren't these the real reasons why people are disadvantaged? No, or at least, not exclusively. There's tons of social science research in which, for example, two identical fabricated resumes were submitted for a battery of jobs, differing only by, say, a headshot of a black vs. white person, or a stereotypically-African-American name vs. a stereotypically white (or not-obviously-race-signaling) one. In these studies…
> No, or at least, not exclusively. But primarily, right? Bias plays a role, so everything else being equal, a black applicant will receive fewer callbacks than a white or asian one, but (and that's a big but) the primary issue is that usually not all other things are equal. The average black person comes from a different socioeconomic background than the average white or asian person, so they'll usually not have the…
But there are programs that focus on access to resources based around class, and to the extent that there are factors besides class that matter (like race), exclusively-class-oriented programs fail to fully level the playing field. That this program exists to help combat bias doesn't stop someone else from starting a different program aimed at attacking a different angle with different eligibility criteria. The more the merrier.
Re: SoftBank launches $100m minorities startup fund
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
> As far as I can see, this doesn't exist in the tech world (any more) Bluntly: there's probably a lot that you can't see.
That's a vague and unsubstantiated statement. Can you provide examples and evidence of things you think the OP does not see.
It makes sense to me. Its possible the poster is a person of color who simply never sees discrimination, but its more likely they are a white person who does not notice discrimination against people of color.
When the James Damore essay swept google, I briefly asked my female friends if they could simply tell me what discrimination they experience. But they were too worn out from every male colleague asking them the same thing to explain it all to each one.
What I realized I needed to do was start listening to women's stories more, and start believing things even when they don't make sense to me. I needed to be curious and look for problems that I had previously been blissfully unaware of. And with that change in mindset I started to see them.
We have to do the same with people of color. We need to listen to their stories and believe them. It's hard to give you a bulleted list which would clearly explain discrimination just as it was hard (and tiring) for women to explain their discrimination to me. But if you take "there are things you are not seeing about racism at the workplace" to be true, you can begin to cultivate a mindset that allows you to learn what is happening.
Re: SoftBank launches $100m minorities startup fund
#70Based on past threads, I think that a majority of HN views startup funding as competitive, and acknowledges the risks from a lack of funding - some from first hand experience, and that adversity is not evenly distributed among non-minorities, and that for technology product adoption nobody looks at the team just the usefulness, so anything other than a level playing field will be frowned upon here.
I am an immigrant where I live, so i will take the liberty to ask:
- Do the behaviors we have been seeing on television from law enforcement in the US extend to offline business relationships in the US in more subtle ways? For example would a minority with a new product be given a lower preference to demo their stuff at a technology meetup? Would they be passed up for a promotion at work because the boss preferred someone who looked like him?
- Is there a systemic variation in the quality and accessability of human relationships for some groups? (vital for recruiting, selling, partnering, fund raising, launching, ecosystem and user community building). For example would it be harder to sign up beta users for an enterprise product?
Those are the core issues they could face, and they are very real in some places in the UK.
If this is a case, perhaps it is warranted or you will have capable people unable to contribute.