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Arrington, Race, and Silicon Valley

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Re: Arrington, Race, and Silicon Valley

#81

Post by temphn »

jessedhillon wrote: post #37
yummyfajitas wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So do you think I (a non-Indian) would be at a disadvantage applying to Khosla's outfit [1]? If Khosla looks for people "like him", that should be the case. Similarly, would an Indian founder be at a disadvantage applying to Fred Wilson? Somehow, I suspect any disadvantage would be minor, if it existed at all. In any case, your theory of who "them" is now drawn quite broadly. It's not so much people looking for other…

You are narrowly reducing the "like him" assessment to race alone. It's culture + race that makes the determination. An Indian person has an easier time demonstrating that s/he is part of the mainstream culture. In my experience, educated immigrants, or children thereof, are often received as a blank slate and accordingly it's easy to see them as "one of us." Most Americans, however, already have a conception of who…

His point is made, though, and it's a good one. This is definitely not simple "racism" as a substantial fraction of Indians are darker than the average African American or Hispanic.

Re: Arrington, Race, and Silicon Valley

#82

Post by jacques_chester »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #77
patio11 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See Moneyball. Traditionally, people can't measure merit. They measure things which they think are proxies, but some popular proxies are hilariously inaccurate. Like, "Lines of code is a proxy for programming skill" hilariously inaccurate.

I haven't seen the movie, but my understanding was that someone used some math skills to better acquire skilled players, thus making professional athletics even more of a meritocracy than it was. If I had to put a bunch of rich people on a chart with three axises of merit, luck, and inheritance, I still think professional athletes lie the closest to the pure merit line.

Nitpick: isn't inheritance a type of luck?

Re: Arrington, Race, and Silicon Valley

#83

Post by tempaccount10 »

patio11 wrote: 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…

Why aren't there many over-weight entrepreneurs in the Vally? I mean just look at how many over weight americans in US and they are under-presented in tech. I'm pissed. I'm going to start a OverWeightMe incubator that helps fat people. And any news media or investor who is not paying attention is a a weight-ist. You all should all write about me and fund me because i'm fat and under-presented so I deserve it.

Sarcasm aside, let me tell you why there are so few black tech entrepreneurs. Fact 1: Most successful tech founders in the Valley are themselves technical. Fact 2: Go to your favorite college, how many black people there studying math or computer science ? how many white or asians?

If there are very small percentage of black studying math and computer science, of course, the number of the black tech entrepreneurs would be small.

To all the black people out there, please don't turn venture capitalism into philanthropy. You will destroy Silicon Vally.

The whole sport (e.g basketball) industry is dominated by black people. Do you see asian people crying around shouting 'racism'? If you are really good (like in sports), you gain success. If you are not good, you're not (like making tech companies). It's simple.

Re: Arrington, Race, and Silicon Valley

#84

Post by entangld »

tempaccount10 wrote: post #83
patio11 wrote: 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…

Why aren't there many over-weight entrepreneurs in the Vally? I mean just look at how many over weight americans in US and they are under-presented in tech. I'm pissed. I'm going to start a OverWeightMe incubator that helps fat people. And any news media or investor who is not paying attention is a a weight-ist. You all should all write about me and fund me because i'm fat and under-presented so I deserve it. Sarcasm…

These comments are not offensive enough for you to wuss out and use a temp account.

When it comes to sports, it's easy to claim they are a meritocracy because the players don't always look like the coaches or GMs. If the players and coaches always looked the same, people might question it.

People are generally blind to their biases, and some biases are wrong. For example you mentioned most founders being technical, but some VCs have promoted picking startups run by designers.

Let's not pretend venture capital is a completely neutral meritocracy. There are plenty of VCs who speak about the herd mentality within their profession and how many social factors like "who's already invested" have an effect on where money goes.

I thought venture capital would be full of strictly analytical decisions, but the more you listen to VCs talk about themselves the more you realize that they use many social factors to try to mitigate their perceived risk. It's possible things could be overlooked. It's not just complaining. How else could a person bring attention to something without talking about it? Edit: I don't see a difference between this argument and the belief that most of the startup talent is in Silicon Valley. Convincing and generally accepted, but not necessarily true.

edit: Don't just vote me down because you disagree. Please respond.

Re: Arrington, Race, and Silicon Valley

#85

Post by rdl »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #77
patio11 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See Moneyball. Traditionally, people can't measure merit. They measure things which they think are proxies, but some popular proxies are hilariously inaccurate. Like, "Lines of code is a proxy for programming skill" hilariously inaccurate.

I haven't seen the movie, but my understanding was that someone used some math skills to better acquire skilled players, thus making professional athletics even more of a meritocracy than it was. If I had to put a bunch of rich people on a chart with three axises of merit, luck, and inheritance, I still think professional athletes lie the closest to the pure merit line.

Definitely professional athletics seems to be an exception, since it has a clearly defined metric for merit, and big enough rewards to picking the winners to justify global search.

I'd assume at some level finance is like this; the algorithmic trading parts, not the "we went to Yale together and you have compromising pictures of me with that nun, so I'll give you this business" parts.

Re: Arrington, Race, and Silicon Valley

#86

Post by philwelch »

patio11 wrote: post #74
jcampbell1 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Professional athletics? It seems to be as close to a pure meritocracy as I can think of.

See Moneyball. Traditionally, people can't measure merit. They measure things which they think are proxies, but some popular proxies are hilariously inaccurate. Like, "Lines of code is a proxy for programming skill" hilariously inaccurate.

The thing is, in a competitive environment, people end up mismeasuring merit in totally different ways and the ones who end up closest to the mark end up winning. The point of Moneyball is that if you win at moneyball, you can win at baseball, too.

Though baseball (and other American sports) aren't generally a good example. With only 20-30 world class teams, it's easy to get contaminated by groupthink. Soccer is a better example. It's easy for all 32 NFL teams to have the exact same ideas about how to measure playing ability. It's hard for thousands of clubs in hundreds of countries to all have the same ideas. Even if English or American teams focus too heavily on size and strength, a Spanish team might take a chance on an undersized kid with a lot of speed and technical ability.

Re: Arrington, Race, and Silicon Valley

#87

Post by nonrecursive »

tempaccount10 wrote: post #83
patio11 wrote: 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…

Why aren't there many over-weight entrepreneurs in the Vally? I mean just look at how many over weight americans in US and they are under-presented in tech. I'm pissed. I'm going to start a OverWeightMe incubator that helps fat people. And any news media or investor who is not paying attention is a a weight-ist. You all should all write about me and fund me because i'm fat and under-presented so I deserve it. Sarcasm…

Your comment would be more helpful if it didn't misrepresent the blog post. Hank is nowhere saying that "any news media or investor who is not paying attention is racist". He's also not saying that he and others in NewMe deserve anything just because they're black and under-represented. Finally, it's pretty ridiculous to imply that this guy, Hank Williams - and ALL black people out there - are trying to turn venture capitalism into philanthropy. The other response says your comment wasn't offensive enough to merit a temp account. I think you did the right thing; personally, I would be embarrassed and ashamed to make such degrading remarks.

That aside - I believe the premise of Hank's post is that it's not a meritocracy in Silicon Valley. It's hard to know for sure whether this is true because there's no way to test this hypothesis. But I think it's safe to assume that VC's are still human, and like every other human, they all have biases, including racial biases. There's nothing wrong with that, in my opinion. However, if they're not aware of that bias - perhaps, mentally, they reject that they have any racial bias because they think that will make them a bad person - then they won't take any conscious steps to correct it. The result would be that fewer black entrepreneurs get funded.

You should realize that being black in America is not like being fat. For most of our country's history, black people have been treated as less than human. It wasn't even until fairly recently in our country's history that blacks gained the legal right, throughout the country, to use the same restrooms and water fountains. Can you imagine that? If you think that that kind of institutionalized racism has completely evaporated, you are wrong.

I think it would benefit you to read the book "Black Like Me" by John Howard Griffin. It will probably change your apparent opinion that black people are a bunch of whiners demanding charity.

Re: Arrington, Race, and Silicon Valley

#88

Post by JabavuAdams »

temphn wrote: post #81
jessedhillon wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are narrowly reducing the "like him" assessment to race alone. It's culture + race that makes the determination. An Indian person has an easier time demonstrating that s/he is part of the mainstream culture. In my experience, educated immigrants, or children thereof, are often received as a blank slate and accordingly it's easy to see them as "one of us." Most Americans, however, already have a conception of who…

His point is made, though, and it's a good one. This is definitely not simple "racism" as a substantial fraction of Indians are darker than the average African American or Hispanic.

You're starting from a false premise: racism (in the U.S.) depends only on skin colour.

The terms "white" and "black" when applied to race are not objective measures of skin-pigmentation. They're proxies for other traits. They are used differently in different cultures. For instance "black" in the U.S. may not be "black" in Brazil.

For example a light-skinned European from Spain would be considered white in the U.S. A person with the same appearance, but from Mexico would be considered Hispanic.

In my part of Canada, we generally don't refer to people as Hispanic. They'd just be white or maybe brown. Unless maybe they're poor and don't speak English or French.

Re: Arrington, Race, and Silicon Valley

#89

Post by JabavuAdams »

colinplamondon wrote: post #46

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?".

> Taking part in a race-selected accelerator, instead of a quality-selected accelerator

This is very true. I'm half-black and I've avoided such programs and clubs to avoid being labeled.

This is part of a larger issue: "black" is not a culture. What we call "black culture" is more like US-poor-uneducated-black-ghetto-post-slavery-culture.

So, if you happen to be black and aren't poor and aren't living in a ghetto, you don't really identify strongly with what most people call "black culture".

This means that successful, main-stream blacks (speaking of Canada, here) are dis-inclined to live with or be particularly helpful to struggling blacks. Compound this with other cultural divides like high religiosity of uneducated blacks vs. lower religiosity of educated people in general, and there really is a sense of "those losers are embarrassing us."

Contrast this to other minority groups that have strong cultural ties. If Jews are shunned in a country, they tend to set up their own parallel social structures. Chinese help Chinese, etc.

Kenyans help Kenyans, and Somalis help Somalis, but blacks (in general) don't really help blacks, because "black" is not a well-defined cultural group. It's only a well-defined cultural stereotype.

Re: Arrington, Race, and Silicon Valley

#90

Post by bilbo0s »

tempaccount10 wrote: post #83
patio11 wrote: 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…

Why aren't there many over-weight entrepreneurs in the Vally? I mean just look at how many over weight americans in US and they are under-presented in tech. I'm pissed. I'm going to start a OverWeightMe incubator that helps fat people. And any news media or investor who is not paying attention is a a weight-ist. You all should all write about me and fund me because i'm fat and under-presented so I deserve it. Sarcasm…

"...The whole sport (e.g basketball) industry is dominated by black people. Do you see asian people crying around shouting 'racism'?"

No.

But I do see them start fights with black people when they get beat by them. You should see it ... it's hilarious ->

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmG9G-ZwDDc

I think the PHYSICAL fighting you see on the part of the Chinese teams is a manifestation of the same frustration that blacks show towards their own under representation in tech fields.

Just my take.

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