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Is There an Institutional Bias Against Black Tech Entrepreneurs?
An anonymous reader writes sends this excerpt from CNN:
"The vast majority of top executives at the leading Silicon Valley tech firms are white men. Women and Asians have made some inroads, but African-American and Latino tech leaders remain a rarity. About 1% of entrepreneurs who received venture capital in the first half of last year are black, according to a study by research firm CB Insights. ... 'The tech industry is pretty clubby,' said Hank Williams, an African-American entrepreneur in the NewMe program who had success in the Internet boom of the 1990s. 'There are really no people of color in Silicon Valley.' Others say the issue could be rooted deep within the black community. The NewMe co-founders said African-American families don't typically encourage business leaders or programmers to pursue interests in tech."
Observing an apparent deficiency in demographics is not proof of bias, it is merely an observation of what is.
--- Bill
That doesn't matter. The computer has to be in the child's home already. A kid who doesn't have a computer doesn't know that he wants to mess around with his computer. He has to have a computer, then be one of the few kids who would rather mess around with it than just play on it or do something else.
paintball
Yes, that would be a good analogy if black people and latinos were physiologically incapable of computer programming.
Unless, of course, you find a way to make computers care about what the person writing code on them looks like. Good luck with that.
yeah, tell that to the thousands of Indians and East Asians in tech. Many of whom come from more poverty than you could imagine.
Its not a rich and poor thing, it's a cultural thing.
Well this is an interesting article. I am black ... and I would like to add my voice - since most of the voices are very likely not black.
There are many facets to a story like this. For one white folks do NOT like to be lumped into the same pot and also do not like to be made to feel guilty about racism. But racism does exist (look at the Yahoo message boards - very OVERTLY racist comments all the time).
... you should get a fair shake ... I think if you are a graduating PhD from Stanford with some new fangled technology, then you will get a fare shake. I know this, because the blacks at Stanford are very happy and they innovate. I have seen some UNHAPPY black people at MIT - I think for a long time they had no tenured black faculty and the one head of department was run off after his department revolted. So MIT from I have heard is not the best place if you are black person ... at Stanford, all I have seen is happy people - they get VC money, they start companies, they get faculty positions ... I heard Berkley is good too ...
... there are usually very few and when one appears in a project - there can be a reaction - or no reaction at all depending on the attitude of the team. Prejudices can come out ... prejudice is stupidity - let me say that now.
... Linux and VxWorks are my lingua franca ... my experiences over the years have been fun ... a lot of great projects networking, codecs, robotics ... a lot of cool stuff ... Today it would be highly unusual if I encountered direct and overt racism - I would likely have a very very hard time with that. I am fortunate - I know that some black people do work in hostile environments where they are second guessed or berated ... it does happen.
I went to a private technological University - I had lots of black classmates - some of them have done really really cool stuff. I met fellow black peers at MIT, Stanford, Caltech and Berkeley ... there are many smart black people ... that go to some of the best schools. The challenge is that many us are buried away in great companies in labs or offices ... we are here ... but sometimes not seen.
The questions as posed, is whether this prejudice applies to Silicon Valley. If your idea is good
No one should be asking if there are smart, qualified black people - There are. There are smart qualified people of all kinds of backgrounds. If you discriminate, you shrink the talent pool.
I do think though that African people (Black Americans, West Indians, Africans and others) working in American technological firms can be viewed as space aliens
I am a programmer - I program in C++ and C mostly
I think one challenge may be that SOME white people do not know how to interact with black people in general. This is not controversial or alarming at all. Why? Well when I look at my managers - I see 40 something, 50 something and 60 something year olds. For the older ones, they very likely did not go to schools with black people due to segregation - I understand that! This is America, and there is a social consequence that affects guys who graduated in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Heck even guys I knew in college, that was their first time interacting with a black person. Truly for a good deal of white people there are sometimes few blacks in their elementary and high schools. Not to be an apologist for people - but from a social studies aspect - when a black person is suddenly introduced, people can act like a space alien fell from outer space. Will the black person lower the API score of my school (for Californians), is he qualified to work at my company? Did he get in through affirmative action? These are things black people think white people think about them.
So in o
The problem isn't that they were comparing "black" names to "white" names it is that they were comparing ghetto names to American names. "Jill" is a very normal, neutral, name in America. "Shaniqua" is a name you tend to only see come from, well, the ghetto. It is not a name that comes from African roots or anything. It sounds, well, lower class.
However turns out it isn't just "black" names that have that. Try hillbilly names. Have "Shaniqua" run against "Sheri-Moon" and see how that goes. Both names are "odd" to the American ear and both speak of a lower class upbringing.
In terms of "black" names I might note that someone who has a REAL "black name," as in one that has an African influence, currently holds the highest office in the land.
There is this expectation that they should go and do some sort of civil rights work, or something like that which helps the "black community". Neil DeGrasse Tyson gives a great talk on that at the HHMI: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I5Fl1Qn-Do.
In it (at around 32 minutes) he talks about an experience on college where another smart, motivated, black student found out he was working to be an Astrophysicist and said to him "Astrophysics? The black community cannot afford the luxury of someone with your intellect to spend it on that subject."
So there is this pressure for smart black kids that you need to go do something that directly helps the black community. Be a leader in some respect. That of course negates doing engineering or anything like that.
Now if you continue to watch the video, Dr. Tyson points out how his path has done ever so much, despite not working for "the black community." The man is the director of the Hayden Planetarium, a minor celebrity, a living, breathing, example that it doesn't matter if you skin has more melanin in it, you can still be brilliant and excel in your chosen field.
But there's that pressure there. Once you've got out of the anti-intellectual community, which as you point out is EXTREMELY strong for black kids, you then face this pressure from the intellectual community that you should be doing some specific things. Doesn't matter what you are interested in, you "owe" your community to use your smarts in some way.
Hopefully, time and people like Dr. Tyson will change that. People will see him, and more people like him, and say "It is ok to be smart, no matter my skin colour, and it is ok to use my smarts on the field I like."