Slashdot Mirror
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
About 0% of entrepreneurs who received venture capital in the first half of this year are white with my ethnic background.
I'm tired of being lumped together with "rich white men" just because I'm white.
There are 100 times as many white teenagers plastered to their monitor messing around with their computer as there are black teenagers. Since successful tech entrepreneurs tend to be the kids who spent thousands of hours in front of their computer when they were kids, and the kids spending thousands of hours in front of their computer are almost all white (or asian), then of course almost all the tech entrepreneurs will be white.
It's got nothing to do with silicon valley. It's due to the comparative lack of computer availability to young black teens, and a cultural difference where American black culture has a much lower opinion on average of nerdy endeavors as opposed to American white culture.
paintball
So this story is based off the CNN documentary "Black in America: Silicon Valley." I haven't seen the actual show, but CNN has been pushing it a lot the past week and showing clips from it.
One really interesting clip that I saw had an Indian who had experience with VCs and start-ups and was also a professor somewhere giving a talk to the African American entrepreneurs.
Now Asians in general, and Indians specifically I don't think are as rare in Silicon Valley and are found amongst high level executives. Additionally, this particular individual was well spoken and articulate, capable of creative thinking, didn't have a strong accent, and in other ways didn't fit the stereotype of an Indian caricature.
However the ONE thing that he said was to get a good looking white guy to be your front man when going to VCs. He said that when we wanted to get funding, he got a (admittedly very capable and accomplished) white guy to be his partner. He said that's just how things work in the Valley. The African American audience he was speaking to was very shocked by this.
The point made was that VCs look for what works. And if they see a bunch of "successful" start-up companies run by young white guys, that's what they look to fund. Plus add in the inherent bias towards good looking white guys in business who fit the common archetype (with as Dilbert says good hair).
While we're on the topic, what about women (white or otherwise)? Are VCs more likely to discount a company being led by women as they're not thought to be "techy"?
So, any thoughts form people with experience here, either for or against this argument. Do all races (not just African Americans) need Caucasian male partners to improve their chances for success.
-"Those who fought today will die tommorow."-
Ever heard of Vinod Khosla? How about legions of Asian programmers? Oh, no people of *his* color. Yeah, just another conspiracy by The Man to keep the bruthas down.
Seriously, when will this victim mentality shit ever end?
Let's look at the fundamental facts here. Well, fact, since there's only one inarguable thing:
African-Americans and Latinos are underrepresented in tech-firm leadership.
That's a correlation - executives in the tech industry tend to be white males (who are significantly overrepresented). Asians and white females are more or less as common as expected. Probably a bit less, but not as significantly.
Now, as we all know, correlation does not imply causation. But it does hint pretty heavily that there is something involved. Since I don't have access to many studies, and can't do my own, all I can do is list every possibility I can imagine, and informally think about it.
Possibility 1: There is a specific bias in technology against blacks and latinos. I find that a bit hard to believe - the tech industry trends liberal, and I'm sure plenty of techies would rather have Geordi La Forge for a boss than Gates or Ellison. It's still a possibility, and I'm not saying no techies are racist, but overall, I don't think this is the best explanation.
Possibility 2: There is a specific bias among business executives against blacks and latinos. That I can definitely believe, but I don't have any statistics to support or refute it, and I'm not sure it would explain it fully.
Possibility 3: There is a specific bias amongst blacks and latinos against entering technology. I suspect this may be a contributing factor, perhaps even the main one. It's only anecdotal evidence, but when I was in high school, there were very few african-american students in the tech program, and no hispanics at all. The ones who were there were fine (one of them remains a good friend, and one of the brightest people I've met), but you'd see a lot more in the art or music programs.
Possibility 4: There is a specific bias amongst blacks and latinos against becoming business executives. This probably isn't a major factor, but it may be a small one. At the very least, racial minorities tend to be less wealthy, which would naturally make them less likely to become major business leaders.
Going off gut instinct, I would say it's a combination of business leaders being biased against blacks/latinos, and blacks/latinos not being encouraged by their parents to enter the tech field. That would be my hypothesis. The best way to check would be to look at the independent factors - you should see a bias against blacks/latinos at all levels of technology, and a bias against black/latino business leadership in other industries, but neither bias should be alone as significant as that seen in tech business leadership. I'd look myself, but I haven't even RTFA yet.
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
Comic Con.
paintball
No. Because Cain believes that a person stands on their merits, not their skin colour. Being half-asian, I do the same. Institutional bias to 'create' groups of people and segregating them does more damage than anything, and the left are very happy to use those all the time.
Useful tip: You might want to actually look into his "computer related" background experience.
Om, nomnomnom...
Our whole society is biased against black people. They are denied education, and the people in power prefer their own kind. Most people who make more than maybe $60,000 a year aren't used to interacting with black people, are afraid of them, and assume they are stupid and shouldn't be trusted.
None of that is true, or only true in very exceptional cases. There's absolutely no discriminatory laws in place (except perhaps to advantage minorities, and very few racist individuals. Of those who are racist, the majority would never admit it.
The under-representation of particular races in particular fields have little to do with racism, and nothing to do with innate capability. It is purely a social artifact of history.
Affirmative action has been used and found to have positive results when applied to other walks of life.
It's also been found to have detrimental effects when applied to other walks of life. The cure for racism is not to enshrine it into law, as affirmative action does. The important thing is to make race an irrelevant factor in success in a field... and I believe it is, in the tech industry.
I think it's very rare in Silicon Valley that an otherwise deserving businessman loses out because they're black. Rather, the deficiency is in the lack of deserving minority businessman in the first place. That's a social and cultural issue, and may not even be a problem. Not every culture needs to have equal representation in all fields; that's one of the ways in which cultures are different.
I worked at a Fortune 100 company in a large IT department in a major coastal city. We had some choice in where we worked. I first worked in a group alongside a black guy, who told me he worked in his group because he didn't get along with someone in another group, he was vague about who. I then went to work for that group. I got along with my manager, but he had it in for this black guy from the other group. In fact I would socialize with the manager and co-workers. At the bar, he would sometimes speak disparagingly on Arabs, Muslims, blacks, Mexicans and the like. When there were layoffs, the black guy was let go. He didn't have direct influence over the group, but having one of the managers there against you was certainly not a help. There didn't seem to be a logical reason for the antipathy either. Honestly, I still get along with this former manager, although I don't agree with his thinking in this respect.
I worked at another company, Fortune 1000. I worked alongside a black co-worker, with whom I had a common manager - white, from the Midwest, late 20s. Again, the manager had a lot of antipathy and made life hard for this co-worker, for no reason I could see. I think it's difficult to work in conditions when your manager is against you and is waiting to jump on any error you make (it happened to me once when a new manager wanted to push me out and get his friend in my position, which is a long story itself). Eventually my co-worker left, or was pushed out, or whatever - the co-worker never wanted to talk about it when I spoke with him after.
So from my experience, the racism is usually not from co-workers, or from upper management and HR, who would probably be happy with some functional, if token, black faces. It's usually from lower management types, who in my experience are often a bundle of neuroses and incompetence to begin with.
On another topic, to quote George Jefferson, with enough green you can always get people to forget the black. When the dot-com boom happened years ago, money flowed into the web properties of Vibe magazine, UBO, BET, Black Planet etc. Plenty of companies were interested in reaching the "urban" market. There is even cross-over - plenty of white teens listen to not only Eminem, but black hip-hop artists. I just read a piece in Adweek on how Android had captured the African-American demographic in the US. Of course, this still is a ghettoization of sorts - it really opens up when blacks get venture capital for new chip designs, or software products or the like, not just web and social media properties geared toward the urban market.
When I was a kid the computer "wasn't there" already. (Of course that way about 1980.) There wasn't any in school either.
My parents basically bought me a VIC-20 to make me stop taking apart the household electrical appliances I found in the house or in the garbage. Someone who likes to tinker with technology can't be stopped by not having a ready-made computer around.
I also volunteer in a youth / children centre. There is a HUGE gap between kids that DO stuff and are INTERESTED in stuff, and a large group of "Me, I don't care about anything, do something for me, entertain me...." kids.
An *entrepreneur* can only come from the first group. The others might still be able to get well-paying jobs somewhere, even in programming and/or IT, but the will almost never really *start* something like a company themselves.
Anyone with $50 - $150 and a library card can pretty much obtain a PC and learn how to use it. Craigslist special. Cable companies are offering dirt cheap broadband, as well as various other gimmicks to get cheap net access.
That's true right now. It wasn't true 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago, which is what is impacting the current market for entrepreneurs.
This is a very important point that you make. Everyone I know who is into tech had a computer in the home from a very young age. Most black people I know aren't into the inner workings of technology. I know one black guy who's a bit of a computer geek and he's had a computer in his home since a very young age. When I was a kid - the 80s/90s - having a computer wasn't exactly common unless your family had money.
I'm not going to bother to look up the statistics b/c everyone knows it's true: black families in America tend to live in poverty. It's a result of how they got here in the first place and the fact that they haven't had legal equality until the 1960s. I would be willing to bet that tech entrepreneurs by and large were raised in middle class or upper class families - that they tend to have parents who went to college. It's not black or white, it's rich or poor. Thus it looks black/white because a disproportionate amount of blacks are poor. I'm sure somebody can find an example of some rag-to-riches tech entrepreneur, but that's the exception, not the rule. And why does tech have anything to do with it? There aren't many black entrepreneurs in general (no, I don't consider LeBron James an entrepreneur, no matter how many companies he starts up).
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
First off, whoever modded you Troll - I think they're wrong. I think you're asking a serious question. So I'll give you my serious answer.
The problem is cultural. The culture that a great many black children grow up in is simply broken. Are you familiar with the term "Uncle Tom"? It's an insult that black people aim at other black people that used to mean "sucks up to white people" but these days means "act too white", i.e. speaking proper English and getting good grades. It's actually frowned upon.
I'm not making this up. Here is an example. The one person is "less black" and an Uncle Tom because they grew up not poor, in a middle class area with both parents married. Less black. Think about that one for a bit.
And the submitter is wondering why you don't get a lot of scholastic achievement from this culture.
Black people are NOT denied education. My university has a list of grants and help as long as my arm for anyone who isn't Caucasian. The problem is that black people (in this area anyways, YMMV) are taught from birth that you are "less black" and something of a traitor to your people if you get good grades and act "too white". There is your real reason.
Think I'm kidding? Watch this bit from Chris Rock (nsfw). Why is everyone laughing? Because it *hits home*.
The culture itself is broken. Fix the culture and allow success to be defined as "gets good grades" and the numbers will change as if by magic.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
This is the kind of stupid argumentation that drives me crazy! (Disclaimer: It is not really a drive, but more like a short putt.)
Somebody notices a glitch in the distribution where the data has been sorted by a hot political topic, and immediately everyone starts expressing an opinion. They are jumping to conclusions which, by definition, means they have not done any meaningful research, analysis, or other investigation. The whole discussion becomes a time-waster or political agenda.
This is an opportunity for some sociology team, anthropology team, or maybe economics team to FIND OUT WHY, by researching the issue and discovering what actually influences the situation.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
Yes, that would be a good analogy if black people and latinos were physiologically incapable of computer programming.
What I know about VC's:
#1 They love money
#2 They never have enough money
#3 Nothing much else matters to them in this life other than acquiring more money
Given the above, I believe that most VC's would gladly suck a bag of dicks if it meant an additional $1B in their bank account. I assume that funding a black guy's tech firm is much more pleasant than sucking a bag of dicks. My conclusion is that VC's would be happy to fund black tech firms, or asian tech firms, or latino tech firms if they thought they could make a bunch of money from doing so.
The open question is whether or not VC's underestimate the ability of black/asian/latino firms to make them a ton of cash.
"Liechtenstein is the world's largest producer of sausage casings, potassium storage units, and false teeth."
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.
"said Hank Williams, an African-American entrepreneur" Seriously? Am I the only one amused by this?
What are people of color? Isn't everyone a color of some sort?
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
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.
I reject that this is entirely up to exposure.
My circles of friends growing up were nerds. We swapped commodore 64 pirated games. We played dungeons and dragons. At least until 13-14 or so we all fit the mould. The computer dorkery lasted a lot longer, through high school.
Of my 30 or so aquaintences, nearly all the anglos and asians have found themselves doing something technology related. A few are pretty hardcore doing EE or embedded programming. Many are more IT or programmer types like me. Some had other focuses and created web sites or "social networking" whatever (retch). Some went into videogames, or makeing art or music for them. Not one of the 5 african american kids ended up in anything tech related. One's a counselor, one's a piano teacher and church organizer, one dropped off the face of the earth, and one's an accountant.
There's a *huge* skew here. These kids were given computers as very young people. We played videogames together as teenagers. On the c64 sometimes you had to fix the basic that would screw up due to a bad crack. I shared my exp tracking program I wrote in BASIC, and someone added features to it (it was bad). But all the african american kids dropped it, and they dropped it after the age of 16-17, when I no longer was following their lives so closely.
This can't be soley from a lack of exposure and opportunity. There's more to it.
-josh
NSF statistics show that in 2006, 2.2% of masters degrees in electrical engineering were awarded to people who described themselves as "black, non-Hispanic." This is compared to 13% of the population that is black. This goes a long way toward explaining why "About 1% of entrepreneurs who received venture capital in the first half of last year are black,[...]" This applies to any field where you're talking about a group being underrepresented; you have to look at the talent pool. If the group is underrepresented in the talent pool, then it's too late to fix the problem. They're simply going to be underrepresented in the field.
And why is it necessarily a problem if a particular group is underrepresented or overrepresented in a particular field? There are a lot of Jewish doctors out there. Is that bad? It's only bad if the underrepresentation is the result of injustice. What if some of it is the result of culture, preferences, or factors such as becoming a dentist because your mom is a dentist?
It would be extremely interesting to know what fraction of entrepreneurs who receive venture capital come from families with below-median incomes. I'll bet you a nickel the figure is much, much lower than 50%. But the US is allergic to talking about class. We only want to talk about race.
Find free books.
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."
Here's my 2 cents as an old white guy as to why. In the 60s, black people decided that they needed their own culture to survive, one different from white culture. Prior to this, most black people tried to be more white, culturally speaking. The problem is, when you isolate cultures, you increase alienation, decrease communication and decrease social connections.
So here we have a pretty successful (economically) culture of Europeans in the USA and a not-so-successful culture of African Americans. After the 60s, they go their separate ways, more or less. White culture was rejected by young blacks who become more isolated from social connections, education and attitudes that could help them be a success, economically. The result seems to be an African-American youth culture obsessed with activities and attitudes that guarantee failure. Sports. Entertainment. The development of the physical. A lack of interest in the mental. And most insidious of all, a tendency to go for immediate gratification, rather than to work for long term rewards. The history is different for Hispanics, who have linguistic separation and legal issues thrown in the the mix, but some of the cultural characteristics of separation are similar.
And so, failure is guaranteed as long as there is no assimilation into the majority culture. The only exceptions I've seen to this rule are situations where the children were acculturated in white neighborhoods with "white" values and little to no exposure to their own racial group's culture. Is this fair? No. Is it real? Sure looks that way.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.