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Comment by sama | Hacker News Reader

it's really hard to address everything in one post, and i think the issues around gender and race in tech are pretty different. (we did include a stat on international founders, many of which are not white.)

i don't think we're playing this on "easy mode", but i'm sorry you feel that way.

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Let me first say, as someone with two children, both girls, I really appreciate the efforts that are going into making CS careers an accessible option for them, and that includes your post and the sentiment behind it. Kudos to you! What continues to irk me is the almost a disregard for black males when discussing diversity. There isn't a single group less represented in CS than AA males and there isn't a single group that has been more disparately affected by the recession.

I believe that gender and sexual identification is a pretty easy thing to agree on when discussing diversity, because only a cave man would oppose a more welcoming environment, and balanced representation of women and LGBT.

What irks me, is that I know only a hand full of AA males working on silicon valley and they are all friends of mine, and yet they are addressed indirectly in diversity reports as (non whites) as a way of covering up the abysmal rates of black males represented.

My cynical side says that some of this is the result of a culture that currently does not take black males specifically seriously, due to the representation of them in popular culture, but my more rational side tells me that we as black males bear alot of the responsibility ourselves for understanding where the world is going, and to prepare our careers for tomorrows jobs (technology) and to help advance those that need mentoring to get into CS career paths both technical and non technical. Even so, and taking self responsibility, black males will need to be addressed specifically by the same organizations that are addressing diversity and there needs to be a more forthright and brutally honest admission of what is happening. Black men are being left out of another generation of wealth creation and we need to stem (excuse the pun) the tide of that now.

Again, I appreciate the dialog, and I do appreciate the efforts to open up silicon valley to all.

Just my humble take (engage in rotten tomato throwing now)

I didn't want to reply to this after just reading it but because there are so few of us out here I almost feel as I have no choice. I'm of the mindset that these organizations, specifically VC organizations are lost to the future quite frankly. They are simply obsolete, some of the largest growing populations and users of technology are not white males and while black males (myself included) are a group that are neglected it's one of MANY different facets affecting black males as a group. I'm not sure what combination of answers will solve the problem but I'm sure it's a combination of rudimentary pushes towards equality. Which I summarily don't expect a VC organization is able to provide in any manner.

I wish all new accounts made such thoughtful posts. Welcome to HN!

I'm so glad to see this post! You hit the nail on the head.

> Black men are being left out of another generation of wealth creation and we need to stem (excuse the pun) the tide of that now.

What's your suggestion, other than the normal stuff (engaging with students in HS etc)?

It can start by not brushing it under the rug. By using "diversity" as a catch all for feel goodiness, is a little bit self serving and even selfish in the grand scheme of things. If we are going to do the work then do it, don't do a bunch of marketing. If we want to look at CS and look at the harshest affected group it specifically black males (which no one is doing in all of these reports they are releasing) - it irks me because it seems that the world has moved on from black males needing help and it is more en vogue in 2014 to focus efforts on women and LGBT entirely and exclusively. A more well rounded approach is needed and that can't begin until we are comfortable with admitting that the job isn't done in regards to young black males, and yet the sentiment seems to be "we've done enough for that underrepresented group"

Solutions? tech companies and incubators need to be targeting young black males for immersion and mentoring programs as early as 5th grade. The myth that silicon valley is closed to non CS types needs to be exposed for exactly that, a myth, so that we can start to recruit talented non SC students into silicon valley in areas of marketing, sales, general management and finance. Areas where they are currently.

waiting ten years until the CS rates increase is not an option, because the ship will have already sailed by then on this generation of wealth being created

the whole debate around diversity in silicon valley right now is pretty much marketing and seems pretty cynical and disingenuous from my POV

>tech companies and incubators need to be targeting young black males for immersion and mentoring programs as early as 5th grade

This right here, If it wasn't for my uncle getting me into computers I don't I would ever had thought to see a career in computers let alone development. If we want to be frank I know when I was growing up (only 28), playing around with computers as a black child was something that "blacks didn't do". It was hard to find any blacks computer teachers, mentors or owners that you could access easily in the tech area and the stigma of being a "nerd" was something the culture was about to accept. Of course my parents made sure if it was something I wanted to do that they would make sure I had the best education I could to make it happen.

What we lack in the community is for children to see other blacks in a position and think "Hey I can do that". This was something that we didn't have much back then. I still only know a handful of black developers and it may be wrong to say it but sometime when going to conventions and what not I know I sorta feel like a unicorn, after a while you just go with it but its still in the back of your mind.

> tech companies and incubators need to be targeting young black males for immersion and mentoring programs as early as 5th grade.

Unfortunately I have no power in SV. People who do are reading this, and I hope they notice how on-point you are. I'll do what I can in the regions I can effect most greatly.

> A more well rounded approach is needed and that can't begin until we are comfortable with admitting that the job isn't done in regards to young black males

I have a bit more power here, albeit not much. Honestly -- and I'm very ashamed of this -- I've been reluctant to call out the elephant in the room (publicly, using my real identity) for exactly the reason you identify (it's not "sexy" and seems "political" somehow).

Anyways, thanks for contributing. I'm now resolved to finally do the right thing.

edit:

> Areas where they are currently.

I hadn't thought about it like this before, and mostly focused on how to increase AA representation in CS programs. Great idea.

Well put, you specifically put eloquent voice to a couple of things which I've grown weary of attempting to discuss [1].

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8086619

it's really hard to address everything in one post, and i think the issues around gender and race in tech are pretty different.

Sure, but you clearly didn't call the piece "Gender and Startups" or "Sexism and Startups." Presumably the broader title was chosen deliberately.

For instance, I'd push back on an essay called "YC and Startups" if it only mentioned one company in one batch, but with a quick token sentence about other batches.

i don't think we're playing this on "easy mode", but i'm sorry you feel that way.

What can I say? It's a piece that scores points for "addressing diversity" but only substantively discusses the less controversial, more tractable subtopic of sexism.

Excited to read the upcoming, more inclusive posts though.

we shared the stats on founders born outside the US. it's not a perfect map to race, but it's not a bad one either--there are people of all colors in this YC batch.

do you really think we are trying to "score points for 'addressing diversity'"?

i had an early draft titled "sexism and startups", but many people pointed out the last 7 paragraphs apply to racial minorities just as much as women.

do you really think we are trying to "score points for 'addressing diversity'"?

That's the net effect; it's not my place to impute a motive.

All I'm saying is that you wrote a piece about sexism and titled it as if it were about a broader topic. And I know that you're usually a sharp, precise writer.

I do recognize that none of this is easy and I think it's admirable that you've addressed this (very thorny) topic. You've said that you plan to address the other aspects of diversity as it relates to YC and I'm looking forward to reading about it.

>"we shared the stats on founders born outside the US. it's not a perfect map to race, but it's not a bad one either."

It's pretty well established that there are lots of people who were born outside the US in tech in general [1] and among founders specifically [2].

Simply noting the same isn't necessarily saying anything.

>"there are people of all colors in this YC batch."

That's great.

Seeing numbers broken out by ethnicity would be a lot more interesting as it would facilitate a more direct comparison to the rest of the recent releases on diversity.

1: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/516546/silicon-valley-f...

2: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/immigration-and...

I've met quite a few YC founders from Europe. They were white, and shouldn't count towards your reputation for diversity.

What's the evidence that sexism is a more tractable problem than racism? Just curious...

If someone doesn't want to consider women for a job, it probably means that they think women have some inherent unsuitableness for that particular job. They aren't aggressive enough for sales, or don't have the upper body strength for landscaping, or some such. They don't mind hiring women for jobs that they think women can do (secretary). They probably have women friends, date or marry women, and so on.

If someone doesn't want to consider blacks for a job, it probably means they don't like black people, and they don't care if a particular black person can do the particular job. They don't want black people around for any job.

The former is more tractable because it involves changing someone's attitude about specific objections about people that they have no general objection to. The latter requires changing a general objection.

> "They don't want black people around for any job."

This is observably false. In American culture there are many jobs are perceived to be "for" blacks, and jobs that are perceived to be "for" hispanics.

Racism and sexism isn't as different as you seem to think it is. In the modern context (i.e., not guys in hoods hanging you from a tree) it is all about perception and opposing when races/genders stray from their "place" in society.

This is even observable in Asians, who are disproportionately highly employed in tech, but represents but a tiny proportion of leadership positions. Clearly someone thinks they're good for grunt work, but not suited to lead.

This is why people object against even positive stereotyping of races, because ultimately the bulk of the racism we deal with today isn't the foaming-at-the-mouth homicidal-rage type of racism, it's more casual and has everything to do with perceptions of what a race should, and shouldn't, be doing in society. Positive and negative stereotypes both contribute to pigeonholing people into their races.

Try talking to an Asian artist about this. "Positive" stereotypes of being mathematical, analytical, and traditionalist are actively harming people who don't fit the description and are trying to work jobs outside of their racial stereotypes.

>Clearly someone thinks they're good for grunt work, but not suited to lead.

This.

Who sets policy? Who makes the decisions? What value system do they use to do it?

And most of all - who benefits from their decisions?

The debate isn't really about diversity, it's about values. And you won't get 'diversity' until those values change and become less dysfunctionally self-serving.

That's certainly a reasonable hypothesis. Is there evidence that supports it?

Counterpoint: in the Jim Crow South and in Apartheid South Africa black people were often employed by white people, but only for the most menial jobs (like cleaning and house keeping).

They very much do didn't like black people.

In the short term (meaning a few generations) even very sexist people tend to have kids of the opposite sex, while racists seldom have kids of another race.

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I'm not sure what you're hinting at with your remark about racial disparities with regard to education, IQ and culture. Right now your comment looks pretty racist.

The average American man and the average American woman have the same IQ, were raised in fairly similar cultural environments, and received fairly similar educations.

But compare the average black man and the average white man. The average black man has a lower IQ (Google it, many citations), somewhat different culture (more likely to have grown up in poverty, more likely to speak in AAVE, more likely to have come from a broken home, etc), and worse education (likely went to worse schools as a kid, less likely to have gone to college, etc).

Maybe I am racist for writing that, but I think it would be more racist to ignore those facts, because that would lead to ignoring the problems and not trying to help disadvantaged groups.

Because of racist laws, policies and practices Black people have fewer opportunities from literally before they're born. Studies indicate that poor nutrition and other environmental factors explain the "IQ gap" nearly completely. The remaining points are most likely an issue of bias in the tests themselves. Most white people wouldn't do well in an AAVE based IQ test.

Black people (and other minorities) are being actively discriminated against. In terms of the neighborhoods they live in (white flight), law enforcement (stop and frisk, minimum sentences, racial profiling), employment, housing (mortgage applications) and so on. This active discrimination is an ongoing and constant problem that goes all the way back to apartheid. Black people will do better when white people stop holding them back.

Conflating black culture and active discrimination has racist connotations. For instance appalling Wall Street behavior is not condemned as a failing of white culture, but street crime is erroneously attributed as a failing of black culture. There are a thousand other examples. Black culture: music, food, dance, art, speech are not to blame. No more than white culture is to blame for WW2.

It's part of the racist discourse where environmental factors are described as if they're innate failings of people who are genetically no different from anybody else.

Now I don't believe you're a racist person (you probably don't think group X is inferior to group Y), but the arguments you make have racist connotations for the reasons I gave above.

When white people enter a black neighborhood, it is "gentrification", and it holds blacks back.

When white people move out of a black neighborhood, it is "white flight" and it holds blacks back.

White people! Stay exactly where you are!

Individual people/families (regardless of race) are not to blame for the effect they have on the housing market, even though the consequences are predictable and well documented.

The effects of gentrification and white flight demonstrate how ingrained the bias against black people and other minorities still is.

I don't disagree with you. In fact, everything you wrote is in agreement with my original post. All of those challenges you describe are just some of the factors that make the racial disparity a more difficult problem to solve than the gender disparity.

And yet, my original post is now deleted, so we can go along pretending these problems don't exist.

"The average black man has a lower IQ (Google it, many citations)" - wow, well, that f'd up comment says alot about alot

That you'd rather ignore things than try to solve problems? It's very easy to ignore the IQ gap and other differences between groups. It's harder to try to solve it with things like improved education, reduced poverty, etc. This is exactly the problem. Pretend the problem doesn't exist, and you don't even have to worry about attempting to solve it!

In case you really are unaware and averse to Googling, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence#United_St...

Rushton & Jensen (2005) write that, in the United States, self-identified blacks and whites have been the subjects of the greatest number of studies. They state that the black-white IQ difference is about 15 to 18 points or 1 to 1.1 standard deviations (SDs), which implies that between 11 and 16 percent of the black population have an IQ above 100 (the general population median). ... Roth et al. (2001), in a review of the results of a total of 6,246,729 participants on other tests of cognitive ability or aptitude, found a difference in mean IQ scores between blacks and whites of 1.1 SD. Consistent results were found for college and university application tests such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (N = 2.4 million) and Graduate Record Examination (N = 2.3 million), as well as for tests of job applicants in corporate sections (N = 0.5 million) and in the military (N = 0.4 million).

That settles it, everything googled on the internet must be true, especially when they comport with your bigoted view of the world. I mean, I read on the internet that black people were 2/3 human somewhere, must be true.

You can Google for academic literature. I provided some pretty comprehensive citations in my last post.

Or you can just ignore the world around you and not be troubled by the problems minorities are facing.

Hey, did you know that the unemployment rate is higher for blacks than whites? Does citing that statistic also make me a bigot? Does it make you feel better to ignore that problem too?

It doesn't make sense to do research on race and IQ. Except for people who are looking for scientific sounding reasons to legitimize their age-old racist prejudices.

So to be clear: there is no serious debate about race and IQ to be had. There are no insights to be gained from Race-IQ research.

I don't believe -- not for a second -- that a discussion about race and IQ helps minorities. The idea that we have to engage in a discussion on race and IQ which is based on racist premises otherwise "we are not troubled by the problems minorities are facing" is ludicrous.

Also see http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/11/the-race...

I don't see why it makes sense to ignore certain areas of racial disparity. If the racial IQ gap can be closed by various means, we should try to do it. Refusing to acknowledge that a disparity exists (not referring to you, but to people like the other guy who replied to me) doesn't help solve anything.

I could replace "IQ" with various other metrics like "SAT scores" or "high school graduation rates" or whatever, since they all correlate to some degree. Do you think that would do a better job of getting my point across? People seem to really dislike IQ tests.

The idea that people who look different are inferior is a racist hypothesis -- now scientifically discredited -- that has been repeated for the past 300 years. People who bring up IQ today use the exact same language people used back in the day and that has racist implications. But when they get called on it they backtrack and claim they never meant to say something racist -- they're just talking about neutral scientific findings! Even though historically IQ tests were used to "prove" the supremacy and inferiority of different races.

The entire reason why racism is bad is because it affects the opportunities and quality of life of minorities. If racism had no measurable effect on anything it wouldn't be a real thing. So any thinking person would expect racism to have an effect on SAT scores and high school graduation rates.

Talking about race and IQ as if it has no history is like talking about a sauwastika as if it were just a symbol that represents balance. Talking about "SAT scores" or "high school graduation rates" would absolutely help, simply because of historical context.

There are many more things to be aware of in order to talk sensibly about race though. First of which is that the concepts of "black" and "white" are cultural inventions, and have no biological meaning. So the very idea of trying to measure the IQs of black/white people is unscientific silliness.

Point taken on most of that. I still believe that the racial disparity in tech is a much more difficult problem than the gender disparity, because that argument doesn't change if you swap "IQ" with "SAT scores". Definitely do not want to imply racial superiority.

However,

the concepts of "black" and "white" are cultural inventions, and have no biological meaning

That's not true. If you take a look human genetic data, clusters very clearly appear which correspond with races. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2013/05/why-race-as-a...

To deny that is unscientific silliness.

Race (as opposed to say, skin color) is a social construct that changes over time. It's an us-vs-them delineation.

This puts it better than I can, so I'll just provide the link: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/05/what-we-... (And I'm aware of the irony)

This kind of argument never seemed very convincing to me. It's the same you see with any kind of fuzzy data. Like what is a "species", when exactly do two groups of animals become different "species"? There's no perfect answer, and attempts at making strict biological definitions often run contrary to popular opinion. Similar to "Is Pluto a planet?", "Is a tomato a fruit?", "Is this blueish-green or greenish-blue?", etc.

The answer isn't to just completely discard the concepts of races, species, planets, fruits, colors, and many other things. It's to understand that all of those things are real scientific concepts, but their precise definitions depend on the context of use.

People get persecuted based on their (perceived) race/ethnicity. The classification of tomatoes or planetary bodies is not a life or death matter.

Additionally, the difference is that race is a product of racism, not of science. This is a historical fact. The concept of race has no scientific value. It has historical and sociological importance, though, and we should seek to understand that.

In a perfectly rational world researchers could research anything and the world would only pay attention based on the merit of the research itself. We don't live in that world. Research on race and IQ today has predictable consequences: it legitimizes racist prejudices.

The concept of race has no scientific value.

If you want to stop scientists from using the word "race", at least propose an alternative. Like people who don't like that male pronouns are used for gender-neutral cases in English at least propose alternatives such the singular "they", "he/she", etc. If you think scientists need a new word for "race" because other people have poisoned it so much, your cause would probably be more successful if you actually tried to propose and promote that new word. Because scientists aren't going to just stop all research related to "race", that would be ridiculous.

"Broad cluster of people with fairly similar genes relative to other broad clusters of people" doesn't quite roll off the tongue.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-specific_and_gender-neut...

Scientists already know that they have to tread very carefully if they don't want to get accused of racism. In public discourse political correctness has also made discussions about race much better. Some of the statements you've made in this thread you would never make on TV, knowing what the repercussions would be.

So from my perspective we're making good progress already, although you may not see it as such.

What makes a person a bigot in people's eyes in these cases is to bring up IQ, a measurement that has a lot of connotations to innate ability. Bringing up lack of innate ability in the context of race will quickly get one labeled a racist. Now, that might be unfair and rash, and people may have a misconception of what IQ is. But the rules are pretty simple: don't allude to things that have connotations to innate ability, and you will at least have dodged the biggest bullet.

If you had not brought up IQ, and instead educational opportunities and such, there would have been no controversy. Yes, black people are in worse position than white people when it comes to education - this is very uncontroversial. No need to bring up things like IQ in order to make that point.

Many people deal with both gender and race issues simultaneously. Non-white women in the U.S. are 18%+ of the population (over 1/3 of the U.S. female population). It's easy to think of gender/race as an either or, but for many of us it's a both/and.

I've written a book on the subject (diverse women/women of color), and have done a good bit of research in this area which is why I am familiar with the numbers and the issues.

Feel free to reach out if you'd like additional information.

Edit: This isn't meant to discourage; the post is a good start. Just wanted to provide some information for next time.

I don't think you're playing "easy mode" by any means. It's admirable that you are writing blogs posts about gender diversity in tech & at YC. It would be even more admirable if you wrote about class and race diversity in tech & at YC. Right now it feels like you are avoiding talk of other types diversity in the industry. Though I do agree the issues are different.

Agreed. A lot of the race issues are closely tied to class issues. The gender issue isn't.

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