[dengnan]

> One senior, Sarah Jones, ... “There are not a lot of people of color in the Valley—and that, by itself, makes it kind of unwelcoming."

This statement may be true if "people of color" means African American. Otherwise, it is just not the fact. I do think, through my personal experience, the Valley is probably the most diverse place that I have been. I've seen people all over the wrold here: Asian, Latino, European, etc.

[ryandrake]

Yea, that was a head scratcher. Where are these places with all white people? Because looking around at my current team, I'm one of two white guys, and there's a white woman, the remaining 20 or so are all either of south-east Asian or Chinese descent. My previous company was probably 75% Chinese, 20% Indian, and maybe 1% white. Prior to that, my company was a bit whiter, but 60%+ were foreign nationals. It gets to the point where "Man, the U.S. Visa system totally sucks!" is the default lunch conversation. There's definitely a gender gap, but as far as race goes, I don't see this lack of diversity.

[Matachines]

None of those races count as minorities in these types of arguments. Only blacks, latinos, and LGBT do.

[jophde]

Asians and Indians are basically considered white in the Bay Area at this point.

[seivan]

Some need to uphold the concept of "structural" racism. Unfortunately pesky non-whites stand in the way of that when it comes to engineering.

So extreme measures are necessary...

0 Claim Silicon Valley is racist, because racial minorities are not hired.

1 Claim that Chinese and Indians are not minorities.

2 Claim that structural racism has "white washed" the Chinese and Indians in Silicon Valley [0]

The funny thing is, the white washing is conducted by the same group as it starts with the sentence "minorities aren't hired" When you live amongst the inherent Marxists as long as I have, you tend to figure out their patterns.

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10945241

[allengeorge]

There's a lot of caveats to that statement.

Within the Bay Area itself there's plenty of segregation: anecdotally, I noticed relatively few Indians living in Palo Alto and working at startups; most live in MV/Sunnyvale/Fremont and worked in larger companies like Cisco and Oracle. I'm not making the claim that this segregation is externally-driven, it's just that there "are people all over the world" doesn't tell the full story. Having worked in both Toronto and New York, both cities have noticeably more diverse workplaces and neighbourhoods.

That said, while in the Bay Area I never felt my skills as an engineer were questioned because of my background. I really appreciated that.

note: edited for grammar

[golergka]

May be because it's much harder for startups to sponsor visas, and they don't have oversea offices to transfer people from?

[hueving]

Yes, this is the main reason. A startup is a much larger gamble for someone on a visa.

[hibikir]

Even working directly for a large company is a gamble for someone with a visa. It's one of the little secrets of H1Bs, Green Cards and consulting: Go though a consulting firm, and you get hit by less incidental layoffs (since you are just capex), and even if you are not renewed, the consulting firm will just keep you on the roster (although probably unpaid), while they hand you another gig. Compared to the ticking bomb caused by a layoff, it makes those places attractive from a safety perspective.

This is not really a valley thing either: Here in the midwest, we have companies that are 50+% indian consultants, and companies that are 95% white, with very little in between, and it's all about whether H1Bs work there, directly or consulting.

[fennecfoxen]

I'd think it runs the other way: a visa is a much larger gamble for someone running a startup.

[allengeorge]

Both are true.

My former company (AeroFS) was one of the few I'm aware of that was willing to hire good talent even if it required a visa.

Also, I think that asking someone from India (taking that country as an example) to move to the US for less than market wage to toss the dice on a startup is... a challenge. That startup is less marketable on their resume than BigCorp if they want to return to India and get hired by another company or join an outsourcing company.

[dengnan]

I think the segregation you were talking about might be attribute to the first generation of immigrants. NYC and many other places have a longer tradition of accepting people from other contries. Many "people in color" in those cities have been there for generations. But in SV, many tech engineers are not born and raised in America. They tend to hangout within their own group for obvious reasons. Compared with NYC, SV has just started to welcome people from other countries.

[Moshe_Silnorin]

As soon as a minorty achieves success (and often disproportionate success) they are no longer considered minorities.

[autoreleasepool]

With 'Latinos' its even weirder. Cubans are almost never treated as minorities (disclaimer: I'm Cuban). White-mexicans are treated as if "you're not really who we're talking about." I have a sneaking suspicion that minority is doublespeak for brown people, but even Indians get excluded from this category... for some reason. Even though I've heard countless heart breaking struggles about first generation Indian-Americans dealing with the pain of culture shock, exclusion, and discrimination...

In the end, everything breaks down when you frame things in terms of race, because framing things in terms of race is lazy and dumb. In fact, "race" is a dumb concept. It only makes sense in Middle Earth. What is the significant difference between a "white hispanic", and a "non-white hispanic"? Is there a "hispanic-hispanic"? What about "black hispanics"? Do we call these folks African American (they're not from Africa), or are they Latino? Why do we lump all these cultures together anyways? Is it because they all speak (various dialects) of Spanish? Then what about Brazilians? Are Spanish speaking people from Europe called anything? "Asian" is another absurd category that lumps hundreds of diverse ethnicities and cultures into one.

For some reason, the government (and most other institutions) desperately seems to want to lump you into one of 4 or 5 unscientific categories. All the categories are old racist ones with PC wrappers. It's all anti-intellectual. IMO we should culturally wean ourselves off of using these categories.

[vacri]

> Do we call these folks African American (they're not from Africa)

My favourite example of this was a black British model, whom an American commentator called "African-American". She was born and grew up in the UK, and was neither African nor American.

[ryandrake]

Or the white guy from South Africa who emigrated to America and tried to get a scholarship as an "African American". By all quantifiable measures he should get to use that label.

[hussong]

> Are Spanish speaking people from Europe called anything?

They're called "the Spanish" or "Spaniards". Sorry, couldn't resist.

[vacri]

> For some reason, the government (and most other institutions) desperately seems to want to lump you into one of 4 or 5 unscientific categories.

Not governmental, but medically, your race can affect what treatments will be effective.

[_yosefk]

As someone who isn't a native English speaker, I've long noticed that, as you mention, "minority" doesn't mean "the opposite of majority" (I'm not sure since when, or exactly what it does mean; you say success is key, but success in what field - chess, boxing, beer-making? Listing just a dozen fields is probably enough to demonstrate that no minorities exist according to the "success" definition.)

However, to return to grandparent's comment - I, similarly to its author, have never noticed that the word "color" had been similarly redefined. Isn't "a person of color" the opposite of "white", where "white" means a having skin with a color at a mostly-agreed-upon pinkish/palish range?

[Moshe_Silnorin]

Success means general economic success and low crime rate. "Minority" outside the context of politics means what you describe above - let's call this "minority_1". "Minority" as used by progressives (lets call it "minority_2") seems to mean a group of people that share uncommon visible characteristics who are also less successful (in the sense defined above) on average than the majority. Racism certainly exists - though progressives use a non-standard definition of racism, such that any member of a minority_2 can not be racist against a successful minority_1 or the majority. In fact, even discrimination against a successful minority_1 by the majority is seen as unworthy of note - an example of this is how no one seems to care about the obviously racist (by any common sense definition) discrimination against Asian students by Ivy-League universities. Asians need much higher SAT scores than white or black students to get a place in same.

[theorique]

"Person of color" is essentially a tortured, PC, language construction intended to enable people to avoid saying "non-white" (which, while descriptive, is apparently insensitive or something like that).

So, for example, mixed-race President Obama is a person of color, his African father is a person of color, and his White mother is not a person of color.

It's fairly situational and the lines are relatively blurry - for example, if I have one Japanese grandparent, am I a person of color or a White person?

[balabaster]

Didn't they ironically misappropriate a term to unambiguously describe this? Caucasian.

[officemonkey]

If it were a game, it would be called "Whiteness unlocked."

An Indian- or Chinese-American can attain "no longer considered minority" (aka whiteness) but African-Americans don't get that achievement.

[fennecfoxen]

I'm not sure how a first-generation immigrant with skin 80% as dark as a random African-American who celebrates Diwali instead of Christmas, follows cricket instead of (American!) football, and favors rice puddings to apple pies is actually statistically deserving of the "no longer considered minority" flag in America, financially successful or not.

It sounds more like some people are changing their criteria as they go along to lend the rhetorical power of a cry against Racism to a potentially-interesting point, an exercise in intellectual dishonesty which undermines the point if the listener realizes it. Perhaps if we used words to accurately describe the situation we could actually communicate.

[yummyfajitas]

I don't know if you intended it this way, but you seem to be portraying Indian culture as just American culture s/Jesus/ganpati/ s/baseball/cricket/ etc. These things, while accurate, barely scratch the surface.

It really is different here, and not just the food. E.g., asking about family is routine (in a manner uncommon in the US), and I intuitively grasp certain social mixing/separation that is just different from the US.

From what I've observed, these gaps are vastly larger (read: earth/jupiter vs earth/moon) than the gap between various western subcultures.

[officemonkey]

In order to accurately describe the situation, we have to first understand that the concept of race is bullshit. It's a societal one, not a biological one.

[Moshe_Silnorin]

Imputing racism on high-status institutions is a politically useful tool; one can even extract rents through the purification ritual of diversity training - modern opinions on race are best modelled as sacred beliefs. Disproportionately succesful minorities such as East Asian and Indian immigrants are considered functionally white for propaganda purposes, as their success in these institutions is significant evidence that they are not discriminating in favour of whites.

[caskance]

>An Indian- or Chinese-American can attain "no longer considered minority" (aka whiteness)

Is this something white people actually believe?

Successful minorities don't become white. They become weapons white people wield against less successful minorities.

[pcardh0]

Shoot, you found out, I wonder who squealed.

[ebfe]

As another poster pointed out, red tribe conservatives are not the ones saying that Indian/Chinese-Americans are no longer a minority.

The only people who consider Indian/Chinese-Americans "no longer a minority" are the same ones who complain about them being whitewashed.

[pofjer]

Of course they are. Indians remain Indians no matter how successful they are. Same with Germans, Frenchmen, or Asian/African Americans, for that matter. They are still part of the respective minority, which is not something bad to begin with by the way…

[huac]

no, they're considered model minorities and become the poster kids for 'if you put down your head and work hard you could overcome the all-encompassing structural racism that defines this society'

is a person's worth to you determined by how successful they are? that's like the argument about steve jobs: 'we should let in syrian refugees because they might end up fathering a brilliant tech entrepeneur' - no, we should let in syrian refugees because it's the right thing to do.

[hudibras]

> I do think, through my personal experience, the Valley is probably the most diverse place that I have been.

Yikes. You need to get out more, visit more places in America.

[jmathai]

Out of curiosity, besides other large cities like NYC, LA, Chicago where have you experienced a large portion of people from around the world?

[markmcdonald]

Honolulu :)

[vonmoltke]

Miami.

[ashwinaj]

Like? The Midwest and South (minus urban areas i.e.cities which are few and far between) there aren't many diverse places.

[niels_olson]

I think you're asking for regions in the US, not cities, where you can meet lots of people, so as to demonstrate diversity.

Well, there are plenty of black people in the deep South. There are plenty of latino ranchers in the Southwest. There are some pockets of even non-English speaking folks in Louisiana and the Chesapeake.

But that's not diversity, that's just a different homogeneity. Although I can certainly attest to the fact that, going to school in New Orleans, life does feel a bit different being in the minority locally.

Cities, particularly coastal cities, have been melting pots, world-wide, for a long time. Since long before Columbus landed in the Americas.

If, by diversity, you want to meet a lot of people from different walks of life, you pretty much have to go to cities.

Now, is San Francisco the ultimate sink to which sources of diversity converge? Probably not. But I've been in every hemisphere and most major US cities, and San Francisco is pretty solid. You just have to get outside the bubble a little.

You want insane levels of homogeneity? Try Tokyo.

[umanwizard]

I am from the Southwest and it is not very diverse compared to SV. Having a lot of Latinos doesn't make a place diverse.

There are tons of Latinos and tons of Whites in Arizona. Not much of anything else.

[niels_olson]

As I said:

> that's not diversity, that's just a different homogeneity

[umanwizard]

Right, I misunderstood your post -- my mistake.

[ashwinaj]

Since this post is about race, isn't it obvious it would be ethnic diversity of a place?

[ones_and_zeros]

I also work in a similarly "diverse" office (east coast, household name software company) but I don't see things nearly as rosey as you do I think. As a white software engineer I'm typically in the extreme minority (I'd say it's a 70/30 split, and of course unless I am in a meeting with mostly management types) and the majority being asians and southeast asians here on work visas.

As this relates to the article I find it incredibly sad that my employer can't find citizens of any color to fill positions and instead chose to hire people coming from countries with dubious education systems.

Instead of bringing over "the best and brightest" to do low quality work at 70k/yr, I'd much prefer our industry and government focus on training its citizens to fill these positions first.