| I'm always wary of articles or tweet-blogs (i guess this is a thing now) where race is the primary conversation topic. I'm Latino and also happen to be very black (or very, very black depending on how long I've been outside.) I've done AP classes in high school, spent years on the national debate circuit, went to a fairly well-known engineering school (that was mostly white/asian) and worked at some of the best tech companies in the country right now. So I'm no stranger to being the "token black guy" in a room/dept/company full of white/asian dudes (women are also a rarity in tech, though that seems to be changing, and that's great). As for this situation: if Demo Day is anything similar to the Startup Weekend that I did recently (and the startup meetups that I participated in during that time), I'll theorize that the problem isn't so much that black founders don't get funded; it's that: a) There aren't that many black or latino founders in tech, b) There aren't that many minorities in tech in general (compared to our white/asian partners), and c) White and Asian people tend to come from wealthier families than we do and, honestly, doing a startup (or getting funding for a startup) is kind-of a rich man's game (or knowing lots of wealthy people). I also sometimes feel like the authors of these articles WANT race to be a problem, so they look for anything that might spark that fire and then promptly pour more gas into it until it turns into a trending topic on Hacker News or Reddit. I mean, I don't doubt that there are some cliques that one can have an easier time of participating in by being white (this is actually one of my biggest fears --- that I'll actually start to feel racism if/when I actually come into wealth because wealthy people can "afford" to be dicks), and I certainly don't doubt that there are racist folks out there. I just don't think that it is as common of an occurrence as it's made out to be. |
So while we can be glad that your path has been as you describe, we cannot let your anecdotal experience cause us to feel like the issue is less serious than it is.
I am not saying this as a means to endorse the linked article. I'm saying it so that we remember to never, ever let anecdotal stories that go "I'm in marginalized group X and I've never experienced significant negative consequences of discrimination in tech" affect our opinions about the issue's prevalence, severity, or significance.
When there's hard data showing improvement, then we can relax about it. Until then, hearing stories about the lucky few who weren't disadvantaged can be inspirational, but is not a valid way to form an opinion of the larger issue and larger community.