[JangoSteve]

That is exactly part of the problem, though. The thing about systemic racism and sexism, versus just regular racism and sexism, is that they're entangled (or worse, encoded) into the existing systems. You can't really solve the issues without unraveling the systems.

Regular racism and sexism is when the reason you're not given a chance is because of direct racial or gender-based bias. Systemic racism and sexism can additionally include scenarios where the systems in place (such as the private Ivy League club) might not necessarily be intentionally racist or sexist, but rather just incidentally racist or sexist.

From the article, when a venture fund hides their email or contact information, that's not directly racist or sexist. However, if it prevents people outside of your existing network from contacting you, and your existing network happens to be underrepresented on the basis of color or gender, then it's certainly going to help perpetuate the already-existing under-representation in your network, regardless of whatever the root cause of it may be.

[anticonformist]

More rich women and rich black people joining the VC network would not solve the problem. And yet that's the conclusion this thinking leads to. It's the author's solution as well and doesn't address the real problem at all.

What portion of non-rich people make up the VC network? It's definitely lower than the percentage of women or black people. No one is more "underrepresented" than non-rich people.

VCs are the 1%. Their target of exclusion is the 99%. Most don't care about race or gender. They will overlook almost any attribute if they see dollar signs, race, gender, and even someone's poor background. Because their primary concern is money.

And since VCs hate poor people. And they know this about each other. Even those VCs that don't hate poor people will be more reluctant to fund poor people because they know other VCs are assholes. If other VCs will discriminate then the company may have trouble raising money and is more likely to fail. This is one of the major the systemic problem.

[JangoSteve]

One type of bias does not preclude the other. In this case, one may even strengthen the other. The argument that VCs discriminate on wealth strengthens the argument of systemic racial and gender-based bias, given the disparities in income and wealth between races and genders. This is the indirect nature of systemic bias I was describing.