| Why aren't there many over-weight entrepreneurs in the Vally? I mean just look at how many over weight americans in US and they are under-presented in tech. I'm pissed. I'm going to start a OverWeightMe incubator that helps fat people. And any news media or investor who is not paying attention is a a weight-ist. You all should all write about me and fund me because i'm fat and under-presented so I deserve it. Sarcasm aside, let me tell you why there are so few black tech entrepreneurs. Fact 1: Most successful tech founders in the Valley are themselves technical. Fact 2: Go to your favorite college, how many black people there studying math or computer science ? how many white or asians? If there are very small percentage of black studying math and computer science, of course, the number of the black tech entrepreneurs would be small. To all the black people out there, please don't turn venture capitalism into philanthropy. You will destroy Silicon Vally. The whole sport (e.g basketball) industry is dominated by black people. Do you see asian people crying around shouting 'racism'? If you are really good (like in sports), you gain success. If you are not good, you're not (like making tech companies). It's simple. |
I have wondered about this and think the core problem lies with two cognitive short cuts. The availability heuristic and the belief that other groups (predicated on culture) are much less varied in individuals than yours (out-group homogeneity bias). And everyone suffers from it. Black, white and every shade between. That is, even blacks will assign the same stereotype backed attempt at a conditional distribution to various outcomes and the only difference is blacks will not lump it into the its just cause they is black bucket. But even that alone is damaging to the cultural self image.
The effects are subtle. Ignoring socio-economic crippling effects, there is a very strong hostile affect against book learning in black culture. And I do not mean the standard antigeek treatment. I inhabited the intersection and can tell you there is a striking difference in the type of hostility, the other one actually creates feelings of real guilt and self questioning. And the underlying cause is not due to a hatred of knowledge but a chronic unacknowledged buried belief of lesser intelligence due to inferences made against the cultural Zeitgeist peppered with lingering traces of an oppressed past and a lack of many examples to counteract the claim.
This results in a defeatist attitude. See, if you try to study you nudge the insecurities of those around you which leads to a "so you think you are better than the rest of us" effect. There is a pressure to not try too hard and an almost pride in ignorance and keeping it real. And if you do press on you will still have this imposter effect suggesting that you struggle against your genes. I succumbed to this pressure in my school years. The cycle maintains a fixed point for the continued apathy towards knowledge in black culture, resulting in a dearth of intellectual achievement. So we think the only way forward is in sports or entertainment. This is the inward problem, why so little of us study math and computer science.
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Personally, I have not met with much overt racism in any culturally diverse setting. Outside diverse settings though and the rapid degradation of the quality of broad-mindedness can be quite cumbersome.
I am much more subjected to the subtle effects of the availability heuristic. I am not offended but sometimes disheartened. Where nice people meaning no offence will cross over to the other sidewalk and back, especially at night (useful when I wish to be left in peace). Or people feel the need to dumb things down and are surprised I am interested in certain subjects cause you know, you people typically don't - well no offence. Or that I am searched more often than my nonblack friends (0 vs twice a year or so) and on days when I say absolutely nothing have to end up being hauled to the station while they look up that my record is as spotless as a cleanroom.
This is the real problem. Well meaning people will say things meaning no offence and which only the most righteously uptight, persecution complex suffering person would take as such. Benign and small indvdually but in aggregate they give away beliefs that end up being real roadblocks when attempting to initiate an interaction. The tragedy is they do it without even being aware that they are doing it. When pointed out the more enlightened will mention some nonsense about statistics and time savings. But this is useless to tell the individual and such beliefs are self perpetuating or confounded by low iodine and magnesium diets - poisoning the well of general knowledge with effects leading to what i mention in my third block of text.
Ah well, I seem to have lost the point of what I was trying to say. but basically the number of dimensions underlying the manifold of this problem is far more vast than the simplistic picture you have painted using only one color.