[nonrecursive]

Your comment would be more helpful if it didn't misrepresent the blog post. Hank is nowhere saying that "any news media or investor who is not paying attention is racist". He's also not saying that he and others in NewMe deserve anything just because they're black and under-represented. Finally, it's pretty ridiculous to imply that this guy, Hank Williams - and ALL black people out there - are trying to turn venture capitalism into philanthropy. The other response says your comment wasn't offensive enough to merit a temp account. I think you did the right thing; personally, I would be embarrassed and ashamed to make such degrading remarks.

That aside - I believe the premise of Hank's post is that it's not a meritocracy in Silicon Valley. It's hard to know for sure whether this is true because there's no way to test this hypothesis. But I think it's safe to assume that VC's are still human, and like every other human, they all have biases, including racial biases. There's nothing wrong with that, in my opinion. However, if they're not aware of that bias - perhaps, mentally, they reject that they have any racial bias because they think that will make them a bad person - then they won't take any conscious steps to correct it. The result would be that fewer black entrepreneurs get funded.

You should realize that being black in America is not like being fat. For most of our country's history, black people have been treated as less than human. It wasn't even until fairly recently in our country's history that blacks gained the legal right, throughout the country, to use the same restrooms and water fountains. Can you imagine that? If you think that that kind of institutionalized racism has completely evaporated, you are wrong.

I think it would benefit you to read the book "Black Like Me" by John Howard Griffin. It will probably change your apparent opinion that black people are a bunch of whiners demanding charity.

[tempaccount10]

I agree that there's no perfect meritocracy in Silicon Valley or anywhere since we're all human and human has bias. And I agree that black history has caused many disadvantages to the success of black Americans. But I don't buy that the reason that there are few black entrepreneurs because of racism or discrimination in the Valley. Yes, there might be some discrimination, but they are not the root or dominant causes.

Like you said, black people have been mistreated for hundreds of years. So even today, not many black students go to college (comparatively), and when they are in college, not many of them choose engineering(cultural?). The reason why there are few black tech entrepreneurs is because there is a small selection pool to begin with.

I think it's more productive to try to solve these root causes than to blame Valley meritocracy which i think is working ok.