Of course that's not the claim being made by your parent. The argument is about how widespread it is and its effects. I'm pretty sure most people would find his story strong evidence for one side of the argument, assuming they believe it. I'm also pretty sure most people will choose to believe it exactly to the extent it agrees with their predetermined bias.
As a white male living in a rural area as a kid and in metropolitan areas as an adult, and having a black best friend, my anecdotal evidence supports a more limited effect than is commonly claimed in pop culture. That is, to the extent that there is willful, systemic, malicious racism, an individual's self-reliance (why this is becoming a dirty word in our culture, I do not know) is significantly more powerful.
I respect people who think the system is flawed and want to dedicate their lives to making it more ideal, but otherwise I think it's healthier to believe your success comes from your own decisions. That's not literally true for ANY of us, but it's best to believe it. It's similar to the recent study which showed that children do best when they believe success is more dependent on how hard you work rather than what your IQ is...which is not the same as it actually being true that success is more dependent on how hard you work rather than what your IQ is.
My only advice to "black" and other entrepreneurs is shut up, go code and make something awesome.
This entire issue is being exploited to get attention for Angela Benton and her new accelerator.
It's easy to tout self-reliance when you're a white male. It's easy to overlook all the tiny advantages you get that accumulate in an invisible, insidious way. It's easy to see people bringing up the issue as whining.
It's hard to understand what it is to be someone else, what it means to struggle with others' perceptions every waking moment of every day in such a pervasive manner as to be incorporated into your very identity. It's hard. But we should all try.
Sometimes, self-reliance means putting your head down and doing the best work that you can do. Other times, it means finding other people with a common experience and taking collective action to actively change your circumstances. Sometimes it looks like a minority-focused startup accelerator. Sometimes it looks like the Civil Rights Movement.
If it looks like whining, probably the best thing to do is to try to refrain from meta-whining, and deeply consider whether the issue could be a real one, even though your own experience is different.
I have lived for 25 years in US. Never encountered racism ever - am from South Asian decent. That is saying something. Of course - there will be some people who will be racist. US, after all has 300M people and it defies probability that it will not have any racists.
However, generalizing racists and saying racism exists based on these extreme edge case doesn't make logical sense.
Have you considered perhaps that you're the edge case?
I've lived in the US my entire life. I'm East Asian. I've encountered racism.
Given two persons of minority descent, one who claims to have first-hand experience of racism, and another who claims that racism is largely a myth, why would I believe the second over the first?
I've lived in Toronto, Vancouver, Seattle, and now SF - all diverse places by American standards. And I've experienced racism at every. single. one. Not of the pitchfork-and-lynching variety, but racism nonetheless.
I want to live where you live, where racism is an extraordinary edge case.
Good luck finding anywhere in the entire world where racism doesn't exist. To say it doesn't is ignorant. It's ingrained in our evolutionary traits to have tendency to group and divide whether it be over race, culture, political or religious beliefs.
Some people don't have the intelligence however to rationally overcome the natural inclinations toward whatever bias we may subconsciously harbor. This has been true for the entirety for human civilization.
What I CAN tell you though, is that reverse discrimination by creating "black only" beauty pageants, television stations, and now incubators is not the solution to the problem and will only cause further division.
It's not a solution to the racism or discrimination problems, but it is a solution to the low self-esteem and self-worth problem of being from a marginalized minority.
As an American caucasian male living in a small town in Asia, I can assure you racism is alive and well across the whole world. Live somewhere where you're looked down on for your accent, color of skin, and national origin, and you'll learn what racism feels like. Then go back to your home country, and you'll recognize the subtle racist remarks and discrimination that you would have never noticed before you'd experienced prejudice first-hand.
I've seen it, some sexism actually. However those who are sexist/racist are easy to spot, they are just aholes in general. The one I knew was very easily spotted as every female member of the team complained about him in a month, followed by every male member just complaining how much of an ass he was.
Almost my entire point was that your own experience is not universal. No one's is.
You admit that you've seen discrimination and that it's easy to spot. Why, then, would you assume that it's not a problem? And why would you assume that all discrimination is easy to spot?
If you've witnessed discrimination, but you're trying to stifle the voices that are trying to raise awareness of their situation, then you're part of the problem.
As a white male living in a rural area as a kid and in metropolitan areas as an adult, and having a black best friend, my anecdotal evidence supports a more limited effect than is commonly claimed in pop culture. That is, to the extent that there is willful, systemic, malicious racism, an individual's self-reliance (why this is becoming a dirty word in our culture, I do not know) is significantly more powerful.
I respect people who think the system is flawed and want to dedicate their lives to making it more ideal, but otherwise I think it's healthier to believe your success comes from your own decisions. That's not literally true for ANY of us, but it's best to believe it. It's similar to the recent study which showed that children do best when they believe success is more dependent on how hard you work rather than what your IQ is...which is not the same as it actually being true that success is more dependent on how hard you work rather than what your IQ is.