[nemothekid]

>I can’t help noticing that 100% of the people I see who are building the future and making the big bucks are ethnically Chinese, Indian, or white. And 100% of the people I see who are washing floors or guarding doors or serving fast food are black and Mexican and Central-American.

Painting this social issue as racism is incorrect and using racism as a boogeyman, sweeps the real issues under the rug. I'm confident that now, especially in Silicon Valley, that no one in this social ladder is actively working against the issues of black and latino people.

Its my understanding is that you aren't actually seeing racism, but class discrimination. I wonder how many Indian or Chinese founders are actually immigrants from relatively well todo families that could afford to send someone half way across the world. I also wonder what is the class make up of white people in that same demographic. Are poor white people afforded the same opportunities? (which is another reason I'm opposed calling this "racism", you may be potentially leaving out an underserved demographic who is being told to "deal with it" because they were born white, yet poor - and alot of them don't exist in cities, but in Rural America)

Looking at it this way, you shift the problem from becoming one about chasing the racist white boogeyman who isn't giving black people jobs, and highlight a deeper social issue. Is the issue here actually that poor america has low social mobility?

Simultaneously, if we look at all the minorities in tech, what socioeconomic background do they come from? I'm willing to bet they are the same, and like me, college educated parents and high income.

So how come there are no poor white people at mcdonalds? Well whats the demo of san francisco's poor? The white poor may all be working at the mcdonalds in the flyover states.

[jisaacstone]

I think you are mostly correct. More precisely, if you take away race you will see that the distinction is 90% education-based. Specifically talking about immigrants, those indians and chinese (and japanese, pakistani, nepalese, korean, iranian, etc) as well as the eastern eropeans that you do not see all have a good education an most likely come from at least the top half of their society.

The Hispanic immigrants are more likely from a lower class an much more likely to have arrived on something like a family visa with no higher education at all.

[jmagoon]

I've always heard of this referred to as institutional racism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism

"When racism is built into the institution, it appears as the collective action of the population", thus "San Francisco is racist".

[sliverstorm]

Your parent is arguing that the lines drawn along race are merely correlated, rather than the cause. Thus, not institutional racism.

In other words, the system is failing people not because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin, but because of their class, which happens to roughly line up with race.

The difference between "You are poor because you are Mexican/from Mexico" and "You are poor because you started out poor, and it just so happens that you are from Mexico where a lot of people started out poor".

[nemothekid]

I don't think I can refer to is as institutional racism. Maybe there are some laws that disproportionally effect minorities in California - I'm not an expert so I don't know. However, I don't think the term racism actually belongs. It seems to me that these are the effects are due to class, and (through the indirect effects of racism of old), blacks and other minorities are disproportionally poor. Because, especially in urban centers, that minorities make up most of the poor, I'm guessing, that one may mistakenly assume its due to racism, when its actually because of socioeconomic background.

[msandford]

I started to read your comment and went "wuh oh" but kept reading. You made an excellent point that there may well be poor whites who are underserved as well.

I imagine that college educated parents with high income (or lack thereof) is a better predictor of future earnings than skin color or sex. I don't have any kind of study to back this up, it's an educated guess. I would love it if someone found something and posted a link with evidence for or against.

I grew up in one of the richer flyover states (MN) and I can assure you that 20 years ago and even 10 years ago there were plenty of poor whites working all kinds of unskilled jobs. Here in Texas (where I live now) it's very uncommon to see whites mowing, painting, etc for a living. Where I grew up in MN it was basically all whites doing that kind of work.

[ahomescu1]

> I wonder how many Indian or Chinese founders are actually immigrants from relatively well todo families that could afford to send someone half way across the world.

From personal experience, I can say that it's not that expensive to send someone "half way across the world" (I grew up in Romania, but currently live in California). What is hard is immigration/getting a visa, but you can't really fix that with more money (unless you're going for the investor visa, which very few do).

Also, it's really easy to apply for BigCo (Google, Apple, Facebook) jobs in the Bay Area from outside the US (you get phone interviews at first, the get flown over for on-site interviews on the company's dime). It's really not money that's stopping people from getting "in".