Is There an Institutional Bias Against Black Tech Entrepreneurs? 645
An anonymous reader writes sends this excerpt from CNN:
"The vast majority of top executives at the leading Silicon Valley tech firms are white men. Women and Asians have made some inroads, but African-American and Latino tech leaders remain a rarity. About 1% of entrepreneurs who received venture capital in the first half of last year are black, according to a study by research firm CB Insights. ... 'The tech industry is pretty clubby,' said Hank Williams, an African-American entrepreneur in the NewMe program who had success in the Internet boom of the 1990s. 'There are really no people of color in Silicon Valley.' Others say the issue could be rooted deep within the black community. The NewMe co-founders said African-American families don't typically encourage business leaders or programmers to pursue interests in tech."
Speaking as a Silicon Valley interviewer... (Score:2, Informative)
I'm posting anonymously because I'm fairly involved in hiring with a Silicon Valley company.
Right now there is a talent shortage in a number of areas, especially mid-senior to senior Unix/Linux admins. If we didn't hire the best PEOPLE who we could find, without regard to race / gender / ethnicity / sexual orientation / etc, we would be at a major competitive disadvantage because then these talented individuals would go to our competitors.
Most of the successful entrepreneurs have spent quite a bit of time in the trenches. Most of the jobs in the trenches are hard work that requires a great deal of fundamental understanding, which can be gained in a wide variety of ways (college, working on open source, etc).
However, for most people who are successful here, the path to developing this understanding starts way before college; it starts at home in the middle and high school years. If you don't get that head start, you're starting out behind. If you want to fix "underrepresented" group issues, you have to fix the parents and fix the home situation. You have to get the parents to support their kids taking hard math, hard science, and getting the help they need.
An anecdote on the parental issue - there was a fairly poor (but relatively organized) neighborhood in a not-quite-majority-black city that was offered free computers and wireless internet for all of the houses, to help the (many) kids in the neighborhood start to get past this digital divide. The parents overwhelmingly rejected the idea because the Internet might possibly lead to porn.
The fact is, the Valley is a meritocracy because anybody who doesn't treat it that way is at a competitive disadvantage. But a meritocracy means just that; no bonus points for the color of your skin.
Re:observing a lack is not proof (Score:5, Informative)
I grew up in Silicon Valley. I will be 59 at the end of this month. I'm an African-American male who has worked his way up in the tech industry from a computer operator to the owner/operator of his own tech consulting firm and "beyond"...
The industry here is the closest thing to a meritocracy I've ever experienced. If you're an entrepreneur worth exploiting here, you will be exploited. Anyone with a good idea can get a hearing as long as they know how to present it to the right people in the right way. I can honestly say that the stakes here are too high for racism to interfere.
My experience was that I was competing against kids whose parents were among the pioneers in the industry. Most black kids were excluded from college by economic circumstance as well as bias when I was growing up. Kids whose parents worked for nascent enterprises like Intel and HP and Fairchild and Apple had--and still have--a leg up on everyone else. The children of BSEE's have more of a chance to become BSEE's than the children of carpenters or dock workers. That's just the way of the world. But I had a knack for the industry, and I got in on merit... and luck.
My son is one of the few kids in our area--black or white--who had an internet connection in his home by the late-eighties. He was one of the few kids in our neighborhood who had a personal computer at his disposal. He didn't nerd out, but he had the opportunity if he'd wanted to pursue it. That's the biggest factor in this; if your parents are nerdy, it's likely you'll be nerdy, too. The lack of access to college among Black Americans before the Civil Rights Movement was probably the single most formidable impediment to the fostering of significant numbers of Black Tech Entrepreneurs. If your parents don't know Avogadro from an avocado, it's unlikely you will either--no matter what color you are.
The current political attitude toward funding education makes it likely that things will stay that way unless people demand change.
Re:observing a lack is not proof (Score:5, Informative)