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Comment by Thorentis | Hacker News Reader

Limiting initiatives like this based on skin color, implies that the reason for them needing help is their skin color. What about white people that come from low-socioeconomic backgrounds? Broken families? Didn't finish high-school? Abused as a child/teenager? Single parent family? Aren't these the real reasons why people are disadvantaged? People of all colors come from these backgrounds.

I'm sick of the hypocrisy of people saying "Black people aren't more likely/less likely to x, it's their education/family/etc. that affects them" ... and then immediately turning around and giving help to people based on their skin color, rather than these other traits.

EDIT: What about somebody who is black, and comes from (yes, one of the rare unfortunately) a rich family or well off family? While not a majority, many POC work for FAANG companies. Are they eligible for this money purely because of their skin color, but disadvantaged people of any color are not?

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> Aren't these the real reasons why people are disadvantaged?

No, or at least, not exclusively. There's tons of social science research in which, for example, two identical fabricated resumes were submitted for a battery of jobs, differing only by, say, a headshot of a black vs. white person, or a stereotypically-African-American name vs. a stereotypically white (or not-obviously-race-signaling) one. In these studies there are huge differences in response rates and callbacks, even when everything else about the resumes (educational attainment, experience, etc.). is identical.

It's true that many black people suffer structural disadvantages because of systemic lack of access to resources, etc. But they also suffer disadvantages because they're black.

> No, or at least, not exclusively.

But primarily, right? Bias plays a role, so everything else being equal, a black applicant will receive fewer callbacks than a white or asian one, but (and that's a big but) the primary issue is that usually not all other things are equal.

The average black person comes from a different socioeconomic background than the average white or asian person, so they'll usually not have the same level of education, but less so because of being discriminated against because of their race, but because of their class. More single-parent households, lower household income, their parents can't simply afford to hire tutors and put them through college etc etc.

That's what makes these things somewhat weird. Yeah, sure, a black guy from a rich family that attended MIT will have a harder time finding funding than his white or asian friends from the same background ... but he'll have a much easier time than some white kid from a broken home.

I believe two things to be true: class is the primary factor, not race. And it's more convenient to focus on race because it's much easier and feels less threatening to the (usually upper middle class and beyond) proponents. "We (as white people) need to share more" puts them in a group with (for the US) 60% of the population and is pretty abstract. Great for virtue signalling, terrible for concrete actions. "We (as rich people) need to share more" puts them in a much, much smaller group and suggests they could actually do something besides yelling at people to check their privilege: share some of the money they inherit. Great for doing something, terrible for virtue signalling because "well, put your money where your mouth is" is so obvious.

But there are programs that focus on access to resources based around class, and to the extent that there are factors besides class that matter (like race), exclusively-class-oriented programs fail to fully level the playing field. That this program exists to help combat bias doesn't stop someone else from starting a different program aimed at attacking a different angle with different eligibility criteria. The more the merrier.

> Yeah, sure, a black guy from a rich family that attended MIT will have a harder time finding funding than his white or asian friends from the same background ... but he'll have a much easier time than some white kid from a broken home.

Even if your claims are supported by evidence, why is it a bad thing to want to correct that disparity? The fact that there also exist other disparities in the world doesn’t seem like a good reason to oppose correcting one particular disparity.

> Even if your claims are supported by evidence, why is it a bad thing to want to correct that disparity?

It's not "bad" as in "omg don't do that", it's just focusing on a less significant problem instead of the large problem, which it conveniently shifts focus from.

I don't think that it's intentional, but I'm absolutely sure that addressing the lacking social mobility in the US would benefit minorities much more than racism, because they are much, much more affected by it.

I have a question, just because I don't know if there is data on this.

I've seen a bunch of studies on things like "stereotypically-african-american-name" vs "stereotypically-white-name", which are good evidence as to why a good hiring process should remove personally-identifying details from resumes.

Not just the name of the applicant, either -- school names and locations can also introduce unfair biases. Company names are unavoidable, I think: there are only so many companies that fit the description of "Social Network, Global, >10k employees, uses lots of Javascript" or "Privatized Intelligence Service, Global, >100k employees, uses lots of Go".

Buuuuuuut... is there research on what happens when you expand the number of dimensions?

E.g., add in a mix of broad cultural backgrounds (Pan-European, Latin, Arab, Chinese, African, etc.), test different raraties ("Smith" is common, "Chaucer" is rare, both are Anglo)

Does "Victoria Henderson" garner a statistically different response to "Vitalija Herrera" (Anglo vs Lithuanian)? What about "Nyala Aregawi" vs "Nadya Ahane" (Mixed Russian-Japanese)?

What happens when we mix in popular fictional names?

Solid bet there are boys out there named "Thor" and "Bilbo" by parents that are fans of Star Wars.

No idea what actual outcomes might be, the data could yield interesting results on hiring biases.

I don’t know if there is such evidence, and while it could be interesting to know just out of curiosity, it doesn’t strike me as particularly valuable to test the impact of adding additional irrelevant information to job applications.

Fair enough. Kind of a data geek, hence the ask.

> I'm sick of the hypocrisy of people saying "Black people aren't more likely/less likely to x, it's their education/family/etc. that affects them" ... and then immediately turning around and giving help to people based on their skin color, rather than these other traits.

In your imaginary world we should stop considering race all together. Logically that'd be "fair" right? But what about the million of POC who have been denied jobs, education, houses, etc who exist NOW today and have been set back from centuries of disenfranchisement. Is it fair to them? We don't get to turn back time, so initiatives like this at least attempt to help a group of people who've sorely been needed from the evolution of startups. This is a GOOD thing. More diverse folks means change. If you feel like it's "taking away" from your opportunity, maybe you should examine that a bit.

> While not a majority, many POC work for FAANG companies. Are they eligible for this money purely because of their skin color, but disadvantaged people of any color are not?

oh no, you found an edge case - better throw in the towel. If it can't be simplified into a single test then the whole thing shouldn't exist right? /s

Consider how hard you have to work to justify your line of thinking. Maybe the simplest answer is that you're wrong.

I personally hate these initiatives because they don't deal with problem at the core.

They should have policies that address every fund they manage, not some 100m, which is peanuts for them.

I really like how YC does it. Yes, there are problems with YC, but their main program is really good at taking people from different economic/social/racial backgrounds.

Have tonnes of friends from disadvantaged backgrounds and developing countries that got in. I don't understand why every fund can't do it.

I suspect because it means acknowledging that there isn't particularly special about one's little in-group, and that talent also lies outside of how one identifies. For example, I've heard that good candidates are impossible to find outside of 'good universities', those being the ivy league, etc.

YC also invests in non-profits. There is a strong social/corrective undertone in its investments.

Not only do they not deal with the problem at the core, these types of well meaning but misguided ideas often end up perpetuating the very problem they are meant to address.

So much of the policies from the left on race are examples of the shirky principle in action:

https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-shirky-prin/

“Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.” — Clay Shirky

This is a great article from Shelby Steele, an African-American senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institute on the issue:

http://archive.is/EXl8N#selection-1951.267-1955.491

I agree that there should be more funds that support all kinds of backgrounds so that we can increase the diversity of people in the VC space. This reminds me a lot of the discussions about affirmative action in the US, which is divisive on both sides, and I do see a strong argument for using class as the main determinant. However, black founders often mention that they are declined funding because they don't look similar to the investors, and while most entrepreneurs need to go through a lot of investors, its often hard to tell if you're getting rejected because of your idea or the color of your skin.

Just because it would be ideal to have programs for all disadvantaged backgrounds doesn't make one specifically for POC bad imo.

> I agree that there should be more funds that support all kinds of backgrounds so that we can increase the diversity of people in the VC space.

And what happens when a black-founder VC fund underperforms an Asian-founder VC fund?

Will we need another level of VC funds to fix that?

> Limiting initiatives like this based on skin color, implies that the reason for them needing help is their skin color.

Systematic racism is very much real in the United States, putting minorities at a disadvantage exactly because of the color of their skin - socioeconomic background and upbringing aside. Affirmative action, and presumably this effort by SoftBank, is intended to address that.

As far as I can see, this doesn't exist in the tech world (any more). Most Fortune 500 companies go out of their way to hire minorities, even if they are less qualified. Colleges do the same. Minorities are not disadvantaged purely for their skin color in the tech world. They are disadvantaged because of their worse financial/education situation. And my point is that these traits that effect people in tech are not limited to PoC.

> As far as I can see, this doesn't exist in the tech world (any more)

Bluntly: there's probably a lot that you can't see.

That's a vague and unsubstantiated statement. Can you provide examples and evidence of things you think the OP does not see.

It makes sense to me. Its possible the poster is a person of color who simply never sees discrimination, but its more likely they are a white person who does not notice discrimination against people of color.

When the James Damore essay swept google, I briefly asked my female friends if they could simply tell me what discrimination they experience. But they were too worn out from every male colleague asking them the same thing to explain it all to each one.

What I realized I needed to do was start listening to women's stories more, and start believing things even when they don't make sense to me. I needed to be curious and look for problems that I had previously been blissfully unaware of. And with that change in mindset I started to see them.

We have to do the same with people of color. We need to listen to their stories and believe them. It's hard to give you a bulleted list which would clearly explain discrimination just as it was hard (and tiring) for women to explain their discrimination to me. But if you take "there are things you are not seeing about racism at the workplace" to be true, you can begin to cultivate a mindset that allows you to learn what is happening.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43708708-white-fragility

Great read, there is several chapters explaining the parents comment

You say that you do not see racism in the tech world. If it isn't happening to you, it can be very hard to see. Just as I did not see the sexism in the tech world until the James Damore essay blew up at google and we finally prioritized listening to women's stories. And then (after a lot of personal work I did with the help from my caring female friends) it became clear.

So perhaps you do not see racism because you've assumed its not happening, and because it's not happening to you? From what I know about racism (as a white person), it must be impossible that the tech world is simply free of racism. It's just hard to see when you are not the victim. The answer I've found is to listen to people of color when they say they experience racism. Don't challenge each assertion, take it to be true and then look further for corroborating stories. You will find them.

Tech companies absolutely do not try hard enough to hire disadvantaged people color enough to offset the issue that comes with getting past interview processes staff with people with inherent prejudices.

Regardless if they get in the pipeline an issue a disadvantaged minority will have will be getting railroaded by say, an engineer who doesn't like said minority regardless of his competence level.

I think that your making assumption based on a lifestyle you don't live. You in the response a being flippant in saying well its not that bad. The fact is I doubt you have any idea. The fact is no is plenty of evidence that say with the same financial/education level a minority is disadvantaged and even with a greater financial/education level they are more disadvantaged.

I think your living in a reality of how you think the world should be instead of the one that exists.

Maybe in Utah or San Diego. In Silicon Valley, half the employees are foreign-born, many of which haven't been indoctrinated. So occasionally, a black developer there will end up at a different company than he otherwise would, and of course he'll spend a bit more time getting dressed in the morning.

For founders dealing with VC, it's a different equation, so your intuition about "the tech world" doesn't exactly apply. Still, I agree with you. There isn't some untapped vein of black and latino American founders that other VC's are currently missing out on.

Intentions sound good, sure: we want to address inequality.

But is the solution “we will only consider people of specific racial backgrounds. We will reject you on the sole basis of your race”? Affirmative action has been firmly grounded in policies for decades. At what point do we do away with it, or decide that it needs to be rebalanced for groups that had potential reduced because of the results of affirmative actions good intentions? It’s made getting into college and many positions as an Asian American pure hell, despite being minorities and many coming from poverty.

This is slight variation on the theme of the Black Lives Matter vs All Lives Matter argument, and it's been addressed adequately on social media.

The fund isn't pointing out that "Only Black Founders Matter", it's saying that that group of people require attention at this point in time, and we're going to focus on them now and correct the systemic problems that have given them a disadvantage until this point in time.

We'll get to everyone else next. The principle of using the water wagon to save the house that's currently burning applies. The people starting this fund have decided that focusing on this group is a good start, other groups will come later after the problem is clear enough.

This is akin to the reservation system in India, which was amended to cater to this very problem by identifying "creamy layer"[1] who are higher income group coming from backward castes and they are not eligible for govt benefits.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creamy_layer

The purpose of such initiatives is to counter the prevalent social bias. If two similarly educated and otherwise skilled FAANG employees pitch same idea to different VCs, the success ratio is tilted against POC.

Rest of the causes need to be looked upon at various stages of life and via various support measures, this particular caters to racial bias.

Aren't these the real reasons why people are disadvantaged?

Not when it comes to raising VC money, no. Typically people who manage to raise a round come from good backgrounds, middle-class families and have a high level of education. There are exceptions but that's a good general heuristic for a founder who has successfully raised money. If you're from a broken home, didn't finish school, or you were abused as a child you're much less likely to be raising money from a VC fund for a litany of reasons that all need to be addressed by society as a whole.

However, even though practically all the people who pitch to VCs are well-educated, relatively wealthy, middle-class people regardless of what color they are, it's still the case that more than 3/4 of deals go to white men[1]. It's extremely hard to raise, and even harder if you're in a minority group. VCs are systemically averse of doing deals outside of their comfort zone.

For Softbank to ring fence the equivalent of 0.1% of their Vision Fund as "this money is only for minorities" that's fine. To be honest it's not really enough.

I don't look at this news as a VC company going 'positive discrimination' but more as a VC company realising that it has a problem turning down deals that could make them money, eg minority-led startups, and doing something to fix that.

[1] https://news.crunchbase.com/news/untapped-opportunity-minori...

That's a valid stance. But reflect on why it matters to you. So what if someone is giving special opportunities to someone based on their skin color, or their gender? There are plenty of special opportunities to go around for all of us.

I think you'll get a lot of flak for this sentiment. But I used to feel the same way as you. What helped me change my mind was to realize that no one is taking away opportunities from me by giving them to someone else. "Opportunity" isn't a fixed pie. If we believe that wealth isn't a fixed pie, why not apply that same logic to opportunities and initiatives like this? It's worth thinking about, and deeply reflecting on.

And, you know, if someone was giving out special opportunities to certain people while denying them to us, that wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. Parents have been doing that for their own children since people were people. It's their money; they can put it toward whatever causes they want.

> So what if someone is giving special opportunities to someone based on their skin color, or their gender?

Because it’s racist.

Say there was a disease that predominantly affected a given race. Would you then object to a health system producing a tailored response to that group based on group characteristics?

e.g. https://www.gaucherdisease.org/blog/5-common-ashkenazi-genet...

Of course not, if race was proven to be the actual underlying factor. The point in the OP was that the underlying cause is not race, but other group traits (low socio-economic status, poor family background) - which people of all races can and do possess.

I'm not replying to that.

These diseases are based on genetic differences, and the tailored treatments are based on genetic differences. Are you really implying that there are genetic differences between the races that cause differences? I find that pretty racist.

That's my point. To talk about differences isn't racist. It's how they are used to keep power structures in place that is. Your definition is IMO not helpful in any way. If racism were so simple to define then as people we wouldn't have had any problems eradicating it, would we?

No. Racism in its broadest, widely-accepted usage, refers to the treatment of people based on the belief that one race is superior to another. This program, as far as I can tell, makes no claims about any race being superior to another race.

Here’s a thought experiment:

A black man and an Asian man rob a bank together. They are caught, charged, and found guilty of the same crime.

The black man is set free because his race is over-represented at the local jail, but the Asian man serves 8 years in prison.

Because nobody is saying someone is superior to another person here, the above example is not racist and totally fine, in your definition of racism. Even though it is obviously deeply unethical and unfair.

That thought experiment does not reflect any realities of the real world that we are discussing, so I don’t find it particularly interesting. The analogous situation would be if judges systematically sentence Black men to twice the jail time for that crime as Asian men, and someone proposed correcting that disparity by cutting the Black man’s sentence in half (so that it would match the Asian man’s sentence). I would support that.

> So what if someone is giving special opportunities to someone based on their skin color, or their gender? There are plenty of special opportunities to go around for all of us.

I think this was the stance of the segregationists in the Jim Crow South. They called it “separate but equal”

“So what if someone is getting to drink from a certain water fountain based on their skin color, or their gender? There are plenty of water fountains to go around for all of us.”

I find both statements morally reprehensible.

>There are plenty of special opportunities to go around for all of us.

By definition this isn't true.

That was such a lovely reply, I already agree with your viewpoint but this has given me a new way of looking at things. Thank you.

If you look at tech and most startups, an overwhelming amount of founders come from a similar background: white, male. I don’t have the data on this but you could for example make inferences from the YC summer and winter showcases.

I would expect that what this helps to do is encourage participation from ethnic minorities in the US.

And to your point on white people from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds. Sure it is good to lift all people up in society, but they certainly don’t have to face racial discrimination in the workplace or admissions pipeline. Failing to acknowledge that race is a factor in many people’s lives experiences is a failure to acknowledge systemic racism. This is an attempt to recognize that and correct that. And as other commentators have said, this by no means implies that other initiatives have to be mutually exclusive l.

People in all countries get measles. Should we help every country equally? If, gasp, there's a rich kid in Pakistan who may get a free measles vaccine, is that evidence to stop fighting measles in Pakistan?

White families have ten times the average wealth versus black families. Putting aside the significant mountain of evidence racial bias in hiring, in tech, in basically every facet of life, that single statistic should be evidence enough that more funding is necessary for minorities.

And what hypocrisy? You can say that black people are not inherently different but face different circumstances due to societal problems. That's not hypocrisy. That's simply acknowledging that race plays a factor in nurture but maybe not nature.

It would be more appropriate to have on a economy basis. Recently the Indian Government took this step to provide 10% additional reservation based on for the general category (forward caste people). There was huge outcry in the country from people belonging to the backward castes, but most of it came from political quarters. I think in general all people want is not to be left out rather than deny other people's rights.

I think you can have different initiatives targeting different issues. Like many have said, being a minority itself is a disadvantage. Cristian Cooper (Harvard grad) is an example.

But I also understand what you mean about people ignoring socioeconomic status or other issues when they are not at the center of the spotlight. I think it's quite clear most companies doing this just for PR. BLM movement has been going on for years, yet these companies never care to actively support it, until now that they've seen "oh shit, people actually care - better get on it now." Let's see whether this is truly a wake-up call for people to address injustices of all kind, starting with racial problem, or simply a 'trend'.

“This system of helping people does not help all people who need help, therefore it is bad.”

No. This comment is similar to responding to “black lives matter” with “all lives matter”.

Helping a subset of those who need help is acceptable too.

Put aside your hardwired, human-as-social-animal unfairness alert criticism, and recognize that this is a good thing, and it is better that this exists than the case where it does not.

Affirmative action isn’t fair either, but it is still a good thing that it exists.

Once everyone in society is treated equally and has equal opportunities, then and only then can we start criticizing equality improvement efforts on fairness.

There is no requirement that helping people who need help be done so fairly or evenly. Abandon that concept.

With these questions is often a matter of scale. Let's take a minority person and a non-minority person applying for the same apartment. The landlord doesn't care about their background. He just thinks the non-minority person is less likeable and gives the apt to the minority person. Fine. However, if you this 100x or 1000x, the minority people will most probably lose out because of racism.

Is the landlord a metaphor for Harvard who also finds certain demographics “less likable” and doesn’t admit them despite higher scores and grades?

It's nice that they're doing this, but I think they could increase their funding for minorities. We've seen them have bigger funds for vaporware that didn't really pan out

I think we all know that all lives matter, but the point is that black lives are in danger thats why were saying black lives matter

Ignoring specific subsets of systematic issues are synonymous with tone deafness

This initiative isn't about the BLM movement (though probably inspired by it given recent events). It's about closing the gap in terms of business opportunity. And my point is that there are many people of all colors who are disadvantaged because of educational background, family situation etc. I never see VCs or Fortune 500s doing much for them. Doesn't have the same clout in terms of social justice points. Using minorities to boost their shitty reputation after the WeWork saga is pathetic.

It's right there in the article: “Racism is a lamentable thing,” Son wrote on Twitter, ending his post with the hashtag #blacklivesmatter.

If you discount a subset of a systematic issue and paint it in a broader light, it doesn't portray an accurate picture.

There should be programs that endeavor to compensate for the inequities between socioeconomic background, family situations, etc. And indeed there are such programs. That’s not mutually exclusive with the need for programs like this one. They should all exist.

Excellent points.

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