If there's discrimination, isn't that purely the fault of the Y Combinator organisers (in this instance), and is this article then an admission that they've discriminated in the past?
Systematic discrimination due to unequal access to infrastructure really, really sucks for the black community as a whole, but if you managed to overcome it as an individual there are multiple interrelated reasons why you have a massive advantage in startups/tech that you probably aren't aware of yet.
Firstly, the market is ruthless. You can't lie to yourself or others in a startup -- the thing you're doing really has to work, so the decisions you're making have to be right. You're white, had a great education, and a well-padded resume? If you don't make precisely the right choices, the market couldn't care less, your company will die. Now, white well educated people with well-padded resumes will probably have easier access to venture capital, but that brings me to my next point.
In my (totally unscientific) experience, skin color, education, and experience has no correlation whatsoever with fluid intelligence (essentially, how well you make decisions without knowledge). In a big company, fluid intelligence doesn't really matter all that much -- the culture is well established, you aren't that important, and if you can just play ball the way everyone else does, you'll do ok. Not so in a startup. In a startup you're dealing with completely new territory, so you have to figure things out from scratch, all the time. You might as well take your knowledge, and your experience, and your education, and throw it all away because it will make a zilch of difference. Fluid intelligence is everything because you have to figure everything out from scratch.
All the white, well-educated, experienced young men who have relatively easy access to VC capital? Without fluid intelligence and wits about them, they'll just burn through it and be left with nothing at the end. The market is ruthless -- it doesn't care. So you're on equal footing.
Finally, the space is hyper-competitive and even in a recession there is too much capital chasing too few good ideas. All those white, traditional, middle aged male VC partnerships really need a win. And I mean really, because if they don't get one they won't raise the next fund, and if they don't raise the next fund they won't be able to pay property taxes and their kids's private school tuitions, and they really, really don't want to end up there. Don't like black people? Have unacknowledged bias? Too bad -- your kids are going to public school next year. So if you come in with a killer idea and the seeds of a working business, you bet they'll invest. The pressure's too high not to. They might care what you look like, but the market doesn't care about them. The market is ruthless and indifferent, and forces them to act ruthless and indifferent, because if they act on their prejudices their fund will die.
This is getting a bit long, so here's my TL;DR: if you've been discriminated against your whole life and want to start a company, don't get discouraged. The market is ruthless and indifferent -- it doesn't care about you, or me, or anyone. For you, that's an advantage. Build something people want and you will be rewarded.
Isn't this really the key here? I agree with your other arguments about ultimately needing to have fluid intelligence etc. But assuming two people (one white, one black) have the same amount of intelligence, smarts etc, but one raises $10 million from Sequoia and the other doesn't. That pretty much makes the difference between succeeding and failing. There are ideas which are so world-changing or brilliant that the market and VC's just can't ignore their eventual prominence (Google maybe?). There are other ideas which need lots of capital and talent injection in order to nurture them to the point where they are big.
Once you get to product/market fit, you'll get capital no matter who you are or where you come from. The market pressure is too strong for people not to invest.
It is widely established that the more similar someone is to you, the more likely you are to "connect" and establish rapport and understanding with that person. Like you alluded to, this is at least part of the reason why "white, well-educated, experienced young men have relatively easy access to VC capital". VC partners are predominantly well-educated caucasian folks, along with a significant minority of South Asian, East Asian, and Middle Eastern partners. The partners, even the ones trying to fight their biases, will have a natural inclination to connect and understand entrepreneurs that are similar to themselves. I am absolutely guilty of such psychological forces myself, as much as I hate to admit it.
Additionally, we have to look at sales. The people you are going to be selling to, whether it be fortune 500 CIOs or SF startup founders, again are predominantly caucasian. Like with the VC situation, all things being equal, you are more likely to "connect" with your point of contact if you have a lot in common with them. If you are starting a B2B SaaS company, Sales is even more critical than the money you raise from VCs. VCs will be much more inclined to actively fight their biases in order to find the best investments, since so much is on the line for them. I don't think you can say the same thing, or at least not nearly to the same extent, for many of the people you would be selling to. Statistically, it is thus advantageous to be caucasian.
Just being smarter and more capable may not be enough when your customers' psychology is hard-wired to be against you, even if they are not conscious of it. Perhaps this is less of an issue if you are building something that does not involve a face to face sales process on a frequent basis. But the existence of such forces cannot and should not be forgotten or overlooked.
I had some other comments, but the way you put this has really made me rethink them. I'll just say that if you make it to YC, then you're clearly doing something right.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0484384/ (The Color of Fear)
There are pieces of it on YouTube apparently:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nmhAJYxFT4
I once decided to investigate racism more. In addition to reading academic materials I also tried reading magazines intended for black women and found a section on how not to scare your white boss with your hair. There was all kinds of stuff like that, and it was both shocking and depressing. I just had no idea.
There is.
> isn't that purely the fault of the Y Combinator organisers (in this instance)
Some of the fault likely is, likely through unacknowledged bias. But discrimination comes in far more systemic forms: if you're a black child you're far more likely to attend a school with concentrated poverty than a white student. You're twice as likely to have teachers that are brand new, or have very little experience. You're less likely to be offered advanced classes. And boom, by the time you're applying for college, you're already behind the curve.
> and is this article then an admission that they've discriminated in the past?
They likely haven't actively discriminated against black applicants. But by not doing anything to further outreach, yeah, they kinda have.
I am also "white" and in 25-49 group (towards the upper end, though), grew up in a different country, had my first home PC during the second year of MS degree with money earned from giving private lessons. None of my friends in the 80s had PCs. I am still struggling to bring my coding skills up to par caused from such a late start. I was not "privileged" in any way or form.
I'm now volunteering at a poor neighborhood high school in Chivago, teaching them Python and helping the FRC Team do the programming. I don't for this because I felt sorry for my privileges, I do it because it's the right thing to do.
Certain aspects of life may be correlated with skin color, we still shouldn't lump the two together.
I think the privileged label is overused these days (esp online), but the way I see it is that I've (apparently) got it slightly easier than a black person.
Doesn't mean I didn't work hard to achieve what I have, and my parents were fairly poor, but I didn't have other people looking at me and dismissing me because of my skin colour.
Some people are more "privileged" than me, some less.
It's a scale of difficulty, and people love to label and classify.
It's hard to tell in the general case and it's still an open research subject in the empirical literature [1]; but for the specific case of labor inequality, there is consistent evidence that race differences in access to networks is one key roadblock --especially in the high-tech sector, where hiring 'through the vine' is common and encouraged [ibid, pp.15-16]. This is one aspect in which outreach efforts like sama's alone can make a huge difference.
[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2915460/pdf/nihm...