Aside from arbitrary virtue signaling and moral grand standing, what's the point?
$1 is $1 no matter which pocket it comes from. Also, this would be introducing discrimination based on immutable traits - two steps backwards there guys...
For sure, but that CCP $ isn't really what is at play here. Given the option to accept local investment vs. foreign in a competition, the entity receiving the cash would be able to make a choice based on their own values.
Anecdotally, British Columbia real estate is actively rejecting Chinese investment on similar grounds.
If you drop all context sure. I'm sure no one here would take investment money from a resurrected Hitler, Narcos, or the Mob, but, since the discussion is about race, it's kind of an orthoginal point.
It's not. Folks have ethics about who they take their money from. I agree, it's not the same, but a dollar isn't just a dollar. Who it's coming from, and what their ethics are, do actually matter.
In this case, I see that minorities are underrepresented in startups. Insomuch as it's all about who you know, there's strong reinforcement of systemic trends of enriching primarily white men. Diversity at the top unlocks hidden talent in their networks and overlooked markets, so picking folks to maximize cultural competency is kind of a no-brainer.
Well, invstors unconscious bias against Black people, against woman and many other (and unconscious positive discrimination of White and Asian men) is hurting the tech ecosystem [1] [2] which isn't good either for current VC and for the society in general.
This action helps the VC to get more fair... and better investors (this is good for their economic performances). Then this can have a positive impact on the tech sector and the whole society...
Huh. Looking at the headline, I had thought that this would mean, "we'll fund your startup, if you agree to meet these diversity hiring targets." But if I'm reading the article correctly, it actually means, "we, the VCs, will try to have more diversity among the people writing the checks."
Of the handful of comments currently posted, yours is the only one that shows evidence of actually having read the article.
Personally, I think it's a good thing that VC funds are trying to include people from underrepresented groups into their club. At least, I hope that's what they're doing, because all this "best effort" language basically means they're not really obligated to do anything.
To be a bit more cynical it seems to be saying something closer to "we want to look upstanding, so please go do the work for us because we couldn't diversify our own firm"
The real beneficiary is that they will reap the benefits from the success but well, VCs are either well off already or reckless. It may technically sway the statistics of the upper ends distribution ans shows it isn't a defacto ethnic segregation but means about as much as Queen Victoria to the status of women. Technically a good thing but not very relevant to most of the minority.
We need to stop introducing artificial racist/sexist affirmative action policies and instead stick to including people based on merit. The injection of this ideology everywhere is pernicious, unnecessary, and discriminatory.
Although hopefully becoming weaker over time, people still hold biases against different groups.
Until these biases don’t exist it makes sense to be aware of them and try to correct
Do we agree that current VC, mostly because of unconscious bias, are racist and sexist ?
Then what do you suggest to change this situation ?
I am not super comfortable with counsious positive discrimination as a momentary tool to correct a discriminatory situation (with negative impact on the whole society), but it is hard to imagine solutions without using this tool.
My belief comes from personal experience. That social mobility is alive and well but can take multiple generations.
There’s Plenty of VCs who came from poverty, who’s parents came from poverty, or who’s grandparents came from poverty.
When looking at that Kind of timescale from 1920s till now, I don’t believe the system has had enough time. Civil rights, racial rights, and gender rights are relatively new concepts.
My belief is over the next 30-50 years the forces of market capitalism will address the issue.
How do you correct it? By holding racist thoughts of your own that you assume this race thinks that of that one and correct for it without judging them by their actions?
The fact is (this is fact, not ideology) VCs tend to :
-discriminate positively White and Asian men because they are White and Asian man independently of their merit
-discriminate negatively all other people because they are women, black people... independently of their merit
In France Oussama Ammar (the local Paul Graham) clearly advice to female entrepreneur, and to Black and Arab entrepreneur to preferably choose a business or strategy where they can bootstrap cause raising fund will be harder to them. Recently there have been many post about black entrepreneurs and VCs. And there is an interesting HBR article [1] showing some biais in investing in woman startup in Sweden (country known for its gender equality)
These racist and sexist bias and discrimination has two consequences :
- Lack of fairness as merit is clearly not the only thing taken into consideration ; with positive unfair impact for White men, and negative unfair impact for women, Black people...
- "Bad" investment by the VC, that could have much better by investing based on "merit" and not (unconsciously) on skin color or gender. This has negative impact on the VC companies... and more generally on the economy.
So finding ways to judge startup more on merit, being able to lower the bias is also a business decision that make sense and that will have positive impact on the VC performance and the economy. Getting more diversity in the VC firm just do it (and if VC are biased against black and woman startuper, we can imagine such bias used to be true for hiring people)
I love how everyone uses throwaways in these comments because they know any deviation from the progressive-left line will get them cancelled!
I’ll say it under my name - I’m completely old fashioned and probably racist / sexist / *-phobic whatever because I still agree with Martin Luther King that it is morally correct to judge someone by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. I’m so totally backwards! I meet someone new and have a blank slate no matter what color they are or what they look like! I do this intensely regressive thing where I listen to what they have to say and judge them by their words and actions. I know, very evil and wrong of me, but I can’t help it - I still like Martin Luther King!
We all carry biases, including towards/against groups we wouldn't expect to be biased towards/against. We probably all start with blank slates, but, unless you've had zero interactions with the outside world, you'd have to work actively to retain that blank-slate outlook.
In aggregate, we run the risk of collectively creating various forms of systemic bias. We can test for these systemic biases (we have) and prove the existence/non-existence of said biases (we have).
How do you propose testing this? Typically, a difference in outcomes is taken as evidence of systemic bias, but it isn't the same thing. For example, if one cohort commits more crimes, they are going to have more police interactions, more arrests, and so forth. But that's not a systemic bias. Unfortunately the recent "anti-racist" authors like Ibram Kendi have been pushing a false and expansive definition, where they term any difference in outcomes (or as they put it, any racial inequity), as "racist". That's not what most people would call "racist".
> prove the existence/non-existence of said biases (we have)
As for the existence of biases, I assume you are referring to the 'implicit association test', which is commonly used as a tool to identify unconscious biases. The IAP methodology has been challenged and debunked many times. Studies have also found that measures of implicit bias do not predict how people act in real life. See https://newdiscourses.com/2020/06/flaws-white-fragility-theo... for more.
There are many ways to conduct studies on bias.
As a simple example, they can do things like send out identical resumes with different genders/races and see who gets called back.
You can find a ton of these; here is a meta-analysis which looks at many such studies: https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/09/11/1706255114
Not a throwaway here either, just felt strongly enough to make an account and add my $0.02 when I might otherwise lurk.
I believe as you do, that we should explore viewpoints counter to the mainstream and break the echo chamber to expose poor and Illogical thinking wherever it presents.
I imagine MLK would be appalled by the weak, hollow, pandering which is outlined here.
If you're going to try to be contrarian, at least do the research to do it well. You think you're being clever but you're showing no understanding of the positions you're trying to make fun of. As a result, you come across like a moron.
You should have used a throwaway, not because you have non-politically-correct views, but rather because you hold extremely strong opinions about something you can't even articulate credibly.
I looked up your twitter and saw this from March:
> Despite everything happening I’m still not worried. Corona is a bad flu and the markets will recover. I’m choosing to relax #CoronaOutbreak #relax
A whole lot of words about how I’m a “moron” without refuting anything in the argument! A very typical stance to take from the progressive left. You clearly feel that you are morally superior to me!
Once again, I will state loudly and clearly - I view all people as what they are: people. You are not a series of identities to me. All people have their own agency and cannot be reduced to a set of labels.
Personal attacks are not ok on HN, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are.
Digging up details from someone's history and bringing them in here as ammunition in an argument is particularly not ok. That's a practice of the online callout/shaming culture, and we're trying to avoid that on HN. Not that the callouts are always wrong, but callout/shaming culture has toxic systemic effects that are incompatible with the intended spirit of this site.
Hey Dan, didn't mean to violate the rules. To be clear, my comment was intended to be about his argument and it's lack of rigour.
Also, his bio links his twitter, so I thought that made it within bounds. But yeah, that was a bit harsh, sorry.
MLK explicitly advocated for policies that gave preferential treatment to Black people, so it's a bit surprising to see such a fan of his taking this stance by invoking King. For example, here's a quote from his book "Why We Can't Wait":
> Whenever the issue of compensatory or preferential treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man is entered at the starting line in a race three hundred hears after another man, the first would have to perform some impossible feat in order to catch up.
Essentially King is arguing that the government should promote the same kind of preferential hiring and other benefits that veterans get, but for members of other disadvantaged groups.
My father in law is a Vietnamese immigrant, came here after communists destroyed his country on a fishing boat. He’s now a retired millionaire!
My neighbor is black, and she drives a $100k+ Mercedes! Country club golfing and sailing type.
My point is, arbitrary assumptions based on race are totally meaningless in 2020. There are people in all social strata of every race. Giving a leg up to someone for being XYZ is dumb - it reduces complex people to simple labels that define how victimized the woke left says they should be.
If we want to talk about giving government assistance to people in poverty regardless of race, I’d be much more amenable. There will be correlations to poverty and race but I think we all agree Oprah and Michael Jordan should not be getting handouts.
As it stands the identity politics movement is ideologically inconsistent and is focused on driving people apart and re-segregating us. This is a movement doomed for failure. We should instead be eliminating our superficial differences and moving beyond bankrupt social justice theories that reduce individuals to mere labels rather than intelligent, thinking independent people with their own agency.
"My point is, arbitrary assumptions based on race are totally meaningless in 2020."
Well, unfortunately race and gender are still important in 2020, and in the VC world there are still important negative discrimination against woman, against black people... and positive discrimination for White and Asian men... [1] [2] and that is a serious problem.
(This comes on the top of existing other problems linked eg. to poverty, that is touching disproportionately the people negatively discriminated by VC and investors)
I still hire the best person for the job, which over the years has included men, women, and people of many races. Like I said in the original post, I am an old fashioned type that believes we are not restricted by superficial and unimportant details like our race - all people can succeed and thrive based on their character. It’s crazy that this is now old school, but this is 2020 and I don’t read any critical race theory pseudoscience.
My view is a much more optimistic, forward-looking attitude than one that constantly analyzes how hard society has screwed each person based on their labels. Rather than see ourselves as victims who can’t succeed because of XYZ, we should encourage people to thrive despite XYZ. If you wait your entire life for society / the government / other people to save you, you’ll never be happy and you will never be saved.
You think you hire the best person for the job... Just like the Swedish in the HBR article I quoted were sure they invest in the best project/person while they were discriminating negatively women (the discriminating positively men).
I’m all for this (meaning bringing diverse co-investors into rounds). I’d add that as entrepreneurs we should add LP riders when doing rounds (where’s your money from?!).
Can’t say I know all these funds super well - they’re not big names outside of a couple - but helping diverse co-investors build track records is a good idea on a bunch of levels. It’s all friends and family anyway.
I will say that Greycroft is one of the few funds who I respect deeply in how they operate and don’t treat “diversity” as an add-on. They’re just a really smart group of people, that I’ve enjoyed every interaction with, that actually have a diverse set of experiences and interesting points of view And investment theses that scale across diverse sociopoltifla outcomes. Novel I know!
I see a few misguided comments here not worth responding too about “merit” and what not. I’ll deal with your anguish if you make a point of it, but please bring some original thought, non-anecdotal or not-bad research cause I feel like I’m reading a bad /r/* thread in the below.
We have recent proof that educational institutions actually discriminate against white and asian pupils.
Your wording suggests animosity, so why would you believe you are less biased than anyone else?
Perhaps you are biased because you spend time on reddit, I wouldn't hold it against anyone, but original thought doesn't make an appearance in this discussion.
I believe that discrimination narrative is largely based on test scores. Which are, and it took me decades to come around to this, fairly biased. Outcomes have been shown to be pretty equal regardless of relative experience (and comparable ability) pre-college.
And I’m less biased cause I’ve seen more and made pretty much every mistake a high test-score, arrogant white or Asian guy can make :).
41 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 106 ms ] thread$1 is $1 no matter which pocket it comes from. Also, this would be introducing discrimination based on immutable traits - two steps backwards there guys...
For all the uproar about Chinese ownership of tiktok, zoom, etc etc, I suspect that your assessment is a minority opinion here.
Anecdotally, British Columbia real estate is actively rejecting Chinese investment on similar grounds.
In this case, I see that minorities are underrepresented in startups. Insomuch as it's all about who you know, there's strong reinforcement of systemic trends of enriching primarily white men. Diversity at the top unlocks hidden talent in their networks and overlooked markets, so picking folks to maximize cultural competency is kind of a no-brainer.
This action helps the VC to get more fair... and better investors (this is good for their economic performances). Then this can have a positive impact on the tech sector and the whole society...
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesnonprofitcouncil/2018/02/... [2] https://hbr.org/2017/05/we-recorded-vcs-conversations-and-an...
Personally, I think it's a good thing that VC funds are trying to include people from underrepresented groups into their club. At least, I hope that's what they're doing, because all this "best effort" language basically means they're not really obligated to do anything.
Affirmative action is racist in nature.
A good test is to replace the race with “white European”. And if the statement offends it’s racist.
Then what do you suggest to change this situation ?
I am not super comfortable with counsious positive discrimination as a momentary tool to correct a discriminatory situation (with negative impact on the whole society), but it is hard to imagine solutions without using this tool.
There’s Plenty of VCs who came from poverty, who’s parents came from poverty, or who’s grandparents came from poverty.
When looking at that Kind of timescale from 1920s till now, I don’t believe the system has had enough time. Civil rights, racial rights, and gender rights are relatively new concepts.
My belief is over the next 30-50 years the forces of market capitalism will address the issue.
In France Oussama Ammar (the local Paul Graham) clearly advice to female entrepreneur, and to Black and Arab entrepreneur to preferably choose a business or strategy where they can bootstrap cause raising fund will be harder to them. Recently there have been many post about black entrepreneurs and VCs. And there is an interesting HBR article [1] showing some biais in investing in woman startup in Sweden (country known for its gender equality)
These racist and sexist bias and discrimination has two consequences : - Lack of fairness as merit is clearly not the only thing taken into consideration ; with positive unfair impact for White men, and negative unfair impact for women, Black people... - "Bad" investment by the VC, that could have much better by investing based on "merit" and not (unconsciously) on skin color or gender. This has negative impact on the VC companies... and more generally on the economy.
So finding ways to judge startup more on merit, being able to lower the bias is also a business decision that make sense and that will have positive impact on the VC performance and the economy. Getting more diversity in the VC firm just do it (and if VC are biased against black and woman startuper, we can imagine such bias used to be true for hiring people)
[1] https://hbr.org/2017/05/we-recorded-vcs-conversations-and-an...
I’ll say it under my name - I’m completely old fashioned and probably racist / sexist / *-phobic whatever because I still agree with Martin Luther King that it is morally correct to judge someone by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. I’m so totally backwards! I meet someone new and have a blank slate no matter what color they are or what they look like! I do this intensely regressive thing where I listen to what they have to say and judge them by their words and actions. I know, very evil and wrong of me, but I can’t help it - I still like Martin Luther King!
In aggregate, we run the risk of collectively creating various forms of systemic bias. We can test for these systemic biases (we have) and prove the existence/non-existence of said biases (we have).
How do you propose testing this? Typically, a difference in outcomes is taken as evidence of systemic bias, but it isn't the same thing. For example, if one cohort commits more crimes, they are going to have more police interactions, more arrests, and so forth. But that's not a systemic bias. Unfortunately the recent "anti-racist" authors like Ibram Kendi have been pushing a false and expansive definition, where they term any difference in outcomes (or as they put it, any racial inequity), as "racist". That's not what most people would call "racist".
> prove the existence/non-existence of said biases (we have)
As for the existence of biases, I assume you are referring to the 'implicit association test', which is commonly used as a tool to identify unconscious biases. The IAP methodology has been challenged and debunked many times. Studies have also found that measures of implicit bias do not predict how people act in real life. See https://newdiscourses.com/2020/06/flaws-white-fragility-theo... for more.
No, you have not.
I believe as you do, that we should explore viewpoints counter to the mainstream and break the echo chamber to expose poor and Illogical thinking wherever it presents.
I imagine MLK would be appalled by the weak, hollow, pandering which is outlined here.
You should have used a throwaway, not because you have non-politically-correct views, but rather because you hold extremely strong opinions about something you can't even articulate credibly.
I looked up your twitter and saw this from March:
> Despite everything happening I’m still not worried. Corona is a bad flu and the markets will recover. I’m choosing to relax #CoronaOutbreak #relax
Similar confidence, similar ignorance.
Once again, I will state loudly and clearly - I view all people as what they are: people. You are not a series of identities to me. All people have their own agency and cannot be reduced to a set of labels.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Digging up details from someone's history and bringing them in here as ammunition in an argument is particularly not ok. That's a practice of the online callout/shaming culture, and we're trying to avoid that on HN. Not that the callouts are always wrong, but callout/shaming culture has toxic systemic effects that are incompatible with the intended spirit of this site.
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=online%20shaming%20by%3Adang&s...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Whenever the issue of compensatory or preferential treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man is entered at the starting line in a race three hundred hears after another man, the first would have to perform some impossible feat in order to catch up.
The Internet Archive has this book available for free to check out, you can read more on his argument around page 134 right here: https://archive.org/details/whywecantwait00king/page/134/mod...
Essentially King is arguing that the government should promote the same kind of preferential hiring and other benefits that veterans get, but for members of other disadvantaged groups.
My neighbor is black, and she drives a $100k+ Mercedes! Country club golfing and sailing type.
My point is, arbitrary assumptions based on race are totally meaningless in 2020. There are people in all social strata of every race. Giving a leg up to someone for being XYZ is dumb - it reduces complex people to simple labels that define how victimized the woke left says they should be.
If we want to talk about giving government assistance to people in poverty regardless of race, I’d be much more amenable. There will be correlations to poverty and race but I think we all agree Oprah and Michael Jordan should not be getting handouts.
As it stands the identity politics movement is ideologically inconsistent and is focused on driving people apart and re-segregating us. This is a movement doomed for failure. We should instead be eliminating our superficial differences and moving beyond bankrupt social justice theories that reduce individuals to mere labels rather than intelligent, thinking independent people with their own agency.
Well, unfortunately race and gender are still important in 2020, and in the VC world there are still important negative discrimination against woman, against black people... and positive discrimination for White and Asian men... [1] [2] and that is a serious problem.
(This comes on the top of existing other problems linked eg. to poverty, that is touching disproportionately the people negatively discriminated by VC and investors)
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesnonprofitcouncil/2018/02/... [2] https://hbr.org/2017/05/we-recorded-vcs-conversations-and-an...
My view is a much more optimistic, forward-looking attitude than one that constantly analyzes how hard society has screwed each person based on their labels. Rather than see ourselves as victims who can’t succeed because of XYZ, we should encourage people to thrive despite XYZ. If you wait your entire life for society / the government / other people to save you, you’ll never be happy and you will never be saved.
Can’t say I know all these funds super well - they’re not big names outside of a couple - but helping diverse co-investors build track records is a good idea on a bunch of levels. It’s all friends and family anyway.
I will say that Greycroft is one of the few funds who I respect deeply in how they operate and don’t treat “diversity” as an add-on. They’re just a really smart group of people, that I’ve enjoyed every interaction with, that actually have a diverse set of experiences and interesting points of view And investment theses that scale across diverse sociopoltifla outcomes. Novel I know!
I see a few misguided comments here not worth responding too about “merit” and what not. I’ll deal with your anguish if you make a point of it, but please bring some original thought, non-anecdotal or not-bad research cause I feel like I’m reading a bad /r/* thread in the below.
Your wording suggests animosity, so why would you believe you are less biased than anyone else?
Perhaps you are biased because you spend time on reddit, I wouldn't hold it against anyone, but original thought doesn't make an appearance in this discussion.
And I’m less biased cause I’ve seen more and made pretty much every mistake a high test-score, arrogant white or Asian guy can make :).