For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

> Guest after guest walked past the pair of executives to greet their White employee, offer their congratulations and ask how he got the idea for the product.

This sort of thing has never, ever happened to me. Nobody has ever suggested that I hire a wingman of a different ethnicity or gender or anything similarly asinine either.

Not sure about silicon valley but this sort of a thing is common in international businees. Depending on who you are meeting with, ethnicity can help or hurt impressions and negotiations.

> This sort of thing has never, ever happened to me

Hm - I have had people look past me to talk to my Indian co-workers when asking technical questions: they just assume the Indian guy is the technical one and the white guy is the business manager.

It doesn't happen to me, so it doesn't exist is fallacious. (Or at the very least, anecdotal and not useful.)

There are plenty of things that have never happened to me, despite it being possible/probable that they should. In 20 years I've never been called for Jury duty. It's never, ever happened to me. Does that mean I should disregard the experiences of people who have experienced jury duty?

I was a dev lead at my former company. I’m Black. One of the guys I hired was an older white dude. I was taking my team out to lunch - I was the only Black guy. The server came up and asked the table in general was it together or separate. I said it was together and preceded to get my corporate card out of my wallet. No one else reached for their card. She still handed the check to the white guy.

African here, this is common in Africa but in a different way. Often by fellow black Africans will trust a foreign white person over me. The big global consulting companies are making a killing sending over specialists in different fields.

That was what I meant, but re-reading I realize it wasn't clear in my comment whether or not I was agreeing with the parent.

I meant that I'm a white male founder and have experienced maybe 5% of the crap described in the article.