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

But when it happens over and over and over, you can't help but feel frustrated. You realize that people natural instinct is to think you are the subordinate. One second your are on stage at Techcrunch (I was in 2017), where you have clearly introduced yourself. You get off-stage, they greet your colleague and ask him the questions as if he was on stage.

I was often in the interview room waiting for my interviewer, only to have him show up, and tell me I must be in the wrong room. A simple "Hey are you XYZ?" could have avoided this frustration.

I've written an article about my experience working as a black developer, I'll post it here in the near future. You wouldn't believe how lonely it is. In my team of 150 people, we were two black people.

What is wrong with people? That's just basic courtesy.

(I also never realized what it must feel like to be a Christian in America until I visited Israel for the first time and had a sense of being among "my people", which didn't really make any sense because I'm not Israeli, but at the same time it felt comforting being among so many Jews in a greater way than when I'm at temple.)

Of course, unless I announce I am Jewish, I know I'm not being judged by it. I can only imagine how difficult it is that whenever you are slighted, you don't know for certain whether it is due to being black. It must be very hard not to start assuming that it's always the reason.

I'll watch for your future post. I look forward to reading it.

People should use blank slates in more situations than they do.

It’s not all upside as some people take you to be slow for “not making connections,” but on the other hand you don’t make bad assumptions.

This is a huge part of the problem isn't it?

I believe these painful interactions would be much less common if tech culture were more diverse in the first place.

Women share a similar fate. Whenever I hear some of these stories I cringe. Some of them are surprising/shocking even.

But this seems important. Hearing those stories including the ones you mentioned. Not necessarily to point fingers (although sometimes we should) but rather to fight this common, widespread ignorance.

At first he is embarrassed. But the more he thinks about it, the more he gets pissed at the chaplain for being present when he embarrassed himself. And when he remembers that the chaplain is only his subordinate, he gets furious. The chaplain suffers the colonel's wrath because...

For me, working in tech feels like being the chaplain.

At what point are we all just different? I can't meet people that are into my particular hobby. I also go to clubs and bars from time to time and never feel like "these are my people". Even going to game dev events (since I do game dev) a rarely feel like "these are my people".

You would be surprised at how pervasive and long-lasting majority privilege can be. I live in Southeast Asia where foreigners are a very distinct minority and they experience all kinds of hardships. Difficulties making (local) friends, difficulties dealing with government bureaucracies, difficulties finding "their" food. Very few of them ever gain any empathy from it.

On one occasion I was at a bar talking with a German guy telling me about how there are some areas in Germany where you get off the train and it "doesn't even feel like Germany". All the immigrants dress differently, talk differently, eat different food. They don't even try to fit in!

Meanwhile, he hasn't learned the local language, has no local friends, lives in an apartment building that is mostly German expats. He actually said "I love my building because there are so many Germans." He doesn't even like the local food; I've never seen him eat it.

You'd think the entire experience would build empathy. "Hey, living in a foreign country as a minority is really tough. No wonder they like to hang out around their own people. I did it too!" But nope. Completely oblivious.

I'am an ethnic Chinese living in Japan and essentially blend in. I've also spoken with a lot of other expats, often white who complain a lot about (sometimes positive) discrimination and just once, rather offhandedly, I replied that now you know what it feels like to be a minority. The instant reaction is to become defensive, but after a while, the bulb lights up.

When living in Singapore, I used to make the faux pas of mixing together Muslim food (no pork), Indian food (no beef) and Chinese food (lots of pork/beef) together.

By the way, I did read your blog post "The Machine Fired me" when it first came out - it was fascinating and extremely disturbing. Hope life is more boring now!

One of the strangest realizations I've had in my adult life is that when Silicon Valley people talk about improving workplace diversity, they don't mean black people. There are virtually no black people in Silicon Valley. Two on your team of 150 under-represents the population but not nearly as much as in places with a larger black population.

Has anyone ever pitched you on Atlanta? Tech here has a long way to go to match the local demographics but being a black developer (or manager, executive, founder, VC, whatever) isn't nearly as novel. Tho, our casual and not-so-casual racism outside the workplace is probably worse than Silicon Valley.

But to tell you the truth, I don't want to start over. The devil you know...

Points in case: Your friend. A couple of my friends back the day during holiday (Asia, Spain, you name it), same thing about food. My grandparents from what is now Tchechia. Born and raised there, never spoke anything else then German, only stayed in there social group.

Generally speaking, that Europeans have a tendency to not take a lesson from that looks like white privilege to me. Your an expat, but still can feel better because of it.

Counterpoint: Another friend of mine, lived in Bangkok for a while during and after his studies, lived in an upscale Appartment block, mostly under Thais. Learned the language as much ad possible, ate at local places. Unless it was a special occasion, then his girlfriend and him went to a European place.

Being in a minority is not enough. I'm a 'minority' where I live, but nowhere near oppressed. Just the opposite as far as I can tell.

You nailed it. At times, I definitely felt like I had become my own worst critique. Before I make a commit, I feel the weight of an invisible black committee that I represent and speak on behalf of.

> Hope life is more boring now!

Oh, how I wish!

I don't think the former is faux pas. Just a bit weird. The latter seems like a hard mistake to make (I live in Singapore), but I guess it's possible, especially if you have no local guidance.

I am white. I am often talking among my white colleagues who make statements like "I just want to work, I don't understand all the focus on diversity. Racism isn't something I consider when I go to work to make software." I understand this. I don't go to work trying to increase or lessen racism, it's simply not in the viewfinder.

However, I've talked with some of them about how it subtley changes your perspective and erodes your peace of mind to go to work among peers you don't outwardly identify with. We hope people go to office parties and learn finer details of those they work with and bond. This doesn't always happen. What helps immediately is being able to look around the room and see people who look like you.

I've been really happy to see how discussions about diversity have changed in the last 10 years. When we sit down with HR and do a workshop about diversity it is NOT about race at all. The emphasis has been on appreciating and drawing from diverse life experience from people who may appear commonplace. I've watched the language change into something more constructive and it pulls people away from simply thinking "I'm the one Asian dude in this department". I remember at my last job I started learning a fair amount of Tagalog because 3 folks around me came from the Fillipines and wanted to share awesome homecooked meals. I really valued that experience.

I have always lived and worked in California. I've been cautiously optimistic seeing people grow curious about others' upbringings and cultures, especially with oversharing from outlets like Instagram.

Anywho, glad to have you here, sir :)

Most people will be unsuspecting that you are Jewish, and even if they realize that you are Jewish, they will not think much about it. Perhaps they will ask you if you have any dietary restrictions and that's it.

Then, most Christians today see Judaism as another Abrahamic religion that is close to Christianity, not as a fundamentally different thing (even if in practice, it can be substantially different). Also, most people in the West are becoming increasingly secular and non-religious.

And often enough, they'll say things like, "you know how Chinese/Malaysians/... are" as if that statement actually made sense...

I've even heard one express profound admiration for a British family that had been involved in the Opium war and had been in HK for a long time. He admired them for staying "pure" despite staying so long in HK...

It's really anecdotal but I've rarely seen a more toxic and racist culture than the Western expat communities in countries I've lived in...

I'm pretty sure white atheists in America feel equally among "my people" as Christians do (unless they're in a church or other highly religious surroundings).

It's also an odd comparison as religion is a choice, where race or ethnicity is not.

I think this is the problem.

Say a black guy with gold teeth, tons of tattoos and colorful dreadlocks and a middle aged white guy walk in. One of them is a rapper. Who is it?

Based on experience, most people will certainly assume the black guy is. What if it turns out it’s the white guy?

Are they unconsciously racist against white people or are they just following experience-based heuristics? Would they have decided differently if rappers were commonly middle aged white guys?

I say for sure. If black people in tech become more common this particular problem will solve itself.

I've lived as part of a minority in other countries for half of my life. I try as much as I can to blend in, not because I think they are superior, but because I want to learn from their culture. But I have no illusion they will ever treat me the same way they treat their own. I can speak the local language perfectly and lots of people will still address me in English (not the local language) just because I look foreign. The locals never invite for anything. It's quite frustrating. I don't even have people from my own culture to socialize with, so I am mostly alone with my wife (who has another culture as well). It's frustrating for sure, but we learn to rely only on our own and enjoy life like that.

Maybe it’s his happiness in the situation that leads him not to ponder it like you do. He’s not missing anything that makes his life richer.

I’ve been in both the majority and minority many times in my life and I like you have pondered it, but I also have the capacity to observe myself from the third person in a cold clinical way so I’m neither oblivious nor unhappy.

Given four choices: aware and content, unaware and content, aware and uncontent and unaware and uncontent, I would never choose the last two, awareness isn’t worth it for contentment.

White privilege is very much a thing in the Netherlands. Even if someone knows you're not Dutch, as long as you look northern European it's fine. If you look like Zwarte Piet though, well, many Dutchies would much rather you went back to where you came from. Except when it's time to bring presents to the white Dutch kids. Then we love those adorable blackfaces!

Actually things are changing in the Netherlands, some of it for the better, but there's still a significant, stubbornly racist population here. Much more than you'd think when hearing about "tolerant Netherlands" from outside.

But as soon as jews don't blend in, either by traditional hair cuts or clothing, or by virtue of being at a synagoge, things are different. We still have enough anti-semitic incidents in Germany to actually be worried. I once worked with a guy who insulted a co-worker behind his back for being a jew (based on the family name, no idea if it's true or not). So yeah, you do get discriminated against if you are a jew. Not the same level as blacks in America, or muslims in India (add other example of extreme racism), but you do.

Only valid for Germany for lack of reevant insight and experience in other countries.

I was taught these are two words for different concepts. An immigrant expects to take permanent residence in a foreign country, an expatriate – temporarily. The former doing it nearly always out of his own volition, while the latter could very well be sent for duty, to varying degrees.

I do not have any sympathy for immigrants refusing to integrate, but I don't think that an expatriate should necessarily come to be held to the same standard.

Meanwhile, the "expat" gets a free pass for being a general douche.

I really doubt that it's the norm.

Look at the numbers not the anecdotes.

There are disproportionate number of Indian CEOs. It would have been impossible with racism and what not.

These are stories we tell ourselves to persuade us we're not "like them".

Unsurprisingly, it's a term invented by the British Empire, when people with no prospects in the motherland (like George Orwell) would move to the colonies to make their fortune but wouldn't dream for a second of ever "going native". The amount of time they ended up spending there, or whether they even came back at all, was irrelevant.

As for ethnicity, while again technically it is not a "choice", I'm not really sure it can be clearly defined. A friend was mine was born in Italy to British parents, his wife was Bosnian and two of their children were born in the US -- what is their ethnicity?

But when you know how it makes people feel when you make your assumption visible, you understand the need to act like anyone could be the CEO, the developer, etc. Same goes for women devs who at tech conferences who are too often "assumed" to be girlfriends, recruiters or other non-tech participants.

Yes, the problem will solve itself if black people in tech become more common - but:

1. it's not going to get solved if we make them feel out of place in tech by always assuming they're "the wrong guy".

2. let's try not to make the life harder to the very few black people (and other minorities) who are already in tech?

It's not clear to me what aspects of religion would be obvious candidates for being described as a 'choice'. Personally, the fundamental aspects seem to operate as primal psychological forces, and overt action in contravention to them rapidly erodes things like confidence and self-esteem, while increasing things like anxiety. Every once in a while, people will definitely work against those pressures, but I would expect that behaviour to be unsustainable in the long term for the vast majority.

Nostalgia is a powerful and irrational sentiment. It doesn't excuse the racism, of course, but I can understand why it would reinforce it.

why do you feel judged?

So an American permanently living in the UK will be considered an expat. A polish will be called an immigrant. Despite the actual definition of the word, "immigrant" has a negative nuance artificially attached to it so people use it to this effect.

In Europe I noticed that skin color makes less of a difference than "source country". Many British people will still treat African-American individuals as expats, and an Albanian as an immigrant, once they find out where they came from.

That said, someone has to be the majority and I think minorities in general have no problem with it. It isn't necessarily a "privilege" or a problem. If it is too hard on you, perhaps relocation is a better option. Most people just don't give it a thought after a while and no society can adapt to every whim, it is on minorities to adapt to the present culture.

I have this bias that people who get into programming as kids tend to end up as the strongest developers. My own personal effort to try and help tech diversify is support and promotion of https://www.blackgirlscode.com/

When I've worked in London I've been often surprised at how diverse QA teams are, especially compared to dev teams. I wonder if that's related.

It's strange because we have a bunch of older black folks in IT roles that have been around for a long time. I've worked with quite a few black folks in my career (boring city not near the coasts) and the overall demographics are actually fair to middling (racially anyway, male/female is still a mess). New hires though? Not not so much. I don't see how we fix this overall situation without understanding what's causing that discrepancy.

It's not a quick fix but personally I feel we have to do more to inspire young kids to dream about this type of career and visualize it as part of their future. Part of that is (probably?) going to be seeing folks that they can identify with in those roles. Another part is (probably?) to make that resources are available for them to test the waters and develop those skills and refine their interests. I'm white, i don't know what it's like to grow up going to school in the setting most young black kids find themselves. I went to a mostly white school in the suburbs in the midwest and it treated 'nerds' like dog shit back in the day. Something tells me the story doesn't get better in metro public schools. Pop culture really seems to hold sway in those settings, maybe some help there wouldn't hurt.

""What are you, press?," asked the Samsung representative. After being let in - Pichai was inquisitive about Samsung's new smart fridge. The profile reveals similar incidents happened multiple times over at CES."

"Even after looking at the name on his badge, the rep had no clue that this curious, friendly inquisitor was one of the most powerful people in technology. "

https://magazine.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/spring-summer-2020...

> It would have been impossible with racism and what not. It would have been impossible with racism and what not.

Please explain the reasoning of why it would have been "impossible".

I don't think this is true. I think that this bias is pushing away a lot of people who could be those strong developers, but think it is already too late for them.

I'm not black, but I'm also not white, and I've been suggested this numerous times as well by well-meaning people after our startup not being able to fundraise for several months but some of our white-male-founded competitors had successfully raised. One friend was even joking about a "white-guy-as-a-service" to help minority startups get funded -- i.e. hire a white guy to show up to your VC pitch (or maybe pitch it for you) and your chances of funding would probably astronomically rise.

How people feel depends on their own assumptions on why you made the mistake. Say that yours was a perfectly natural mistake based on innate heuristics, and there is no value judgement implied. If this is the way your mistake is interpreted, no feelings are hurt. But if you spread the idea that this is racism and a value judgement is implied, then feelings are hurt, and it becomes a serious issue.

So the way you frame the issue actually ends up creating the issue.

It seems to me pretty much impossible that a white person would ever fully feel like part of the group in Korea, even if 100% of the hostility was replaced by genuine love. You’d be different.

The main difference seems to be whether they're people moving there to make a new life in a new place, and the work is secondary vs. it's the work that gets them to move (and if you move for work, it's probable that you're being paid more, so have the luxury to have the option to move somewhere else in a comparatively short time.)

A friend of mine was talking about it recently (her family are from Egypt, but she's born and raised Dutch) and she said she probably notices more issues from being a woman than looking "Arabic." This is Amsterdam though, and it's hard to generalise from here to the rest of the country.

But when you are a single data point that represents a group, any personal characteristic can be easily construed/extrapolated as a characteristic of the group you are supposed to represent.

This leads to the feeling of "Am I being judged for myself or for my group?". This cuts for both the good and the bad stereotyping that your group might have.

Despite what social media and talk radio says, most Christians are fine others enjoying a non-Christian Christmas as long as it's being used in an uplifting way. Definitely no need to feel excluded.

Why do you find this lonely? Do you not like the company of people unless they are black?

I'll also ask that atheists stop referring to religion as a choice. Atheists have as much of a say in whether God exists as anybody else. It would be patronizing to tell firm atheists that they chose atheism when clearly in the atheists mind, they are just reacting to reality. Likewise a theist doesn't have a say in whether an almighty creator exists and has opinions or not.

Both! Today's discussion about racism isn't (mainly) about critiquing the motivations in peoples' deepest heart. It's about acknowledging that the outcomes of this kind of assumption can be racist, regardless of whether any harm was intended.

The person who is assumed to be subordinate, or less educated, or more prone to criminality will be given fewer opportunities. Society will systematically fail to recognize and utilize their talents, and can ultimately do them great harm through neglect - even if the individuals involved were "just following experience-based heuristics".

Acknowledging your potential to participate in racism doesn't mean admitting you have a cartoonish hatred. It means recognizing that it requires a proactive effort to keep assumptions from becoming self perpetuating in harmful ways.

It happens even on a very micro scale when people move from cities to villages or the other way around. I quit a city life and moved to a village (~1200 inhabitants) but I also changed as many habits as I could to enjoy this life style. I met a lot of people early on and got to know them, developed some friendships, helped out and got some help. They are (edit: I would dare to say: we are, I feel part f the community now) very open, honest and inviting if you are as well. However there are people who move purely because property is way cheaper, but they want to maintain their city lifestyle and then try to contest the aspects of rural living that interfere with their idyllic vision of peaceful and silent sanctuary away from all civilization. There are noises and smells, tractors and cattle. Infrastructure is not up to par. Shops close early. And, worst of all, some treat the locals as uneducated dirty mass that is below their middle-class level. They tend to isolate and only seek company of other "expats". And in consequence are treated as suspicious, or even unwanted, element by the locals. It builds tensions and happens on the scale of ~50km between a village and the nearest city. On international or intercontinental scale it is probably amplified by orders of magnitude.

I'm sure the parent comment doesn't mean that they only like the company of other black people. It's more likely they feel like an outsider on their team simply due to looking different and having a different cultural upbringing than their other teammates. A more inclusive team would have likely made the parent comment not feel this way.

If you were on a team of 148 people of another race and there was only one other person that was the same as you, would you feel a little out of place?

Almost a decade in the industry and I have never worked with another black developer. One time I was on a team with a black project manager who use to be a developer but that's it. For all the pushback on diversity recruiting I appreciate events like Google sandbox that remind me that we do exist and present opportunities to network.

The majority of people of African decent alive today have either lived through, or have parents/grand-parents that lived through the civil-rights movements(US)/decolonisation(Africa).

Some have lived without the right to speak their native language, to go to the school of their choosing, to vote, or had to give up their seat to a white person if the bus was getting full, considered second class citizen in their own land. So they either experienced it, and/or heard stories of how only the color of their skin stripped them of what we would consider basic rights, and the pain it caused people they know and love. Some (until 1990) have been born a crime[0] for being "mixed race".

You may think it's history but for many alive today it's their life story. And what I mentioned is but a small part of it, and I'm only talking about people of African decent. Had she lived 3 more years, Rosa Parks would have been able to see Barack Obama becoming president. And today, some get gentle[1] reminders[2] that they don't belong here[3], or just get threatened[4].

[0] https://youtu.be/WHKOJgUDRDM?t=86

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLXh85Nc1Bk

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQKx315yPtk

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEAHBl7OWBY

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d25HYk9Oms

what do you mean by integrate? are immigrants allowed to speak their native tongue, dress differently or act differently?

does Integration to you mean the complete erasure of their past identities? because that what the German in the pub seems to think.

I don't know Sundar well enough to recognize him in the streets or at a press event if I haven't spoken to him first. Same goes for a lot of CEOs of various ethnicities.

> If black people in tech become more common this particular problem will solve itself.

I suspect there will not be more black people in tech, until they are not treated differently based on skin color.

Imagine calling every white, bald guy "a neo-nazi". A reasonable person who just didn't get the problem suddenly finds the heuristics explanation as no longer appropriate. An unreasonable person probably doesn't want to understand anyway so any effort is wasted on them.

Of course they do. The question is how does everyone around you see you.

It does make a bit of a difference if the job lead to switching countries (mostly "expat"), or switching country lead to getting a job (mostly "immigrant"). But this detail is buried pretty deep, people will most likely first find out where you're from (by asking, or accent, etc.) and that will determine their first and longest lasting opinion.

Black Americans in the UK are considered expats while white Bosnians are considered immigrants.

It is, by far, the main reason anyone anywhere moves to a new country.

> people will most likely first find out where you're from (by asking, or accent, etc.) and that will determine their first and longest lasting opinion.

Perhaps. Where I live there are a lot of Turkish immigrants, for example (mostly they/their parents moved in the 60s/70s.) At the same time I work with people who are Turkish who moved here for work, often in the past several years. I suspect that given the situation, the latter would still be considered expats and the former immigrants.

Can't we just call it Bayesian profiling?

This exemplifies my point perfectly. Even though you go on to write that some were born in the country, they are still "Turkish immigrants" not "expats" or [that country's] citizens. Some may be considered expats by you now but walking down the street I can assure you people see "immigrants".

Say "British immigrants", or "US immigrants", or "German immigrants" and see how that rolls off the tongue. Now say "Polish immigrants", or "African immigrants", or "Mexican immigrants".

English has this distinct connotation for the word "immigrant" and it's associated with individuals overwhelmingly based on their country of origin (the poorer the country, the more "immigranty" the person).

I am a white male coming from a reasonably developed and civilized second world country (literal and figurative definitions apply) to follow a high end job. Yet the second I open my mouth I am very much an "immigrant" in the eyes of most locals.

Does this distinction actually exist in how people use the words "expat" and "immigrant"? A lot of the time, immigrants will have accepted their job offers already before entering the country, and if they did not switch countries, they would have the same kind of job in their home country anyway (e.g. immigrant nurses recruited by the NHS).

The dictionary definition (OED) talks about the immigrant being a person who enters a country to live there permanently, but in reality, even those who enter with the intention of leaving after a few years are considered immigrants by everyone around them if they are from a third-world country.

You don't realize it, but all indians in one category is a white thing, created by WHITE people.

So stop with "so many Indians", it's not equivalent.

I think it's a noble cause but unfortunately the biases are deeply rooted in SV culture.

The situation outside those tech hubs can be very different.

I'm assuming you're directing this towards me since you mentioned my example. I am myself a minority. Do you realize that you just racially profiled me based on my opinion?

Working in technology in the public sector, where women and racial/ethnic minorities underrepresented in technology as a whole are generally less underepresented than is generally the case, I've worked with...two others, in a similar time frame.

Let's take your example and let's make it realistic and say there are 2 people in suits, one black and one white. Which one is the CEO? Heuristics say it's the white male. What is the difference between experience based heuristics and unconscious racism? It has to be internal to the person who is making the call. Because from any other perspective there is absolutely no difference.

As the parent said, these are honest mistakes. Based on what we learned from our parents, our culture, our peers. Based on our observations. We all have these prejudices. I certainly do. You call it experience based heuristics. I call it racism. Maybe it's not the technical definition of racism, but to me, if the only determining factor is the color of someone's skin, to me that is racism.

So is there a problem? I think we all agree there is. You even mentioned in your comment that this is a problem. Is it your fault? No. So if we agree there is a problem, the question you are asking is... should we do anything about it?

I am an optimist. And I do believe that eventually it will solve itself one way or another. But we can help. We can make it happen faster. This is a spectrum. One end is saying that it will happen anyways so why do anything about it? You could say a similar thing about any effort. Why contribute to cancer research? We will figure it out eventually. The reason is that we want it to happen faster. Because people are actively suffering, people are dying. This is happening to Black Americans right now and for centuries! The other end of the spectrum is equally ridiculous. Should you feel guilty and spend all your time on this cause? No.

I want to make one more point. I used to argue for experience-based heuristics. So. What is the argument in favor of experience-based heuristics? Well, the argument is that it's useful. It's a tool for making quick decisions that help you. It's most useful in situations where your safety is at risk. And yes, it's racist, but I'm not going to deny that it's useful for you to use heuristics to decide to walk quicker when you are walking through certain neighborhoods. I certainly would. But is it useful for you to assume that one person is a CEO? Or even a rapper? I'm pretty sure your safety is not at risk or there is an urgent need for a quick decision. I would argue it's actually starting to become harmful in today's environment to make these assumptions. And that's a great thing. Yes, it does suck for the people who were inadvertently caught between the old paradigm and the new paradigm. And I genuinely empathize with that and feel sorry for those people. And I wish we could all be more empathetic to that and seek to help those people rather than punish them. The new paradigm is better for us. For our society and for the majority of people. We are making progress. And we can accelerate that and make it happen faster.

I am sorry that we do this, as I now know how it makes you feel. For some perspective, many white people do this because they don't see the world from your vantage point. It would be akin to me being blind and you being able to see and me asking you what does a tree look like. We think it is an innocent question, one that only you will have perspective on and therefor we don't see the harm that it actually does. We (not all of us) see it as akin to asking a guy who can see for his personal perspective, not as asking a guy to speak for all people that can see.

I have a good friend who just so happens to be black (I know that's a white thing to say but I don't know how else to express it) and he is frank with me and helped me to understand why this question is so alienating and degrading.

I regret that I have been guilty of this and appreciate that I have a friend that we have very little racial barriers due to our friendship so he can check me when I do asshole things not realizing it. Apparently passing cop cars with a black friend in the car is also an asshole move, I learned that one as well so I am guilty of a few, but at least I gain perspective.

Look at it this way - complaining about the Crusades makes as much sense as complaining about Purim, which celebrates 75 thousand Persians being pre-emptively killed for being "enemies of the Jews".

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

There is the idea that all people are unconsciously racist based on cultural inheritance of the last centuries (imperialism). It is just assumed by everybody that white people are superior in some way. Evidence based reasoning ( few black CEO => it's unlikely to meet a black CEO => this black guy there is not a CEO )is welcome (defensive) argument. Yes, it would help to increase the number of black CEO's, developers, ... But it's only a part of the problem.

Some companies are genuinely concerned. When I left a major corp, the VP of Software Development called me into his office and said (paraphrasing) "since you're leaving I can count on you to be honest with me. Are our diversity programs doing anything useful or are we just kidding ourselves?"

The company I went to after that (another large corporation) hired a consultant to interview a set of women and minorities to try to understand how comfortable they felt in their day-to-day roles. Again, knowing the HR people there, I felt they were genuinely trying to foster a pleasant environment, but that's also the company where I came across that one black developer.

Then again, I do recall travelling across the country to be my company's Expert for a deposition for a lawsuit over a project I was on and having the opposing party think I was the cab driver...

on the topic that kicked off this subthread (i think--about stubbornly non-adaptive western foreigners in very different cultures than their own), when i was doing ~25 hours a week of korean language classes and study in addition to a full time job, i used to tell that particular subtype of Complaining Expat that if they wanted to level up their complaining about the host culture, they should learn intermediate korean, if only for the sole purpose of unlocking a whole new ocean of complaining material. this was obviously bait/a joke, but there are no jokes: it's one thing to have someone make basic hand gestures like "eating" etc to you when they know you absolutely don't really know what you are saying; it's another thing to have someone do it when you have been conversing with them in their language for the last five to ten minutes.

i could do like fifty posts about race and foreignness in korea but i always think of the model who has appeared in a lot of korean shoe and clothing ads recently. his parents are nigerian and korean and he grew up in korea with korean as his first language, and in an interview he once expressed goodhumoured frustration about ethnic-korean people speaking English to him by default when his english is, by his own admission, not that great at all.

I was born in Australia, my mother was born in Scotland. In my mind, that makes me a second generation immigrant. I never thought of my mother, or her parents, as "expatriates".

A lot of Australians who immigrated from the UK and Ireland identified themselves as "immigrants" not "expatriates".

Your second sentence is an "ought sentence". It's about how we would like the world to be (a world where everyone who has the potential to be strong at something doesn't get discouraged)

Your first sentence is an "is sentence". It's a statement about how you think the world is.

Putting the second sentence after the first makes some people think that you're confused about the relationship between "is" and "ought". This is a criticism often levelled at the more daffy left-wing/liberal/progressive extremes -- that they refuse to confront the distinction between how the world is and how we would like it to be.

People who want liberal/left political thought to be rescued from dumb 21st century "progressives" find this sort of thing upsetting when it comes from someone who, as in your case, obviously is expressing a worthy sentiment.

I'm not sure what the answer is to that but I say just be you. You are where you are, hopefully, because of the person you have become and that is something that you should be proud of and be able to act on.

You can also look at it as that you have already been judged in a positive light in order to be in the place that you are.

Don't you have sociology classes or political education in school? I just looked up the word to make sure and it turns out its meaning is almost the same to what I remembered, and it certainly is not a complete erasure as you allude to.

Nice straw man, though. Man, must it be satisfying to topple it over!

Yes, they're definitely not expats by the definition I gave earlier - those who move for work. Considering second+ generation residents as immigrants was really a mis-edit on my part, though they are seen by "natives" here as immigrants, often.

But you're kinda focussing on a point I wasn't making - that (in my experience, where I am), it's not only white people who self-identify as expats. Russians, Bangladeshis, Kenyans, USians, etc. are all generally expats if they moved for work.

Right, but the point is people who are generally called expats get a job offer in another country, and move because of that job.

People who are generally called immigrants want to move, and so try to get a job in another country (or maybe don't, depends on the relationship between the two countries and the status of the person.)

The expat causality is (typically) "job -> move", the immigrant causality is (typically) "want to move -> job".

The actual ordering of when the move happens and when the job is got aren't that relevant.

Also notable that there are plenty of exceptions, grey areas, regional differences, etc. involved. Which is why I don't like sweeping statements like the one I was originally replying to, because they're invariably wrong in some situation.

This argument makes no sense. I based my words on your statement not your person and it wasn't even addressed to you. I picked up your argument and from personal experience explained why those people that you described see it like that. Making a very wobbly assumption based on criteria that puts one in a protected group is profiling and it gets old when you keep hearing it again and again. Moreover the same reasoning can lead to far more offensive conclusions then calling someone a rapper.

I never mentioned your race and it would make no difference to the argument: a black person in Africa will have just as little experience being profiled as a white person in the US. My "prejudice" wasn't towards you but towards the people who think making such assumptions is normal. Pulling this absurd "you racially profiled me based on my opinion" card now suggests to me that minority or not perhaps you also do not understand the real issue.

I would have thought that people who suffered this kind of profiling understand why it's a problem and actively steer away from doing it or even condoning it without the need for further explanation. And I get it that some are doing it without realizing it's a problem. I'm not assuming bad faith, just lack of understanding.

Words have meaning. If an act wasn't done with a racist motive then it isn't racist. As the previous commenter said, it's just heuristics : they can be more or less in tune with reality. The only way to make someone change his heuristics is when reality and his map of reality become too different from one another.

> Acknowledging your potential to participate in racism doesn't mean admitting you have a cartoonish hatred. It means recognizing that it requires a proactive effort to keep assumptions from becoming self perpetuating in harmful ways.

So now people have to go against an evolutive and efficient process that enables them to not spend 1h thinking about how to behave in front of a lion or a boss ? The self-perpetuation will stop by itself when people's experience will change.

With such wishful thinking are you conscious you could then ask people to believe anything you want, regardless of reality?

That is not possible in this country.

yes, I've had an overly technical education but I fail to see how that's relevant.

> I just looked up the word to make sure

I feel like you misread my argument. "seems to think" means that I don't agree with him. Some people, including the person that this thread-tree is about (in my opinion) use integration when they mean cultural erasure. (aka assimilation)

if people speaking/dressing differently in a train implies that they are not integrated (according to him). Than integration (according to him) implies that people do not speak/dress differently which I see as cultural erasure.

And from my own experience, I've been told by a Turkish friend that he received cold stares and was yelled at for speaking Turkish with his daughter in public transportation (out of concern for her integration). Although, it's a common technique for each parent to speak a single language when you want to raise a bilingual child.

and honestly, it's not that novel of an idea:

- "In fact, integration has become a code word in some circles for intolerance and discrimination" - The Emerging Monoculture: Assimilation and the "model Minority" De William E et al

- 'the older völkish notion of German national identity lurks behind calls for acculturation as a condition for social acceptance.In contemporary Germany, "integration" is a codeword for cultural assimilation, with a strong emphasis on learning the majority language and history.' - From the Bonn to the Berlin Republic: Germany at the Twentieth Anniversary of Unification. Jeffrey J. Anderson. Eric Langenbacher.

I'm not taking issue with you doing that, I was just aiming to illustrate the fact that everyone does this constantly. It's easier than thinking - it saves energy, we evolved to do it. It'll be hard to get rid of this and therefore maybe shouldn't be in the focus as much as it is.

Her upbringing and class doesn't matter.

This is common: https://www.cnn.com/2015/04/02/us/chris-rock-pulled-over-pol...

For what it's worth, I agree that people shouldn't be villified for having evolved heuristics. Many people who care about - and especially many that have been directly harmed by - systemic racism are extremely realistic about how common these heuristics are. But, once you are aware that some of your heuristics harm others, you do have a revealing choice to make.

People go against evolved heuristics all. the. time. Often to make society work, which is itself an evolved impulse. Our layers of evolved reasoning are in constant conflict. Should I eat this thing that's tasty or impress that potential mate? Should I stay home and lie on the couch or keep my job and the respect of my family? Should I punch the guy who cut me off or stay out of jail? It's disingenuous to say, "I manage all of those things, but I'm helpless about my assumptions based on race."

We talk about things like anger management and racism in order to develop new heuristics that let us thrive together efficiently. You don't have to suppress your internal guess about whether someone is a rapper if you learn to invite people to introduce themselves. You can invest in confronting your biases in high stakes situations like performance reviews and project assignments, when you should be engaging your cognition anyway.

> The self-perpetuation will stop by itself when people's experience change.

This is a literally saying "the beatings will continue until morale improves". What makes it self perpetuating is that people can't disprove stereotypes with a boot on their neck.

Should have left it there, mate.

Many people who are members of a minority group feel pressure to do everything "perfectly" because people will naturally use them as a reference for the whole minority group. That's just how human brains are wired - we use patterns that we observe to predict the future. If we don't have much data, we form crude stereotypes.

It takes active effort and learning from people like you and I to help overcome those biases so that members of minority groups aren't exposed to this pressure and can feel safe in making mistakes (or at least, as safe as members of the majority feel).

In general, if you don't know what you're talking about (at least you were honest about it), it's best to do some more learning rather than to add noise to the thread. I'm not claiming that I know much here, but I know enough to know that a solution like "just be you" is not going to be helpful here.

The examples[0][1] of humiliation from the article, and the many examples from black folks in this thread don't paint a picture of an industry that is particularly appealing to a student thinking about their career options. That's if they've even considered the industry in the first place - the dearth of visible/powerful black faces in tech is very likely causing a "can't be what you can't see" effect in the minds of many young black kids.

The fact that the industry is currently doing some introspection is great, but real-world, noticeable progress on these issues will probably take decades.

[0] > That message hit particularly hard in 2015, when Givens and his co-founder Eric Williams, who is also Black, brought some of their employees to Churchill Downs Racetrack, home of the Kentucky Derby. They were at a VIP suite to celebrate the first big installation of one of their bartending machines. 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. The mood dimmed once the well-wishers realized their gaffes. “It went really quickly from ‘I have a drink in my hand, and I want to network’ to ‘I just want to get out of here,’” Givens recalls.

[1] > His first two fundraising rounds were challenging, according to Hayes and his apparent doppelgänger, Messick. The recurring confusion about who was CEO, and the embarrassment and apologies that followed, certainly didn’t help. “I usually remember the room and the look on the face,” Hayes says. “The energy would drop dramatically.”

But in rich countries that are old enough to have a population that already forgot they probably also came from elsewhere (populations have always moved around, replacing, killing, and/or mixing with the locals), recent waves of immigration are always from poor countries with a very different culture/language (so that they have trouble assimilating, getting jobs, contributing and so on... and many end up giving up and start to feel marginalized, causing some to appeal to crime) which made the word immigrant have a very negative connotation... hence the need for people from other rich countries to distinguish themselves from those poor people and call themselves something more respectable like "expats".

I've never had any particularly anti-semitic things happen to me, just a few minor incidents. But anti-semitism still happens to jews, and that affects me. For example, after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting a couple years ago, my temple had to hire an off-duty police officer during our high holiday services so that temple members would feel safe. I have family members who attended the Pittsburgh temple.

My mother experienced anti-semitism growing up in NJ that is part of her psyche to this day such that she's not comfortable wearing any jewish symbols.

This is nothing like the black experience, and I don't mean to say that it is. But it gives me some empathy for what it must feel like to be marginalized, to be different.

That is all I was trying to say.

No, that's just not true. Yes, we have the privilege of being white. But hate crimes still happen to Jews. America still caters to Christians.

To be clear: I'm not trying to compare being Jewish to being Black. I'm saying that I can draw empathy from the Jewish part of my identity toward other people who have been mistreated because of part of their identity.

Also, even if it were a choice, I would no more give it up than anyone else should have to give up their race or ethnicity or any other part of their identity just to fit in.

I'm only trying to draw empathy from my Jewish experience, that is all.

In guidelines it says "have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents"

tbh, I am really curious about the situation.

Why do Indian-Americans have a disproportionate numbers of High paying jobs i.e founders, CEO, CTO etc?

Why do indian-americans have a median salary of 120k?

What are they doing right?

I could have framed it in a better way but the question still stands.

Thanks!