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

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677 points saeedjabbar | 1 comments | 16 Jun 20 15:19 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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DevX101 ◴[16 Jun 20 22:09 UTC] No.23544897[source]▶
Some of the most successful blacks in tech had to 'hide' their blackness to achieve success. Robert Smith, the wealthiest black man in America, specifically didn't put up a photo on his investment firm's site to avoid any possibility of bias (now that he's a multi-billionaire who's "made it", this is no longer a concern).

Calendly, who's CEO is black, and is one of the top performing black led tech startups curiously doesn't have an about us page (and though I don't know the exact reason, I can only suspect why).

A very good friend of mine, a black woman in finance, had to have drinks with and entertain obnoxiously racist jokes from a potential white client to close the deal.

Black folks don't get the presumption of competence. You're assumed to be mediocre (or worse) until you can prove yourself exceptional.

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1. Eleopteryx ◴[16 Jun 20 22:47 UTC] No.23545258[source]▶
I've tried a strategy like that in various contexts. e.g. not uploading a photo of myself on a Slack workspace. How differently might people read what I'm saying if they assume that I'm white versus knowing that I'm black?

I thought it wise to try this strategy when looking for employment, but I think it actually works against me in that case. If the employer knows I'm black then they can filter me out from the get-go and save both of us time rather than be dragged through a pointless interview process. It's hard to really quantify the exact degree to which my race is a detriment to how I'm perceived, but I sense it often enough to know that it's there in some capacity.