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

I thought this was a great article. One of the most interesting things to me was how the embarrassment/defensiveness of the white people involved was one of the biggest blocks to the black CEOs in their advancement, e.g. the VCs who "just wanted to get the hell out of there" after mistaking a white subordinate for the CEO.

I've recently been reading/watching some videos and writings by Robin Diangelo on systemic racism - here's a great starting point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7mzj0cVL0Q. She also wrote the book "White Fragility".

Thinking about that, I'm just wondering how different it would be if one of those people who mistook the employee for the CEO instead turned to the CEO and said "I'm sorry, please excuse me for the instance of racism I just perpetrated against you, I promise it won't happen again." I realize how outlandish that may sound writing that out, but I'd propose that the fact that it does sound outlandish is the main problem. Everyone in the US was raised in an environment that inculcated certain racial ideas, subconsciously or not. We can't address them if we're so embarrassed by their existence as to pretend they don't exist.

Robin Diangelo’s work doesn’t seem to me very good or well informed on what anti-racism actually constitutes. It seems mostly like a schtick to sell to HR managers. The way that she essentializes race seems like a bizarre, inverted reification of whiteness (and by extension white supremacy), than any deconstruction or attack on it.

Anti-racism is about taking on the powers and material structures that reproduce racism in our society to put an end to that reproduction. It’s what the multiracial coalition is doing right now, in the streets, forcing changes to laws and policing.

All of this has little to do with your boss paying someone to lecture you about why you’re bad/biased/ignorant. In fact, it’s contrary to anti-racism, because it positions your boss, who controls your life and buys her classes, as the arbiter of what is and isn’t racism.

People would be better off studying the life and work of Fred Hampton.

What exactly are the powers and material structures that contribute to the perceived racism in our society?

From my limited understanding of this position, it sounds like the goal is a dismantling of police and courts which form the backbone of a civil rule of law society.

Systematic exclusion of black people from social programs, like the GI Bill and Social Security, and redlining, which prevented black Americans from building up wealth through homeownership the way white Americans were. "The Color of Law" is a good book on redlining.

To expand on the bit about Social Security, farmworkers were excluded, since farmworkers tend to be not white. It was a nice sneaky way to be racist without coming out and doing so explicitly.

One of the things that confuses me quite a bit is the focus on laws that expired or have been abrogated 50-60-70-150 years ago and make it as if everything wrong with contemporary American society is caused directly by such laws and nothing else.

* GI Bill: adopted in 1944, expired in 1956.

* Social Security: adopted in 1935, unclear what the impacts were at the time. Unclear what the impacts are today.

* Redlining: created in 1934, illegal since 1977.

As an immigrant that landed in US post 2000 with $1000 to my name and a tenuous F1 situation, all this sounds like ancient history. Much more stringent appear, in no particular order and not pretending to be exhaustive:

* the whole F1/H1B situation, which depresses the domestic labor market in technical jobs, especially software, but also research at large

* global competition, especially with China

* the over financialization of the economy

* the profits accumulating at the very top since the 2008 Great Recession

* the explosion of real estate market in big cities, way above what we pretend the inflation rate is

* manufacturing decline

* offshoring of entire industries to East Asia

* right now, the covid19 lockdowns which are destroying the service economy, which was supposed to be the future of jobs

* the decimation of small business America due to same covid19 lockdowns.

* specifically for the black community, the lack of academic achievement

* the rise of the gig economy and Amazon warehouse jobs

* the opioid, homelessness and suicide crisis

* the obesity crisis, and the related food deserts

Again, not a young black guy or gal. But if I'd were, there'd be 10 high priority items on my worry list before I'd get to the Civil Rights Era. As a nation we seem to have abandoned the middle and working class of all colors. The public discourse is obsessed with Instagram influencers and race histories half a century old if not older, sometimes much older.

I can't weigh in from personal experience, but I look at it like a marathon. One set of runners face a first half of the race with mud, crushed glass, vertical climbs, and other obstacles, while other racers had a nice tailwind and extra drink stations.

Regardless of the obstacles faced in the second half (which are still more numerous than the competition's), can't you understand why runners would still look back at that first half to explain their fatigue, anger, and feelings of injustice? Particularly when looking ahead and thinking, "Oh God, this crap /again/??"

The marathon in this example actually spans multiple generations, but even the horrible segregation of the 50's was experienced first hand by the parents of black people still in the workforce today.

Sounds like you came into the race halfway through. As an immigrant you're still facing those unfair obstacles in front of you, but just remember that you don't have the fatigue of carrying the baggage from the first half.

This analogy would work if it weren't for the immigrants who arrive with no connections and resources, and successfully make it through hardships within one or two generations.

A more apt analogy may be a marathon where there are bystanders who latch on to half of the runners and keep telling them, "you cannot make it, you need us to help you, the race is unfair".