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.

I've read "White Fragility".

While I completely agree that the stories in this article are hugely problematic and represent issues that need to be solved, I think books like "White Fragility" are not helpful in solving them. This is due to a focus on group identity, and describing "White" as if it's a monolithic group of people, all with the same culture, emotions, and reactions.

Another interesting aspect I identified while reading the book was it's description of the emotions that one can expect to see when confronting white people about race issues: the description could have been used to describe any human being you will ever meet when you accuse/blame them for something that they did not personally do. It really does read like a horoscope in that sense.

I find it ironic that people on HN, who are typically super data driven, get on board with works like "White Fragility". Diangelo is one of many academics from the humanities departments who are incredibly pseudo-scientific. Data is incredibly scarce, measurements and studies even less so. Statistical knowledge isn't present in the vast majority of these folks. Typically, the "scientific method" is reading and writing essays/novels. When you don't attempt to quantify a problem, you can't propose solutions and then measure their results. You instead just keep yourself busy finding ever more ways to describe the water to the drowning person.

> Another interesting aspect I identified while reading the book was it's description of the emotions that one can expect to see when confronting white people about race issues: the description could have been used to describe any human being you will ever meet when you accuse/blame them for something that they did not personally do.

I've heard this before and don't understand it.

Why should talking about racial issues make people feel like they're being accused of something? I am a man. I have not be catcalled or threatened for rejecting someone's advances. I can't recall any prominent examples of witnessing a woman being threatened for rejecting a man's advances. But when a woman tells me that it happens to her, I don't feel guilty. So I don't understand how someone telling you about their experience leads to feeling like being accused or blamed for something you did not do.