There's really no way to convey my feelings about this sort of thing without coming off as overly negative, but I'll try.
It's kind of a bizarre logic, wherein the author gets to gloat about all of the street-cred of making it while still condemning efforts at trying to eliminate the attempts at color-blindness that have at least partially eased that journey. That seems like a self-defeating game, one that injures future folks while serving to give a temporary soapbox and bonus to the person making the observations.
Also, the bit about ethnic/minority founders being so much more resilient than everyone else is unnecessarily divisive. Go read about the early history of Id software, for example, and then tell me that stealing company equipment at night and fording rivers is somehow easier work than being one of a few persons of color at a YC demo day. Everybody's journey is rough in its own way.
And if you want to talk about the elephant in the room--at the end of the day, what are the numbers? How many minority-owned businesses have succeeded compared to their non-minority contemporaries? How many have gotten funded?
If we are here to do social welfare, and give everybody a shot at the prize, that's one thing. That's the good work of the civil rights movement. But today? Today, America's a business, and despite the whitewashing, what matters at the end of the day is what has the historically the best ROI. And if we want to be honest with ourselves, that paints a very different picture of what works and what should work. That picture is super ugly. It's also pretty lucrative.
And yeah, it's shitty. Then again, maybe we should save our pity and outrage for the dozens of homeless or imprisoned people of color in our cities instead of one dude complaining on Twitter.
It's kind of a bizarre logic, wherein the author gets to gloat about all of the street-cred of making it while still condemning efforts at trying to eliminate the attempts at color-blindness that have at least partially eased that journey. That seems like a self-defeating game, one that injures future folks while serving to give a temporary soapbox and bonus to the person making the observations.
Also, the bit about ethnic/minority founders being so much more resilient than everyone else is unnecessarily divisive. Go read about the early history of Id software, for example, and then tell me that stealing company equipment at night and fording rivers is somehow easier work than being one of a few persons of color at a YC demo day. Everybody's journey is rough in its own way.
And if you want to talk about the elephant in the room--at the end of the day, what are the numbers? How many minority-owned businesses have succeeded compared to their non-minority contemporaries? How many have gotten funded?
If we are here to do social welfare, and give everybody a shot at the prize, that's one thing. That's the good work of the civil rights movement. But today? Today, America's a business, and despite the whitewashing, what matters at the end of the day is what has the historically the best ROI. And if we want to be honest with ourselves, that paints a very different picture of what works and what should work. That picture is super ugly. It's also pretty lucrative.
And yeah, it's shitty. Then again, maybe we should save our pity and outrage for the dozens of homeless or imprisoned people of color in our cities instead of one dude complaining on Twitter.