There need to be more A-List Asian-American movie stars ...

Well this is an interesting article. I am black ... and I would like to add my voice - since most of the voices are very likely not black. There are many facets to a story like this. For one white folks do NOT like to be lumped into the same pot and also do not like to be made to feel guilty about racism. But racism does exist (look at the Yahoo message boards - very OVERTLY racist comments all the time).

The questions as posed, is whether this prejudice applies to Silicon Valley. If your idea is good ... you should get a fair shake ... I think if you are a graduating PhD from Stanford with some new fangled technology, then you will get a fare shake. I know this, because the blacks at Stanford are very happy and they innovate. I have seen some UNHAPPY black people at MIT - I think for a long time they had no tenured black faculty and the one head of department was run off after his department revolted. So MIT from I have heard is not the best place if you are black person ... at Stanford, all I have seen is happy people - they get VC money, they start companies, they get faculty positions ... I heard Berkley is good too ...

No one should be asking if there are smart, qualified black people - There are. There are smart qualified people of all kinds of backgrounds. If you discriminate, you shrink the talent pool.

I do think though that African people (Black Americans, West Indians, Africans and others) working in American technological firms can be viewed as space aliens ... there are usually very few and when one appears in a project - there can be a reaction - or no reaction at all depending on the attitude of the team. Prejudices can come out ... prejudice is stupidity - let me say that now.

I am a programmer - I program in C++ and C mostly ... Linux and VxWorks are my lingua franca ... my experiences over the years have been fun ... a lot of great projects networking, codecs, robotics ... a lot of cool stuff ... Today it would be highly unusual if I encountered direct and overt racism - I would likely have a very very hard time with that. I am fortunate - I know that some black people do work in hostile environments where they are second guessed or berated ... it does happen. I went to a private technological University - I had lots of black classmates - some of them have done really really cool stuff. I met fellow black peers at MIT, Stanford, Caltech and Berkeley ... there are many smart black people ... that go to some of the best schools. The challenge is that many us are buried away in great companies in labs or offices ... we are here ... but sometimes not seen.

I think one challenge may be that SOME white people do not know how to interact with black people in general. This is not controversial or alarming at all. Why? Well when I look at my managers - I see 40 something, 50 something and 60 something year olds. For the older ones, they very likely did not go to schools with black people due to segregation - I understand that! This is America, and there is a social consequence that affects guys who graduated in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Heck even guys I knew in college, that was their first time interacting with a black person. Truly for a good deal of white people there are sometimes few blacks in their elementary and high schools. Not to be an apologist for people - but from a social studies aspect - when a black person is suddenly introduced, people can act like a space alien fell from outer space. Will the black person lower the API score of my school (for Californians), is he qualified to work at my company? Did he get in through affirmative action? These are things black people think white people think about them.

So in order to foster inovation you must destroy prejudice. In terms of Venture Capitalists who are looking to invest - the next innovations may come from where people are not looking - as I have said the top schools Stanford, Caltech, MIT, Berkley, Cornell etc etc have talented black scientists and engineers. If they cannot get their ideas accepted in America, maybe China will accept them ... think about it.

There are many black people who are doing just fine at the top calibre schools.

The challenge though should be viewed in the broader context of Social Isolation. While going to my top notch private college studying my engineering degree, I was mostly invisible. Few white students befriended me - when I say few that would be almost none. I went days and days and months without people talking or interacting with me. So I got used to it. I had lived in Canada so this was wierd - in Canada it is very different I have to say. So I graduated from my private college ... I remembered many Thankgivings and winters and seeing people go home to their families for Thanksgiving and on Ski trips, and I would have wanted to have been invited ... (I was an out of state student) ... sometimes you try to break in (I did) but get the weird look from people ...

This Social Isolation is what prevents ideas that may exist amongst black people from perhaps having a platform. The causes of Social Isolation is simply prejudice ...

There is a book by Ralph Ellison called "Invisible Man" ... it is a good read ...



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Not true ... please visit Stanford, Caltech, Rensselaer, MIT ... lots of black students there ... x