Are there renowned Internet startups with black founders?

March 13, 2011 10:12 AM

Are there renowned Internet startups with black founders?
posted by Memo (60 comments total)

Lots of anecdotes.

Not a lot of data.


NEXT!
posted by schmod at 10:13 AM on March 13, 2011

This is not very coherent. He "rules out discrimination" because of a handful of non-black minority founders, which doesn't follow. I agree with schmod that a discussion of this issue requires hard data.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 10:26 AM on March 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

i can't remember when i stopped reading... but i did
posted by flyinghamster at 10:30 AM on March 13, 2011

needs more data, context and broader questions.
IMO, valid issue though and one I would like to read.
posted by clavdivs at 10:30 AM on March 13, 2011

Is it wrong that this article offends me because of all the underlining?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:32 AM on March 13, 2011

I know quite a few Nigerians are behind some really ambitious and impressive projects.

Most of us have probably received e-mail from them.
posted by three blind mice at 10:43 AM on March 13, 2011 [8 favorites]

I didn't mind the article, but I'd like something deeper. I also thought it was weird when he called out the HopStop founder for not having his face on his website. I had an image of a Gilliam-esque animation of his face spitting out my subway directions. Do most successful websites have the owner's face on them, MySpace and its Tom notwithstanding?

Also, I immediately thought of HopStop when he asked his rhetorical question about knowing of any famous Internet site created by a black person. I guess HopStop doesn't count, according to his logic, because it's only in a number of first world cities, but some of the "famous" sites he cites are completely unknown to me.

Anyway, that's all beside the point. He is correct that there needs to be more activity in this area, especially in terms of organizing mentoring.
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:48 AM on March 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

Most of us have probably received e-mail from them.

Not helping.
posted by nasreddin at 10:54 AM on March 13, 2011 [23 favorites]

Now that I think of it, I don't recall any black computer science majors at my school either. The lack of women always stood out to us, of course, but maybe this is another serious issue that needs addressing.
posted by naju at 11:44 AM on March 13, 2011

The sociological anecdotes I recall suggest black people use the net more on their phones than the rest of the population, lots of twitter and stuff. I can see that area having a lot of room for someone to break out because phone apps tend to be smaller projects and easier for a startup to take on.

I guess minority representation in computer science could be looked at, as a lot of tech founders are techies to start with.

Kinda meh that the one example he finds is the co-founder of Justin.tv, which I've only ever used for copyright violation. Does it get a lot of legitimate traffic too?
posted by furiousxgeorge at 11:52 AM on March 13, 2011

Is it wrong that this article offends me because of all the underlining?

If offends me far more because of the size of the font he uses on the comments.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 11:55 AM on March 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

Something interesting about this problem is how the internet has been pitched as a great equalizer, since in theory anyone with a $300 laptop and an internet connection can download weapons-grade open source software and the Library of Alexandria several times over. So why is it that the tech economy seems less diverse than even, say, law?
posted by Sticherbeast at 12:08 PM on March 13, 2011 [9 favorites]

The sociological anecdotes I recall suggest black people use the net more on their phones than the rest of the population, lots of twitter and stuff.

"like, I be thinking every now and then, that yo *we* could have started that facebook shit, or that twitter shit, you know what I mean? If we would have all been in that frame of mind and recognized our power." -- Raekwon
posted by the mad poster! at 12:21 PM on March 13, 2011 [3 favorites]

Blacks Just 1% of Financed Internet Start-ups
posted by clavdivs at 12:28 PM on March 13, 2011

A black friend of mine is co-founder of a technology company with a market cap of about 1.5 Billion. It is definitely not an "Internet app" though so I suppose it doesn't count.
posted by vacapinta at 12:38 PM on March 13, 2011

Are there renowned MeFi contributors who are black? How the hell would you know?
posted by SPrintF at 12:39 PM on March 13, 2011 [2 favorites]

This is not very coherent. He "rules out discrimination" because of a handful of non-black minority founders, which doesn't follow. I agree with schmod that a discussion of this issue requires hard data.

Anecdotally, I've worked with a small but noticeable number of black software developers that were born and educated in Africa (though most went to college in the US or Europe) over the last fifteen years or so. I can't think of a single African American co-worker in a software development role. HR definitely, QA and project management, maybe.

The African and African-American co-workers that I've worked with tend to be highly intelligent, highly motivated, and have great communication skills.
posted by b1tr0t at 12:43 PM on March 13, 2011

Sticherbeast: Could there be more black lawyers, doctors etc than Internet entrepreneurs because the Internet is a newer phenomenon? Parents would tend to encourage long established 'safe' career choices? Doesn't quite explain why young white males seem to dominate Internet startups though.
posted by Duug at 12:48 PM on March 13, 2011

EVERY RACE USES THE INTERNET EQUALLY

Really? I was curious about this claim. So I found this article from September 2010:

Trend #1: The internet and broadband populations have become more diverse over the last decade, although key disparities do remain

We’ve been measuring internet use and broadband adoption since early 2000, and the general story with respect to race and ethnicity is one of narrowing gaps combined with continuing disparities.

Over the last decade the internet population has come to much more closely resemble the racial composition of the population as a whole. Between 2000 and 2010 the proportion of internet users who are black or Latino has nearly doubled—from 11% to 21%. At the same time, African-Americans remain somewhat less likely than whites to go online.

Similarly, African Americans have made up substantial ground in the last year when it comes to home broadband adoption. However, even with these gains they continue to trail whites in broadband use at home. They are also quite a bit less likely than whites to own a desktop computer—51% of African-American adults do so, compared with 65% of whites.

But then it goes on to note that mobile use is higher amongst blacks and Hispanics. It'd be interesting to find out if this evens out the numbers.
posted by desjardins at 12:48 PM on March 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

Are there renowned MeFi contributors?
posted by cjorgensen at 12:49 PM on March 13, 2011

cjorgensen, I'm not black.
posted by desjardins at 12:50 PM on March 13, 2011

cjorgensen, I'm not black.

It's ok, I forgive you.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:52 PM on March 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

Venture capitalist John Doerr may be able to help explain. "[Successful founders] all seem to be white, male, nerds who’ve dropped out of Harvard or Stanford and they absolutely have no social life. So when I see that pattern coming in — which was true of Google — it was very easy to decide to invest." (The relevant part of that quotation, according to the WSJ, is that startup founders must "have no life", not that a venture capitalist is admitting to race and gender discrimination.)
posted by Ralston McTodd at 12:59 PM on March 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

Are there renowned MeFi contributors?

Renown may be localized.
posted by dhartung at 1:13 PM on March 13, 2011

Seems like the top is the wrong place to look. Its not like industries where there are a lot of black employes but no managers/CEOs. There are very few black programmers period, and most tech startups are founded by programmers or other techies. And the lack of black programmers seems to be due in large part to a lack of black people studying cs (very under represented). Why that is I don't really know, but whatever the reason I f that changed I think you'd see it flow up the ladder. There are tons of non-whites (indians, asians, etc) starting tech companies, but there are also tons of indians, asians, etc working as programmers. I can probably count the number of black people I've worked with or even interviewed on both hands.
posted by wildcrdj at 1:14 PM on March 13, 2011

Can I call you racists for not liking the article?

JK. In all seriousness, when he starts "From my observances...", I knew he was dwelling in an area he didn't have much knowledge in. It shows. He's gotta understand that anybody who is hardcore about the scientific method will figuratively tear up something written without any regards to science.

That's a lot of people on metafilter.

But, those people are kinda concentrated here, and not that highly in the real world. So how do his REGULAR readers respond to something like that?
posted by hal_c_on at 2:10 PM on March 13, 2011

a) why doesn't hopstop count?

and

b) see this
posted by infini at 2:31 PM on March 13, 2011

Oh come on guys, get real. Next time you are at the office take a look around. I live in an incredibly diverse city but when I walk into the office I notice that all the security guards and facilities people are black males and almost everyone with a desk is white. The few African Americans with desk jobs are all female.

White males dominate all office jobs, not just Internet Startups.
posted by Ad hominem at 2:36 PM on March 13, 2011 [6 favorites]

Anecdata - over ten years at > 5 startups in the SF Bay Area, I think I have worked with only one black techie (and one black salesperson) out of a few hundred co-workers. I have worked with > 10 white or asian technical women (and many more in sales and marketing).
posted by zippy at 2:44 PM on March 13, 2011

I worked with one black software tester at MS, many years ago. I have worked with a few black producers for web projects. Just like everything else I'm involved in, I wish it was more diverse.

Though, come to think of it, I could easily have worked with a number of black people, I haven't met or even seen a photo of at least a third of the people I've worked with long distance.
posted by maxwelton at 2:49 PM on March 13, 2011

oliverwillis.com
posted by jfuller at 3:21 PM on March 13, 2011

I don't know about internet startups but I have encountered very, very few minorities of any sort in my IT career, especially the higher up I go. There's only one I can think of off-hand, though he works as an engineer for Redhat. I'm not sure if it's a regional thing, an interest and opportunity thing, a simple numbers game, or reflective of entrenched racism/sexism, or most likely a blend of all of those factors. As stated upthread though, I'm not sure this 'article' really provides enough data to foster any meaningful debate.
posted by Godspeed.You!Black.Emperor.Penguin at 3:44 PM on March 13, 2011

Go into any inner city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can’t teach our kids to learn; they know that parents have to teach, that children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white. They know those things.

-Barack Obama
posted by Scoo at 4:22 PM on March 13, 2011 [3 favorites]

So why is it that the tech economy seems less diverse than even, say, law?</em?

Really? Anecdotally east and south Asians seem very much overrepresented in tech.
posted by gyc at 4:25 PM on March 13, 2011

I was at O'Reilly Strata recently. There were very few women there - and even fewer persons of colour. Of the persons of colour, I only remember a few being African American - most people in that subset were Asian or Southeast Asian. I'm a Canadian from Vancouver and I was just shocked, since demographics are so different here. I asked people there if this was typical for a Silicon Valley conference and many seemed not to know what I was talking about.
posted by acoutu at 4:33 PM on March 13, 2011

I don't know about internet startups but I have encountered very, very few minorities of any sort in my IT career, especially the higher up I go. There's only one I can think of off-hand, though he works as an engineer for Redhat.

Funny, I'm meeting one of their global heads of tomorrow, and he's definitely a black American. And last year I spent an evening bonding with an Indian Amercian RH tech who'd come out to visit us, because I was the first person he'd run into who gave a shit about cricket. Actually, RedHat in our corner of the world are full of non-Caucasian folks - their reps at an IBM conference I gave a presentation to a couple of years back were all east Asian guys, based out of their Brisbane engineering team.

Mind you, I work at a bank, which is the polar opposite of the startup world, I guess; our CIO is a white Aussie, but reporting to him are a New Zealand Polyneisan man, a New Zealand Caucasian woman, and a New Zealand Caucasian man. Polynesian, Indian, and east Asian faces are dead common in our tech teams.
posted by rodgerd at 4:48 PM on March 13, 2011

This may or may not be related:

Two weeks ago I went to a private equity conference at NYU. One of the panels had to do with venture capitalism at NYU where we got to hear straight from the mouth of the venture capitalist who are giving out the money to the likes of twitter, foursquare and so on. As a prospective (minority) entrepreneur I asked the members of the panels how did they choose/find which projects to fund, their unanimous response:

"It's usually through friends, or friends of a friend"

the follow up statement:

If you are not within 3 degrees of separation from us it becomes very difficult to get any funds......

In my mind, all i heard was, yes all minorities are fucked....
posted by The1andonly at 4:51 PM on March 13, 2011 [15 favorites]

Around April of 2010, a meme on black entrepreneurs was bouncing through the anti-racism blogs. This is a fairly representative article. Eventually it cascaded into a flame war but many of the earlier articles are worth the effort to hunt down.
posted by Ardiril at 5:19 PM on March 13, 2011

He "rules out discrimination" because of a handful of non-black minority founders, which doesn't follow.

Oh, no, you've figured out that we're very selectively racist!
posted by 0xdeadc0de at 5:22 PM on March 13, 2011

I remember a company called NYOL, New York On Line, with a black founder, in the mid 90s. I can't remember his name though. And I remember one black PhD student in Computer Science in the 80s.
posted by Obscure Reference at 5:30 PM on March 13, 2011

I would suggest that the Internet wouldn't be what it is today without Robert E. Knowling Jr., the CEO of Covad during its heyday. His actions helped turn a Baby Bell monopoly on slow $200 ISDN lines into a $14.95 a month, easy self-installation business. A former boss of mine. Good one, too. He currently runs Ariba, Inc. "Ariba combines industry-leading technology with the world's largest web-based trading community to help companies discover, connect, and collaborate with a global network of partners - all in a cloud-based environment."

I would add Omar Wasow to the list. Blackplanet is a very major online community.

There's Sam Jones of Formation Media, who buys dead magazines and downsizes their business model so that they're appropriate to a new web home.

Gregory Evans, president and CEO of Ligatt Security International.

There's John Henry Thompson, Chief Scientist at Macromedia during its heyday, and creator of Macromedia Director and the Lingo scripting language.

I would even mention my old .netart LJ friend Auriea Harvey. She did pioneering work on Entropy8zuper.org during the late '90s, which won her two consecutive Webby Awards for Art on the Internet, along with a life achievement award. She also designed websites for numerous major clients, such as Janet Jackson. Nowadays, she runs TaleofTales, a game design company, with her husband.
posted by markkraft at 6:07 PM on March 13, 2011 [7 favorites]

There was an unusually good GoogleTechTalk recording on the subject of participation on the internet. Highlights include why African Americans are more likely to use Twitter (celebrity news!), who edits Wikipedia, women were early adopters of facebook privacy feature, and that women and blacks are far less likely to post youtube videos.

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned the alternative explanation: affirmative action. Large companies go out of their way to recruit and retain minorities. So we might interpret the lack of minority startup founders as the system Working as Intended. So, to the extent that minorities enroll and graduate in tech fields, large employers place a premium on diversity and leave a vacuum.

Also, the Gates and Zuckerbergs of the world have families that were okay with them dropping out of college to start a company. I can imagine a mother's pride of raising a first generation college graduate might be a strong disincentive, and even if they were supportive, you likely don't have social access to deal with venture capital or lawyers.
posted by pwnguin at 6:44 PM on March 13, 2011 [3 favorites]

Lots of anecdotes.

Not a lot of data.


NEXT!

Wow, you read the whole article, and were able to analyze the use of data in one minute? Impressive.

JK. In all seriousness, when he starts "From my observances...", I knew he was dwelling in an area he didn't have much knowledge in. It shows. He's gotta understand that anybody who is hardcore about the scientific method will figuratively tear up something written without any regards to science.

Please, the only people who are going to throw a fit over this are people who can't stand to hear that there might be racial disparity anywhere. If anyone mentions anything there's an immediate demand for peer reviewed scientific data, a standard that rarely gets applied to anything else in normal conversation. How would you even get data on this?

---

Anyway, he kind of undermines his own point when he talks about startups run by friends of his. But the wealth aspect, plus the 'friends of friends' aspect of Venture Capital is probably the main driver.
posted by delmoi at 8:20 PM on March 13, 2011

In fact, Omar Wasow founded NYOL before starting BlackPlanet.com.
posted by sudama at 9:42 PM on March 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

Please, the only people who are going to throw a fit over this are people who can't stand to hear that there might be racial disparity anywhere.

Who are these people, and do you expect to find (any of) them on Metafilter? I'm just curious as to what sort of people you think would try to undercut efforts into studying this sort of thing. Discounting of course the usual suspects of openly racist people and organizations. (Warning, personal opinion coming up!) Most of the people I know in IT tend to be fairly rational people, and, barring personal disagreements on an individual basis, are more interested in having co-workers, management, bosses, owners, etc that are competent and fair. No doubt there is still that pervasive "casual" racism, which you find almost anywhere if you look, and that fucking sucks. I saw far, far worse in telecomm/construction when I was younger though.

As for being strictly topical and considering only "startups" I would agree with others' comments regarding the socioeconomic starting point of minorities in general, coupled with an increasingly bad economy and gunshy banks. It may also be related to certain tendencies that banks have been shown to have.
posted by Godspeed.You!Black.Emperor.Penguin at 9:42 PM on March 13, 2011

Gregory Evans, president and CEO of Ligatt Security International.

Gregory Evans is a disgrace to his (and my) industry, and it doesn't have a thing to do with his race. He's a convicted felon and a plagiarist. (previously)

Now, if you want to show an example of a successful African-American entrepreneur in the IT Security industry, let's talk about Dr. Paul Q. Judge, founder of PureWire (now part of Barracuda Networks). Unlike Gregory Evans, Dr. Judge has EARNED his reputation.

Sorry, but Gregory Evans is one of those topics that really gets under my skin.
posted by deadmessenger at 9:50 PM on March 13, 2011 [2 favorites]

@deadmessenger - Wait, IT Security is an 'industry' now? Doesn't that imply something gets done? (I kid, I kid! I used to do application/hosting ops admin stuff and security was, well, lulz is probably the best word)
posted by Godspeed.You!Black.Emperor.Penguin at 10:02 PM on March 13, 2011

I'm going to have "Please read to the end before deciding to comment" inscribed on my gravestone.
posted by tapesonthefloor at 11:30 PM on March 13, 2011

"If you are not within 3 degrees of separation from us it becomes very difficult to get any funds......

In my mind, all i heard was, yes all minorities are fucked...."

For those interested, I used to be the "all things business" manager of LiveJournal, before it sold to SixApart, which was VC funded... and before SixApart flipped it to a Russian dotcom.

Here's my thoughts on this...

No, all minorities aren't fucked.

I've lived in the S.F. Bay Area all my life, and my work has brought me in touch with a lot of the digerati, and a few of the VC crowd. I also occasionally like to play cricket, even though I'm not any good at it. An old friend of mine started up the Santa Clara Cricket Club, though. When it started, it was Stan, the Brit expat owner of the nightclub One Step Beyond, and a bunch of his friends. Nowadays, though, it's largely made up of Indian expat engineers.

"Why does all this matter", you ask?

Well, because one of the people who likes to show up regularly is one of the very top venture capitalists in the Silicon Valley, who has made a fortune by directing money towards some *very* successful startups.

So, if you're Indian, it's safe to say you're not fucked when it comes to getting VC funding in the Silicon Valley.

Likewise, if you're Japanese... or Asian in general, really... you're not fucked.

But if I really wanted VC funding, well... yes, it would be harder if I were an average person in the black or latino community, well... chances are I wouldn't play cricket badly. I wouldn't know any digerati (not that most of them are worth knowing...) who knew about the next big party everyone would be at, or the next big restaurant gathering... and certainly not the swanky house party being held at (insert bigshot's) place, up in the hills , which Esther Dyson is going to be at... (and Esther knows *everyone*, because she makes it her business to connect people together, and could easily get some facetime with anyone else she needed to know.) I probably wouldn't know the digerati well enough that they'd expend some of their pull to hook me up for an appointment with whatever VC they might know. I wouldn't be invited to TED, either.

In short, I might very well be fucked.

However...

Back in July 2000, Brad, was an 18-year old programmer who went to high school near Portland. Most of his friends were young local geeks... but nobody of note, really. And this simple scripted widget that he kinda copied off of someone else's idea online that made it easier to throw type on a webpage had started becoming a real problem, because first his friends used it, then their friends... and then a bunch of camgirls. And people thought reading and interacting with camgirls online was really hot, especially when they showed skin. All of a sudden, he had 13000 people using his site, and he felt overwhelmed. He'd clearly need a bigger server. A dotcom VC-funded guy whose business was buying up sites with traffic, tying them into his network of affiliated sites, and slapping "punch the monkey" ads all over them, had offered him some money and a percent of future profits for his site. He didn't know what to do though... maybe he should get VC funding somehow?! He asked this online, on his LiveJournal... and as his journal was the first journal, created by the founder, a fair amount of people read it. I did too, because I had recently created an LJ, because Auriea -- mentioned above as a very accomplished Black .netartist turned business owner -- had also created a weblog.... and I already loved sites like links.net and loved the kind of brave, open expression that was just beginning to really be put out there online.

I was one of the few people who felt the need to reply back with ideas. My answer in short?

Don't seek VC funding right now. Your site isn't a business yet, and isn't generating any income. Take some time and focus on doing that first, so that you don't get suckered into a bad deal where you're not in control. Start small, but think big.

Don't sell, either. Ask those using your service for help, advice, and contributions to help buy new equipment, if needed. Sell paid memberships. Maybe give them something special in exchange, even if its just a token at first... but don't kill your growth by taking away the basic functionality of your site and restricting it to paid users only. Ask those who love the site the most if they'd be willing to volunteer to help you, if possible.

As a result of that email, and future correspondence, withn a month, I got my "job" -- unpaid -- as the "all things business" manager of LiveJournal. We raised $20,000 from those who used the site to support our growth. Our site doubled in users every 80 days or so. Within a few months, we were getting (semi)serious attention for what we had accomplished... an actual, working business model for an online startup, based, at heart, at being as honest as possible, as open as possible, as generous as possible, as collaborative as possible, and in simply asking those who care about what you're trying to create for whatever help they can offer, whether it's advice, financial, coding, or simply telling their friends about what you're trying to make.

Don't think you can build a great dotcom by just throwing money at it. In its early years, LJ spent a lot of $$ on hardware, only to find itself locked into hardware bottlenecks. The solution, ultimately, was to make better software. So, when you face a brick wall... when your servers are overloaded... when your users aren't enthused with your product, don't see it as something new and creative, aren't telling their friends about your site... think about the problem first. Ask for ideas and feedback. And, above all... CODE!

Create an income-generating, scalable small online business that your customers love, with real goals and a working business model. Do that... and don't be afraid to ask for help from anyone online who is generous with their ideas who might be able to point you towards a few people who could help you even further. Get to know other web entrepreneurs at sites you care about, even if it's only by blog comments or emails. Go to SXSW, maybe. If you don't have a lot of $$, try to volunteer there. See if there's a local DorkBot, and, if so, give a short presentation on what you're trying to create, and ask for help or advice. You might be the only black person there, and you're probably going to have to try harder than many others. Stay honest and humble about it. Don't oversell yourself, or get too fixated on it, because ultimately, what your idea needs more than a lot of socializing or the approval of the digitally elite is a *sh*tload* of hard, largely thankless work. 17 hour days, coding, interacting with your customers, promoting it, etc.

When you do promote your business, do it guerilla-style, online, using free forums and communities that might be relevant to what you're creating, in a non-hyped "I could use any advice or feedback on what I've created" or "I have a free site that you might be interested in" kind of way, etc. Don't try to "sell" your creation. Offer it up for people to use freely... and ask for feedback.

Let the most satisfied users of your site sell it for you. You might even want to give them simple ways of doing this, within the coding of the site itself. When you ask for help on your site from them, make it clear that telling their friends about it is *always* welcome and appreciated. Direct, personal, unhyped, non-form lettery looking invitations to join a website from friends are the most successful way to attract new users. You can't expect to attract solid users through spam tactics.

Don't be dotcom hype. Build a real business. And if you need VC money then, doors will open for you.

Yes, many minorities are fucked when it comes to VC funding. But if you try to follow the advice given above, it is highly unlikely that *you* are fucked. And that matters, if you make it matter.
posted by markkraft at 4:48 AM on March 14, 2011 [14 favorites]

Last August, BlackWeb 2.0 covered CB Insights' "in-depth look into characteristics of the founders of venture-backed companies including race, age and experience, and the number of founders per company" ... but comprehensive data is only evidence. Internet founders don't seem to have much incentive to make their ranks as diverse as the folks who give them (whether they not it or not) the data that builds those businesses. "Don't be evil." - what the fuck ever.
posted by dagarrat at 7:27 AM on March 15, 2011

"Internet founders don't seem to have much incentive to make their ranks as diverse as the folks who give them (whether they not it or not) the data that builds those businesses."

That, in itself, is part of the problem though, I suspect.

Based on my experiences with LJ, which was a pretty mainstream site for those who were younger, and hardly elitist, yuppified, etc., I strongly suspect that Black people aren't as represented -- and as prone to be identity-oriented -- as other minorities. And minorities, in general, tended to be underrepresented, especially in the early days of the site. There were a healthy amount of active communities geared towards Asians, Japanese-Americans, etc. Not so much so for those who were Black. Most of those I knew who were Black in the early days of LJ were quite technologically skilled... but they used those skills primarily towards art and towards music, not towards open source programming. And, indeed, despite being open source, being able to actually contribute a patch to LJ and have it approved was a very difficult thing to do, unless you were a close friend or associate of the site's creator, and were working on something he wanted you to be working on. This encouraged lack of diversity, unfortunately. It also tended to mean that most of the diversity in coding wasn't for those coding the main site, but for those working on things such as clients, which could be made and distributed without official approval... not that LJ didn't kind of lean on those making clients, effectively giving their blessing and official attention to some, while ignoring others.

Likewise, involvement of minorities in any of the volunteer roles available with LiveJournal -- both skilled and relatively unskilled -- was low... but especially low for minorities. Women were well-represented in support-related roles and business/marketing roles -- much of which I directly oversaw -- but hardly at all in programming roles.

I think a big part of the problem is that there's a culture of "early adopters"/technophiles out there that tends to be white, male, and wealthier than average. Even amongst open source development -- something which, frankly, should be a lifeline to those who might not be as affluent, including many from other countries and cultures -- the culture is very white and nerdy. Frankly, it's not necessarily a subculture that a lot of minorities want to be a part of, I suspect, and there's a lack of role models for them.

I wish I knew the answer for these kinds of complex issues other than time and education, because we can definitely use more minority involvement in technology, and I would *love* to see it. But I don't, really. Perhaps we need more people like Percy Julian, who not only suceeded in their own right, but also taught at Howard University, and opened doors and gave jobs to others who needed a chance.

In an environment where Asian students form private study groups, and white geeks share information and provide a social structure for themselves, Blacks, in particular, need to a whole lot more united and a good deal more selfish about getting ahead. They need to work together and beg, borrow, or illegally download, frankly, and start putting their own spin on what works for other minority groups to get ahead. They need to be selfish about their communities, and downright hostile to those -- within or without -- who hurt them.

The answers are hard. The problems and difficulties faced, however, are glaringly obvious.
posted by markkraft at 8:03 AM on March 16, 2011

Do Black folks read MetaFilter?
posted by dagarrat at 12:50 PM on March 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

Are you serious?
posted by desjardins at 1:25 PM on March 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

Why wouldn't I be serious? Does this read like a conversation with Black participants adding something to it? Does the topic precipitate that participation from Black folks online - or anyone else concerned about it?
posted by dagarrat at 1:42 PM on March 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

I meant that the question is unclear, not that you were insincere.

Did you mean "Do ANY Black folks read MetaFilter"? Obviously, some do, because some have self-identified as Black.
Did you mean "Does the population of Black MetaFilter readers match the percentage of the Black population in the English-speaking world?" It should be pretty obvious that the answer is "probably not." "Why not?" is a great topic, but is not inherent to your question.
posted by desjardins at 2:07 PM on March 19, 2011

And "Are you serious?" was meant to be understood as "Your question wasn't clear." ...

I asked the question because I don't see "Obviously, some do" reflected in this conversation - specifically as commenters of this topic who self-identify as Black. Which is extremely frustrating as a Black reader looking for a Black presence within this particular conversation. It seems to mirror the same lack of diversity inferred in the article.
posted by dagarrat at 8:05 AM on March 21, 2011

dagarrat, to answer your question, many black people do read metafilter and are active participants in this community.
posted by The1andonly at 9:50 AM on March 22, 2011

The1andonly, it's one thing to read someone saying that it's so and quite another to see it in flagrante as we represent for ourselves - especially in a discussion about the lack of Black presence within circles of folks who create the spaces we frequent online.
posted by dagarrat at 4:56 AM on March 23, 2011

around the time i first became a member of metafiter (back in '04), someone posted an askme asking for a "headcount," if you will, of the black members. unfortunately, that question was deleted by the mods. as a self-identified black/brown member, i was also curious. i rarely post or comment but i read metafilter every single day.
posted by lunachic at 2:01 PM on March 31, 2011

also this: growing up in the 70s/80s my first computer use was on my neighbor's commodore 64. i even went to a "computer camp" in 1982. i am far from a techie but do have many black techie friends. most of them i actually did meet while online in the early internet days. on the flip side, about 75% of the people i know fall under the 'i'm only online because of myspace/facebook' category. (outside of facebook) it's always been a pain to join social sites when none of my peers have a real internet presence to 'add'... up until the last few years, just actually owning a computer was not a necessity but a luxury for many.
posted by lunachic at 2:13 PM on March 31, 2011