A Fiery Debate Breaks Out
CNN’s “Black in America 4: The New Promised Land — Silicon Valley” hasn’t even aired yet and it has already ignited a fierce debate about whether or not tech start-ups succeed based on a pure meritocracy or the culture is tainted by racism like the rest of society. The documentary posits that Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurs are mostly young, white and male and follows eight Black entrepreneurs who live together for a two-month immersion program called the NewMe Accelerator.
Online War of Words
As a largely African-American audience watched a screening of the documentary at the Time-Warner building in New York City October 26, a Twitter feud between two tech entrepreneurs featured in the program broke out. The debate started when an audience member tweeted that she wondered what TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington would think of Duke University scholar and entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa’s advice to the group that they hire white men to front their companies.
Both in the theater and on the internet, people expressed displeasure with statements Arrington makes in the film. He says, for example, that he doesn’t know a single Black entrepreneur and that he was so eager to promote diversity that he would have put a Black guy onstage at a tech demo event he hosted even if the guy presented a “clown show.”
CNN fanned the flames with an article about the debate on its website Friday and Arrington followed with a response on his blog accusing CNN and journalist Soledad O’Brien of deception and gotcha’ journalism.
“Maybe now some of you can begin to understand why I never wanted to be called a ‘journalist’ at TechCrunch. It is a shameful profession,” Arrington said.
O’Brien fired back today with this measured response:
“I didn’t ambush Arrington and I don’t think he’s a racist. He’s a realist. What has everyone upset is that what he is saying is true — there are not many blacks entrepreneurs succeeding in Silicon Valley. Fewer than 1% of funded tech startups are run by African-Americans.”
In the Time-Warner Theater
While the internet debate raises interesting and important questions, the discussion that O’Brien hosted after the screening is worth recounting.That discussion included one of the entrepreneurs from the documentary, Hank Williams, “digital lifestyle expert” and NPR contributor Mario Armstrong, CNN producer and New York University journalism professor Jason Samuels, and Interactive One Chief Technology Officer Navarrow Wright.
Highlighting a Cross-Section of Black Entrepreneurs
Samuels said he was fascinated by the idea of featuring eight African Americans who represent an economic, social, and educational cross-section of America.
What stuck with Armstrong from the documentary was a statement by tech investor Ron Conway, who said he didn’t know how to recruit Black entrepreneurs. Armstrong wasn’t alone in his response.* The room erupted in indignation and laughter when Conway made this statement on screen.
“I can tell you kids right now that want to be future technologists, but they don’t get the exposure, they don’t have the access, and they don’t have the role models like we’re trying to present. … It’s an inherent problem with the mindset of people holding the purse strings when they say, ‘We can’t recruit; we don’t know how,’ ” said Armstrong.
Helping African Americans Navigate Silicon Valley
Wright was an advisor to the NewMe entrepreneurs and said he focused 60 percent of his time on helping them navigate the race issues they would face in Silicon Valley.
“I had a unique perspective in making them understand the unique challenges they had as African Americans in the valley. Understanding that merit is one thing, but you kind of have to navigate. You have to be ready for the VC [venture capitalist] conversation when the VC brings up, ‘Hey, I’ve watched “Martin,”’ to create a commonality between you in the meeting, because he’s as uncomfortable as you are,” said Wright.
Comparing Experiences
Williams, the oldest and most experienced of the entrepreneurs featured in the documentary, compared his own efforts to those of an nineteen year old Israeli entrepreneur who received $5 million in funding for an undeveloped idea.
“That’s not my experience. I’ve never been able to go and convince somebody to give me money based on a dream. It had to be the train leaving the station,” said Williams.
Consumers, not Creators
The most passionate and vocal member of the panel was Armstrong. He argued that African Americans were early consumers of tech products and made them cool, but said they have generally not been creators.
“It’s not that we don’t want to create. Clearly that’s not the issue. We know how to hustle. We know how to pitch our ideas. We know how to wear multiple hats and be effective in that realm,” said Armstrong.
The technology gap, as he sees it, is because the so-called “digital divide,” focused on everyone gaining access to technology at the expense of asking how it would be used.
The Skill Gap
A budding tech entrepreneur in the audience wanted to know how to make up for a lack of programming skills.
“Get a partner or get a book. Literally, you either have to learn how to do it yourself or have to be the business guy and find a technology guy to partner with to build your company,” said Williams.
Armstrong concurred, advising the young man to learn enough coding to earn the respect of programmers and to gain the knowledge necessary to avoid getting ripped off by them.
“When you hear Michael Arrington talk about the meritocracy and how everything’s equal, they use data and they use those things to keep us shut out, but we have to own the fact that to a certain degree we shut ourselves out,” added Wright. “The reality is if you want to be in this business, you have some onus that there are skills you need to have to gain entry. …Today the barriers are lower than they’ve ever been.”
Armstrong likewise expressed irritation with Arrington, saying, “Out of these eight people, that damn Michael Arrington needs to answer that question and get one out of this so he doesn’t have to say, ‘I don’t know where they are’ anymore.”
Waiting to See What Happens
We weren’t shown the conclusion of “The New Promised Land — Silicon Valley,” so I’ll be watching when it airs November 13 at 8 pm ET on CNN.
How about you? Will you be watching? If you have any thoughts on the debate, please share them with us in the comments section.
*Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly attributed this statement by Mario Armstrong to Jason Samuels.
Go to page 2 for our bonus interview with Soledad O’Brien.
Something is very interesting to me. Why are we so offended by the realities that Mr. Arrington is putting forth? Obviously, the tech world is a place that, as African-Americans, we still need to break through in terms of leading and guiding our own companies/startups. Isn’t it better to know the realities that we face? I was reading the story from CNN that was linked in the article and saw where Mr. Arrington was honest about having to seek out minorities as well as women and folks were upset. They didn’t want to be chosen because they were black or because they were a woman. Whenever you are breaking new ground those who choose you may have their own reasons, but who cares? As long as when that door opens for us, we prove to everyone that we are legitimate and we can bring it with the best of them. After that is proven, then we won’t have to be so concerned about whether I was chosen because I was black or whether I was a woman. Succeed so greatly that the thought of being brought in so there is diversity isn’t even considered.
I believe we carry too much of a chip on our shoulders. We get upset if we’re brought because they need a black person or a woman, but we would get even more upset if there were none of us on the platform! We can’t have it both ways. At least not until the groundbreakers have done their job. Our forefathers had to deal with the same thing in other arenas. This is nothing new. I’d also like to add that the attitudes we may see in Mr. Arrington are not unique to white people. In sports (especially basketball) and in music (especially Hip-Hop/RB) we tend to assume that blacks can bring it while being tougher in our evaluation of those of other races (especially white folk). Therefore it may be tougher for them to be taken seriously. I realize there are more factors that figure into the equation.
What I’m trying to say is that life isn’t fair. But you take advantage of the opportunities presented regardless of the reason it came (unless immorality is involved). We’re too quick to point to racism as the cause.