This sums it up perfectly. So many times I am asked what I think of all this as a black person in tech. I don't think anything of it. It simply is how things are. You can either live with that chip on your shoulder, or learn the skills to navigate life with the cards you were dealt and deal with it. There is no other option, and how you feel about it is irrelevant. Some people are born with physical disabilities or mental handicaps. It's no different. Should we live in a world without racism? Of course. But we should also live in a world without war, poverty, and disease as well. It's a part of the human condition.
Speak for yourself.
I'm sure you'll get a lot of support for this point of view because it's the easy way out. (it's what white people love to hear to because that means "aha! this one gets it!")
Throw your hands up, keep your chin up right?
I don't roll over like this because it's not how I was raised. My parents came from less than poverty, my father all but lost a finger farming for pennies to cover school fees while his father drank away what little money they had in his home country.
My mother didn't have parents to raise her, she came from a home where she was seen as a burden foisted upon her caretakers by familial obligation, and their wish for her was to be a seamstress
Today they both hold doctorates, their siblings are doctors and nurses and engineers, all coming from the same backgrounds.
I wasn't raised to roll over and tell myself "it's not under my control", that mentality wouldn't have gotten them where they are today, and it wouldn't have gotten me where I am today.
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Fairness is always an option, the problem is it's expensive, it's hard work, it's humiliating sometimes, it's risky.
When you're slighted and you feel it's because of the color of your skin, the moment you say something, you're painting a target on your back. Sometimes it means you have to walk away from opportunity.
So some good little kids tell themselves it's not an option, they can't take that risk, they can't risk being the tall nail, or not grasping a opportunity they have just because it might be tainted with "unfairness".
Maybe it's a privilege that my parents have passed onto me, putting my in a position where I could take those risks and stand tall, but I grasp on to it proudly, and it makes me stronger than those who can't to the same.
I honestly don't have a problem with people who can't do the same, but trying to spread that brand of thinking is weak and shouldn't be done. It's a coping mechanism, it's not something to be paraded and shared as sound advice like your comment does.
Against all of what defines them, I'm sure there were times where my parents had to swallow that strength and put up with "unfairness" (in fact, I know of it from them first hand), but by not changing themselves, and by not buying into the narrative that "it is what it is, it's the human condition", they were able to pass on that strength to me, and put me in a much better place than they would have otherwise
I mean look _the whole passage_, the article is about a black man who is not buying "fairness is not an option" and yet you seem to have somehow picked out the counter-argument which is immediately torn down:
> "I don't live in a world where fairness is an option," he said. "I am certain that over the time in my professional career there are things that have made it difficult as an African American. I have put so little time in acknowledging those instances because that's what I expected."
> But that milieu may ultimately hurt venture's bottom line.
> Gompers, who looked at the performance of venture portfolios that had more diverse teams, found they achieved better returns than homogenous teams.
> "The importance of diversity is all about making better decisions," he said. "If you all look the same and have the same experiences, you are gonna make the same mistakes."
People still don't get this, diversity's reward is not different amounts of melanin in the skin of the people sitting at a table.
As long as people continue to make this basic misunderstanding, they will continue to fail to understand why diversity matters, and they will continue to feel as if it's needless feel good charity work.
Diversity is different walks of life and different ways of thought that come with it. People still see taking people of different backgrounds as some sort of charity, they don't understand how much stronger they can be than competitors where every person in the room is a different shade of the same background.