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[return to "Navigating the Venture World as a Black VC"]
1. conduc+zA[view] [source] 2020-06-18 18:51:45
>>ericza+(OP)
Firstly, assume positive intent, I am not undermining the topic of racism and rather like that we are giving the issue the proper attention and hope to see real change.

That said, has anyone seen stats that say what is the right balance of POC based on market realities? I work in finance, not VC, but still as a hiring manager it’s every difficult to force diversity when the overwhelming majority of candidates are white males. It’s a similar issue as women in tech, you have to take a step back and look at the university systems and how a more diverse set can be encouraged to take a finance track. Likely, there is an issue with college in general and we need focus on why white have higher attendance rate (no data, pure assumption). And so on. It’s a systemic issue that needs to be addressed. You can’t always just rebalance the current diversity mix because the inventory of qualifying candidates may not support it.

I read recently that 13% of America is black. I googled that the average BOD is 9.2 members. To me, 1 black person in the room is about right. Granted there are probably high number of boards with 0 blacks. But I’d be interested to know if this is due to the above mentioned market realities. There are certainly racism impacting the micro but maybe the macro is better than we think?

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2. vmcept+mH[view] [source] 2020-06-18 19:24:37
>>conduc+zA
everything you said happens and should also be a focus which I'll reply to in another comment, the only lack of awareness here is using singular noun for plural form

when plural you want to use color descriptors as adjectives. black people, not "blacks", white people, not "whites".

nobody can say why, but they are not synonyms to be used interchangeably between sentences, and will undermine your positive intent.

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