The Weaponization of Diversity

posted in Ethics, Funding, Hiring, Long Essays, Personal, Power, Venture Capital on by

This is an unusually extra lengthy essay, because the issue is so complex, sensitive, and nuanced that it deserves an appropriate level of patience and attention. It includes my deeply honest, personal, and some would say risky perspective on the topic of diversity in high-performance elite careers, including tech entrepreneurship; and my concern, as a latino who grew up low-income, that the decision by some to “weaponize” diversity is backfiring and causing harm to under-represented minority (URM) groups.

I would like to emphasize the distinction between “American Latino” and “Latin American” in this essay. By American Latino, I refer to Latin Americans (and their children) who migrate to the United States, and as a result are a sub-group (with various selection biases) of Latin America. The importance of that distinction will become clearer as you read on. 

I grew up in a very “colorful” part of Houston, Texas, with neighbors and schoolmates who were usually a mix of latino (immigrants and 2nd generation), black, asian and white; and a general socioeconomic range hovering between welfare, blue collar, and sort-of-middle class. My parents (Mexican immigrants) started a produce business selling avocados and tomatoes, which eventually grew into a financially meaningful operation but then unfortunately imploded due to some mismanagement and poor decision-making on my father’s part; culminating in my parents’ eventual divorce.

By the time I was sending off college applications, my two sisters and I were supported by our single mother who sold perfumes at an indoor flea market. After public K-12, I ended up attending the University of Texas and Harvard Law School, graduating in both cases with various honors. Today, with three healthy kids, happily married over a decade and a successful legal practice/leadership position at an elite boutique law firm, my cozy “1%” life definitely does not suck.

But this isn’t your classic self-congratulatory American Dream story. There’s a key twist, and that twist has given me a unique perspective on issues of socioeconomic inequality and diversity. My mother, despite ending up in a struggling, unstable situation, was actually a computer science graduate of the top technology university in Mexico; the Tecnologico de Monterrey. Basically the MIT of Mexico. And her family background includes a nationally celebrated Mexican artist, various political elites, and a biological (estranged, he abandoned them) father considered one of the top medical doctors and medical school professors in his field.

How did my mom go from a top-tier student with a strong family background to selling perfumes at a flea market as a single mother hovering preciously close to Medicaid-level poverty? This isn’t my autobiography, so I’ll cut that part of the story short and summarize: very difficult mental illness. Many people fail to appreciate how success is just as much about emotional stability and health as it is about intellectual and analytical capacity; and the formula for producing the former is often far more complex and nuanced than what’s necessary for the latter.

I mentioned these details about my mother because they are historical elements that keep me, if I’m honest, from painting for you a perfect “everything is totally fine because I made it” story; the kind of story that is too-often used to ignore real problems in society. My mother’s emphasis on academics and her love of computers – which she made every effort to expose me to, within her limited means – were key strategic assets in my childhood that differentiated me from my peer group, and undoubtedly propelled me forward. The truth is the vast majority of people who give you these “rags to riches” stories can, if they’re sincere enough, come up with their own kinds of privilege (including familial privilege) that they depended on growing up. If anything, simply being born “gifted” (a very broad but frequently used term) is itself an unearned privilege reserved for a lucky few who often like to conveniently overlook their luck.

Yes, we were poor latinos living in a low-income area and a broken home, speaking a blend of spanish and english and having our fair share of tamales, frijoles, barbacoa, etc. A (candidly) stereotypical and recognizable American Latino household portrait. But as it related to school, my home culture (driven by my mother) was different, and my latino peers noticed. I studied hard, taking advanced coursework beginning in elementary and through high school. I entered college on a full academic scholarship with enough advanced credit to almost qualify as a junior; some of that credit having been earned from reading textbooks on my own because my high school didn’t offer a particular course. My level of academic discipline got me labeled as “acting white” (by other latinos) more than enough times. There was even a special term for it: “coconut.” Brown on the outside, white on the inside. I had friends growing up who studied as hard as I did, but none of them were latino.

I didn’t know it at the time as a boy or young man, but the gulf in home culture between myself (via my mother) and my latino peers in Houston was encapsulated in a phrase I often heard from mom: “we don’t behave like those latinos.” It was all class cultural conflict reflected via playground insults (coconut) and maternal chastising (to succeed, don’t replicate “poor” culture). I struggled with this tension of identity growing up – I was definitely not “white” but somehow a different, less familiar and far less common (in the U.S.) kind of “Mexican,” and my latino friends could tell.

Very very few of my childhood American latino friends have ended up as successful doctors, lawyers, engineers, executives, or entrepreneurs, including some who had more money and far more stable families than we did. Many didn’t go to college; some didn’t graduate high school. Whenever I hear someone bring up statistics about the under-representation of latinos among the top economic strata in the U.S., I think about my childhood experiences and how differently I saw the world from my friends, because of the expectations I had at home; my “coconut” expectations. Rare among Mexican-Americans, yet not so for other American immigrant groups (more on that below), I grew up with a low socioeconomic status but cultural education expectations more typically aligned with upper classes.

I often think about how much I heard, and sometimes still hear, underachieving peers lash out at the world for its supposed racism and prejudice against latinos; and yet, with a name like Jose, there was no hiding my own ethnicity. If the world I was living in had deep, systemic discrimination against latinos, surely I was an easy target. Certainly I’ve encountered some bona fide racists, but rarely were they in positions of influence to alter my trajectory. And of course there are stereotypes that I’ve had to overcome. But, again, given the progressiveness and merit-driven nature of the people and institutions of influence I’ve encountered (and thank God for that), the stereotypes eventually gave way to what I could actually deliver.

I’ve learned to not be so offended by weak stereotypes, because given my experiences growing up, I understand full well why they exist. Stereotyping is at some level a normal, even if often unfortunate, function of human behavior. We had plenty of stereotype jokes in our household growing up, particularly about white people. Stereotypes alone do not really make you a racist. They make you human. It’s how strongly you hold onto a stereotype, and your willingness to give individuals the benefit of the doubt, that determines whether or not you deserve the label.

Yes, bias exists, and we should work to overcome it. But it doesn’t and hasn’t existed solely for modern-day under-represented minorities. Jews, Asians, Indians, and all kinds of immigrant and religious groups have historically faced discriminatory bias in America (and all over the world). For American Latinos to dwell on “unconscious bias” as the primary reason for their under-representation is to ignore the reality that dozens of other groups found ways to overcome the biases they faced in society. So why would the bias we face be so much more, and uniquely, insurmountable?

Constant discussion of bias in the market amounts to what I would call, frankly, “unfairness porn.” Addictive to some, and even a lucrative career for others, but ultimately of questionable impact relative to more actionable topics. It’s not entirely wrong, and there’s some value in it. I empathize with those who work in that area. But big picture it feels like a time-consuming distraction from deeper issues which, if addressed, would naturally resolve negative bias over time. Nothing is more impactful at overcoming bias than creating a record of unambiguous and credible results.

Let’s jump back to the unfortunate above-mentioned personal fact: very few of my latino friends ended up successful. Why? Racism? Systemic discrimination? I’m sorry, but you won’t convince me of that. I will acknowledge that stereotypes are out there, and they do impact latinos at the margins, but my own experiences, observations, and reflections make it impossible for me to accept that the dramatic under-representation of American latinos in high-performance industries today is the result of their being discriminated against for being latinos. The gap is simply too large, reflected across numerous top-tier industries, and many of these industries are simply too competitive and lucrative for key players to ignore truly untapped talent being kept on the sidelines.

If you want to argue for strong, systemic discrimination against latinos, you’ll have to explain the very big gaps in outcomes between, say, elite Cuban-Americans and Mexican-Americans. Jeff Bezos, as one example, was raised by a Cuban-American adoptive father whose surname he carries. A reflective and honest latino can explain that gap very quickly. Cuba had a “brain drain” thanks to Castro. Mexico did not.

Every major country has different strata with their own subcultures and attitudes, including about education, work, family building, and many other life factors. Mexicans certainly share a common culture, but a Mexican banker or professor has a very different attitude toward education than a Mexican laborer or restaurant owner; much like how the general culture of Cambridge, MA is very different from that of West Virginia.

History has caused Cuban immigration to the United States to select more for Cubans with values that help them succeed at higher levels of performance in an education and capitalism driven society, while Mexicans with similar values have disproportionately chosen to stay home, with their much more blue collar counterparts (with far less emphasis on academics) leaving to America. But because of relative population sizes and geography, the number of Mexicans who have migrated to America completely dwarfs Cubans, and so the generalized data (and outcomes) of American latinos reflects more the outcome of Mexican-American culture (laborer, blue-collar) instead of affluent Cuban-American culture (academics, entrepreneurship). Nevertheless, they are both American latinos, and would face similar “racism” and “bias” in American society. The dramatic difference in their economic outcomes is telling.

Why do Peruvian-Americans, Chilean-Americans, and Argentine-Americans have a higher median household income than white Americans? They are “latinos” or “hispanic” after all. Those countries’ far greater distance from America (relative to Mexico) ensures those immigrant groups come from higher education brackets (with applicable cultural values). The poorest in those countries don’t make it here. The reverse is true for Mexico.

You see this issue pop up between black Americans of recent African descent – like Nigerians and Ghanaians – relative to African-Americans with lengthy American histories, including with slavery and Jim Crow. Nigerian and Ghanaian Americans, and their children, are far more economically successful on average than other black Americans, including by some measures more successful than average white Americans. But just as between elite Cubans and Mexicans, any “racists” would have a hard time distinguishing them from appearances. Clearly this systemic discrimination narrative is more complex than some make it out to be. Immigration patterns have generated a “brain drain” from various African countries that selects for members of those populations with values that generate more positive outcomes.

Indian-Americans are the highest-earning ethnicity in the country. Much has been written about how they are the most positively selected immigrant group in American history, pulling from the most educated slivers of the very large Indian population, and arriving with the added advantage of (usually) already speaking English. If India (or China) had a geographic proximity to the U.S. equivalent to that of Mexico and Central America, allowing tens of millions of peasant laborers to walk across the border, everyone’s stereotypical images of what Indian-Americans or Chinese-Americans are like in terms of educational values and attainment would be dramatically different; much closer to typical Mexican-Americans.

Of course, this isn’t to pretend that the selection process of differential migration alone explains the full outcomes of different groups. Confucianism goes a long way in explaining why certain “Asian” cultures are obsessive about academic achievement for their children. China broadly cares a whole lot more about school performance than Mexico does (or anyone else for that matter). Talmudic history similarly explains the strong outcomes of Jews. Explaining Mormons is a little more complicated.

But the general message is centuries of distinct history produce distinct cultures with distinct values that generate distinct kinds of performance in distinct environments. How many elite Chinese-American baseball players are you aware of? Now try Japanese instead. Culture matters. A lot.

So why is there such a disproportionately small number of American Latinos in high-achievement careers? On a socioeconomic level, latinos in America obviously face barriers like higher amounts of poverty, poor schools, cramped housing, and all the challenges of being in the lower economic brackets typically reserved for recent immigrants. Regardless of what minority group you are talking about, these factors push down long-term performance.

Yet the data unavoidably shows that, even when controlling for socioeconomic barriers, certain groups still dramatically outperform others in school and long-term economic outcomes. It also shows that even in affluent environments, wide achievement gaps between groups persist, and are linked to parental educational engagement, expectations, and perceptions about how educational achievement impacts market success. There are even studies demonstrating that among under-represented minority students, there is a negative correlation between high academic achievement and popularity among their same-ethnicity peers.

Do not interpret this as suggesting that economic inequality is not a serious problem in America. Without a doubt, it is. But the point here is that given the number of under-represented minorities “of color” who aren’t poor, and even attend decent schools, if poverty and weak schools were the main issues we would see much better representation of URMs in high-performance industries than we currently do. The fact that, on average, even middle and upper middle class URMs continue to reflect an educational performance gap, but that the gap narrows and even disappears for specific sub-cultures of URMs, necessitates acknowledging that something deeper is at play.

To ignore the reality of cultural values is to cowardly stick your head in the sand, and therefore never fully address the main source of the problem. American Latino culture (generally) heavily promotes short-term economic gain over the kind of long-term success requiring what’s often called “delayed gratification.” If you find a decent job right outside of high school (and even during high school) that can afford you a relatively nice car and possibly a modest home, your “network” as an American latino is far more likely to celebrate your achievement. If you grind out your high school years acing AP classes (having taken advanced classes in middle school), forgoing short-term economic opportunities in hopes of getting a BA and even a masters degree, you’re more likely to be called a coconut.

American Latino culture (specifically the culture of the strata of latinos who come to America, which is very different from Latin American culture generally), for all of the above-covered reasons having to do with history and immigration selection, disproportionately prioritizes blue collar and middle-class success over the long-term delayed training required to reach the upper tiers of high-performance professions. Where are the millions of Mexican parents who demand academic excellence from their kids? Largely in Mexico, where, because of a dynamic economy (tied closely to the U.S.) that functions quite well for the upper classes, they are successful and have no reason to leave.

The educated elite of Mexico stay in Mexico, while the poorest and least educated came to America. The most educated elite of India come to the U.S., while its hundreds of millions of poor don’t. This inevitably reveals itself in educational attainment and earnings, with Indian-Americans being the highest earners and Mexican-Americans being among the lowest. Racial discrimination has virtually nothing to do with it. It’s precisely what you would expect in a meritocratic market economy.

High-performance professions, like law, engineering, and medicine, are heavily oriented toward the kinds of skills that depend on long-term, compounding training and achievement. Unlike, say, marketing or sales, where someone with a natural gift could possibly not do that well in K-12 and still quickly absorb necessary skills for high-performance post-school, it is very hard to make up, in a matter of a few months or even years, for extremely weak math and science training if you want to be an engineer or doctor.

Heaven knows many universities try (and bless them for it), but they simply cannot waive a magic wand and erase a poor public education and home environment (culture) that failed to instill academic rigor over the course of over a decade, including during a child’s most formative years. They have made great strides in helping students with weak backgrounds “catch up” for middle class oriented careers, but the gap for top-tier achievement is simply too high. Think of what it takes to be a world class violinist. How many of them started training only when they got to university, or even high school? Virtually none. How a child spends their time heavily influences the performance level they are able to attain as an adult, especially in careers dependent on compounding skillsets with high-performance requirements.

Thus, these career tracks by their nature – a nature that has absolutely nothing to do with racial discrimination, mind you – heavily disfavor anyone who doesn’t show up to college with a relatively solid academic background. That means, disproportionately, American latinos (and also other subcultures, like rural whites in Appalachia). To really address this problem requires a lengthy, candid discussion about childhood, parenting, family structure, and cultural identity. Calling “the system” and its performance standards racist gets you nowhere.

Yes, certain groups do better than others in the system, but that’s generally because they better prepare children to meet its logical and unavoidable requirements, with a home environment that emphasizes high educational expectations from an early age. Rather than pretending that reasonable and necessary meritocratic standards, which an enormously diverse set of ethnic groups and nationalities are able to succeed within, are “racist” and oppressive – a logic that has more to do with defeatist Marxist ideology than racial supremacy – we should be addressing the background sociocultural and educational reasons (originating in early childhood and education policy) behind why certain groups struggle disproportionately with the standards.

To be clear, one can reasonably acknowledge that the historical origin of the educational values of certain URMs is directly tied to oppression and lack of opportunity. This is certainly the case with laborers and low-income migrants from Latin America, where social mobility is generally worse than it is in the United States. Latin American laborers have, because of colonialism and its legacy, historically been denied access to viable education and thus, over generations, a distrust and skepticism of the real payout of long-term academic effort (and starting very early in that effort) became engrained in their values. Contrast that with China, where for centuries the entire basis for virtually all social mobility rested literally on a standardized exam (the keju, or imperial examination). China invented standardized testing, so guess who is really good at studying for tests? History matters.

But with all of that being said, even if oppression is the historical cause of cultural values that now generate underperformance, that doesn’t at all mean that today URMs are (on average) underperforming because they are academically or professionally oppressed. History can’t be changed, but culture can evolve, if we’re willing to be honest about it. These groups have the opportunity to begin learning and integrating more successful strategies into their identities and cultures today, just like others have done so in the past. Unfortunately, some of the strongest interference in this process comes from confused third-parties who want to pretend that there really is nothing new to learn, other than a few statistics about “unconscious bias.”

Acknowledging the cultural underpinnings behind educational performance gaps, and how they directly align with under-representation in top-tier industries, is not about blaming under-represented minority groups for their challenges. No one chooses the culture of their childhood, or the history of that culture, any more than they choose their parents or skin color. But acknowledging the issue, no matter how much certain misguided commentators demand silence, is essential for ultimately resolving it. In fact, the combative tendency to immediately shout down anyone as “racist” or offensive for sincerely raising these issues is precisely why discussion remains stuck in a phase of stale and exhausted, but easier-to-discuss ideas; like “trying harder” to find qualified candidates.

Now speaking even more narrowly for the audience that frequents this blog: why are there so few successful latino tech entrepreneurs? I’ve already explained part of the answer. As much as we celebrate people like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates dropping out of Harvard to start tech companies, it’s worth emphasizing that first they still got into Harvard, and second they surely must’ve learned the skills necessary to start tech companies somewhere before getting to Harvard. Tech entrepreneurship is dependent on a compounding skillset that, again, filters out people whose childhoods failed to help them develop that skillset. Zuck and Bill didn’t learn to code during their freshman years.

But let’s put aside the compounding/technical skill issue for a moment, because there’s a more nuanced issue at play here, and it relates to the point I made when discussing my mother’s poor outcome despite her clear academic intelligence: success depends on technical skill but also, particularly in certain environments, on emotional/psychological resilience.

There’s a frequently cited John Adams line that I am going to paraphrase and somewhat modernize: people become farmers, so that their children can become merchants, so that their children can become professionals, so that their children can become artists and entrepreneurs.

What is this line telling us? That there is often a generational progression to career trajectories, and that progression is tied to economic stability, which itself is tied to psychological resilience and willingness to take risk. I can tell you, having worked with and observed hundreds of entrepreneurial ventures, your average tech entrepreneur is not coming from a low-income or even blue collar/middle class background. Zuck and Bill certainly did not.

It often takes a childhood environment that infuses a person with confidence about their family/network’s overall economic stability to enable that person to confidently take the enormous personal risk of becoming an entrepreneur; instead of going into a nicely salaried career. Wealthy kids are far more likely to grow up to become entrepreneurs, because they know that going “bust” doesn’t mean actually going homeless, but instead there’s an enormous set of resources there to serve as a parachute.  Kids with similar technical or “intellectual” ability, but with families living on the precipice of poverty, or at least with very few excess resources to manage a blowup, do not have that luxury.

This is not to say that tech entrepreneurs with wealthy backgrounds are not big risk takers. Most of their equally wealthy friends probably still went into consulting and other salaried jobs. But it is to at least acknowledge that having an affluent background dramatically subsidizes personal risk tolerance.

I do not regret for a second becoming a VC lawyer instead of becoming an entrepreneur. Neither of my parents had any substantial savings. In fact, I support my mother in her retirement, and most of the rest of my family struggles on a daily basis to even stay in the middle class (loosely defined). Unlike Zuck or Bill, failure in my case would’ve, quite literally, risked homelessness. I have met entrepreneurs who really did risk homelessness/poverty in starting their entrepreneurial ventures, but they are a far smaller minority than is suggested from the heroic “risk absolutely everything” stories one often hears in the media.

So I went into a career that made sense for my low-income family background/history. No regrets. I can guarantee you countless high-achieving latinos (and other minorities) make this exact decision on a daily basis. Startup? Sorry, I’ve got parents and other extended family to help out. I’ll take that high-salaried job I busted my tail and sacrificed for. Maybe my kids will have a better parachute.

Many high-achieving under-represented minorities simply do not have the luxury of parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins all with stable incomes and savings to provide them a parachute for an entrepreneurial adventure. Now, their kids might (see the John Adams line), but that’s why changing the long-term economic success of any broad group simply cannot be wished into existence. The most challenging forms of success take an entire childhood of compounding learning, and going even further, the very highest risk paths often take generational building of wealth and resilience.

We like to think of entrepreneurship, including tech entrepreneurship, as a very democratizing, equalizing playing field where anyone with the right motivation and persistence can succeed; but my honest experience is that today, in fact, it’s the opposite. High-achieving entrepreneurship takes a spectacularly rare and complex combination of analytical and technical skills, communication skills, social skills, and creative judgment about current and changing market conditions, on top of incredible psychological resilience. Rather than an easily accessible field for anyone who wants to play, modern hyper-competitive tech entrepreneurship represents the apex of human abilities, creativity, and endurance. We should not be surprised that, for most people, the necessary (but not sufficient) conditions for reaching that apex start well before adulthood; and include a childhood environment that supports high achievement.

Tying this all together: first, the compounding technical skill “filter” disproportionately impacts American Latinos (and similar groups) because cultural, not just socioeconomic, factors lead fewer of them to develop the compounding skills in childhood that make tech entrepreneurship (or many other high-performance careers) feasible. Second, for the disproportionately small number of them who still end up getting there, they are far less likely than other groups to come from the kinds of stable economic backgrounds that make high-risk paths like entrepreneurship attractive. Among under-represented minorities like American latinos, the “best and brightest” are, much more so than other groups (but certainly not always), drawn toward stable high-income professions and away from high-risk paths like startup employment and entrepreneurship.

Now, let’s ask ourselves a hard question. How much of this unfortunate reality can actually be materially impacted by recruiters and investors in any short-term sense? It takes time for the descendants of low-income immigrants to build the kind of economic stability and resilience that encourages very high-risk, very high-reward paths. Anyone expecting to actually impact long-term collective outcomes needs to face, head on and without unproductive outrage or finger-pointing, the fact that helping people meet the requirements of high-performance takes time. It also takes honesty about the cultural/behavioral values that build up children to face those requirements as adults. The requirements themselves, no matter how much we might wish otherwise, are not going to budge.

I want to see more “people of color” in tech entrepreneurship and other high-performance careers just like all other good, honest, progressive people. But I’m afraid that a segment of the community – either well-intentioned or not – has chosen to weaponize the issue of diversity in a way that is not only hostile and disingenuous, but counterproductive to its own cause.

There are historical, cultural, and socioeconomic reasons – all of which have been exhaustively studied – that explain why a disproportionately small number of people in certain ethnic/minority groups are able to achieve the high levels of performance and economic success attained by other groups. The number of high-performing candidates “of color,” in the sense we are discussing, is in fact smaller. Throwing the label “racist” around indiscriminately, and trying to guilt decision makers – like recruiters and investors – into hiring or investing in more of these candidates than realistically exist (today) can backfire. Dramatically. I’ve seen it happen.

I’ve seen very well-intentioned “diversity” accelerators created with much fan-fare and PR. But because they didn’t actually dig into the deep, complex reasons for the low representation of certain groups in their industry, and instead wanted quick and easy results, what actually ended up happening is that they promoted companies that underperformed and underachieved. The end-result? They very loudly and publicly reinforced the very stereotypes they were trying to break. Even more sadly, already successful/wealthy people, usually white, still get their PR and photo ops from these initiatives, while minorities are, once again, left holding an empty bag. On the most important issues, good intentions are not enough. Instead of stereotypes truly holding us back, we are foolishly incentivizing their amplification.

In the case of many mission-driven “diversity” venture funds, they’ll often amplify the idea that venture capital is racist or systemically discriminatory, but a quick glance at their portfolio makes it clear that they are sourcing and funding various kinds of businesses that do not generate true venture capital returns (but fulfill their mission). That they are choosing to fund other lower-margin, lower-scale kinds of businesses is great, and yet their claims that venture capitalists seeking high-scale, high-margin venture level returns are “racist” are still disingenuous.

The more exposed any position is to the harsh, unforgiving reality of the market, the harder it is to compensate for underperformance. This is why large organizations, like the government (including the military) have historically been the best environments for “affirmative action” type initiatives that acknowledged some preferential treatment of under-represented minorities, but are able to contain and address any performance issues with the “slack” of the large organization. Very high-performance, high-stakes positions, like startup entrepreneurship (and also complex law, by the way) unfortunately don’t have this luxury. If there are nuanced, complex reasons for why a disproportionately small number of American latinos meet the requirements of medical schools, I doubt anyone wants to suggest we guilt and shame the schools into graduating more of them anyway.

Tech startups operate in the most performance-driven, cut-throat, “figure it out or die” segment of the economy. Unlike large organizations with many layers of staff and substantial buffer resources for training, bringing on anyone who underperforms risks catastrophic failure for a startup team. The reasons they underperform may be totally unfair: disadvantaged background, low-income, poor education, etc., but, again, customers don’t care. Can an NFL team afford to take into account “fairness” in whom they put on the field? No, and neither can startups. Once we clear out true discrimination, any attempts at increasing representation must involve actually improving the performance of the underrepresented groups.

The world of startups is one of the most culturally progressive environments I have ever encountered in my life. But it is also, by necessity, fiercely (even if imperfectly) meritocratic. This fact makes it quite “colorful” in terms of the full diversity of ethnicities and nationalities one encounters – hardly all white American-born men, but it also means wide performance differentials between groups are going to be unavoidably visible in outcomes.

The great “myth” of the tech sector, or really of the entire high end of the modern economy, isn’t a myth of meritocracy. Competitive markets make it very expensive to hire under-performers, or to discriminate against available talent. We have, perhaps more than any time in history, meritocracy. The myth is that meritocracy (alone) means equal opportunity. To the contrary, hyper-meritocracy puts an enormous premium on having a strong (socioeconomic and cultural) background that prepared you with compounding training, because you need to show up on Day 1 ready to perform. Meritocracy massively privileges having a good childhood, including a home culture that enables, from very early on, high achievement. Appealing to racism and prejudice among the decision-makers in elite institutions (including employers) isn’t necessary at all for explaining the wide disparities we see in our increasingly meritocratic market economy. The problems aren’t post-college, but pre-high school; going as deep as early-childhood development and parenting.

The fact is that, in the United States, equal opportunity largely stops at who your parents are. Relative to other developed countries, America is particularly egregious in how little it does, especially in early childhood, to prevent young kids’ educational trajectories from becoming extremely dependent on the private initiative (and resources) of their parents. Meritocracy ensures people are measured by the skillset they bring to the market, but without additional public policies it does nothing for the kids who aren’t born into families that, from a very young age, help them develop their skills so that they benefit from the kind of long-term compounding that produces very high-performing adults. Some of those kids start to take control of their educations around high school when they begin thinking about financial independence as adolescents, but by then high achievers have had a 5-10 year head start. The nature of compounding is that gaps widen over time; they rarely close.

It’s these “late bloomer” strivers who often struggle the most with observed performance differentials in the market. They are just as intelligent and hard-working (as adults) as higher-achieving peers, and so they understandably conclude that employers and universities must somehow be stacked against them unfairly. The variable they’re missing is the 5-10 year head-start (late elementary, middle and high school), with compounding learning and training, that high-achievers typically leveraged before even arriving in college; virtually always driven by parents with high educational expectations of their young children.

Raw intelligence and effort are inputs. The market rewards outputs, and years of extra studying and training, especially during childhood and adolescent years that are dramatically influential on a person’s cognitive and social development, adds an enormous boost to any person’s output. That’s uncomfortable to acknowledge, and extremely challenging (if not impossible in many cases) to rectify decades later in life. But it is nevertheless the reality clearly visible in the market to anyone with their eyes wide open. If in college you suddenly decide you want to learn and play golf or basketball professionally, you may make it to the top if you are exceptionally talented and train like crazy. But more often than not you will find that other exceptionally talented players, who’ve also been playing the game competitively since they were 10 yrs old, will run laps around you.

Industries like tech and law may be different in the sense that there are far more “slots” to make a comfortable middle class living, but the requirements and challenges of making it to the top – a wealthy entrepreneur, an elite managing partner – are far closer to those of professional athletes. Simplistically demanding “representation” at this tier of the economy is as vacuous and fruitless as expecting the NBA or the PGA, or perhaps more appropriately the Olympic Committee (business is international), to adopt affirmative action quotas for “proportionate” ethnic representation. Given the constraints and demands of international competition, there is no HR department or recruiting committee with power over who can fill these positions. Once you step onto the field, into the arena, or into the C-suite, there is only performance today. The scoreboard or financial results make everything else secondary.

Promoting diversity in tech entrepreneurship and startups is an extremely noble and good goal. I support it. Wholeheartedly. But for the love of God, let’s please be honest, decent, and smart about it. If we’re honest, we’ll first acknowledge all of the nuances and complexities – some of them clearly uncomfortable – about the background sources of the problem. We’ll also acknowledge that extremely competitive industries – like venture capital – are heavily incentivized to look for and exploit “undervalued” talent. Literally hundreds of funds, many of them led by people hardly from the kinds of backwater places simmering with racism, are all competing to the death to find successes. If they still are not substantially moving the needle on finding numerous tech ventures led by teams of underrepresented color capable of generating venture returns, maybe racism isn’t the real problem.

Second, if we’re decent about it, we will not play this unfair game of simply looking at a team or portfolio, finding that there’s no one “of color” on it, and throwing a racist label at someone. We will stop weaponizing diversity. Many recruiters in certain high-performance industries know how much extra effort it can take to find truly high-performing “diverse” candidates. It is not because they do not exist. It is because they, for all of the discussed reasons, are in shorter supply; and because they are in shorter supply, they get taken up by employers with the best brands and compensation packages. When a particular A-level firm – whether it’s a law firm or a venture capital firm – loudly promotes their “diverse” roster, it does not mean every company with less “diverse” rosters is full of racists. It means that in a market increasingly looking for these scarcer candidates, those with the most “pull” (better brand, better pay, lower risk) are able to win, and those with less pull lose. In many cases “inclusiveness” has absolutely nothing to do with it.

This last fact is a real problem with arguing simplistically that “more diverse teams outperform.” Of course if you hire meritocratically from the broadest pool of talent (including all ethnicities and international talent), you are going to get more high performers. If we count the full spectrum of ethnicities and nationalities, together with gender diversity, in “diversity” (broad diversity), the argument that diversity improves performance is almost certainly accurate. It’s the story of American immigration and outperformance. Even Silicon Valley is extremely “diverse” in this sense. Bigger talent pool, more meritocracy. But people who use that data to then justify weaponized diversity initiatives for specific under-represented groups (narrow diversity, just URMs) are engaging in a sleight-of-hand with the term “diverse.” There is no data suggesting that early-stage founding teams comprised of those specific groups outperform.

If we expand the discussion to later-stage teams hiring employees (not entrepreneurs or senior executives), the causation between “diversity” (in the narrow sense of URMs only) and performance can easily run in the opposite direction. The highest performing companies raise from the most prestigious funds, pay the best, and are able to absorb the high-achieving under-represented minorities in the talent pool. Because high-performing URMs are, for the discussed reasons, in more limited supply, lower performing companies have fewer to recruit; thus top companies are more “diverse”, and lower-tier companies are less so.

All of these attempts at using misapplied data to force overly-aggressive hiring of under-represented minorities are at best unhelpful, and at worst disingenuous; and they distract us from addressing the real problems behind under-representation. I cannot stress this enough: our unwillingness to openly talk about the uncomfortable reality, and instead continue with the same “we just need to try harder at ending racism” stories, is exactly why we are making so little progress.

Relatedly, the weaponization (and in some cases monetization) of diversity heavily incentivizes tokenism. As long as I can secure enough people who, from outer appearances, check the “diverse” box, I can move on and totally avoid actually addressing the systemic issues that demonstrably disadvantage certain people over others, i.e. actual poor people. For example, many latinos at elite universities are the children of doctors, lawyers, and executives, from stable homes and private prep schools. Are these really the “diverse” candidates we want to pour substantial resources into helping? Does a Jose who summers in the Hamptons and got a BMW for his 16th birthday bring “color” to your workplace in the way diversity initiatives intend? Maybe. But if that’s what we really want, let’s be honest and open about it. Filling your workplace or portfolio with people from objectively affluent and privileged backgrounds, who nevertheless have the right names or skin tones, feels different to some of us than really putting in effort to level the playing field for people facing real structural barriers.

Finally, if we’re smart about diversity in high-performance areas, we’ll acknowledge how important patience is. Instead of pretending that a few well-intentioned initiatives are going to suddenly erase decades and even generations of differences with compounding effects, we’ll start going after long-term policies that will really change the landscape. Policies like:

-equalized public school funding and school choice
-funding for schools to engage with low-income homes and communities on educational culture
-public daycare and pre-K
-criminal justice reform
-public funding for healthcare, including mental healthcare
-social and economic support initiatives

Evidence is mounting that the charter schools most successful at breaking cycles of poverty, and closing the early achievement gap of URMs (which widens over time when left unaddressed), are those that go well beyond educational instruction; directly engaging with parents and households to instill a culture of high educational expectations. Achieving results requires intervention into household environments, and that requires letting go of our misguided and self-defeating fears of discussing family cultural differences.

Recklessly and indiscriminately warmongering over diversity is the business world’s equivalent of breaking windows and looting. The anger and frustration over the slow pace of results are understandable and worthy of empathy. And yet angrily pointing fingers at people who are sincerely trying to improve an issue that they really did not cause, and in truth are very limited in their ability to quickly fix, is counterproductive. If we push them to promote candidates who truly are not ready, the resulting underperformance will not only ruin the confidence of people who otherwise might’ve had very positive outcomes in a more appropriate environment, but it will also harden stereotypes that we should instead be, strategically, weakening.

For too long we’ve allowed discussions of diversity in tech and other high-performing professions to be hijacked and unjustifiably dominated by those who want us endlessly distracted by searching for racism and systemic discrimination as the supreme, seemingly supernatural explanation for all our challenges; and who at times see a profitable opportunity in that distraction. Their often vitriolic refusals to even engage in respectful substantive discussion about other explanations, and other solutions – including long-term policy solutions – are, unfortunately, a significant reason why our community is stalling in its progress.

I’m thankful every day that the decision-makers I encountered throughout my life didn’t just see “a latino.” They didn’t see a stereotype to be quickly discarded, nor a token to be pushed in directions driven by a political agenda. They saw Jose Ancer – a specific kid with some challenges but also some abilities – and gave me a shot at showing what I could really deliver within the background and life I was actually living. We should want nothing less for every single child that enters the school system, and adult that enters the market. How many individual people are we failing to objectively help, because we are paralyzed by grand theories chasing rushed collective goals that have never been feasible on any short timeline?

Results over misdirected rage. Adult discussion over childish tantrums. Equal opportunity over unrealistic expectations of quickly equal outcomes. But getting there requires all of us to talk honestly, empathetically, and carefully about the real issues, without demonizing those who sincerely feel like we are spinning our wheels. That’s the only way we will finally get past the anger and frustration that understandably result from misguided quick fixes that ignore the complexity and depth of the challenges.

I want to see, on top of the public policies that directly address the social and economic challenges of poverty in America, an environment in which every young latino can throw him or herself into whatever subject they want, and make long-term sacrifices to succeed, without facing labels like “coconut” or other counterproductive messaging from other latinos that children from other ethnic backgrounds simply never have to face. We absolutely know how to work hard, but as it relates to high academic and business achievement, we too often celebrate working on the wrong things, and wait too long to correct course.

Without a doubt, let’s ensure we’re rooting out whatever racism and non-meritocratic discrimination that exists in our high-performance industries. I’m sure some does, though we too often exaggerate (dramatically) its explanatory power for disparities in outcomes. Importantly, we also shouldn’t deny the personal responsibility necessary in our own communities to evolve our identities so that no child is ever forced to choose between high achievement and culture. In doing so, we must not forget to support socioeconomic and educational public policies that can legitimately level the playing field for everyone.

The evidence is nevertheless quite clear that no amount of public policy or reconciliation over historical injustices will ever replace the profound, long-lasting impact of private household cultural values, including about education and long-term training, on the performance level children are able to reach as adults. Sometimes the very hardest problems are the ones that no one else can fully solve for us. Yet at the same time, there can be hope in realizing that many of the long-term solutions are much more in our control, and we don’t have to wait for outsider heroes to be our saviors.

It’s time for the most honest among us to demand that the level of diversity discourse be elevated and civilized; above the yells and sand-pounding of those who continue pretending that the key to increasing true high achievement in our community lies in another inclusiveness seminar, another infantilizing apology from a colleague, or another lecture from self-appointed “experts” on our universal, never-ending victimization. The truth is that it lies far closer to our communities, our families, and our homes.

On a closing note, I was careful to keep this discussion personal, and about my own experiences as a latino. I don’t pretend to speak in any way for other minority groups; and certainly not for the black community, which has faced a very different and legitimately harsher historical reality in America. I believe there are very clear parallels between latino and black low representation in tech and other elite education-driven professions, but parsing out those parallels or making that case is not my personal project. This essay was about my perspective based on my lived experience and research.

I cannot pretend to know what it is like to be a black American, or to fully understand the outrage sparked by George Floyd’s death. This essay was not at all about police brutality, for which there is certainly some evidence, or well-documented racism and discrimination in segments of society outside of tech entrepreneurship and other high-performance career paths. It by no means is an argument that we live in a perfect, fully meritocratic world; but rather a personal observation and reflection on whether we are completely missing the mark on the real reasons – or at a minimum, the most impactful reasons – why certain groups, like American latinos, remain so under-represented in the very high-performance, high-risk world of tech entrepreneurship.

I do hope, however, that some of my thoughts might be helpful for other people of color to assess and chart their own paths on the issue of diversity, and what changes they hope to effect in the market. I hope we will no longer allow legitimate voices and perspectives to be silenced in favor of the same mono-narrative that wastes precious time and fails at delivering durable results. Anger and frustration can be fuel for enormously productive action, but only if we channel them in ways that truly hit the source of a problem; even if that source is more complex and uncomfortable, and less responsive to simplistic outrage and politicization, than we want to admit.

Post-Script: This 2020 essay evolved into a three-part essay series.

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