Who gets invited to the party?
There is both a pipeline problem and a bias problem and they are intertwined.<p>Historical discrimination has left black families much poorer than they would otherwise be. Poverty discriminates in myriad ways: lack of good role models and mentors, poor educational environments, lack of nutrition, lack of opportunities for enrichment, etc...<p>Discrimination is also still present and different ethnic groups are affected differently.<p>The negative effects of poverty and discrimination compound over time such that when you get to a tech company&#x27;s hiring process, the pipeline would have shrunk massively. The students in this pipeline are competing against upper middle class kids who have been groomed their entire lives to compete in the system designed by people like them.<p>As to the recruiting pipeline, there is class elitism&#x2F;narrow mindedness in tech companies that does narrow recruiting. Some interviewers don&#x27;t countenance views or attitudes other than their own just as some recruiters favor certain universities far more than others. This seems to be changing at least at the recruiting level.<p>As to why some ethnicities still succeed or fail despite discrimination, that is at least partly cultural and partly selection bias and these in turn have also been affected by discrimination past and present.<p>Lastly, I suspect the beef some poorer whites have is that they too have been discriminated against due to poverty and they feel that another group now has a leg up on them and that discrimination against them isn&#x27;t acknowledged.<p>I hope that we come up with a just system for everyone.