Maine Democrats Laugh About Rising Suicide Rates Among White Males

The Economist must read JPP. One of their feature articles this week:



Women in technology
Silicon Valley’s sexism problem
Venture capitalists are bright, clannish and almost exclusively male


“BOOBER” is the nickname Travis Kalanick, the boss of Uber, used to describe the effect that the ride-hailing startup had on his attractiveness to the opposite sex. Mr Kalanick’s wisecrack seems to have been emblematic of a deeply macho culture. An investigation is under way into allegations from a former employee that Uber refuses to promote capable women or to take complaints about harassment seriously. The results are due to be released in the coming weeks.

Uber is not the only technology star in the spotlight for its treatment of women. Google has been accused by America’s Department of Labour of paying female employees significantly less than male ones (see article). Google flatly denies the charge. But that technology in general, and Silicon Valley in particular, has a gender problem is not in doubt.

A survey of 210 women in the valley found that 60% had experienced unwanted sexual advances and that two-thirds felt excluded from important social and networking
opportunities. PayScale, a research firm, has found that only 21% of American tech executives are female (the figure in other industries is 36%). Women in tech are paid less than men, even after controlling for experience, education and responsibilities.

Not all these problems can be laid at the door of Silicon Valley. Plenty of people are worried about the small number of girls taking science, technology, engineering and mathematics courses. Only 18% of bachelor’s degrees in computer science in America were awarded to women in 2013, down from 37% in 1985. Pay gaps are pervasive, too.
But that shouldn’t let the valley off the hook. It prides itself on solving difficult problems and on being a meritocracy. Being as bad as everywhere else in its treatment of women falls disappointingly short. More to the point, the valley suffers from a distinctive form of sexism which is in its power to fix.

Venture capitalists are the technology industry’s demigods. Through their cheques, connections and advice, they determine which startups succeed and which languish. They are bright, clannish and almost exclusively male. Only around 6% of partners at venture-capital firms are women, down from 10% in 1999. Less than 40% of the top 100 venture-capital firms have a female partner charged with investing. Many of the most highly regarded funds, including Benchmark and Andreessen Horowitz, have none.

For a set of people who finance disruptive firms, venture capitalists are surprisingly averse to disrupting their own tried-and-tested way of doing things. They sit in small groups, meet entrepreneurs and repeat a single formula for investing whenever possible. John Doerr, who backed companies like Google, summed up his philosophy thus: “Invest in white male nerds who’ve dropped out of Harvard or Stanford.”

Defenders of the valley have two retorts. One is that throwing stones at the most successful business cluster on Earth makes no sense. Market forces ensure that the best ideas win funding, irrespective of gender. The data suggest a different story. Only 7% of the founders of tech startups in America that raised $20m or more are women, according to recent research by Bloomberg. Yet nobody would argue that men make the best founders nine times out of ten. On average, firms founded by women obtain less funding ($77m) than those founded by men ($100m). The VC industry has been successful enough to ward off the pressure to change. That does not make it perfect.

A second defence is that VCs rely on tight-knit relationships, in which trust is essential. Call this the “dinner with Mike Pence” gambit, after the American vice-president’s reported refusal to eat alone with a woman other than his wife. On this argument, any outsider, particularly one lacking a Y chromosome, is liable to upset the club’s precious dynamic. Venture capital is indeed a strange mix of capital and contacts, and peculiarly hard to industrialise as a result. But as a justification for sexism, clubbiness is an argument that is as old as it is thin.

Y combinator, X chromosomes

Plenty of studies show that diverse teams are more productive. Hiring more women in venture capital seems to increase the odds of finding and funding those elusive female entrepreneurs. Venture capitalists play a vital role in shaping the culture of startups: investors who value diversity are likelier to guide them away from the reputational and legal risks that beset offices full of “brogrammers”. Silicon Valley is a remarkable place. But it is time for the boy’s club to grow up.


http://www.economist.com/news/leade...lmost-exclusively-male-silicon-valleys-sexism

I apologize for posting this fake news from the economist. Clearly the heavily democratic Silicon Valley could not be sexist (or racist). The Economist should be ashamed of itself
 
Feel free to call it something else. The evolution of the American population is well under way .. no turning back.

that's where you're wrong kiddo.... hispanics will join #teamwhite and convert in 20 years. There have been numerous studies on this that after a generation or two, assimilated hispanics take on the white label.

You blacks are still gonna be shit out of luck. :)

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/22/upshot/more-hispanics-declaring-themselves-white.html?_r=0

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...-ethnic-identity-from-one-census-to-the-next/
 
Who said they weren't?

Folks on this board have and even BAC has given them somewhat of a pass.

You said I pretend there aren't sexist and racist people on the right. That's not the case at all. I even respond to some of them on here. Why do you think CFM calls me a NL?

But what I do respond to is this idea that voting Democratic, in not so many words, gives immunity to being charged with sexism or racism. Thus the examples I lay out. And here's another one:


Battling racial inequality, segregation in Bay Area restaurants


When Demonte Lane recounts his past few years working in the Bay Area restaurant industry, his stories are tinged with equal parts frustration and resignation.

He saw white workers shuffled into higher-paying server jobs, while people of color like himself were relegated to posts as dishwashers, porters or prep cooks. His first restaurant job was a front-of-house position at a mid-level place in Oakland. His stint there ended amid a flurry of raise denials, demotions and an inexplicable firing, he said.

“One of the owners, who was white, brought in one of his white friends to do a similar job as me,” said Lane, now a busser at Kingston 11 in Oakland. “Then I noticed he was getting raises. Then I was suddenly bumped down.”

Lane’s experience is not an anomaly, according to Ephraim Colbert of Restaurant Opportunities Centers (ROC) United, a national restaurant worker advocacy group comprised of more than 25,000 workers, 600 restaurant owners and 15,000 consumers.

Colbert spent 10 years as a fine dining server, often being the only person of color on predominantly white staffs. His tales of raise denials and career stagnation are similar to Lane’s.

“This practice, and others, is very common in the restaurant industry where people of color are overlooked and replaced by a fresh white face,” said Colbert.

Occupational segregation is a nationwide issue in the restaurant industry, and the Bay Area is among the country’s worst offenders. Despite the region’s liberal and inclusive reputation, the race/wage gap in San Francisco is the highest in the country — roughly twice that of Houston.

According to ROC studies, white male restaurant workers in San Francisco get hired faster, promoted sooner and paid more — specifically, $6 more per hour — than their Latino, black and Asian co-workers. ROC’s data draw from more than 500 worker surveys, government data analyses, interviews with employers and Bureau of Labor Statistics reports.

Furthermore, the restaurant positions held by people of color also show segregation; from the kitchen to the dining room table, a plate of food in San Francisco moves farther away from brown hands the closer it gets to a paying customer.

“Basically, the farther into a restaurant you go, the skin color gets darker,” said Saru Jayaraman, ROC co-founder. “The system is broken, and it has to change.”

The Bay Area restaurant industry is one of the largest in the country, with around 200,000 workers. Between 2004 and 2014, the number of food service businesses in the Bay Area increased 21 percent, as the field grew to 9.5 percent of the regional economy, generating well over $10 billion in revenue and $905 million in sales tax on federal and local levels, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

With the highest average restaurant wages in the country at $15 per hour, and about $18 per hour in the fine dining realm, San Francisco is filled with promise for restaurant workers. The promise just isn’t equally available to workers with darker skin, Jayaraman said.

Minorities in the Bay Area most often fill back-of-the-house positions as dishwashers, line cooks, bussers and porters — staff who rarely interact with consumers. The more visible positions of maitre d’s or servers, who in fine dining can make upward of $100,000 annually, are positions predominantly occupied by white men, despite this demographic making up less than 25 percent of the workforce overall.

Founded in New York City after 9/11, ROC made national headlines earlier this year after launching the Sanctuary Restaurants Movement, a campaign promoting tolerance in the food industry. The movement was a direct response to President Trump’s stances on immigration issues. Hundreds of restaurants have signed up across the country, including dozens in the Bay Area.

“The sanctuary movement has been a big draw to get people to talk to us,” Jayaraman said. “Now we think it’s important to turn our sights toward the Bay Area.”

ROC is taking a long-term approach to the Bay Area, punctuated by a large brick-and-mortar presence in Oakland. The organization recently purchased a building in Fruitvale through a partnership with the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. There, ROC will build a new restaurant named Colors, a training facility and a worker-owned cooperative incubator.

Demonte Lane, now a busser at Kingston 11 in Uptown Oakland, says he had a front-of-house position at his first restaurant job but was demoted and fired after a white man was hired and given raises for the same type of work. Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle Demonte Lane, now a busser at Kingston 11 in Uptown Oakland, says he had a front-of-house position at his first restaurant job but was demoted and fired after a white man was hired and given raises for the same type of work.

When Demonte Lane recounts his past few years working in the Bay Area restaurant industry, his stories are tinged with equal parts frustration and resignation.

He saw white workers shuffled into higher-paying server jobs, while people of color like himself were relegated to posts as dishwashers, porters or prep cooks. His first restaurant job was a front-of-house position at a mid-level place in Oakland. His stint there ended amid a flurry of raise denials, demotions and an inexplicable firing, he said.

“One of the owners, who was white, brought in one of his white friends to do a similar job as me,” said Lane, now a busser at Kingston 11 in Oakland. “Then I noticed he was getting raises. Then I was suddenly bumped down.”


Lane’s experience is not an anomaly, according to Ephraim Colbert of Restaurant Opportunities Centers (ROC) United, a national restaurant worker advocacy group comprised of more than 25,000 workers, 600 restaurant owners and 15,000 consumers.

Colbert spent 10 years as a fine dining server, often being the only person of color on predominantly white staffs. His tales of raise denials and career stagnation are similar to Lane’s.

“This practice, and others, is very common in the restaurant industry where people of color are overlooked and replaced by a fresh white face,” said Colbert.

Occupational segregation is a nationwide issue in the restaurant industry, and the Bay Area is among the country’s worst offenders. Despite the region’s liberal and inclusive reputation, the race/wage gap in San Francisco is the highest in the country — roughly twice that of Houston.

According to ROC studies, white male restaurant workers in San Francisco get hired faster, promoted sooner and paid more — specifically, $6 more per hour — than their Latino, black and Asian co-workers. ROC’s data draw from more than 500 worker surveys, government data analyses, interviews with employers and Bureau of Labor Statistics reports.

Furthermore, the restaurant positions held by people of color also show segregation; from the kitchen to the dining room table, a plate of food in San Francisco moves farther away from brown hands the closer it gets to a paying customer.

“Basically, the farther into a restaurant you go, the skin color gets darker,” said Saru Jayaraman, ROC co-founder. “The system is broken, and it has to change.”

The Bay Area restaurant industry is one of the largest in the country, with around 200,000 workers. Between 2004 and 2014, the number of food service businesses in the Bay Area increased 21 percent, as the field grew to 9.5 percent of the regional economy, generating well over $10 billion in revenue and $905 million in sales tax on federal and local levels, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

With the highest average restaurant wages in the country at $15 per hour, and about $18 per hour in the fine dining realm, San Francisco is filled with promise for restaurant workers. The promise just isn’t equally available to workers with darker skin, Jayaraman said.

Minorities in the Bay Area most often fill back-of-the-house positions as dishwashers, line cooks, bussers and porters — staff who rarely interact with consumers. The more visible positions of maitre d’s or servers, who in fine dining can make upward of $100,000 annually, are positions predominantly occupied by white men, despite this demographic making up less than 25 percent of the workforce overall.

Founded in New York City after 9/11, ROC made national headlines earlier this year after launching the Sanctuary Restaurants Movement, a campaign promoting tolerance in the food industry. The movement was a direct response to President Trump’s stances on immigration issues. Hundreds of restaurants have signed up across the country, including dozens in the Bay Area.

“The sanctuary movement has been a big draw to get people to talk to us,” Jayaraman said. “Now we think it’s important to turn our sights toward the Bay Area.”

ROC is taking a long-term approach to the Bay Area, punctuated by a large brick-and-mortar presence in Oakland. The organization recently purchased a building in Fruitvale through a partnership with the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. There, ROC will build a new restaurant named Colors, a training facility and a worker-owned cooperative incubator.

“Opening Colors across from the Fruitvale BART Station allows us to begin training hundreds of workers of color to move into fine dining,” Jayaraman said. In the fine dining realm, white workers earn $22 per hour, while people of color in the same restaurants earn $16.

ROC is also launching pilot programs at a pair of San Francisco restaurants to address real and perceived barriers influencing occupational segregation. Daniel Patterson’s Mid-Market restaurant, Alta CA, is one of the participants; the other has yet to be identified.

Patterson is no stranger to the intersection of race and food. Last year, he helped launch Locol, an ambitious restaurant chain with locations in Watts and Oakland, built to provide healthier fast food options to lower-income areas.

With ROC’s guidance and Patterson’s participation, Alta is reshaping its staff, a process that might not immediately be noticeable to customers. To improve advancement opportunities for employees of color, Patterson said servers will take support shifts and bartenders will take back bar shifts, and vice versa. Pay will be tied to people — not to positions.

“We want the best, most well-trained and experienced servers to be excited about taking any shift they are given,” Patterson said. “Cycling less experienced servers through the more front-line positions will improve their growth and learning.”

As ROC’s programs gain traction in the Bay Area, Patterson said his focus will be on the transition at Alta, with the goal of creating a model that can be replicated. The first push will also involve standardizing hiring, training and promotion practices.

“When your most qualified person doesn’t get the position they deserve, the restaurant suffers, and the industry suffers,” he said.

Next month, Patterson plans to make a change that diners will notice: Alta will go tipless.

The changes at Alta are meant to break down stereotypes associated with race and job positions, which Jayaraman said has been perpetuated through unconscious bias. Several Bay Area restaurateurs, along with ROC advocates, see tipping as a business component that fosters racial and gender discrimination, as well as sexual harassment.

Demonte Lane said he has witnessed the influence, both subtle and overt, that racial bias can have in a restaurant. Brown employees are viewed differently, he said — especially when it comes to tips.

“It’s enough to make you miserable,” Lane said. “When I was in that environment, I definitely was.”

Not just restaurant owners and employers are being targeted by ROC’s new Bay Area initiatives. The program reaches out to workers to locate obstacles barring their advancement in the industry, from transportation complications to self-selection bias; there are also training programs where workers — like Kingston 11’s Lane — can learn new skills. And when it comes to diners, ROC wants to know if diners are uncomfortable with servers of color and, similar to employers, if some form of bias exists.


The process hasn’t been without its fair share of hurdles, Jayaraman said. In San Francisco, a city touted for its open-mindedness and acceptance, the conversation about segregation can be a touchy one to have, she said.

“There is definitely this crowd where they say they’re open and accepting, but it just doesn’t show,” she said. “It’s uncomfortable for people when confronted with the reality that the restaurant they love, the place is extremely segregated and something has to be done.”

Kim Malek of Portland, Ore., ice cream company Salt & Straw recently opened her first Bay Area outpost on Fillmore Street. She said she noticed the racial gap in the San Francisco restaurant scene and, similar to the ROC ethos, agreed changes must start on the management level. As a result, Salt & Straw has implemented training classes that, in part, focus on race issues and promoting equality.

“I think a strong business can only exist with a strong community, and your business should reflect the community in a positive way,” Malek said. “You have to provide opportunities.”

The Bay Area ROC outpost launched in 2013 and currently represents thousands of workers in the Bay Area. Jayaraman said that by expanding the organization’s local footprint — through Alta CA, Colors and the business incubator — more attention can be drawn to the prevalence of implicit bias in one of the country’s largest restaurant industries.

“If you can’t get rid of that, you can train all the workers of the color in the world, but they will never get hired anywhere,” she said. “And then San Francisco will remain exactly as it is.”


http://www.sfchronicle.com/restaura...al-inequality-segregation-in-Bay-11075919.php




Again, no area voted for Hillary Clinton in a higher percentage than the Bay Area. Yet look at the racism and sexism here.
 
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