EthnicMajority

(CNN) Wayne Sutton has been asking venture-capital investors and Silicon Valley executives a question that's not often broached here in the epicenter of the technology industry:

"Why aren't there more black people in tech?"

The vast majority of top executives at the leading Silicon Valley tech firms are white men. Women and Asians have made some inroads, but African-American and Latino tech leaders remain a rarity. About 1% of entrepreneurs who received venture capital in the first half of last year are black, according to a study by research firm CB Insights.

This lack of diversity in Silicon Valley made headlines last month when influential tech blogger Michael Arrington, in an interview for CNN's upcoming documentary "Black in America: The New Promised Land: Silicon Valley," said, "I don't know a single black entrepreneur." Arrington later recanted the statement, saying he was caught off guard by the question, but the sensitive issue sparked a public dispute between the newly minted venture capitalist and CNN's Soledad O'Brien.

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(Washington Post) President Barack Obama acknowledged on Wednesday that black Americans have faced “enormous challenges” with unemployment under his watch, and appealed for their support in pursuing solutions that he can implement without help from Congress.

Appearing at a daylong White House summit of black business, community and political leaders, Obama said the current 15.1 percent unemployment rate among blacks is “way too high,” and that various other problems that plagued black communities before he took office, such as housing and education, have worsened.

“We know tough times,” the president said. “And what we also know, though, is that if we are persistent, if we are unified, and we remain hopeful, then we’ll get through these tough times and better days lie ahead.”

Full story…

(Washington Post) President Barack Obama acknowledged on Wednesday that black Americans have faced “enormous challenges” with unemployment under his watch, and appealed for their support in pursuing solutions that he can implement without help from Congress.

Appearing at a daylong White House summit of black business, community and political leaders, Obama said the current 15.1 percent unemployment rate among blacks is “way too high,” and that various other problems that plagued black communities before he took office, such as housing and education, have worsened.

“We know tough times,” the president said. “And what we also know, though, is that if we are persistent, if we are unified, and we remain hopeful, then we’ll get through these tough times and better days lie ahead.”

Full story…

(Washington Post) President Barack Obama acknowledged on Wednesday that black Americans have faced “enormous challenges” with unemployment under his watch, and appealed for their support in pursuing solutions that he can implement without help from Congress.

Appearing at a daylong White House summit of black business, community and political leaders, Obama said the current 15.1 percent unemployment rate among blacks is “way too high,” and that various other problems that plagued black communities before he took office, such as housing and education, have worsened.

“We know tough times,” the president said. “And what we also know, though, is that if we are persistent, if we are unified, and we remain hopeful, then we’ll get through these tough times and better days lie ahead.”

Full story…

(Washington Post) When Al Flowers was born, his grandmother brought him home in a shoe box and sat all night by the wood stove to keep him warm.

(SFGate) Justice Michael Douglas is the first African American on Nevada’s Supreme Court and served a stint as chief justice, a rotating position, earlier this year. Speaking recently in San Francisco, where he went to law school, Douglas recalled the welcome he received the first time he entered a Nevada courtroom as a lawyer.

It was in 1982 when the newly hired Legal Services attorney showed up in a three-piece suit to represent a low-income client who wasn’t in court. Douglas said the judge looked down, saw a black man sitting by himself at the counsel table, and assumed that the client hadn’t been able to find a lawyer so the case would be defaulted. Only when the opposing attorney spoke up did His Honor realize that Douglas, too, was a lawyer, he said.

“I was slapped in the face. …It brought me back to reality,” Douglas, now in his seventh year on his state’s high court, told law students and attorneys at a Golden Gate University panel on “Chief Justices of Color.”

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(CBS Chicago) They’ve been waiting for a long, long time, but on Tuesday, the first of hundreds of African American applicants finally got a fair shot at Chicago firefighters’ jobs.

They’ve been waiting 16 years since filing a lawsuit accusing the fire department of discrimination in its testing for the Fire Department.

CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine reports on their stories about “the lost years.”

The firefighter candidates might have lost some strength and agility since they took the written test in 1995 and maybe gained some weight, but what many haven’t lost is their childhood dream.

“I just thought this was something that touched me deeply going back into my childhood; watching all these beautiful greystones in the city die and watching them die at the hands of fires. So I always wanted to be a firefighter,” said Michael Taqee, who took the city’s firefighter test in 1995.

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(Washington Post)The big idea: How can companies stop spinning their wheels and make real progress toward diversity and inclusion?

(Boston Globe) With black unemployment reaching historic levels, banks laying off tens of thousands and law school graduates waiting tables, why aren't more African-Americans looking toward science, technology, engineering and math — the still-hiring careers known as STEM?

The answer turns out to be a complex equation of self-doubt, stereotypes, discouragement and economics — and sometimes just wrong perceptions of what math and science are all about.

(Huffington Post) The recent death of New York University law professor Derrick Bell, a tenacious black champion of "critical race theory," and a recent report that the Supreme Court may take up a new challenge to affirmative action on campus both mark the decline of racial "identity politics" and "diversity" strategies that preoccupied America before 9/11 and the current economic and political crisis.

Not even racism's raw eruptions against the first black President or its grinding ubiquity in the lives of countless non-whites (especially young black men) caused the crisis that's gripping this country. And not even the staunchest anti-racist activism, necessary though it surely is, will get us out of it.

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