Now that Tech Crunch Disrupt SF 2013 is history, I’m going to make this quick observation: there were more African Americans there, including Startup Battlefield presentations by two groups that had black entrepreneurs in them, and one, Monsieur, which was entirely black.
That’s a good reason to cheer, because it means that the one factor not talked about when the question of why there aren’t more blacks in tech comes up (a question that I think is wrong to start with because there are a lot of blacks in tech, but they tend to work for large, established companies and in the IT sector), is that most of “us” historically don’t come to events that are mostly white or go to industries that are mostly white.
But that’s changing, and the evidence of that was at Tech Crunch Disrupt SF 2013.
Many younger African Americans care less about being in the minority at a tech event, and because there are more black like that, their ranks are going to increase. The overall problem was, at first, that many startups were established by friends – so if you were someone white, with an all-white friendship base, your company was going to be all white.
But today’s drive toward integration has changed that. It’s more likely that someone white will have a diverse friendship base, and a great example of what I’m talking about is New York’s current Democratic front-runner in that city’s Mayor’s Race, Bill De Blasio. De Blasio’s wife is black and his kids are wonderfully bi-racial, and say their dad’s a really cool white guy. And De Blasio’s wife once declared herself Lesbian years ago.
That’s America today, and it’s only a matter of time before it transforms tech to a point where that question doesn’t come up any more.
Stay tuned.