September 5, 2012

Slate: "The Unbearable Whitemaleness of Apple's Executive Team"

Matthew Yglesias points out that the top 12 executives are all white men at Apple (which, in less than a decade and a half, has gone from down-and-out to the world's highest stock market valuation). He goes on to suggest how to begin fixing Apple's problem.

Thank God I sold all my Apple stock in 1999 and used the money to buy Hewlett-Packard stock because HP had appointed Carly Fiorina CEO. As we all know, white men cannot begin to grasp the diverse needs of women and people of color, so how can they sell them computers?

104 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Matt Yglesiases of the world simple can't go to bed worrying about such things, can they?

No. It's that they go to bed worrying about a topic for their next column and so this kind of stuff is what they come up with.

Pathetic, just pathetic.

bjdubbs said...

Maybe Matt might want to look closer to home.

From an article in 2008:
Barack Obama: 55

John McCain: 1

Bob Barr: 1

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2008/10/slate_votes.single.html

Anonymous said...

how could the white guys fix that problem?

Transgenderism? Transsexualism? Transracism? Transspeciesism? Transadiposism? Trans...oh to hell with it!

We are all gay!

IHTG said...

Hilarious comments as usual, Steve.

"Right. If Apple had more female leadership, its stock market valuation might rival HP's." :D

Anonymous said...

I think it should be the unbeaTable whiteness...

Apple has Arabs, Jews, Italians, and gays. What's not diverse?

Anonymous said...

Interestingly, Apple has produced a highly 'feminine' brand by tech company standards. This shows that empathy (which is just imagination, which is correlated with IQ) works assymetrically downwards.
Gilbert P.

Anonymous said...

Just from looking at them, the number of Scots-Irish might be....0?

Maya said...

That's awful! Not only are they proving themselves to be sexist pigs over there at Apple, but they are depriving themselves of the valuable feminine perspective.

The best way to fix all this is to hire ME! I could benefit Apple by:

1. Showing up for all the public events and forcing my ugly (but very distinctly female)mug into every photo

2. Showing up on time every day in proper attire (or not showing up, whichever is more comfortable for them)

3. Never embarrassing them in public by being caught with a live girl or a dead boy

4. Being generally friendly, pleasant and upbeat which could very well include home baked goods, on a regular basis.


You know, they are going to hire some woman, given enough public scolding and pressure. But instead of it being some big shot's daughter who's been indulged by the big shot her whole life, so she won't get the joke, it should be someone like ME. At least, I'd be genuinely grateful and accommodating. The only special perk I's ask for is that the tech mafia arrange foe Stanford to enroll and certify my children, even if they'll be retards. Especially if they'll be retards.
How's that for a cover letter?

DirkY said...

The CEO Tim Cook is openly gay, which officially counts as diversity.

Eddy Cue is quite swarthy, sort of looks Lebanese, but his last name is Irish. It is a varient of McCue or McHugh.

One thing to remember about Apple is that it isn't a bubble. They are sitting on more than 100 billion in cash and have a pretty low p/e. Jobs, Cook, and the rest are the best in the world.

Bill said...

Eddy Cue looks part Chinese.

Anonymous said...

If people start making a deal about it they can just starting coming out as gay.

Maya said...

"Transgenderism? Transsexualism? Transracism? Transspeciesism? Transadiposism? Trans...oh to hell with it!"

Oh, come on! You think they'd rather cut off their own testicles than allow someone like, well, ME onto the payroll? No, I believe that I'd be an a lot less painful and only a slightly more expensive option than multiple sex reassignment surgeries with the required lifetime post-op care. God, I'm not even asking for 6 figures, and I make great coffee! Plus, I'm an immigrant, very possibly multi-racial and have a medical disorder, so I'm pretty much disabled too! They won't be able to spin transsexualism as a disability. That's homophobic.

Anonymous said...

"That's because nobody has any idea what makes someone qualified to serve on a board of directors and nobody knows how to measure board of directors performance."

So, as anyone who is familiar with institutional design should know, directors should be people who have significant experience and connections, and serve as (among other things) a sounding board for the CEO.

Basically, you want to promote people from senior exec to CEO to board member. Suggesting that Apple should stick a woman at the top, just because of her sex, seems like the height of folly.

Anonymous said...

Steve Jobs was half A-Rab!

Anonymous said...

How about Samsung? or Nokia

peterike said...

The iPhone comes in black and white. Is that not diversity enough?

stari_momak said...

"Thank God I sold all my Apple stock in 1999 and used it to buy Hewlett-Packard stock when HP appointed Carly Fiorina CEO. Diversity is our strength!
"

And I bought Palm!

Rev. James Cost said...

No mention of the fact that at least a third of those executives look 'unbearably' (or hideously to quote Gregg Dyke) 'chosen'. Same with that Yglesias fellow.

Anonymous said...

Maybe he should self-critique since he is 100% white his own self. How come it's usually the ones who have never worked a real job who say this !@#$. No, journalism doesn't count.

Steve Sailer said...

"And I bought Palm!"

In 1998, I wrote a spec script for the HBO comedy "Arliss" about a sports agent. In it, Arliss is trying to get his client, a quarterback, a deal endorsing the new Palm Pilot hybrid PDA/cell phone. It didn't exist yet, but I figured it was a sure thing within a year or two. Little did I know how badly Palm would mess up.

Ex Submarine Officer said...

Has anyone analyzed the connection between the rise of startups in our culture with the appearance of affirmative action?

The notion that small startups are the best opportunity for the most industrious and talented seems to have followed closely on the heels of the spread of affirmative action, which is an affliction of large organizations.

Anonymous said...

White males rule! Woohoo!

I need to get me some of that white male privilege myself, as in getting a job that pays more than minimum wage with health insurance.

Anonymous said...

No UNBEARABLE JEWISHNESS OF GOLDMAN SACHS?

Anonymous said...

Apple has Arabs, Jews, Italians, and gays. What's not diverse?

The founder and chief architect of Apple, Steve Jobs, had an arab muslim father..

Jobs looked like he could pass for an ethnic Pashtun or Kurd.

RKU said...

Strangely enough, Apple is located in Silicon Valley, which is less than 30% white European, but I don't think I've ever read a single local complaint about its lack of executive "diversity."

Maybe that gives Yglesias a really great professional opportunity. He could move out there and start complaining about Apple day and night, thereby completely occupying that vacant environmental/media niche...

Anonymous said...

How about the unbearable yellowness of Apple's arch competitor Samsung's executive team?

jwbs said...

I own two Apple computers, and one IBM clone. I switched to Apple a year ago because I was tired of my IBM clones dying after a year or two. I'll pay more for quality.

I suspect most companies pay more for quality employees.

It would be nice for a nation to demand the same threshold for immigrants.

Anonymous said...

"The founder and chief architect of Apple, Steve Jobs, had an arab muslim father.."



"Steve Jobs was half A-Rab!"

Arabs don't count as "diverse" unless they are Muslim. Christian Arabs (cf Ralph Nader, the Maloofs, etc) don't count.Jobs was raised Lutheran and converted to Zen Buddhism (the ultimate SWPL religion). Jobs doesn't count; he was just a plain old White guy.

Syon

Anonymous said...

Apple has produced a highly 'feminine' brand by tech company standards.

Apple's not feminine; they're high modernist. It's just that all the other tech companies consider design to be telling manufacturing what shade of biege to use for the case.

And, yes, the absurdity of Matt Yglesias opining on what makes a good board of directors for what has been for the last ten years the most successful company on the planet is not lost on me.

Soran said...

As we all know, white men cannot begin to grasp the diverse needs of women and nonwhites, so how can they sell them computers?

- Or for that matter, have the wisdom of a Latina to design new technologies that might be of use to anyone.

Anonymous said...

This line is just priceless: "That's because nobody has any idea what makes someone qualified to serve on a board of directors and nobody knows how to measure board of directors performance."

"nobody has any idea?" Speak for yourself, Matthew. YOU have no idea because you've never held a job besides telling people on the Internet what you think about politics. But trust me, there are plenty of people with real jobs whose jobs actually depend on their company having a competent board of directors.

Anonymous said...

Levantines are the best business people in the World, the CEO of Renault-Nissan is the Christian Lebanese Carlos Ghosn.

Anonymous said...

Maybe Apple's bosses need to be beaten on the head with vibrancy, like Matt was.

Drunk Idiot said...

It's pretty funny that after a summer full of iSteve posts that dared to notice how left wing diversity mongers like @mattyglesias never seem to get exorcised over their favorite trendy Silicon Valley firms' (and, in particular, Apple's) distinct lack of diversity, Yglesias writes a piece criticizing Apple's lack of diversity.

Slate's "Godawful Whitemaleness" headline (did Yglesias write the headline himself?) just makes it that much funnier.

It's almost like somebody at Slate is doing a parody of ... well, Slate, Yglesias and their ilk.

Anonymous said...

I'm guessing he would find a similar demographic executive background at Intel, Microsoft, Google, Cisco, and Oracle as well. How on Earth have those companies achieved such great success without black and Hispanic executives, it's certainly a mystery.

kudzu bob said...

In 1998, I wrote a spec script

Somebody who knows somebody who knows Mike Judge needs to show him your work.

Anonymous said...

The bedrock of Apple success, besides its industrial design, hardware which can some what can be replicated is teh OS borrowed from FreeBSD. Apple cannot claim complete ingenuity in its products. It may appeal to most people, but Linux on IBM or Apple platform rocks far better.

Thanks to FreeBSD based OS Apple is a success, a claim Steve Jobs accepted that Apple is a Software company.

stari_momak said...

"Jobs doesn't count; he was just a plain old White guy."

I have no doubt that Jobs got much of his smarts from his academic biological mother and father. But having read excerpts of his biography, it seems to me that a lot of Apple comes from the tradition of working-class tinkering that characterized majority white America, and Jobs father.

Reading a book about the origins of mountain biking, I was struck between the similarities between the dudes up in Marin who were improvising, making homemade this and that, riding, and working toward a new form of bike, and what I've read about the 'Homebrew Computer Club', who were working less than 100 miles to the south.

Anonymous said...

I don't know what to think about this.

On one hand, Apple products are very bad in terms of value for money and they only make money by ripping off old people and selling image to hipsters.

On the other hand, their goal isn't to make good products, their goal is to make money. And they make money.

So I guess this shows that white males are good at business but not very ethical?

jwbs said...

Stari,

It is interesting that so much innovation was confined to a geographic area.

At the turn of the century, innovation was occurring in the midwest and eastern seaboard.

Probably more due to wealth and resources, but even 20 years ago, people could change the world working in their garage.

Anonymous said...

How about Samsung? or Nokia

Ive just checked the Samsung board. They are all Korean and thus the Samsung board is already 100% diverse, nothing to worry about there (though they are all men).

Nokia's board is all white (different nationalities) though it does include some women so I suppose they can just about claim a measure of diversity.

We should note that Nokia is in trouble and Samsung isnt.

Matthew said...

"Just from looking at them, the number of Scots-Irish might be....0?"

Tim Cook is a gay man from Alabama who attended Auburn University. There's a good chance he's at least partly Scots-Irish. How well-represented are Southerners in Fortune 500 management positions? Has anyone ever bothered to count, or do Southerners not matter?

Other Apple execs are surnamed Mansfield, Sewell, Browett, Forstall, Ive, Cue (as in McCue) and Williams. Could very well be that as many as half of the top execs are at least partly Scots-Irish. Not likely, but possible.

"No mention of the fact that at least a third of those executives look 'unbearably' (or hideously to quote Gregg Dyke) 'chosen'."

Actually only maybe two do: Peter Oppenheimer and Philip Schiller are the only two that strike me as Jewish names, and even those two don't look strikingly Jewish.

Perhaps that's why Yglesias dared to raise the issue: not only does Apple dare to have an all-white, male executive team - unlike Google or Microsoft or Facebook (or Slate) it bothers to succeed without a lot of Jews.

Anonymous said...

BTW, the latest Woodward book is leaking. It's not a very flattering portrait of Obama, and pretty much tracks the opinion around here that Obama is delusional about his abilities. The law school classroom gasbag turns out to be an empty suit; who'd a thunk it?

http://tinyurl.com/9l3ah4p

"John, I've got great confidence in my ability to sway the American people," Boehner quotes the president as having told him.

But after the breakthrough agreement fell apart, Boehner's "Plan B" would ultimately exclude the president from most of the key negotiations. The president was "voted off the island," in Woodward's phrase, even by members of his own party, as congressional leaders patched together an eleventh hour framework to avoid default.

Anonymous said...

Four more years. Clinton's DNC speech seems to have fired up the reduced number there.

Of course, he seems to have gotten better at lying.

Anonymous said...

I have no doubt that Jobs got much of his smarts from his academic biological mother and father. But having read excerpts of his biography, it seems to me that a lot of Apple comes from the tradition of working-class tinkering that characterized majority white America, and Jobs father.

Woz (Steve Wozniak) was the tinkerer. He was literally the one tinkering in Jobs' garage while Jobs was thinking about selling the stuff. This salesmanship presumably came from Jobs' biological Levantine father. His father runs a casino today:

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/10/steve-jobs-estranged-biological-father-declines-comment-on-his-death/1

DirkY said...

RKU, non-Hispanic whites are 38.4% of Santa Clara County, not 30%. Asians are exactly 30%, non Hispanic blacks are 2.4%, and the rest are mixed race and/or Hispanic. If you ad in "white white" Hispanics like MY then you're probably around 40% white.

What is interesting about California maps by race is that if you look at color census maps, 98% of the coastline is heavily white, as are most of the suburban inland areas. While a minority in California, they have both a large majority of land and an even larger majority of the nicest land. Hispanics are crowded into small areas geographically in the coastal cities, mostly in housing they don't own.

DirkY said...

It is true that apple products are better made and more durable than windows products, but high end windows pcs are also very durable. The best example is probably IBM thinkpads. It is not like apple makes the parts or puts them together, they use the same big Asian suppliers anyone else can. The problem for the windows pc makers is they can't resist going downmarket and using cheap parts. Sony used to mean quality and commanded a premium, now they license their name to any shady Chinese manufacturer that pays their price.

Dell has gone downhill the worst, even expensive dells are crappy. With HP their expensive business line of printers workstations and monitors are very solid. And NEC products are uniformly expensive and high quality, with little spent on chasing consumer markets.

Lizard Power said...

But note, none of this does any good for the 99.99% of White men or for Whites in general.

Anonymous said...

Steve Jobs was a liberal and so are all the executives he chose.

Apple like Google and Microsoft is an overwhelmingly liberal company. Little diversity in ideology.


Anonymous said...

Perhaps that's why Yglesias dared to raise the issue: not only does Apple dare to have an all-white, male executive team - unlike Google or Microsoft or Facebook (or Slate) it bothers to succeed without a lot of Jews.

Interesting angle. Google's executive team appears to be dominated by Jews and Indians. Microsoft and Facebook have a good deal of Jews and Indians.

Anonymous said...

"Thank God I sold all my Apple stock in 1999 and used it to buy Hewlett-Packard stock when HP appointed Carly Fiorina CEO." - I... sorry man.

Mr. Anon said...

The unbearable Yglesiasness of Matt Yglesias.

Anonymous said...

I'm a well versed political online opinion junkie (i know all the big players). I've payed attention to Ygelsias for awhile now (via bh.tv, etc.). Sailer praises him as smart but everytime I hear or read him I am not impressed. He is intelligent but he uses it in the worst way. Most of his work comes down to social status game (i.e. look how PC I am, I went to Harvard). He annoys me. His demeanor is condescing. He spends alot of time as far as I can tell calling other people racist. I've been waiting to see his "good" stuff but haven't found anything good of his yet.

Anonymous said...

Actually, Facebook is mostly un-Jewish at the highest levels. You've got Mark, Sheryl and I'm not sure about Ebersman(he could be Jewish or German, it's a 50/50).
But the VP for engineering, which is more important in the Valley than the CFO, is a WASP. The same is true for most other positions.

Mark only replaced his last COO, who was a WASP, because he tried to stab Mark in the back and take over the company. Had he done his job, you'd basically have Mark at the helm and rest of 'em would've been WASPs.

Here's Facebook's current mangement team.
Notice the total whiteness.

http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-silicon-valley-diversity-problem-2012-8

Microsoft is mostly an all-white affair at the higher ends too.

I read somewhere that about 30-35 % of all employees in the Valley are Asian, but Asians aren't complaininers.

The people who raise this issue are white libs like Yglesias or race-baiting diversitymongers like Soledad O'Brien at CNN(who did an entire CNN special on 'Silicon Valley and Diversity'.

Part of the reason why you don't see too many Asians at the highest level, I think, is because many of them create their own companies(which they then stack with Asians). Many of those companies do well, but most are also bought off at some point.

Another is that 75 % of all Asians in the U.S. are foreign-born, and I'd guess the number is even higher for the Valley, so if you want to be at the top, you gotta be a founding member(most of the time) or come early on.

The people who start the biggest Valley companies are native-born, they tend to be young, white male college dropouts and they tend to self-select for other white men.

Although the newer companies are more diverse as you have more minorities who are native born(and by minorities I mean basically Asians and the odd high-performing Iranian). This is especially true in NYC, which actually has the most Asians per-capita of all major cities, a lot of Jews etc.

The NYC startup scene is more diverse and more mixed.

Yet you still have companies like Asana, the company of Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein, two of the earliest Facebook employees(when the company was actually more Jewish).

Dustin is actually richer than Mark because he got more stock, and Justin is a mathematical genious.
Probably one of the smartest guys in the tech industry, and that's saying a lot.

Here's their employee page:

http://asana.com/team

Notice a pattern?
Both Mark and they are young, very bright Jews.

Yet they are much more likely to self-segregate among whites(or at least advocate diversity) than their more leftist parents.

As a Jew, it's kind of interesting. I notice the same pattern for the younger kids I meet, especially the more educated. Their friends are very diverse, but if you start looking into the highest echelons, it becomes very white with Asians dotted around.

Or just take the recent 'Girls whiteness' controversy. It's the same thing.

Anonymous said...

In the past you (mr. sailer) have given props to Ygelsias (that's fine I respect it from a strategic POV wanting to be part of the cool wonk club) but in case you really think he's a writer that needs to be read I heartily disagree. What you highlight above seems to be the average Ygelsias article to me and not some abberation. Ygelsias is the epitome of the obnoxious, condescing social climber using his uber PC bullshit as a medallion of his rigteousness, etc.

DR said...

Maybe Matt Yglessias could query those nice diverse young men that mugged him about how to inject some "soul flava" into the iPad.

jody said...

yeah, they're not very jewish. 1 or 2 guys, maybe a few are part jewish. you can't just go by people's last names in the US anymore, those days were over decades ago. i have an english name but i'm more german than english.

tim cook made 378 million dollars in 2011 which is obscene, but the liberals didn't single him out for ridicule. i thought "nobody needs that much money."

sometimes i ask liberals how it's possible for companies in japan and south korea to produce anything of value, since their staff is 100% east asian, and even worse, the executive staff is 100% men.

Kylie said...

"Maybe Matt Yglessias could query those nice diverse young men that mugged him about how to inject some 'soul flava' into the iPad."

They'd probably do a better job at that than they did at knocking some sense into him.

Drunk Idiot said...

Wrote "Slate's 'Godawful Whitemaleness headline'" when in fact the headline was "the Unbearable Whitemaleness."

Got something wrong in comments section yesterday too.

Getting sloppy. Maybe need to quit trying to read & comment while "multitasking" ... leave the multitasking to the laydeez.

Anonymous said...

Jobs looked like he could pass for an ethnic Pashtun or Kurd.

Maybe in the eyes of Americans who seen none in person he could...

RKU said...

DirkY: RKU, non-Hispanic whites are 38.4% of Santa Clara County, not 30%.

Actually, I had checked the numbers before posting. According to the Census website Santa Clara County was 34.8% non-Hispanic white in 2011. However, it's very likely there's a significant undercount of Hispanic (and other) illegals, so that figure should probably be reduced by a point or two. Furthermore, "non-Hispanic whites" includes all sorts of non-European Caucasians such as Iranians, Afghans, Armenians, other Middle Easterners, etc., whose numbers are quite sizable in Silicon Valley, and none of these groups are the "white Europeans" I was describing.

So I stand by my claim that Silicon Valley is almost certainly less than 30% "white European"...

Anonymous said...

Actually, Facebook is mostly un-Jewish at the highest levels.

Executive team members usually aren't fungible. Steve Jobs was just one guy out of 12 on the executive team but presumably he had much more than just 1/12 of the team's presence and influence.

stari_momak said...

Does plain old 'Senior VP' Mansfield look like the heavy set dude frats always have around to liven up parties or what?

jody said...

what's strange to me, other than apple's ludicrous market capitalization which is nothing but a stock bubble, is that they barely make more money than microsoft, and they have a much lower margin.

in 2011, apple had 108 billion in revenue and 25 billion in profit. microsoft had 69 billion in revenue and 23 billion in profit. apple's margin is 23% and microsoft's margin is 33%.

so how can a company that only made 2 billion dollars more than another company be worth 2.5 times as much. it's not. it's just whatever people bid the stock price up to.

how apple can be worth more 1.5 to 2.5 times more than the big oil companies, i'll never get that. they all make more money than apple.

SFG said...

Maybe Apple is less Indian/Jewish because, being focused on design rather than new software algorithms like Google, it has less need for hardcore math brainiacs and more for 'normal' people who can sell to the masses?

Does anyone with actual knowledge of the tech industry know if this idea makes any sense?

Aaron B. said...

"Ygelsias is the epitome of the obnoxious, condescing social climber using his uber PC bullshit as a medallion of his rigteousness, etc."

I thought that's why Steve posts him: he's such a perfect example of the way PC anti-racism is really about holier-than-though competition among elites.

Quoting someone doesn't mean you think he's right or has anything useful to say. Often the opposite.

PropagandistHacker said...

I think that what is happening is that the pseudoLeft anti-white subculture has become so widespread that those people who parroting its tenets/laws/unwritten proverbs and vocabulary (as we see above here) have in essence so FLOODED the propaganda-sphere with it that many people can easily see it now. The anti-white pseudoLeft vocabulary and dogma has become so ingrained into the brains of those who were indoctrinated into it when young that this set of phrases has become ubiquitous and so commonplace that it has lost its power. PseudoLeft anti-white dogma has therefore 'jumped the shark,' becoming so obvious that it can no longer invoke shame and fear in whites. So now many people are not afraid of it any longer.

eah said...

What next?! Soon he might notice that a disproportionate number of bankers are Jews.

Anonymous said...

Anon said - Part of the reason why you don't see too many Asians at the highest level, I think, is because many of them create their own companies(which they then stack with Asians). Many of those companies do well, but most are also bought off at some point.

I wonder if they set up their own businesses not so much because they have some unique product but because, for asian men, having your own business is the model.

Steiner said...

Regarding a comment from Matthew on the possibly Jewish component of Apple's executive:

"Actually only maybe two do: Peter Oppenheimer and Philip Schiller are the only two that strike me as Jewish names, and even those two don't look strikingly Jewish."

Those are both common German surnames (as is Jobs, although less so), Oppenheimer is often German-Jewish. It is worth noting how, even here in the far corners of the discourse on race and culture, participation by America's largest ethnic component is understated.

Jobs himself had a German mother, and was raised in a German-American household where, as is so often the case, hands-on ability was encouraged, alongside academic achievement.

Anonymous said...

so how can a company that only made 2 billion dollars more than another company be worth 2.5 times as much. it's not. it's just whatever people bid the stock price up to.

Hedge funds have a lot of money to bid, and they can borrow even more money from banks to bid. And many mutual funds and other smaller funds and traders just follow what bigger funds do.

"Apple Inc (AAPL) Is Still A Hedge Fund Favorite"

http://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/apple-inc-aapl-is-still-a-hedge-fund-favorite-17512/

Anonymous said...

Te article actually mentions something like "you do need to find some specific space where you say, "guys we need to pick more women."

Steve is right about HP. Who wants to bet Yahoo will dissolve into insignificance faster?

Anonymous said...

The top 16 people at Microsoft:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/exec/slt.aspx

Anonymous said...

Look at the biggest names in Silicon Valley news of the past decade: Ashkenazi Jews and Steve Jobs. All genetically half non-european.

Interesting coincidence or an example of Hybrid Vigor?

ATBOTL said...

How 'bout an article entitled "The Unbearable Jewishness of Hollywood Executives?"

Anthony said...

Apple succeeds without many Jews in the executive team because they're not on Broadway.

Severn said...

According to the Census website Santa Clara County was 34.8% non-Hispanic white in 2011. However, it's very likely there's a significant undercount of Hispanic (and other) illegals, so that figure should probably be reduced by a point or two. Furthermore, "non-Hispanic whites" includes all sorts of non-European Caucasians such as Iranians, Afghans, Armenians, other Middle Easterners, etc., whose numbers are quite sizable in Silicon Valley, and none of these groups are the "white Europeans" I was describing.


So I stand by my claim that Silicon Valley is almost certainly less than 30% "white European"...



"Silicon Vally" does not mean "the population of Santa Clara County".

That's like thinking that "Wall Street" is populated by a representative cross section of the population of NYC. Since NYC is something like half black or Hispanic, surely Wall Street must be too?

Your inability to think logically remains a mystery to me, Ron.

Anonymous said...

The top 16 people at Microsoft:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/exec/slt.aspx


Makes a liar out of the poster (obviously an indian) who claimed they were all Jews and Indians.

Of the 16 only 2 are non-whites. A Chinese and an Indian.

Of the 14 whites I am guessing at least 4 are Jewish, counting the head honcho Ballmer who is half Jewish.


Anonymous said...

"How 'bout an article entitled "The Unbearable Jewishness of Hollywood Executives?"


As noted previously, intra-White diversity does not count. Whites are a monolith; only non-Whites count as diverse.

Anonymous said...

Look at the biggest names in Silicon Valley news of the past decade: Ashkenazi Jews and Steve Jobs. All genetically half non-european.

Silicon Valley was originally founded and run by self-effacing WASP farmers from the Midwest:

http://www.forbes.com/asap/1997/0825/102.html

Back then these WASPs in Silicon Valley were pioneering revolutionary technologies.

Silicon Valley more recently has been much less pioneering in technology.

Much less well known people like Elon Musk, originally from South Africa, and Sebastian Thrun, originally from Germany, have actually been more pioneering technologically than "the biggest names in Silicon Valley news of the past decade" such as Jobs and Zuckerberg.

Anonymous said...

By the way, Steve Jobs widow Laurene had a prominent seat at the Democratic Convention yesterday. She sat with Chelsea Clinton and watched admiringly as Bill Clinton delivered his rousing speech.

Remember that Clinton's Vice President Al Gore was a friend of Jobs and is a Board member at Apple.

How do you all explain why Silicon Valley is so overwhelmingly Democrat?

Anonymous said...

"Maybe Matt Yglessias could query those nice diverse young men that mugged him about how to inject some "soul flava" into the iPad."

This quote reminds me of the Simpson´s episode where Homer´s brother asks Homer to design a car. Actually believing that the working man deep down is a genius and the MBA boardroom types are a bunch of shmucks...

But in all honestly,, the fact that this is an actual discussion let alone mainstreem news shows a lot of what´s wrong with america.

Anonymous said...

Also, with women receiving 60% of diplomas, they can´t be considered disadvantaged/minority...its plain ridiculous.

Anonymous said...

Silicon Valley more recently has been much less pioneering in technology.

I guess you have yet to hear of the post-PC revolution, of smart phones and tablets, of apps and the cloud?

Much less well known people like Elon Musk, originally from South Africa

Did you know that he left South Africa because he could not stomach its white apartheid? I wonder if Elon Musk is also an ashkenazi jew, since the name Elon is very Israeli and his anti-apartheid sentiments were far more common among jewish south africans than Boers or Anglos.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous:" I wonder if Elon Musk is also an ashkenazi jew, since the name Elon is very Israeli and his anti-apartheid sentiments were far more common among jewish south africans than Boers or Anglos."

WIKIPEDIA does not say if he is or is not Jewish:




"Musk was born and raised in Pretoria, South Africa, the son of a Canadian mother, Maye (née Haldeman), and a South African father, Errol Musk.[6][7] His mother's heritage include Pennsylvania Dutch;[8] his maternal grandfather was from Minnesota, and had moved to Saskatchewan, where Musk's mother was born. His father is an engineer and his mother is an author, nutritionist and model,[9] appearing on the cover of New York Magazine in 2011 and Time Magazine in 2010"

Aaron B. said...

"How do you all explain why Silicon Valley is so overwhelmingly Democrat?"

Probably for some of the same reasons that Hollywood is: successful people want to believe that anyone could have done what they did. People want to believe that their success comes from hard work and virtue, not an accident of birth. And to the extent that they can't convince themselves of that, there's white guilt over the advantages they had.

Also, computer geeks tend to lean heavily libertarian. In 1996, when the Internet was just starting to take off but was still mainly the province of people geeky enough to figure out what AT commands to send to their modem to get a good connection, I remember some web site taking a poll where the libertarian candidate for president actually got the most votes. In the real world, he probably got 1% or less, but online he won.

Now, some libertarian types lean more Republican and some lean more Democrat, depending on whether they care more about abortion and drugs or taxes and regulations. But when you're talking specifically about the younger ones who might
be willing to move out to Silicon Valley to work for a startup, you're going to get more of the former type. Hence Democrats.

Anonymous said...

"Also, with women receiving 60% of diplomas, they can´t be considered disadvantaged/minority...its plain ridiculous. "

diploma?
They are disadvantaged in that these numbers don't translate into 60% at the highest positions(and why not more?) and you better remember the summer of Summers.

Anonymous said...

successful people want to believe that anyone could have done what they did. People want to believe that their success comes from hard work and virtue, not an accident of birth

That is in stark contrast to the racists who believe that success is due to genes. Is it not?

In other words you are saying that successful people are not racists. But, but, aren't you a HBDer?

Anonymous said...

I guess you have yet to hear of the post-PC revolution, of smart phones and tablets, of apps and the cloud?

None of that holds a candle to Silicon Valley's past, and contemporary major players in Silicon Valley know this:

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2011/09/12/peter-thiel-on-how-to-solve-40-years-of-stagnation-in-silicon-valley/

Did you know that he left South Africa because he could not stomach its white apartheid? I wonder if Elon Musk is also an ashkenazi jew, since the name Elon is very Israeli and his anti-apartheid sentiments were far more common among jewish south africans than Boers or Anglos.

I don't think that's actually why he left South Africa in high school. Though playing to mainstream media by saying that certainly is better PR than saying that you left for more pragmatic or cynical reasons.

South Africa is influenced by Boer Calvinist culture which is heavily Bible based. Strange Biblical names aren't unusual in this kind of culture. In parts of the US influenced by a similar Bible based Protestant culture, you see the same thing.

Matthew said...

"what's strange to me, other than apple's ludicrous market capitalization which is nothing but a stock bubble, is that they barely make more money than microsoft, and they have a much lower margin."

Hardware generally has lower margins. Much of Apple's revenue is from hardware, though in Apple's case it's not even possible to separate the software revenue from the hardware revenue.

Matthew said...

Yglesias and other Lefties who complain about the underrepresentation of women and NAMs in business, etc., don't really care about remedying the problem, aside from mandating the occasional AA hire.

What they're really doing is trying to encourage NAMs and (especially) white women to feel aggrieved at their "oppressors" - white (gentile) men. It's just a way of stirring up contention among one dominant group, white gentiles, to help another. It's a way to destroy traditional American culture.

Are women really better off since they started doing this shit? Nope.

Anonymous said...

I kinda wish the old guy was still around to send a terse, heartless e-mail back at Matty (that way they'd both win)

names said...

South Africa is influenced by Boer Calvinist culture which is heavily Bible based. Strange Biblical names aren't unusual in this kind of culture. In parts of the US influenced by a similar Bible based Protestant culture, you see the same thing."

Old Testatment names have been common among Protestants since the early 1600s because they wanted to avoid "saints" names required for Catholics to be baptized. Fundamentalist Protestants (Puritans in New England) also took virtus as names: Faith, Hope, Charity, Prudence. Not sure where "Cotton" as in Cotton Mather came from though.
The name "Sarah", until it became universal in the 50s or 60s, was exclusively Protestant or Jewish. You would never find an Irish Catholic named Sarah until, maybe, the 60s.

Matthew said...

I am done with these people. I didn't really pay attention to it on the first read, but Yglesias is explicitly supporting the EU law that would require private corporations to appoint boards that are at least 40% female. He wants government mandated remedies for disparity.

OK. He can have them.

And that will include government mandated remedies for Jews and Asians doing better than non-Jewish whites. No more than one board member or executive who is Asian or Jewish. No more than 2% and 5% of students at Ivy League schools who are Jewish or Asian, respectively. And Supreme Court members? Throw Breyer, Kagan and Ginsburg out on their asses.

The real goal of these people spewing about "disparity" is to turn people against each other - blacks and Hispanics against whites, women against their husbands and boyfriends, ad nauseum.

And the 35% of Forbes 400 members who are Jewish? Take every last damn dime from them 'til they're only 2% of the group. Create a Jew tax and a Hindoo tax to equalize wealth and success in this country. This is what Matt Ygelasias and George Soros and Rahm Emanuel and Elena Kagan want - and they can have it, good and hard.

I will no longer ignore this issue when the conversation comes up. When people bitch about disparity, I will ask why it's wrong when whites do better than blacks and men do better than women, but fine when Asians and Jews do better than non-Jewish whites.

Anonymous said...

"banking..."

Citigroup executive team.

http://www.citigroup.com/citi/about/our_leaders.html

ben tillman said...

Just from looking at them, the number of Scots-Irish might be....0?

My goodness. Schiller looks very Jewish.

ben tillman said...

Maya said...

The best way to fix all this is to hire ME! I could benefit Apple by:

***

4. Being generally friendly, pleasant and upbeat which could very well include home baked goods, on a regular basis.


I can see that. Your internet persona is likable.

ben tillman said...

And that will include government mandated remedies for Jews and Asians doing better than non-Jewish whites. No more than one board member or executive who is Asian or Jewish. No more than 2% and 5% of students at Ivy League schools who are Jewish or Asian, respectively. And Supreme Court members? Throw Breyer, Kagan and Ginsburg out on their asses.

You know the woman who was the subject of our two minutes of hate a few days ago? Kathleen Parker? She actually wrote a column complaining about the lack of diversity on a Supreme Court with 3+ Jews and 5+ Catholics.

ben tillman said...

Silicon Valley was originally founded and run by self-effacing WASP farmers from the Midwest:

http://www.forbes.com/asap/1997/0825/102.html

Back then these WASPs in Silicon Valley were pioneering revolutionary technologies.

Silicon Valley more recently has been much less pioneering in technology.

Much less well known people like Elon Musk, originally from South Africa, and Sebastian Thrun, originally from Germany, have actually been more pioneering technologically than "the biggest names in Silicon Valley news of the past decade" such as Jobs and Zuckerberg.


The promotion of politics exterminates apolitical genes in the population.

The promotion of frontiers gives apolitical genes a route to survival.

ben tillman said...

successful people want to believe that anyone could have done what they did. People want to believe that their success comes from hard work and virtue, not an accident of birth

I've never seen any evidence of this. Smart people know they are smart because of their genes.

Moreover, even hypothetically the argument makes no sense. The ability to work hard and be virtuous must come from somewhere. No smart peron believes in free will.

A person's decisionmaking algorithm can't arise ab nihilo. Either it's inborn, or it's imposed by something after birth. Or it's a combination. Can this possibly be disputed?

Mr. Anon said...

"ben tillman said...

Much less well known people like Elon Musk, originally from South Africa, and Sebastian Thrun, originally from Germany, have actually been more pioneering technologically than "the biggest names in Silicon Valley news of the past decade" such as Jobs and Zuckerberg."

Indeed. Musk has bent his energies and a considerable part of his fortune, to making practical, efficient, and (relatively) low-cost rockets for space launch and electric cars - far more significant than Facebook.

Maya said...

"What they're really doing is trying to encourage NAMs and (especially) white women to feel aggrieved at their "oppressors" - white (gentile) men. It's just a way of stirring up contention among one dominant group, white gentiles, to help another. It's a way to destroy traditional American culture.

Are women really better off since they started doing this shit? Nope."

Well... women aren't really a one big clubs that plots together every other Thursday. Here's how I see it:

Women who are high quality people only ever wanted equality before the law, both because they thought it would benefit society as a whole and because they wanted a fair chance to self-actualize to their fullest potential. Today, they generally feel embarrassed and handicapped by the exploits of what passes for modern feminism, but they count on the ability of the people they respect to judge them on their individual merits. I think a lot of them manage to arrange their lives and development to their satisfaction, despite their frustration with the modern political climate. But then again, a lot of them managed to arrange for satisfactory fulfilling lives in previous political climates as well.

The women who are easily indoctrinated with (questionably) flattering crap and are able to enjoy sincere moral superiority from a fake victim status are either damaged in some way, or, more likely, mediocre in talents and intelligence. From what I can tell, they are REALLY frustrated right now. They are stuck in boring, stressful jobs and have the frustrations of the mediocre men directed at them. They also don't seem to understand how and why they end up in their current situation. That must suck. But then again, they used to be completely dependent on and controlled by mediocre men and thus susceptible to all kinds of stupid misfortunes. Who knows which is worse? Hey, at least, those of them who are lesbians or autistic are probably a lot more comfortable now.

Lastly, we have the intelligent sociopaths of the female sex. This must be the golden era for them, as they've been given a go ahead to rape and pillage for personal gain, which is all that can make these types of people happy anyway.

So, even if the relatively recent shifts in culture haven't produced a large net gain in women's well being, I'm not convinced that they produced any sort of a net loss.

In conclusion: 1. Laws that put limits on the rights of a whole gender are stupid. 2. Laws that are based on presumed victimhood are stupid. 3. Stupid laws hurt the masses, but those with well functioning heads and stable tempers will (almost) always find a way to not be screwed up by stupidity. 4. Evil will always find a way to benefit from any situation, especially a stupid situation.

And the world keeps going round, and it's still so beautiful in so many ways. Time to try to work off these 3 cups of espresso which were supposed to make me professionally productive, but instead are causing me to tweak. Excuse this stimulant induced message. I'm gonna go for a run, force a deep tissue massage on my husband and mash bananas for banana bread. And i wish you the same, dear sir.

Cheers!

Anonymous said...

Matthew:"And that will include government mandated remedies for Jews and Asians doing better than non-Jewish whites. No more than one board member or executive who is Asian or Jewish. No more than 2% and 5% of students at Ivy League schools who are Jewish or Asian, respectively. And Supreme Court members? Throw Breyer, Kagan and Ginsburg out on their asses."


For that kind of policy to actually work, you would need to split up the white monolith into separate groups: Italians, Germans, Poles, Greeks, etc. It would swiftly become unworkable.

"The real goal of these people spewing about "disparity" is to turn people against each other - blacks and Hispanics against whites, women against their husbands and boyfriends, ad nauseum."

Women and men do not turn on each other; too much fraternizing with the enemy.

"And the 35% of Forbes 400 members who are Jewish? Take every last damn dime from them 'til they're only 2% of the group. Create a Jew tax and a Hindoo tax to equalize wealth and success in this country. This is what Matt Ygelasias and George Soros and Rahm Emanuel and Elena Kagan want - and they can have it, good and hard."

Again, this would only work if quotas were applied to all White groups. Americans of WASP background are over-represented at the top relative to their numbers. Would you be willing to see them reduced in number?

"I will no longer ignore this issue when the conversation comes up. When people bitch about disparity, I will ask why it's wrong when whites do better than blacks and men do better than women, but fine when Asians and Jews do better than non-Jewish whites."

Asians are non-White; therefore, nobody cares if they do better than Whites. As for Ashkenazi Jews, nobody cares if one group of Whites does better than another group of Whites. Does anybody care that WASPS do better than Portuguese Americans?

Anonymous said...

The name "Sarah", until it became universal in the 50s or 60s, was exclusively Protestant or Jewish. You would never find an Irish Catholic named Sarah until, maybe, the 60s.

Not surprisingly, there is no St. Sarah, at least not one recognized by the Church of Rome.