Lack of diversity in Silicon Valley
But it’s not what you think. Really.
“This is so not ‘The Real World.’ It’s so not ‘Big Brother,’ ” O’Brien said of “The New Promised Land — Silicon Valley.” “There are no hot tubs and booze and arguments. All they did was work from dawn to late at night. For fun, they went to get some yogurt.”
“The New Promised Land” is the fourth installment of O’Brien’s compelling “Black in America” documentary series, and though it may contain a structure that loosely follows that of a reality show, it sets its sights on a higher cause: the glaring lack of diversity in the tech industry.
According to statistics cited by the documentary, less than one percent of all venture capital money went to digital startups with African-American founders in 2010. The digital boom, O’Brien says, mainly belongs to “the white male who dropped out of Stanford with a good idea.”
“The New Promised Land” chronicles the efforts of the NewME Accelerator — a groundbreaking program founded by North Carolina residents Angela Benton and Wayne Sutton that brings a group of black digital entrepreneurs to work on their products and have precious access to prominent Silicon Valley investors and executives.
“They left their homes and families with the hope of changing the pattern,” O’Brien, who was in the Bay Area last week for an advance screening of the film at Google headquarters. “Basically, they were trying to move a needle.”
The documentary follows the accelerator participants as they relocate from the Eastern part of the country to a modest three-bedroom home in Mountain View (where they sleep on $40 air mattresses). Gradually adapting to the unique culture of Silicon Valley, they struggle at first — especially at an impromptu “dragon’s den” session, during which they were forced to quickly pitch their ideas to tech bigwigs.
But then the program gains traction as the accelerator hopefuls begin to channel the power of teamwork.
“That was a genuine turning point,” O’Brien recalled. “One night, after about two weeks in the house, it just sort of dawned on them that they had to stop thinking in individual terms — that they had to work together or fail. … And there was a real sense that, if you succeed, it can help others succeed (in the future). It was interesting to see that unfold on camera.”
Even before it airs, “The New Promised Land” has stirred up some controversy, stemming from comments made in the film by TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, who said, among other things, that he doesn’t know “a single black entrepreneur” and that “It’s a white and Asian world here. It just is.”
“I don’t think Arrington is a racist,” O’Brien said. “He’s just speaking the truth as he sees it. … I don’t get the sense he’s trying to exclude anyone.”
Source Mercury News
