I know we don’t see eye to eye on this, and I’m not writing to scold you. You’re a serious person who cares about the future going well. That’s exactly why I want you to look at something you haven’t examined closely: why is this community, working on a problem meant to matter for everyone, so overwhelmingly missing Black researchers?
You’ll say it’s the pipeline. I used to think that too, but look at where the actual friction is. Funding here runs on warm introductions and trust built over years in the same handful of universities, forums, and social circles. If a Black applicant didn’t grow up adjacent to those circles, they’re not failing on merit; they’re failing to have a name a grantmaker already recognizes. Fellowships often ask for a track record in a field that has, until recently, made almost no effort to recruit from HBCUs or Black-led computer science programs, then treat the resulting gap as evidence of lower interest rather than lower access. And hiring leans hard on “culture fit,” which in practice means fluency in a specific set of forum threads and thought experiments, not fluency in the actual underlying math or safety problem.
None of this requires anyone to be prejudiced. It just requires nobody to check where the money and mentorship are actually flowing. A community that extends moral concern effortlessly to future generations and hypothetical algorithms, but can’t get funding to the Black researcher applying for a fellowship right now, has a gap worth sitting with rather than explaining away.
What would change my mind: look at the last ten fellowship cohorts and see who’s missing. Ask whether the application process assumes access most Black applicants haven’t had. And ask whether “we’d fund anyone qualified” is doing the same quiet work “we just prefer people like us” did before.
Dear Friend,
I know we don’t see eye to eye on this, and I’m not writing to scold you. You’re a serious person who cares about the future going well. That’s exactly why I want you to look at something you haven’t examined closely: why is this community, working on a problem meant to matter for everyone, so overwhelmingly missing Black researchers?
You’ll say it’s the pipeline. I used to think that too, but look at where the actual friction is. Funding here runs on warm introductions and trust built over years in the same handful of universities, forums, and social circles. If a Black applicant didn’t grow up adjacent to those circles, they’re not failing on merit; they’re failing to have a name a grantmaker already recognizes. Fellowships often ask for a track record in a field that has, until recently, made almost no effort to recruit from HBCUs or Black-led computer science programs, then treat the resulting gap as evidence of lower interest rather than lower access. And hiring leans hard on “culture fit,” which in practice means fluency in a specific set of forum threads and thought experiments, not fluency in the actual underlying math or safety problem.
None of this requires anyone to be prejudiced. It just requires nobody to check where the money and mentorship are actually flowing. A community that extends moral concern effortlessly to future generations and hypothetical algorithms, but can’t get funding to the Black researcher applying for a fellowship right now, has a gap worth sitting with rather than explaining away.
What would change my mind: look at the last ten fellowship cohorts and see who’s missing. Ask whether the application process assumes access most Black applicants haven’t had. And ask whether “we’d fund anyone qualified” is doing the same quiet work “we just prefer people like us” did before.