Silicon Valley barriers, not lack of skills, impede diversity

[Commentary] Silicon Valley has long been insular, clubby and steeped in the pernicious myth of the meritocracy. We are colorblind and gender-blind, the story goes, and we only hire the best talent available. But if we accept that on its face, are we to conclude that blacks, Latinos and women of all backgrounds are simply not as smart as white and Asian men, or that genius is disproportionately concentrated in race-based subsets of the population? Of course not. Yet, until now, so many of the solutions to the tech-pipeline problem have focused on changing behavior within the underrepresented populations themselves. The reality is that most of the barriers are structural.

[Freada Kapor Klein is co-chair of the Kapor Center for Social Impact]