As a white guy, I'd certainly encourage you not to worry about this -- if we're talking about an upper middle class, professional-ish activity, you can be fairly sure that all those white people feel self-conscious about their group being so white and would welcome you to join them.

Anyway, I'd be interested to hear more about the psychology of this.

I remember when I was growing up in the 90s and 00s in California, people talked about race way less than they do today. When ethnic representation became a common topic of conversation, I had a hard time believing it at first, because it seemed so self-evidently obvious to me that race wasn't a particularly important characteristic of a person. I actually had the experience of thinking back to my time in jr high/high school and thinking "wow, that friend of mine had dark skin, and they weren't from India... I guess they were Black, huh".

I'm not trying to claim that I didn't have subconscious biases related to race as a kid. I'm sure I did. But I do suspect they have become a lot more severe as a result of people talking about race so much -- it has become a much more salient characteristic. (I'm also more aware of trying to mitigate my biases and avoid microaggressions and so on, of course.)

So yeah, I'm curious to compare notes with other 90s kids in this regard. I'm white, but if I was Black, I imagine that I'd be way more self-conscious about it now than I was when I was growing up. (Like, if I'm the only white person in a group, I feel self-conscious about it now in a way that I didn't feel when I was a kid.)

Growing up this was a big realization for me the other way. I was raised by evangelicals in Kansas, including going to a mennonite school for most of my education. As a teenager I realized how at my school, at my church, at basically everything in my family's shared life, there was not a single person with brown skin. Not even one. And worse, no one had real awareness of this, and would not understand how it could be any sort of problem if you brought it up. To them it was just the natural order of the universe that their world was purely white people.

There's plenty of evangelicals of every race, but overall the communities are very segregated. It was clear no matter their professed faith, in practice the community I grew up in was hostile to PoC.

> makes it’s so I don’t want to be the first.

This makes me curious. Would you mind answering, from your point of view, why do you think that is? Is it a specific scenario or type of scenario you wish to avoid or is there a generalized concern that comes with it? Is that due to uncertainty or past experience?

Similarly this gives me pause about Ivy League MBA programs.

Although a small sample size, despite their ambitions the BIPOC people I know haven’t been able to reap any professional benefits from it. Whether from access to executive roles, getting taken seriously by venture capital firms, or in their attempts to join venture capital firms. There is a level of discretion in these team forming situations that is not extended to them whether it has anything to do with their race or not, its pretty clear the upwards mobility is not coming from this credential.

For people with their own capital and leverage, it amplifies their ambition if they want. BIPOC don't really have this.

The “average salary” of MBA alumnis is not what is interesting about getting one, for me or them.

Some, or more, examples to the contrary would make it seem less like a total waste of time.

Are you willing to give some examples? I’m curious in what contexts people feel this way.

Sounds like a good enough reason to mandate quotas for everything everywhere. Anything else on your wish list?