I agree that it is easier to envision yourself in a role if you have role models to look up to, but I don't agree that its mandatory. The counter example is sports, it stayed white until the strictures were removed and then became talent driven. The goal of a sports team is to win games which is a wonderfully crisp way of prioritizing recruiting.
The goal of startups (and a lot of companies) is to ship code and so talented people get hired regardless of their race, religion, or sexual orientation. In fact tech has something of a reputation for hiring "weirdos" as really talented technical folks are valued even if society at large discriminates against them. Just as true for the LGBT folks as it is for the non-white folks.
So the barrier to entry for becoming a Ruby star is essentially zero, laptop and a free AWS instance. And the market is demonstrably talent driven not 'class' driven.
You will have a hard time trying to convince me that the lack of non-white guy talent/leadership in the Ruby community has anything to do with race.
The goal of startups (and a lot of companies) is to ship code and so talented people get hired regardless of their race, religion, or sexual orientation. In fact tech has something of a reputation for hiring "weirdos" as really talented technical folks are valued even if society at large discriminates against them. Just as true for the LGBT folks as it is for the non-white folks.
So the barrier to entry for becoming a Ruby star is essentially zero, laptop and a free AWS instance. And the market is demonstrably talent driven not 'class' driven.
You will have a hard time trying to convince me that the lack of non-white guy talent/leadership in the Ruby community has anything to do with race.