Asian Americans make up less than 5% of the U.S. population[0], but almost 35% of tech workers at Google[1] and 36% of tech employees at Facebook[2]. That's over representation by a factor of about 7 times.
Yet, the media will continue to harp on the over representation of white people at tech companies. Why? Because "diversity" really only means "not white".
BTW: I bring this up not because I want fewer Asian Americans in tech or more white people in tech, but to point out the hypocrisy of the reporting on diversity in tech.
[0] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
[1] http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/06/google-diversity-sta...
[2] http://recode.net/2015/06/25/facebook-employee-demographics-...
It is possible to be both marginalized in one aspect and privileged in another. It is definitely the case for Asian Americans in tech. Very few will say they're not (in aggregate, individual experiences vary of course!) better off than other people of color in this field, even as they also suffer racism. The numbers, as you suggest, do not lie. It's a similar phenomenon to the treatment of homosexual people in tech on the west coast. Just because someone is a gay man doesn't make them suddenly not white, for example.
This is a really important and often overlooked feature of intersectional feminism: nearly everyone has privilege even if they're also marginalized. That's why it's such a worthy cause, nearly everyone has something substantial to gain.
If I'm not mistaken, all of those sources are from 2015.
You seem to be interpreting my statement of the facts regarding demographics in the tech industry as as a statement that I believe Asian Americans are privileged. I'm not saying that. I think tech is the closest industry to an honest meritocracy that exists, and if there are more Asian Americans in tech than white people, then it's probably because of differences in ambition and the extent to which education is valued.
But, I brought up those stats not to make that point, just to prove the point that the way the media, and popular perception views diversity in tech is wrong.
So while it changes nothing about your comments about Asian people being over-represented, it does show that white people are not really underrepresented significantly.
And it's exactly this type of argument that is the problem: underrepresentation as a majority is far less of a problem than underrepresentation as a minority.
Acknowledging this fact does NOT imply that whites and asians are better than others. It just implies that whites and asians go into tech fields at a higher rate than others.
If you want to increase diversity, it is far better to acknowledge this and then work on finding out why some groups have a low rate of going into tech, and fixing that.
It's like Jews and doctors in the US. Jews are about 1.2% of the US population, but 14% of US doctors. This doesn't imply that Jews are better than everyone else at medicine. Jews are so overrepresented among physicians because Jewish culture in the US greatly admires and respects physicians and children are steered toward becoming doctors from an early age.
Choosing objective measures of merit first requires choosing a subjective choice of how to define merit -- what the mission is and what things are needed to fulfill it.
And, in point of fact, many "objective measures of merit" are objective measures that have a tenuously presumed connection to merit in the specific job that are adopted because of what amounts to cultural traditions in the profession.
[0] Given the obfuscation around race and culture, this might not be clear on first reading, but I am only discussing the possibility that the culture that is highly correlated with being "Caucasian" might have some advantage, not being "Caucasian" in itself. Thus my claim is entirely analagous with "You should hire more Black people because more (cultural) diversity will add more viewpoints to your company and hence increase productivity".
That's her point: given the data, claiming it's a meritocracy implies that Caucasian men are "better" than everybody in this field. That's not a useful attitude if you're trying to improve diversity.
> What if the viewpoint of the Caucasian male happened to be more suited to a particular field or company?
Then the particular field or company has evolved to favor Caucasian males (or if you prefer the culture that is highly correlated with being "Caucasion"). In other words, it's got embedded structural discrimination. If you want to improve diversity, that needs to be acknowledged and removed.
It isn't an attitude at all. It's purely descriptive.
If you're saying it's wrong to describe it as a meritocracy because it isn't one then that's one thing. If making the industry more diverse would also make it more meritocratic then that is clearly the way forward. But then what we need to do is not to stop calling it or wanting it to be a meritocracy but rather to make it live up to its name.
On the other hand, if it is (more or less) a meritocracy already then what you're asking for is not that we stop calling it that, but that we stop it from being that. And if that's what you're saying then say it clearly so that more people can disagree with you.
> Then the particular field or company has evolved to favor Caucasian males (or if you prefer the culture that is highly correlated with being "Caucasion"). In other words, it's got embedded structural discrimination. If you want to improve diversity, that needs to be acknowledged and removed.
This is a really great exemplification of the failure of your entire line of reasoning.
Let's suppose that, culturally, the parents of white and asian males generally encourage them to study engineering at university and the parents of females and african americans generally discourage it. In this not altogether unrealistic hypothetical this explains the main cultural difference leading to the disproportionate representation.
Then companies looking to hire engineers logically require that candidates have studied engineering. You call this structural discrimination and demand that it be removed. Companies are expected to what, hire engineers who have no knowledge of engineering?
Sometimes the problem is not the culture of the industry. Sometimes the problem is the culture of the people.
Given that this is true, the responsible thing would be to both acknowledge that you want diversity and that certain groups are underserved in the field. How to resolve this in terms of policy as a business is going to be a difficult decision for anyone. But I don't think it's responsible to not acknowledge that white men are not the best qualified candidates (though I was under the impression Asian males also do quite well in the tech industry)--i think that is doing a disservice to young people trying to understand the industry and the truth about the massive disparity between minority population distribution and minority hiring distribution.
That definition of "merit" implies that whites have more merit than blacks (because they tend to be more privileged) and men have more merit than women. If your goal is to increase diversity, that's not a helpful definition.
> Why would you ever assume meritocracy would naturally lead to a diverse workplace?
Exactly. Any definition of "meritocracy" will have embedded biases, and so won't lead to a diverse workplace. That's why I saw this as such good advice.
> But I don't think it's responsible to not acknowledge that white men are not the best qualified candidates
If the definition of "best qualified" favors white men, then of course white men are more likely to be the "best qualified" candidates. It's a classic example of structural discrimination.
> That definition of "merit" implies that whites have more merit than blacks (because they tend to be more privileged) and men have more merit than women. If your goal is to increase diversity, that's not a helpful definition.
What he wrote was "Privilege increases merit via education and culture". Why did you cut off the "via education and culture" part?
No, I said that it TENDS that way. Obviously, if a man goes to trade school and a woman does not (for whatever reason), the man has more merit for conducting that trade than the woman, barring any other evidence or considerations. So, privilege allows people to increase their own merit. It's fairly intuitive, and to increase diversity while still embracing meritocracy (which is just good business, IMHO), we need to increase the opportunity for people to improve their own merit.
To be utterly clear, I do not (consciously) condone the extrapolation of phenotypical traits to imply very much of anything about a person's capabilities, especially in a business sense. I'm just pointing out that there's not much use in ignoring the reality of the disparity in minority distribution between certain industries and the greater geographical reason will force obvious problems if you're trying to both be diverse and meritocratic—you can't hire people who don't exist (statistically speaking) in the hiring pool.
> If the definition of "best qualified" favors white men, then of course white men are more likely to be the "best qualified" candidates. It's a classic example of structural discrimination.
I don't think we disagreed; I just don't think there's any point not to acknowledge that the best hires in a pure merit sense are going to lead to poor quality diversity hires. It indicates there's an opportunity here for underserved minorities to fill a gap. IMHO there are problems all up and down the pipeline mucking with natural free market forces; as you said, structural discrimination. But we should be providing people with MORE transparency to help them make better decisions, not LESS transparency because it's an uncomfortable truth.
Honestly, I feel like the definition of privilege is fairly close to "unfair advantage". I don't really see a way to pull it apart—again by nature—from how people naturally take advantage of the opportunities they have. But recognizing them baldly is a good way to start.
> The goal is meritocracy, with diversity only desirable insofar as it enables meritocracy.
In other words "The goal is anti-diversity, with diversity only desirable insofar as it enables the anti-diversity goal."
The old great metaphor for America was that it was a "melting pot." The metaphor comes from smelting. When you smelt metal, you're not promoting diversity - you're creating a homogeneous alloy. You also skim off the slag and throw it out.
It's not a particularly pleasant metaphor when you think about it.
Meritocracy is not anti-diversity. Meritocracy is correlated with diversity. Choosing meritocracy where they diverge is nothing more than accepting that diversity is not the one true goal of all things.