By Arturo R. García

There’s been something ugly brewing in Silicon Valley, and now it’s starting to seep to the surface, following preview screenings for Soledad O’Brien’s latest CNN special.

The clip up top is an excerpt from her interview with TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington. The interview was taped in July, and is slated to air during the Nov. 13 episode of her Black In America documentary series focusing on the eight black entrepreneurs taking part in the NewMe Accelerator program.

In a commercial for the show, Arrington describes Silicon Valley as “a white and Asian world,” and in the interview, he goes so far as to tell O’Brien that he doesn’t know any black entrepreneurs.

Except that he really did. And Arrington’s been digging himself – and seemingly the tech industry around him – into a deeper hole ever since.

Here’s a transcript of the clip:

O’Brien: Who would you say is the Number 1 black technology entrepreneur?
Arrington: You know, that’s a weird question. Who would you say is the Number 1 black technology -
O’Brien: I don’t cover technology.
Arrington: I’m trying to think of any black CEOs in Silicon Valley, and I’m not even coming up with any.
O’Brien: Okay, so the entrepreneurs – the people who are making companies.
Arrington: I don’t know a single black entrepreneur.
O’Brien: And you cover the industry.
Arrington: I mean, there aren’t -
O’Brien: What does that say?
Arrington: It means there just aren’t any. It’s not a perfect meritocracy, but generally speaking, it doesn’t matter what your education is, it doesn’t matter who your parents are here. You can become very successful, based purely on your brain size and how you use it.

According to CNN’s Laurie Siegall, however, Arrington did correct himself at another point in the interview, telling O’Brien about one black entrepreneur who launched his company at a TechCrunch Disrupt event, at Arrington’s urging:

“His startup’s really cool,” Arrington said. “But he could’ve launched a clown show on stage, and I would’ve put him up there, absolutely. I think it’s the first time we’ve had an African-American [be] the sole founder.”

Arrington might be surprised to know, then, that there happens to be (gasp!) more than one black person running their own company in Silicon Valley, and as ZD Net’s Violet Blue has reported, they are furious with Arrington over his comments. One of them, consultant Adria Richards, knows who he was referring to:

The guy he had on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC, he’s known for several years…and he basically called him a clown. Clarence Wooten sold his company, ImageCafe, for $23 million to Network Solutions in 1999, that’s over 10 years before Arrington sold TechCrunch to AOL for the same amount.

I’ve now likened it to Southern White male slave owner saying he has no idea why there are mixed babies cropping up on this plantation even though he damn well knows he’s been creeping down to the sheds at night.

Arrington has since compounded his gaffe on various online platforms, thanks to tweets like these:

And on his blog, where he uncorked this doozy of self-congratulation:

See, my brain database doesn’t categorize people in terms of skin color. Or hair color. Or sexual orientation. When I queried that database, under stressful circumstances, I got zero results.

That kind of statement would barely sound cute coming from a kid cosplaying a Cylon. Coming from a man who makes his living writing about and investing in the tech industry, it sounds skeevy and arrogant at best. And according to Mitch Kapor – an investor in NewMe, who has also been involved in developing seminal programs ranging from Lotus 1-2-3 to UUNET to the Mozilla Foundation to the company behind Second Life – it’s also, to borrow Arrington’s techno-babble, working from a deeply corrupted operating system:

A recent study, The Tilted Playing Field, indicates there are practices in recruiting, promotion, and retention within the IT sector which are problematic for women and under-represented people of color, and reduce their participation. Specific experiences of exclusion, bullying, difficulty balancing work/family are reported at much higher rates by underrepresented groups — i.e African Americans, Latina/o/s, and women of all backgrounds. Another vicious cycle at play. “If I’m not going to be valued or respected, then I’m outta here.” Meanwhile, Caucasian and Asian male engineers and managers report that their companies spend the right amount of time on diversity.

Silicon Valley likes to think it operates as a pure meritocracy, e.g., it’s the best teams and ideas which get funded. In practice, as luminaries from John Doerr to Ron Conway acknowledge, key decisions are often guided by a combination of pattern-matching based on superficial characteristics and the network of people you already know. More on this here and here.

If “young, white, geeky, and Stanford/Harvard/MIT dropout”, then “invest”, is a kind of mental shortcut that is anything but objective. This is mirror-tocracy not meritocracy.

Being meritocratic is a really worthy aspiration, but will require active mitigation of individual and organizational bias. The operation of hidden bias in our cognitive apparatus is a well-documented phenomenon in neuroscience. We may think we are acting rationally and objectively, but our brains deceive us.

Arrington has also accused CNN and O’Brien of sandbagging him, writing that the network did not mention race in its’ original interview request from O’Brien’s producer for Black In America, Kimberly Arp Babbit, which read in part:

We are producing, what we think is the first major broadcast news documentary on the Silicon Valley accelerator phenomenon and start-up culture. In this culture, Michael Arrington is God and TechCrunch is the bible.

The CNN “In America” documentary unit, led by special correspondent and anchor Soledad O’Brien, has produced a number of award winning long form documentaries.

This particular documentary will be told through the experience of a group of digital entrepreneurs who travel to Silicon Valley to chase their dreams.

He also wrote that, when O’Brien asked him if he’d heard of the NewMe program, to which he answered, “Nope. But [Arrington] said that sounded awesome.” Another TechCrunch writer subsequently covered NewMe’s inaugural demo event.

However, O’Brien has posted another e-mail sent to someone working with Arrington sent four days before the interview, at least one of which specifically mentioned NewMe and the program O’Brien was interviewing him for. So either Arrington’s memory storage capacity is limited, or somebody didn’t upload the proper talking points for him. Or maybe, like a lot of people before him, Arrington has only just realized his default setting was on Privileged this whole time, and doesn’t want to fess up to it.

ETA: Please note, we got an email from NYMag saying they want us to take down this post. I pushed back asking them about their definition of fair use, and we are working it out. So if you access this post over the weekend, and it has changed, that’s what happened. I’m going to go through and prune it down a bit – good faith and all that – but we are still going to run the other pieces on Monday, regardless of what actually ends up in this space. – LDP

Earlier this week, readers Elton and Tomi alerted us to this front page New York Magazine piece called “Paper Tigers,” by Wesley Yang. It is remarkable in that it’s one of the broadest examinations of Asian American identity to be prominently placed in a mainstream outlet. The article made a huge impact – on Facebook alone, it was liked by 31,000 people. However, reading the piece left a lot of questions to be answered, and for every “hell yeah!” there was an equal *head desk*.

We’re putting together a reaction post from our friends and contributors, but in the meantime, please set aside the time to read all of Yang’s article.

To start you off, here are some points that jumped out at me.

The Good

• Yang’s discussion of Asian American invisibility in face of stereotype: “A conspicuous person standing apart from the crowd and yet devoid of any individuality.”
• The frank discussion of Thomas Epenshade’s work, which calculated how Asians generally must score higher on the SAT than white applicants to have the same chance at admission.
• The disparity between Asian American representation in higher education and under-representation in the board room. (We’ve covered this before, under the title of the bamboo ceiling.)

The Interesting, but Questionable

• Yang looks at the bamboo ceiling, but attributes it mostly to unconscious bias, not actual racism.
• The absolute absence of Asian American female perspectives, despite the higher rates of suicide for Asian American women.

The WTF

• Yang appears to have a love/hate relationship with being Asian-American; using the term “banana or twinkie to self identify and saying he’s “devoid of Asian characteristics.”
• The piece challenges some stereotypes, but reinforces others, perhaps because of the divided feel of the narrative.
• Yang quotes JT Tran, the Asian American pick up artist, who essentially says Asian American (heterosexual men) should pick up white women in order to…well, it’s not exactly clear how Tran thinks that is going to fix the school/boardroom gap.

Stay tuned for more perspectives from our APIA contributors.

By Guest Contributor Aymar Jean Christian, cross-posted from Televisual

I recently had a conversation with a black director who fretted not putting any men of color in his film project. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t find anyone to play the role. In the end he told me: “I can’t carry the whole black community on my own!”

It’s a strange thing to be a writer, creator, producer, artist and belong to some kind of “other” group. Every one of us — I think — struggles with how responsible we are to our communities. It’s something I find myself having to deal with more and more. And I’m starting to develop opinions about it.

Writing about one’s identity group is not always a “burden.” Soon I’ll be writing a column for AfterElton about gay men of color in the media, and I couldn’t be happier! I hesitated a bit when I was asked. The old questions emerged: would I pigeonholed? Would I be “that black gay guy”? But ultimately I saw more opportunity than limitations. I care about that stuff, and it’s so often not talked about. Why not?

Still, for anyone who creates media, the burden can be tiresome. The truth is there are typically few people who are X identity in a given field — film, the academy, television, web production — that the few who exist are often asked to correct structural imbalances, even if they have other interests. It’s unfair, but it is the world in which we live. These burdens aren’t limited to the traditional groups of minorities, though they have to deal with it most; it spans genre identities (sci-fi, western, horror), ideologies (nihilist, modernist), styles (independent, art-house, fringe), basically anything with a dedicated core of minority adherents and members.

When I was younger and immature I used to wonder: “why does so-and-so only write/talk/think about X identity? They’re so unimaginative!” You know who I’m talking about: the showrunner who only pitches shows about women, the journalist who only writes about sexuality, etc.

As I grew older and started to participate in these various worlds, I realized it was often the other way around. The people who are “pigeonholed” are, more often than not, forced to or called upon to hold those positions. Since there aren’t a lot of academics in, say, economics, who write about race, those scholars are asked to write the “race essay” for the edited collection, or edit an issue in a journal. If they aren’t asked by the “powers that be,” they’re urged to by friends or colleagues.

Because, like myself, they want and are happy to oblige because so few people write about their communities. As they start to, they realize how many stories go untold and theories unexplored; it starts to get interesting. I blog and write a lot about black identity, gay identity and women. (See the tag cloud to the right). Some might say I’m falling prey to stereotype. But the truth is I find there’s a lot to say about these topics that isn’t being said by the mainstream media, or even prominent blogs.

When I first started researching web series over a year ago, virtually no one was writing about black web series and gay/lesbian web series, despite dozens being released each year. That’s why I started making the lists linked to above (though I can never keep up! I try to update about once a month). I felt compelled to and was happy to do it, to give producers/directors what little exposure I could provide (it’s not much!).

I always feel for those directors, producers, writers, etc. who “stray” from their communities and do other things. Occasionally they’re branded “post-racial,” “post-gender,” “post-gay,” post-whatever. Will Smith is a classic example — he’s planning yet another project in China. Some have avoided it: Spike Lee and Gus Van Sant do a lot of non-black, non-gay films, but make sure to come back home every once in awhile. A lucky few can be both responsible to their communities and do other projects while not being branded either way. But society demands shortcuts, and in the end, most of us have to take our label and wear it with pride.

The best do both. Some of the greatest artists and thinkers of the 20th century took their less-than-popular identities and used them to create bold works about the broader culture, about society and civilization, from Toni Morrison and James Baldwin to David Wojnarowicz and Judith Butler.

We should embrace the challenge. I used to think “label” was a dirty word. Even today, read an interview with any artist or writer, no matter their race or religion, no matter how singular their interest in a particular identity, and, without fail, they will inevitably say they don’t want to be labeled. Nobody wants to! But labels are a way of communicating to the world, a way of signaling something important. Any creative or intellectual person should relish the opportunity to take something presumed to be “marginal” and make it central and important to a conversation.

Should we accept our burdens? I think maybe we should. Carrying a burden only makes you stronger.

Even by Fox News standards, the amount of FAIL on this segment from Money Rocks is staggering. But oh, does it on on a funny note.

In discussing why the U.S. Postal Service should be privatized – a foolish idea, but just roll with it here – GOP “strategist” Jack Burkman lets fly with this beauty:

“Most of these guys working in the Post Office should be driving cabs, and I think we should stop importing labor from Nigeria and Ethiopia. That’s about their skill level. They’re only in there because of massive union protection.”

Now, the host, Eric Bolling, lets him off the hook. And columnist S.E. Copp, not to be outdone, brags, “I can deposit a check by taking a photograph of the check with my phone and e-mailing it to my bank!” (Where does she bank, Narnia?). But attorney Tamara Holder – who seconds earlier defends privatizing national security(?!) is the first to call Burkman out on his remarks. And when Burkman tries to defend his assertion that postal workers are “unskilled labor,” former Sen. Al D’Amato (R-NY) lets loose around the 5:19 mark. Language is NSFW, but well worth it.

D’Amato’s certainly had his own share of dumb moments in the past: 15 years ago, in the midst of the O.J. Simpson trial he used a mock-Japanese accent to make fun of Judge Lance Ito. But at least he shows some decency here. Disconcertingly, though, Bolling allows Burkman to close the segment with some more frightening remarks:

“… The reality is that many in the American ‘Middle,’ like postal workers, are really unskilled labor who should have been pushed down for market reasons, but because of union and government pressures, we import labor at the bottom and keep these people here. That’s a very true statement.”

Of course, in cases like this it’s always good to remember The Daily Show’s lesson on how this guy became one of those That Guys:

By Guest Contributor quadmoniker, cross-posted from PostBourgie

Top Chef’s contributions to the reality show genre don’t come from exciting cliff-hangers or the evil machinations of those who would only win by cheating: the ingredients that make it work best are good chefs cooking food that looks pretty and makes you want to eat it. Occasionally, there’s a key rivalry or a chef you want to hate. The two chefs everyone hated are now gone: possible-pea thief Alex left last week, and Amanda, the overly-intense, scatterbrained former addict who never seemed to get anything right, was finally voted off last night. But before that, another source of drama this season ended prematurely when Kenny Gilbert, whose long-simmering rivalry with Angelo made him seem more talented than he probably was, was voted off after the Restaurant Wars episode. (Restaurant Wars is the show’s bread and butter: two groups of chefs start restaurants and compete to win.)

Kenny inspired a lot of inappropriately racist, pimpish nicknames, like chocolate bear and big daddy, and, when he was kicked off, an unfortunate number of outdated South Park  jokes (I think you know the one). But mostly he was a gregarious, lovable self-promoter; fans believed he was the big cheese because he said he was every week. In truth, his cooking skill seemed uneven. But whether you think he deserved to go or not, his absence highlights a longstanding problem with the show:  there hasn’t been enough diversity, and it is particularly problematic in the way it portrays its black chefs. Diversity on a reality TV show might not seem the most important topic, ever, but it evidences two things: one, the dearth of people of color at the top of many fields extends to reality contests that purport to propel novices to the top of those fields; and two, shows like this in which contestants are judged subjectively still often pick white male winners.

First, some by-the-numbers history. The premiere season wasn’t bad: of 11 chefs, two were Asian, two were black and one was Latino. Only one, Lee Anne Wong, made it close to the top. The second season was worse: of 15, only three were of color. Cliff, a black chef from New York City, finished fifth, but his finish is the important part: he was the only person ever kicked off the show for becoming physical with another contestant. That season, all the chefs picked on a scrawny, whiny kid named Marcel, and on one of the last nights Cliff and the other finalists decided they were going to shave Marcel’s head. In fairness, head judge Tom Colicchio wanted to kick off all the other conspirators, too, who were just as mean to Marcel that night, and make Marcel the winner by default. But Cliff actually wrestled Marcel down to the floor, and was the only person to explicitly break the rules against physically fighting another contestant.

In the third season, the only black chef, Tre, a favorite in the beginning, was voted off after the Restaurant Wars episode because he didn’t lead his team well enough. (A Vietnam-born chef named Hung won that season). The next season, the only black chef was out so early I don’t even remember her, though, in a bright spot, a woman won for the first time that year. The fifth season marked the first Indian American chef, Radhika, and Carla, a black woman from D.C. who made it to the finale and who has had a real career-boost since the show. Season 6 brought us another Indian American and a chef from Haiti, both of whom were out in the middle of the competition. Of the six winners, five have been white and all but one was a man.

That brings us to the current season and its surprising diversity buffet. When it started, Kenny had three fellow black chefs, two Latinos and one Asian chef, which means that nearly half its contestants were people of color. It could be that the show’s producers, who chose to film in D.C. this season after the arrival of the Obamas gave the city a short-lived sizzle, became more cognizant of its diversity needs, or it could be that it’s been on so long now that it’s luring a more diverse applicant pool. Either way, Kenny’s timer wasn’t the first to go off early: Kevin, Angelo and Tiffany are the only chefs of color left.

So, what’s the problem? When a woman won for the first time in the fourth season, Colicchio wrote pretty elegantly about the problems women face in professional kitchens, which aren’t too different from the problems women face in many careers. The balance of work and life falls squarely on women’s shoulders, and a lot of sacrifice is demanded of top chefs. I don’t think anyone’s surprised to know that the challenge of overcoming discrimination in high cuisine is similar to the challenges people of color overcome in other fields.

But that doesn’t mean those problems have to be replicated on a reality TV show. Of course, the judges always say they pick the best dish, but we all know how the idea of “merit” mostly benefits white men. To a great extent, judging food is a subjective enterprise, and cultural expectations and prejudices play into what we think of food. It’s probably completely fair that Cliff was kicked off for being, admittedly, an a-hole to Marcel: it’s true that Tre seemed to bite off more than he could chew when he led his team; and it’s likely just as true that Kenny wasn’t the cream of the crop. But when the judges talked about, say, Kenny’s dishes, they said they were “unsophisticated” and “unedited.” When Tre was kicked off, he was regarded a good technician but not a good thinker and organizer. Again, Cliff, a former football player, was kicked off for getting physical. All of those fit uncomfortably into stereotypes about black men, no matter how true it could be in any individual situation. To raise suspicions even more, Colicchio even compared Kenny to Tre in his blog post about the episode in which Kenny got kicked off. They both took on leadership roles and failed, but other chefs have been kicked off for that reason in different years, too. The thing Kenny and Tre most have in common is that they’re both black. Because we don’t taste the food, we have to trust the judges aren’t bringing stereotypes about the chefs to the tasting table.

There are bright spots, though. Tiffany Derry, a black woman from Texas, has surged late in the game to win just about every contest, and is now positioned as a favorite, especially as Angelo’s work has fallen off. And in Top Chef’s sister show, Top Chef Masters, this year, an Ethiopian chef raised in Sweden, Marcus Samuelsson, won. In the finale, his dishes carried the judges through his life: his first food memory of smoky salmon, and the first meal he cooked, which was another Swedish dish. His final course had to be a vision of where he wanted to go as a chef, and he went back to his roots, cooking a classic Ethiopian fish dish. The fish was soft, and the meal, overall, was heavy, the judges said. Samuselsson told them, in just about so many words, that he didn’t care. That’s the way the food was meant to be cooked, and he knew the judges wouldn’t be used to it. But Americans have developed a palate for Chinese food, for South American food, and for all other kinds of cuisines, he said. He felt it was his job to bring African cuisine to higher regard in America, and it was their job to get used to it. He didn’t have to conform the cuisine to their liking; they had to learn to like something new.

So, it’s not that I think all of these contestants are losing because they’re not white. It’s that, as in most other fields, the inability of people of color to rise has a lot to do with subtle, complex interactions between prejudice and expectation that few have the power to wrest control over. We just often misunderstand who’s job it is to overcome that.

In Jim Webb’s latest op-ed for the Wall Street Journal (titled “Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege“), he turns the traditional narrative for ending affirmative action on its head. Instead of using the same old racist platitudes, the Democrat from Virgina uses history and acknowledgment of structural inequality to propose a radical rethinking of government programs. But check the bait Webb uses:

I have dedicated my political career to bringing fairness to America’s economic system and to our work force, regardless of what people look like or where they may worship. Unfortunately, present-day diversity programs work against that notion, having expanded so far beyond their original purpose that they now favor anyone who does not happen to be white.

In an odd historical twist that all Americans see but few can understand, many programs allow recently arrived immigrants to move ahead of similarly situated whites whose families have been in the country for generations. These programs have damaged racial harmony. And the more they have grown, the less they have actually helped African-Americans, the intended beneficiaries of affirmative action as it was originally conceived.

My, my, my. Webb’s op-ed makes some very astute points but also trades on the idea that race is a zero-sum game. For this reason, the piece both succeeds and fails.

Webb provides great historical context in making his argument and often notes that the historical baggage of state-sanctioned discrimination is still with us. However, Webb distills our history down to black and white, noting:

The injustices endured by black Americans at the hands of their own government have no parallel in our history, not only during the period of slavery but also in the Jim Crow era that followed. But the extrapolation of this logic to all “people of color”—especially since 1965, when new immigration laws dramatically altered the demographic makeup of the U.S.—moved affirmative action away from remediation and toward discrimination, this time against whites. It has also lessened the focus on assisting African-Americans, who despite a veneer of successful people at the very top still experience high rates of poverty, drug abuse, incarceration and family breakup.

Those who came to this country in recent decades from Asia, Latin America and Africa did not suffer discrimination from our government, and in fact have frequently been the beneficiaries of special government programs. The same cannot be said of many hard-working white Americans, including those whose roots in America go back more than 200 years.

Webb doesn’t mention Native Americans, who are also currently suffering due to our nation’s founding and history.

Webb’s idea that remediation is needed for African Americans is true, and many of the current programs do not have as much benefit as hoped. However, America’s racial history doesn’t only spin on a black and white axis. Webb is correct that there is no parallel for what African Americans have experienced. But, while immigration laws may have changed the make up of the United States, many immigrants did face state sponsored backlash on their way to citizenship. And even if immigrants and their children find success on American shores, the story doesn’t end there – for example, much of the new data about Latinos denotes a difference between first, second, and third generation Latinos, because the data sets become quite different. Quite a lot of research is starting to reveal that third generation Latinos tend to slide backwards, reversing many of the gains their parents achieved. For example, a 2009 research brief exploring connections between work and school and black and latino youth, and how the rates of “connectedness” start to fall after the second generation. While the reasons for this vary, some studies point to assimilation as part of the issue – along with adopting societal norms, third generation Latinos keenly feel the impact of racism and discrimination in hiring and in other aspects of life.

Webb downplays exactly how much racism is woven into the fabric of society, and underplays how much other ethnic groups suffer under a racist system.

However, Webb does bring up an important point – there is a diversity of white experience in America that is not currently acknowledged or measured:

Generations of such deficiencies do not disappear overnight, and they affect the momentum of a culture. In 1974, a National Opinion Research Center (NORC) study of white ethnic groups showed that white Baptists nationwide averaged only 10.7 years of education, a level almost identical to blacks’ average of 10.6 years, and well below that of most other white groups. A recent NORC Social Survey of white adults born after World War II showed that in the years 1980-2000, only 18.4% of white Baptists and 21.8% of Irish Protestants—the principal ethnic group that settled the South—had obtained college degrees, compared to a national average of 30.1%, a Jewish average of 73.3%, and an average among those of Chinese and Indian descent of 61.9%.

Policy makers ignored such disparities within America’s white cultures when, in advancing minority diversity programs, they treated whites as a fungible monolith. Also lost on these policy makers were the differences in economic and educational attainment among nonwhite cultures. Thus nonwhite groups received special consideration in a wide variety of areas including business startups, academic admissions, job promotions and lucrative government contracts.

I can agree with Webb on a variety of fronts. However, Webb frames his entire piece as if racism is only a problem that faces African Americans, recent immigrants have no issues in society at all, and whites, once again, are getting the short end of the stick. This line in particular…

Also lost on these policy makers were the differences in economic and educational attainment among nonwhite cultures. Thus nonwhite groups received special consideration in a wide variety of areas including business startups, academic admissions, job promotions and lucrative government contracts.

…is eerily reminiscent of all the other critiques of “set-asides” disadvantaging whites and unjustly privileging people of color. And Webb never mentions that most business start ups are still helmed by white men (firms run by whites are 81% of small businesses, despite major pre-recession gains by nonwhites), that most people admitted to college are still white and upper-middle to upper class (the research on this is grim), that the managerial class in America is still predominantly white and male (check the EEOC numbers on private industry), and government contracts are still mostly funneled to companies helmed by white men (here’s a Native perspective on contract parity), even with all the other programs in place.

While I appreciated many Webb’s points, his overall analysis leaves me cold. It would be beneficial if policy makers revised many of these programs, since they are not benefiting African Americans in a substantial way. And it would be wonderful if the scope of research and policy reflected a more thoughtful discussion of sub-groups in general, especially since our racial categories (white, black, Asian, other, with Latinos as an ethnic group) as so broad and indistinct.

But Webb’s framing of the issue still ignores how many people do not believe African Americans are owed any sort of redress from the government, and his critiques minimize the impacts of racism on other nonwhite populations. We can agree on the need for government reform, particularly around the effectiveness of diversity programs and how they are proctored, but there needs to be a level of honesty as to how much racism and classim permeate society before we can make an accurate assessment.

We’ve received about five or so emails about Harvard Law Student Stephanie Grace, and her email ”clarification” after a group dinner where she made some racist remarks that were not well received (predictably). At the time of the first email, her identity was shielded – as of today, outlets like Bossip, Jezebel, and Gawker have outed her identity and posted her photo.

Again, on its face, this is a fairly simple thing for the Racialicious audience – this woman was basically spouting the foundation to eugenics, the idea that some races are genetically inferior. This isn’t exactly new or revelatory – it’s the same logic used to justify the white man’s burden. So, after arguing that she could possibly believe that black people are genetically predisposed to be less intelligent than whites, she sent out an email clarifying her beliefs. As Above the Law excerpts from her email:

I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent. I could also obviously be convinced that by controlling for the right variables, we would see that they are, in fact, as intelligent as white people under the same circumstances. The fact is, some things are genetic. African Americans tend to have darker skin. Irish people are more likely to have red hair. (Now on to the more controversial:) Women tend to perform less well in math due at least in part to prenatal levels of testosterone, which also account for variations in mathematics performance within genders. This suggests to me that some part of intelligence is genetic, just like identical twins raised apart tend to have very similar IQs and just like I think my babies will be geniuses and beautiful individuals whether I raise them or give them to an orphanage in Nigeria. I don’t think it is that controversial of an opinion to say I think it is at least possible that African Americans are less intelligent on a genetic level, and I didn’t mean to shy away from that opinion at dinner.

I also don’t think that there are no cultural differences or that cultural differences are not likely the most important sources of disparate test scores (statistically, the measurable ones like income do account for some raw differences). I would just like some scientific data to disprove the genetic position, and it is often hard given difficult to quantify cultural aspects.

Then, the email went national, leaving us with an interesting other situation that cropped up: those rising to defend Stephanie Grace.

Interestingly, the Black Law Student’s Association has yet to release a statement, but is already being vilified for “trying to rescind her clerkship.” And the nattering has begun about defending the freedom “to exchange ideas” presumably without consequence. An additional post on Above the Law, which we are not linking to, does just that, starting with the fact that the author didn’t agree with tagging the beliefs as racist, and that using any “ist” is shutting down conversation.

(We personally prefer calling shit as we see it, but that’s why this website is for militant minorities and our brainwashed white associates.*)

Jill Filipovic, over at Feministe, former law student and current lawyer brings a great perspective to the situation:

Instead, I want to discuss (a) the system that made Stephanie Grace feel that her email and her arguments were totally appropriate and within the realm of acceptable academic discourse, and that lead her to believe that her views would be accepted and welcomed; (b) the troubling reaction to the dissemination of her email, some of which has revolved around the ethics of naming her; and (c) why this matters. Because while Stephanie Grace is sending out racist emails, sites like Above the Law are falling all over themselves not only to obscure her identity, but also to say that maybe she was kind of right — and that her email wasn’t actually racist, and that the idea that black people are genetically inferior is one that we should entertain.

In other words, this isn’t just about Stephanie Grace.

Harvard Law School is no stranger to racial controversy. I am soliciting a guest-post from an HLS grad who will hopefully be able to delve more into that issue, but suffice it to say that something like this happens almost every year. And Harvard is certainly not alone among law schools in dealing with racist and sexist controversies. I’m not entirely sure what it is about law school that encourages the kind of behavior that Stephanie Grace exhibits here and I didn’t go to Harvard for law school, but I suspect it’s some combination of students with fairly sheltered upbringings and homogeneous social circles, an academic emphasis on logical consistency over actual justice, and an environment where discussions are so hyper-intellectualized that students feel they can say anything so long as they can give it a veneer of logic and rationality.

Yes, racism is everywhere. It is in law schools, and it is in law students before they ever get to law school. But it plays out in law schools in a very particular way. Law schools are environments that traffic heavily in discussions about logical consistency. In class, you read and discuss cases that all work off of each other in developing law. You start with one basic theory or set of laws, and then look at how the courts apply those theories to new sets of facts and circumstances; you look further down at how the courts use the outcomes of previous cases to draw conclusions in subsequent ones. Law school trains you to think in a particularly linear way — not “what is just here,” but “what is consistent here.” Often, consistency is the closest we can get to justice, and it offers a way to evaluate our laws in light of varying circumstances. It at least attempts objectivity. It’s a helpful way to learn how to think, and it certainly helps in the practice of law.

But it’s also a fairly narrow way of thinking, in a lot of ways. It eliminates, or at least lowers the value of, concepts like justice and social privilege and real-life inequality. In other words, while it is a helpful tool to use in order to be an effective attorney or advocate or debater or writer or thinker, it cannot be the only tool in your chest if you strive to be not only effective, but also conscientious.

For some law students — and for some lawyers — it seems to be the only tool in the chest.

I don’t know what Stephanie Grace was thinking when she wrote this email. But I would imagine part of her mentality was that if she can make a consistent, rational and logical argument for this point then it’s fair game (now, she clearly failed to make a consistent, rational and logical argument, but she wouldn’t be the first law student or lawyer to do that).

None of this is to say that law schools should no longer emphasize logic, rationality or consistency — of course not. But the lack of emphasis on concepts like social justice, and the disparate treatment of non-white people in the justice system, is not a part of the standard law school curriculum. It’s there, certainly, if you seek it out; it’s there in incredible, groundbreaking ways, and some of the best race and gender scholarship and activism in the United States is coming from the legal world. But it’s very easy to get through law school without having very much exposure to in-depth and challenging conversations about racial, gender and other inequalities.

It’s also very easy to get through law school spending time with people who mostly look and think like you, and who have life experiences that are similar to yours. It’s easy to fall into a group of white people who all understand White Person Code — the little things you imply or say that have attached racial meaning, without ever having to talk about race or risk saying something actually racist. I’m white, and believe me, White Person Code gets dropped like nobody’s business, in law school and out. And because its messages are coded, there isn’t a great way to explain what it always looks or sounds like. But, for example, it’s the way that a white student’s mistake in class or inability to answer a question correctly will be read as “they made a mistake” or “they didn’t do the reading,” whereas a black student’s mistake in class or inability to answer a question correctly will be read as “they are not very smart and only got in here because of affirmative action.” It’s the little glance, the raised eyebrow. It’s the implication of understanding — the inference that I don’t have to say that person is only here because of affirmative action, but we all know. It’s the study group of all white kids, who aren’t excluding people on purpose, but who decide they want to study with people who will challenge them. And I know more than a few law students of color who hated talking in class for that very reason — they weren’t just representing themselves, or how much studying they did the night before, or even how intelligent they personally are; they felt like they were representing all black people everywhere, and especially all black people who go to elite academic institutions. The pressure is on to prove that you belong here, and to prove that everyone who looks like you belongs here. And the second a mistake is made, it confirms what at least a few white people in the room are looking to have confirmed: That you don’t belong, that you aren’t as smart, that you aren’t as worthy of your spot as they are.

As does long time commenter MQ, on his brand new blog:

The main take-home from all this is simple: unless you’re burning crosses on my lawn, while wearing a white sheet and singing “Ship Those Niggers Back” in three-part harmony with David Duke and Zombie D.W. Griffith, your actions can’t be legitimately described as racist. Once I encounter someone given to such rationalizations, I walk the fuck away. I’m old, and I try to be a little more discriminating in how I direct my energies.

What does tickle me is when people who make these statements get depicted as victims. No, I’m not talking about GOP/Red-State anointing of idiots like Rusty DePass as folk heroes and victims of “vicious smear tactics” by that fearsome Liberal Media. I’m talking about folks with perfectly up-to-date progressive/liberal/Blue-State credentials. As far as some people are concerned, sites like Gawker are ruining this poor little girl’s life by reporting on comments she made no bones about believing in. At a dinner table. Surrounded by her peers. And then later, in an email to get them to understand just how wrong they were for not holding the same beliefs. But yeah, we’re destroying her life (include standard lynching subversion here). [...]

Here’s the deal: I’m sure this Stephanie Grace chick is a nice enough person, as much as I want to smack her upside the head. I’m also sure D.W. Griffith was perfectly sweet to his friends and family. Painting these people as evil, hate-consumed ogres is the easy way out – so you never have to deal with your own racist Uncle Arthur, or your own thoughts when those black kids board the train. If the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing us he didn’t exist, the Racist Fairy’s greatest accomplishment has to be convincing us that he does.

When made up as either David Duke or Kitty Genovese, the true importance of exposing her bias gets lost. She’s a Harvard Law 3L student with a clerkship waiting for her with a Chief Judge of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. She’s literally got all the damn keys to the kingdom, save one or (possibly) two – she’s white, wealthy, (perhaps) heterosexual, well-connected, and presumed to be well-educated. She’s on the road to being entrusted with the destinies of thousands of people belonging to a race she believes is genetically (therefore irreversibly) inferior to hers. I don’t want to hear any outrage about how her life is being ruined by this exposure. If you hold these views, you shouldn’t be put in a position to ever decide who gets hired, gets a bank loan, or gets into a school program. I think it goes without saying, therefore, that she should never be let anywhere near the judicial system.

But the thing that sticks out to me is how much these situations become about one person’s reputation and earning power, and not about the masses of people that are damaged by racist practices and policies implemented by people who hold beliefs like Grace and see no problems with playing around with thought excercises.

Racism doesn’t exist unless someone is there to uphold the oppressive structures, but there appears to be no end of folks who want to do just that. Thea and I had a quick chat about the situation:

Thea: While much of the coverage is “OMG how could she think this?”, an overwhelming amount of the coverage is “how could you be so stupid to make these ideas public.”   So the issue is just as much about her saying these thoughts as it is about her thinking them.  To me this is very problematic; to emphasise “you shouldn’t have said this” rather than “why are you even thinking this.”

This is how the Above the Law article starts:

Every time you put something into an email, please remember that someone you send it to may hit Forward. If your email makes the case for a biological reason for racial disparities in intelligence, someone might hit Forward and send it to Black Law Student Associations across the nation.

The response sure-you-shouldn’t-think-these-things-but-if-you-do-think-twice-about-putting-them-in-an-email misses the point that racist thoughts are the true problem, not the articulation of them. This goes back to Carmen’s diversity consulting work, where she felt frustrated that so much of diversity training was not actually trying to make companies less racist, but just simply trying to make companies look less racist.

Latoya: I was going to do an open thread, because I want to talk about how systemic bias begins. The idea is that she should not have vocalized these ideas and that vocalizing them was worse than possessing them. (Anticipating the token “thought police” comment here.)

Thea: I am kind of glad she vocalised the thoughts. Not glad about the hurt or harm her comments caused, but now that they’re out in the open she has to answer to them, whereas before she would’ve just gone on her merry way.

Latoya: Well, that’s the interesting thing. A lot of people feel that she shouldn’t be responsible for what she said because, wow, we’re ruining her career here and “Everyone has to learn.”

Thea: Right – that’s what the Above the Law piece said, “What a shame that people had to ruin her rep in the process of talking about racism at Harvard Law.”  The first mention of this to ping into our inbox was from a Harvard Law student, who sent us an email in distress that blame was being levelled against the BLSA for calling Grace out on this.

I agreed with that reader.  Because first off I am sure Grace will bounce back from this – maybe she’ll lose her clerkship, but this is the internet, people have short memories.  But more than this: shouldn’t such racist beliefs at least slightly stymie a career built on a federal clerkship?  Grace worked for Espenshade, for crying out loud.

Latoya: You know, I want to be more worked up about this but I am not.

We have all seen demonstrated that it is more important to avoid the appearance of racism than racism. But I find it interesting that when it’s a young white woman the defenses are like “she’s just learning!” “They need a chance to learn!” What the hell makes people think that people learn to be less racist over time instead of just finding ways to reinforce their existing beliefs? Racism, by nature, is irrational.

Thea: Ha! Grace is old in my books – old enough that such opinions should be of concern. And anyways, age is often a scapegoat for problematic beliefs, and wrongly so.  If you’re young, people say “they’re just learning.” If you’re old, people say “well, they’re from a different time.”

Latoya: And in the meantime, these people are building their careers on a racist foundation and are entering our existing racial hierarchy. All the while, these people are gaining power. It’s was kind of like some of the responses to the entryway – people were seriously like “well, they’re just kids, they are only learning.” But they are being published in major news outlets and getting funding. We aren’t playing parlor games, these people are firmly in the real world. This chick will have a hand crafting legal policy – and people wonder how institutional bias persists. Newsflash: this is how!

Thea: Yes, I agree. I also was not steamed at all about this. I just kind of felt, well, why is this surprising? I feel like we at Racialicious deal in more complex manifestations of racism, and this is about as textbook as it gets. Incidentally, I do think a response of outrage and indignation can be in itself racist – it implies that racism isn’t everywhere.  Responses to this kind of overt racism from a white mainstream audience will often run the gamut of  CAN YOU BELIEVE THESE PEOPLE or HOW CAN WHITE PEOPLE BELIEVE THIS or I AM SO SHOCKED AND UPSET.

Well, I’m not.

Latoya: I swear, the longer I do this, the less tolerant I am of those who defend racism because this dynamic happens time and time again. I find myself less angry at the bigoted person who committed the action but at the person who is like “I know that was wrong, but we need to cut her some slack…”wtf? So you know this is wrong and you cosign it anyway? And then its normally some defense of this person’s youth/age/position/social awkwardness/lack of decision making power – without acknowledging that society proves time and time again that it is totally cool to hold racist beliefs by keeping people in power who espouse them.

Thea: Definitely. I don’t know – some people just naturally feel the need to respond to blowback and defend anyone who is under attack. Unless they are a person of colour.  Though of course there are exceptions there too.

Latoya: Imagine if we spent this type of energy doing something else. Not defending racism, but saying “Damn, I guess that was racist! What do we do now and how do we fix it?”

Thea: Yes, for sure. I think this has a lot to do with the misunderstanding of the term “racist” too. For some reason “racist” is painted as an extreme term. So you can’t call someone racist unless they have been spouting nazi rhetoric, or people will say silly stuff like, well yeah, “her email was problematic, but I wouldn’t call it racist.”  What?? There is a knee jerk reaction to insist that nothing is racist since we must be careful with the word “racism,” “because it’s one of those words that people throw around.” I would really like to understand where that came from. Who came up with the belief that racism has to be a huge massive act that involves genocide? (Actually even when it involves genocide people will argue it’s not racism.)

Latoya: Or you have to be singing klan carols with a white hood on, drop some slurs, and say “by the way, I am only doing this because I hate everyone that is nonwhite” and even then, people are like “Well, it’s just one person – not like it’s a system or anything.”

*This is a reoccurring joke, that may one day make its way onto the site header. Run while you still can, readers!

The doors slid open to another frost covered morning as I left work. I took a deep breath and shivered as the crisp air invaded my lungs. In contrast, the sky defied the dead cold with its deep red and orange streaks. Mesmerized by the flaming sky, I stood in the doorway for a moment taking time to absorb the world outside.

The morning breeze carried a mixture of odors, the most distinguishable being of car exhaust and frying chicken. The adjacent streets echoed with the hum, squeak and whine of the early rush to get somewhere. I was in no hurry but was content to let life flow around me like flood waters around a tree.

As the sun rose higher, the warm hues reflected off of the still frozen dew enveloping everything in the color of warmth. It had been a long time since I’d stopped to enjoy a sunrise.

“What are you doing?” a co-worker approached, “Go home.”

“I will,” I smiled, “Just taking time to remember that life can still be beautiful.”

“Okaaaaay, spit it out,” he joked, “What did you take?”

“Look you,” I turned my head to glare at him, “can you not drag me out of my happy place today?”

He laughed, “Let me guess. It’s a Zen thing, right? You got some feng shui thing going on?”

I raised a fist and shifted my weight, “Wanna die, white boy?”

“Oh gawd,” he exclaimed in mock terror covering his head with his arms, “She’s whipping out the kung fu! Don’t hurt me, ninja girl!”

“I will stab you in the face, you pale piece of shit, ” I replied through my teeth in a low, threatening tone.

We paused to exchange the most menacing looks we could muster before he cracked a smile and assaulted me with a bear hug.

“See you tonight,” he said as he walked away.

“See you,” I replied.

“Get some sleep today!” he yelled over his shoulder, “You busted your ass last night.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said and began to make my way to the car.

Sitting down in my car made me realize how tired I really was and suddenly, I couldn’t wait to get back to the apartment. People from the day shift were still sifting in, and a few waved as I drove away. Some of them looked exhausted even though they’d were just beginning their day. Maybe it was the look of working too long in a job one didn’t really enjoy. Would I look like that in a few years? Would I even be there in a few years?

I was still a baby in the eyes of the old timers. Only just recently completing my first year, I had seen so many come and go. It was hard to believe a few had stayed for as long as they had. Some I knew had been there for a decade or more. I could no longer imagine living in one state for that long, much less working in the same job – especially one that required so much physical exertion.

I wondered how long my body would put up with the way I abused it. Sometimes, it was like going to the gym and working out for eight hours. The plus side was that I’d whipped myself into shape in less than six months. It was like getting paid to lose weight and tone up.

The pace at night could be grueling and hectic or just plain blah. It was a joke among some of us that the night would either bore us to sleep or drive us to the point of collapse. Either way, we ended up unconscious and drooling. Some of us seemed to thrive on the chaos, the pressure and the push to exceed our limits.

We all bitched and moaned, but for some, the complaining was a perk. After spending two decades as a stay-at-home wife and mother (the last three of those trying unsuccessfully to maneuver myself into a job), being able to talk and complain about work felt good. I drew a weird kind of satisfaction out it.

Quite a few of my coworkers were at least half my age. They were younger and had more energy reserves which forced me to drive myself even harder just to keep up. It was easy to get discouraged, but I was determined to keep pace and excel if possible.

The social dynamic posed its own kind of challenges. Not only was I the old geezer in the bunch, but I was the only Asian woman. I was more than familiar with the scenario, but wondered how I’d adapt to it being in a work situation. The group I worked with came from varied backgrounds, a few of them being a bit rough around the edges. Most were good people that I genuinely liked , but there just wasn’t room for the suburban, stay-at-home-mom I’d become.

It was also a joke among some of us that the last thing you wanted to do was show weakness or let each other know the one thing that really makes you mad. It would be the one thing we’d all pick on with very few exceptions. We tested each other and quickly learned individual limits. We pretty much knew who we could and couldn’t badger. It was done in good humor, but there were times it could go too far. I’d been yelled at and done my own share of yelling over jokes being taken past the limits of tolerance.

The previous exchange is a prime example of where they focused their attention when it came to me. The first time it happened, I was furious. A co-worker made a crack about Asian drivers which sent me into a rant about Asian stereotypes. I might as well have lit up a huge, red, neon sign that said, “PUSH THIS BUTTON!” Luckily, one of the guys I’d befriended suggested I fight back.

“Don’t get mad,” he advised, “Give it back to them. They can take it. It’s the way it works here.”

One might wonder why I didn’t just go straight to management and complain. I could have, but what would that have gotten me other than further alienating myself from the group? Besides, I wanted to handle things on my own terms which I’m glad I did for two reasons. The first being that it took a while, but I had to learn to distinguish between an intentional jibe and a statement made out of genuine ignorance/prejudice. They are the same to me. The second being that I also had to learn their teasing was their way of showing their acceptance.

That’s not to say there wasn’t racism at work. Where ever there is diversity, there is at least some measure of racism and prejudice. It seems to be a human thing from everything I’ve experienced. My goal at the time was not to let any of it hold me back from doing what I needed to do at work, but it was in the back of my mind. I did everything possible not to be seen as the old, fragile Asian lady.

I learned to be near ruthless in verbal volleys and as a last resort, use physical force as part of my arsenal. One morning as I was leaving work, I surprised myself when one of the guys referred to me as the “kung fu chic” as he was walking away. Not willing to let it go, I walked up behind him intending to act as if I were going to kick him in the face.

“I’ll show you kung fu,” I said as I came up from behind and slightly to the side of him. I swung my leg into the air and was surprised when I felt my foot come into contact with his face.

“What the hell!” he exclaimed, putting up a hand to cover his eye, “Did you just kick me in my face from behind my back?”

“Ooops,” I laughed, “I think I overshot that a little.”

Honestly, I hadn’t meant to really hit him, but it didn’t seem to matter. By the next day, people were asking me about it.

“You do know you’re just perpetuating the stereotype, right?” said one of my friends.

“Probably,” I laughed, “but it shut him up, didn’t it?”

It did for a while, but never for long. From that moment on, we all had something else to joke. The poor guy wasn’t the last to get an up close and personal introduction to my foot.

Adaptation 101 – Sometimes, you just have to own it.

I know there are problems with playing with the stereotypes, but this particular group of coworkers are people I’ve befriended. I’ve grown close to a few of them, and we have an unspoken understanding. When it comes down to it, we know we can count on each other for support. But who knows? Maybe I’ll look back later and think, “Ugh, I was awful.” It wouldn’t be the first time.

The whole experience makes me wonder if I’d had the same tools and the nerve to confront and deflect racism and prejudice as a child, might I have fared better? I can never really know, but some part of me thinks so. Back then, everything pointed to something being wrong with me, and I felt helpless to “fix” myself.

Not white enough. Not Asian enough. Not pretty enough. Not tough enough. Not smart enough. Not tall enough. Not nice enough. Not happy enough. Not American enough. Not *insert family last name* enough. Bye, bye self-esteem, and it was all downhill from there. I saw everything through that perspective.

It took my descent straight to the the bottom of self-hate hell in order for me to realize that sometimes something was wrong with other people. I wish I’d understood that the first half of my life. If I had, maybe the loss I’d experienced as a result of my adoption would have stopped at my birth parents and my culture. Instead, it flowed into my adult life and into those of my children in ways I’d never even considered.

But I suppose that’s a subject for another day…

(Image Credit: myrthezz13)

By Guest Contributor Aaminah Al-Naksibendi, originally posted at Anishinaabekwe

Note from Cecilia, owner of Anishnaabekwe: This is a guest post by Aaminah Al-Naksibendi. She is a Michigander, mother, daughter, sister, artist, writer, activist, truth teller, rebel and NDN. I asked her to write a guest post because of my utter exhaustion around what happened to me this week. So I thank her with all my heart for helping me to speak and share this story when my voice is drenched in sorrow, depression and dealing with the effects of racism in the 21st century.

I grew up in Michigan, adopted by a white family. As a young girl I attended NDN pow wows, African American cultural festivals and the Hispanic festival in our West Michigan city. My parents attempted to raise us with multi-cultural friends, in multi-cultural public schools, and attending multi-cultural churches. As a woman, I had a long relationship with a fellow NDN who had gone to school with and remained friends with my brother. We had a son together before we separated.

When my son was about 7 months old, I started dating a Zhaganaash man whose family lived in Benzie County, up just north of Traverse City. For many reasons, I was not really liked by his overbearing mother, but we attempted to build bridges and visited up there several times before we married in December and his family refused to attend and cut communication with him.

Needless to say, those visits up north were very uncomfortable in many ways. But one thing that was especially difficult for me was the complete lack of color. My fiancée talked about wanting to move up north. We loved the wooded areas, the idea of living just outside a small town, and the literally Crystal-like water of the lake – cleanest water I have ever seen. But the idea of being surrounded by only white people made me really uncomfortable. I wasn’t Muslim at the time, and I am pale (and as a baby my son was blond and pale too) so I was able to “pass” as white and no one recognized us as NDN. I didn’t experience personal racial attacks while visiting (except by my fiancée’s mother of course) and out in the community, though there was one time when a shop keeper asked my fiancée “what” I was and he answered that I was Irish like him. I do also recall overhearing jokes about Blacks, “wetbacks”, and NDNs. Even so, my discomfort stemmed more from the complete lack of color, and not being able to imagine raising my son not only completely outside his own culture, but also without the benefit of a multi-cultural environment and amongst people who were clearly hostile to people of color.

There was one time, only one, where I saw any other color in that town. It was when a Black girl accompanied a white foster family who was visiting the town on vacation. We ran into them when we went to have lunch in a little burger shack near the lake. The little blonde children of the family were in bathing suits, and the Black girl was in sloppy cut off shorts and an oversized none-too-clean t-shirt. When the family’s number was called to pick up their food she got up to serve everyone. I didn’t hear the mother or father say that wasn’t necessary or even thank her, and they certainly weren’t jumping up to help. I lost my appetite and that was the day I declared there was no way I could live there. My fiancée insisted that since they were only visiting their cabin in the summer, that family didn’t represent the year-round residents, but I will never forget what it represented to me. Between that and his family, I never again was able to bring myself to visit.

When my NDN sister Cecelia told me about moving up north, my first thought was discomfort but of course I didn’t want to spoil her plans with my misgivings so instead I congratulated her. I wanted to believe that things have really changed in the last dozen years and there would be more color in the north. Certainly, I thought there must be other NDNs there! Cecelia wrote happily about communing with nature, getting in touch with silence, getting away from the gray and draining energy of the cities. I was happy for her.

Unfortunately, it didn’t surprise me then to hear that she quickly ran into issues when looking for work. Of course people can write it off as our bad economy, no one can find work right now, etc. But I sensed something else… I sensed that she also wasn’t finding a lot of support from the small NDN community there either. Finally she wrote to tell me she had accepted a position as a volunteer (with small stipend) with an organization. I thought volunteer work is better than no work anyway and at least she felt like she was contributing to her community.

Quickly that changed. Quickly it seemed that there were some “issues” at her job and that she was being routinely disrespected on the job. The funny thing is, people know that it is wrong to be discriminated against or spoken down to when they are a “professional” on the job. But I think that people figure that if you are “just” a volunteer then no one owes you professional respect and you could just leave if you don’t like how people treat you. Of course, a committed and professional person who cares about community-based organizations doesn’t see it that simply. It is a difficult choice to leave a job, whether it is paying or not. And so many of us have been taught to second-guess ourselves, to not trust our own instincts that something is racist or classist or otherwise damaging to us.

As women we are socialized in this society to turn off our instincts. Yet instinct is one of the first things that an NDN woman works to regain when she gets in touch with her culture. Instinct is a powerful and important tool that the Creator gifted women with. For women who are interested, as Cecelia is, in healing – not only herself but also her community and the earth – instinct is essential. But so many people of color have been told that our instinctual recognition of discrimination is wrong, that we are being paranoid or “playing the race card” to gain sympathy. So many of us instinctively feel that something is wrong and that it is related to our ethnic difference, but we attempt to give any other excuse for the situation and work thru it.

And there isn’t much talk (that I hear anyway) of how NDN women continue to be marginalized in this society. We are targeted for programs to sterilize us but cannot get access to an abortion by choice. We are rarely the group that is sought out, even in a tokenizing way, by organizations, task forces and other groups when they start looking for “minority representation”. And often we are simply erased from existence. As so many of us are “mixed” and span the spectrum of skin colors from whitest White to blackest Black, we have often been forced to “choose” a side and subsume our NDNness to the other “part” of us. For those of us who are on the paler end of the spectrum, we often find that fellow NDNs don’t accept us either, especially if we have been separated from our people and culture and are trying now to reconnect.

A little while ago Cecelia shared with me some misgivings about her job and the community she was in. She was having a hard time connecting with other NDNs. When she had accepted the job, the woman who was to be her supervisor had offered to help her settle in and get hooked up with other NDNs. But that promise was never actualized in any way. Now, there are different management styles, but on the job one does need basic guidance from a supervisor, and this supervisor didn’t given any direction. It is important for anyone in a supervisory role to be a leader, and that means that they have to have some relationship to those they are leading and provide an example of how they expect the job to be done. Also, seemingly little things started to pile up. Cecelia said that she’d send emails asking specific questions, seeking specific direction, specific community connections that would help not only her but also the people they were working with. But her emails went unanswered. She noticed that she was ignored, not spoken to in the office by that supervisor or spoken to as an afterthought. When she was spoken to, she felt rather patronized, like a “second class citizen”; the whole tone was different than how she witnessed others being spoken to. There were no specifically racist comments made directly about her, but loose comments about how “white bread” the area is in a tone that implied “you don’t fit, why are you here?”

This week I heard from Cecelia after she was called into the office of her supervisor. Cecelia shared with me that she had never felt so degraded, so disrespected, that it was even worse than the day-to-day poor treatment she had been experiencing. Her supervisor decided that she would henceforth need to submit to oversight of her job duties and supervisory meetings every other week to discuss her performance. In a paying job, that would be properly termed “a probationary period” and would come about after having received, in writing, some sort of complaint about performance. Cecelia had never been told, verbally or in writing, that there was any problem with her performance. In fact, she was never given any feedback or direction in regards to her job even though she pointedly requested it. As a volunteer, such oversight sounds excessive. To be clear, this was not a matter of a policy change that would affect all volunteers (of which there are two others). Even while being told that she would be subject to this level of new scrutiny, Cecelia was never given concrete examples of any way in which she was failing to carry out her job duties or doing so in an unacceptable or inefficient manner, nor was she given a concrete reason for the change. As far as she knows, she has been doing her job just fine and been given no reason to believe there were problems with her performance. But now she must submit to constant scrutiny and being spoken to as if she were an ignorant child, while other staff and volunteers witness her being called to the office.

Is it because Cecelia is the only NDN there? I trust Cecelia’s instincts. And I remember the general hostility of the area – an area that is almost exclusively liberal White racists that think we live in a “post-racial” society. I remember Cecelia sharing stories of how overt the staring and whispering was when obviously-of-color friends visited. I’ve also seen media showcasing open racism in Northern Michigan, in particular against NDNs. And I think that since she has been singled out for the treatment and treated in a paternalistic manner, it’s reasonable to assume that being NDN had something to do with it and that White privilege and power is at work. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that they may be intentionally trying to run her out of town to preserve their communal privilege and “white bread” vision of utopia – sans color, sans NDNs.

As if independent bookstores don’t already have enough to worry about, Fidel Martinez at Guanabee writes about a language controversy at Atticus Bookstore in New Haven:

Atticus Book Store and Cafe, located in New Haven, Connecticut, has caused a controversy over a recent policy decision to require all Hispanic employees to only speak English within a customer’s earshot.

The staff is allowed to speak Spanish, but only in restricted areas.

A document from the bookstore states:

Spanish is allowed in the prep area, the dishwasher area and the lower level. Let’s make our customers feel welcome and comfortable.

“Let’s make our customers feel welcome and comfortable”? Yeeeeouch. (And yes that stuff about “the dishwasher area” is plain unfortunate.)

I’m sure I’m not the only one on this site who feels happy, or even relieved, when I hear multiple languages being spoken in a space – even though I’m a filthy monolinguist myself.   Places where people are welcome to bring their culture with them, are places where I feel comfortable.  So you have to wonder just who Atticus is referring to, when they imagine customers who feel uncomfortable when they hear Spanish.

And despite when I might’ve been led to believe by The Great Gatsby, it doesn’t sound like New Haven is some enclave of pearl-grabbing ethnocultural anglo purists.  Martinez goes on to report:

This new directive has pissed off members of Yale University (Atticus is located next to Yale’s British Arts Center) and the New Haven Workers Association. The latter sent out an email to local community groups like the New Haven Labor Council and Unidad Latino En Accion protesting what they deem to be racism in the workplace.

Apparently though, Atticus is within their legal rights to demand its employees speak English.

This is just a little news piece, but I can’t help but feel discouraged by things like this, because they seem to evidence to me how wide the gaps are, when it come to how different folks think about race and culture in America.  I imagine that the body responsible for the language rule at Atticus has no concept of the fraught history of language bans.   It just seems like good business sense, right? An English bookstore should have English-speaking employees.  Even though Martinez says

From our own personal experience, the Hispanic waitstaff at Atticus speak English well enough that it doesn’t impede them from taking an order properly.

But at schools and in the workplace, the restriction of language has a long ugly history in our country.  Almost any group of colour or marginalised linguistic group in this country has a history of their language, or access to language, being suppressed at one point, for the sake of cultural comfort and good business.  I’m sure Atticus Bookstore carries history books that could tell us all about these things.

So apart from the fact that it’s just inherently not right to restrict people’s culture, there is also a historical context for the abusive relationship that business has with language.

This just reminds me of that pretty poor episode of Seinfeld, where Elaine get’s George’s dad to spy on the Korean women who do her nails, because she knows they’re talking smack about her.  Is that why Spanish makes customers uncomfortable? Because I’m pretty sure that kind of thing only – well almost – happens on Seinfeld.

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Photo credit: Aaron Gustafson

by Guest Contributor Shani-O, originally published at PostBourgie

Much is being made of Michael Luo’s piece in yesterday’s New York Times which explains how simply being black often hurts job seekers:

Johnny R. Williams, 30, would appear to be an unlikely person to have to fret about the impact of race on his job search, with companies like JPMorgan Chase and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago on his résumé.

But after graduating from business school last year and not having much success garnering interviews, he decided to retool his résumé, scrubbing it of any details that might tip off his skin color. His membership, for instance, in the African-American business students association? Deleted.

“If they’re going to X me,” Mr. Williams said, “I’d like to at least get in the door first.”

Similarly, Barry Jabbar Sykes, 37, who has a degree in mathematics from Morehouse College, a historically black college in Atlanta, now uses Barry J. Sykes in his continuing search for an information technology position, even though he has gone by Jabbar his whole life.

“Barry sounds like I could be from Ireland,” he said.

Though Luo is working under the rather shaky premise that recent progress for blacks, like Barack Obama’s election, was supposed to improve prospects for black job seekers, he notes the opposite attitude in his interviewees:

Many interviewed, however, wrestled with “pulling the race card,” groping between their cynicism and desire to avoid the stigma that blacks are too quick to claim victimhood. After all, many had gone to good schools and had accomplished résumés. Some had grown up in well-to-do settings, with parents who had raised them never to doubt how high they could climb. Moreover, there is President Obama, perhaps the ultimate embodiment of that belief.

Certainly, they conceded, there are times when their race can be beneficial, particularly with companies that have diversity programs. But many said they sensed that such opportunities had been cut back over the years and even more during the downturn. Others speculated there was now more of a tendency to deem diversity unnecessary after Mr. Obama’s triumph.

Adam rightly notes the disincentives for blacks to speak up about discrimination, writing “why dwell on racial bias when it’s something you can’t really control? It’s obvious that racism doesn’t make success impossible, and things are obviously better now than they once were.”

And Ta-Nehisi agrees, adding, “I was in competition with a lot of other people who weren’t black. Obsessing over discrimination would have been, from that perspective, like a rooking guarding Jordan complaining about the officiating. You aren’t going to win, and it distracts you from actually doing your job. You may not like your assignment. It may be unfair. But that really isn’t up to you. My charge was to find some way to win, not to enumerate the obstacles in the way.”

Unfortunately, neither Adam nor Ta-Nehisi notice something that was glaringly obvious to me on my first reading of the piece: not a single black woman was quoted in it. Luo may have interviewed black women, but he certainly didn’t give them a voice in a story about black — not just black male — professionals.

And while Ta-Nehisi’s post is a great exploration how blacks navigate racism and success, even he only refers to black men — Obama, Deval Patrick, Cory Booker, Booker T. Washington.

This is not a minor problem.

Black women go to college at higher rates than black men, and 27 percent of black women are employed in managerial positions, while only 19 percent of black men are. I don’t think it’s much of a leap to suggest that there are more black women looking for professional jobs than black men.

Of course, black men have a unique set of challenges. And while black women share a similar experience with them, it surely wouldn’t do to quote women in a story about men. Likewise, quoting a variety of black men doesn’t speak to the experiences of a variety of black people. What about the single mothers? Or young women who are struggling to be taken seriously in the male-dominated corporate arena? I know plenty of black women who would have a lot to say about having a business degree and a ‘black’ name, or being interviewed by someone who’s not just of a different race, but also of a different gender.

The stories of the men in Luo’s piece are valuable, but in a story about black professionals, they just don’t get the job done.

When I hear the words Ellis Island, one of the first things I think of is not the New York point of interest or tiring travel across waters to reach the grand goal of the U.S. of A. and its related Dream. The first words that come to mind for me are “name changes” and “assimilation.” But with the recent economic crisis and the lagging recovery process, Ellis Island comes to mind. Only this time, instead of Eastern Europeans, Italians or the Irish knocking on the door of American opportunity, only to learn that their identities must be altered or ensconced, their traditional cultures erased for the sake of infinitely approaching some Nordic white ideal, the group scrambling for the promised land of economic security and job market acceptance is black.

That’s not to say that blacks in America have never sought assimilation as a means of achieving social acceptance and equality, in fact both during and following slavery, some black Americans employed various methods of mirroring the white majority as they recognized it could mean a chance at social and class mobility. Black immigrant groups arriving to America also faced a similar challenge. Having lived in countries where race-based terminology and categorization, media representation, and general opinion of blacks may have varied from those in the United States, only to arrive and gain an externally-defined identity based on perceptions of black Americans, black immigrants may also have felt or still feel the pressure to change or deny elements of their culture, nationality, ethnicity, and ultimately race.

In the aftermath of the recession, as the competition for the limited jobs that are available has sharpened, few applicants have room for error. Unfortunately for blacks living in the United States, one possible means of avoiding the potential disaster of not even getting a foot in the door at hiring companies is deleting any and all signs of their race. It is common knowledge that “ethnic sounding” names or, in other words, names that are not of Western European, particularly Anglo-Saxon origin, often lead to discriminatory hiring practices.* Even among these names, there are specific ethnic groups whose names are least welcome in the corporate world. Unfortunately, blacks are often the common victims of this discrimination, the bearers of African-American names, despite their qualifications, often being relegated to the bottom of the résumé stack. 

However, most of the fears of being rejected from job opportunities are spread through anecdotes or are the result of self-fulfilling prophecy based on a perception of inadequacy from simply being black (i.e. assuming the hiring party is white and would not be interested in taking on a black employee, thus not applying for the job at all), research often following as a result. Several studies comparing the successes (or lack thereof) of blacks and their white peers have been conducted (particularly as a means of measuring the success of affirmative action policy implementation and its continued need), though all ended with the same result: even with equal levels of educational and occupational experience, white candidates are more likely to be hired following the interview process than blacks.

In light of these studies, the pressure of being hired during a recession, and the discrimination based on racial markers as mentioned above, the New York Times recently released an article on history repeating itself entitled “In Job Hunt, College Degree Can’t Close the Racial Gap.” In the article, one of the few attempts made by the Times to report on the effect the recession has had on those other than wealthy whites, author Michael Luo points out with frank honesty that the push for obtaining a college degree has done little to help blacks gain footing as they compete with other applicants. Any indication of their blackness on their résumé alone could be a hindrance to their job search success.

Noting the false sense of temporary confidence Obama’s success in being voted the nation’s first black President may have given Americans of all colors in terms of progress and hope for race relations, Luo explains that little has changed when it comes to racial inequity:

That race remains a serious obstacle in the job market for African-Americans, even those with degrees from respected colleges, may seem to some people a jarring contrast to decades of progress by blacks, culminating in President Obama’s election.

But there is ample evidence that racial inequities remain when it comes to employment. Black joblessness has long far outstripped that of whites. And strikingly, the disparity for the first 10 months of this year, as the recession has dragged on, has been even more pronounced for those with college degrees, compared with those without. Education, it seems, does not level the playing field — in fact, it appears to have made it more uneven.

Luo goes on to profile applicants who have resorted to referring to themselves in their résumés by names that they normally do not use:

. . . Barry Jabbar Sykes, 37, who has a degree in mathematics from Morehouse College, a historically black college in Atlanta, now uses Barry J. Sykes in his continuing search for an information technology position, even though he has gone by Jabbar his whole life.

“Barry sounds like I could be from Ireland,” he said.

This quotation by Mr. Sykes struck me as particularly ironic, and fit quite appropriately with my note that the process of “cleaning up” one’s ethnic identity in the present is a sign of social regression in the race relations continuum, particularly considering that the Irish once received considerable discrimination for not being quite the right type of white, if white at all. During the same time of the largest immigration of the Irish population to the Americas (1845-1849 as a result of the Great Famine), Dred Scott was suing for his freedom and his trial was going through state courts, and two decades later, black American slaves were given their freedom with the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment. Now, in 2009, a black American man hopes his name sounds more like that of one of the immigrants who were socially on as low a level as many of their black peers.

But with the unemployment rate for college educated black males 25 and older being double that of their white peers, 8.4% to 4.4%, respectively, the push to erase one’s blackness goes beyond name changes. Applicants have noted that any mention of black business associations, black fraternities and sororities, and any experience that may somehow hint at one’s racial background (i.e. writing for a black issues blog) could prove hazardous. To make matters worse, Luo notes, even Asian-American and Hispanic managers are more likely to hire whites than blacks. That is not to say that someone of non-white (Anglo) racial or ethnic origin should feel obligated to hire someone who is also nonwhite, but the fact that these practices reach beyond white managers and are committed by those who could potentially be more empathetic is alarming.

Other applicants in Luo’s article mention that if and when they get beyond the application stage and are actually called in for an interview, their chances at being hired do not increase. In fact, in-person interviews sometimes lead to more problems such as outright discrimination, shock and surprise that the applicant is black, and ultimately rejection for the position despite presumed stellar interviews and excellent applications. The rejection can be without motive, leaving the applicants to second-guess not only their skills, but also whether or not their race played a role in their not being hired:

Whether or not each case actually involved bias, the possibility has furnished an additional agonizing layer of second-guessing for many as their job searches have dragged on . . .

Many interviewed, however, wrestled with “pulling the race card,” groping between their cynicism and desire to avoid the stigma that blacks are too quick to claim victimhood. After all, many had gone to good schools and had accomplished résumés. Some had grown up in well-to-do settings, with parents who had raised them never to doubt how high they could climb.

Luo also mentions the impact of networking and connections that go beyond the typical hiring process. In spite of blacks becoming part of the ever-expanding American middle class as a result of more educational opportunities since the Civil Rights Era and subsequent increased inclusion in the workforce, one of the most damaging residual effects of segregation and social exclusion from whites (Jim Crow, anti-miscegenation laws, ghettoization of the black urban population by way of discriminatory housing laws and restricted covenant, racial profiling and imprisonment, etc), has been the fragmentation of black and white populations’ interaction (even with the end of its legal prohibition). By way of stigmatizing (legally and socially) black and white interaction, whites continued to align themselves with their own social networks and blacks were left to form their own, albeit less validated, community-based social networks and connections.

Edward Telles, author of Race in Another America: the Significance of Skin Color in Brazil, an amazing text based on his comparative studies of race relations in the United States and Brazil, notes that “Recent research in economic sociology shows that hiring, even in the modern employment sector in the United States, continued to be governed by social-network ties” (Telles, 163). I found that Telles’ observations about the Brazilian job market and related hiring practiced greatly mirrored those of the United States as reported by Luo:

Most recruiting and hiring for these jobs used networks and patronage systems. Such informal methods favor whites, so that employers often do not directly deny jobs to nonwhites. Rather, blacks and browns [note: people of multiracial backgrounds that include some percentage of African heritage] seem to be discriminated against by being denied access to these networks or they are less likely to know job sponsors. When they do have access, job sponsors and networks are likely to screen out nonwhites, and especially blacks, themselves. Job sponsors may mostly recommend other whites because they themselves prefer whites or assumer employers prefer whites. Similar, persons in networks with information about jobs, including those who currently hold such jobs, are also likely to recommend whites, especially because it may enhance their own status in the eyes of their employers. (Telles, 162)

In short, even before blacks can apply for a job, it is more likely than not to be discussed amongst and filled by whites. This is what might be the most frustrating aspect of the problem. The issue itself is hard to resolve simply because a big portion of the discrimination occurs by way of silent and often unintentional exclusion. Bias does not always play a direct role in the hiring or rejection of an applicant. Though hopefully with the continued participation of blacks in higher education and the corporate world, the networks can expand to include blacks or, at least, following the older model, blacks can continue to construct their own networks as a means of gaining acceptance into the higher levels of the formal labor sector.

One fear, however, is that such findings can be discouraging in terms of morale, possibly making self-fulfilling prophecy a recurring theme in the daily lives of black Americans. Another fear is that assimilation by way of identity erasure may become a normative means of achieving success, which is disturbing considering the advances so many people of color (including, but not limited to, blacks) have made without having to resort to it. What could this mean for future generations of blacks, and further, incoming immigrant groups to the United States, where pluralism is an accepted method of both governance and social interaction (at least, in public)? In some ways, is this fear of being initially “outed” as a nonwhite racial other, particularly a person of African descent, a sign that an American identity is being tightened in the wake of economic crisis?

*for more information, please refer to the study “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal?” from The American Economic Review

(Image: “Melting Pot” political cartoon)

Soledad O’Brien says she wants Latino In America to “start a conversation.” Unfortunately for viewers, the series’ message seems to be, what? Woe is us? Abandon ship? What did Brown ever do to you?

Grounded in depressing case studies and missed questions, the series’ first installment was less “Latinos In America” and more like “Latinos For Lou Dobbs’ Audience.” Most of the people featured were not “changing” their communities – they were being victimized in or by them. They were pregnant, suicidal (or pregnant and suicidal), caught in an immigration raid, losing their cultural roots, facing an uphill job struggle or isolated in their churches. The premiere’s first profile, of Univision TV chef Lorena García, was the only one that focused on somebody doing something positive – in her case, building her own brand in spite of skepticism over her “accent.”

Most of the rest of the Garcías profiled – a disparate group “united” by having the 8th most popular surname in the U.S.; take that, Velazcos! – were, to put it mildly, in very bad places in their lives. And more damning from a journalistic perspective, we never got to see O’Brien ask crucial follow-up questions: how responsible does Cindy García’s mother feel for her inability/unwillingness to learn English obstructing Cindy’s studies? How did Cindy (pictured above) figure unprotected sex was a sensible idea in the face of a 70% failure-to-graduate rate and a sister who was also a teen mother? And what in the blue hell was her boyfriend thinking having sex without a condom?

Similar questions came to mind in the feature on Araceli Torres, the young woman facing impending deportation despite living here more than two decades. Was there something preventing her from seeking citizenship once she turned 18 years old, or was her story nothing more than an excuse for CNN to hype the grand-standing Anderson Cooper, who saw fit to follow the show by giving a platform to anti-immigrant sheriff Joe Arpaio.

The feature on Latinos in Hollywood was also clumsy: sure, it’s sad to see Lupe Ontiveros still doing the (NSFW) Hollywood Shuffle after 30 years, but Eva Longoria-Parker’s blithe dismissal of the issue (Latinos need to get behind the camera? Thanks, CNN, for the breaking news) didn’t help the segment as much as, say, asking Screen Actors’ Guild president Ken Howard how he feels about his POC members working in an industry bent on excluding them would have.

O’Brien’s best moment came during the feature on the St. Louis church struggling to integrate an increasingly Spanish-speaking membership into its’ ranks, when she got both the English-speaking and Spanish-speaking factions to admit neither will hang out with the other. That acknowledgement boosted the segment’s finale, with members from each community awkwardly attempting to communicate at a church fundraiser – and made the earlier omissions all the more glaring.

In fact, the most compelling discussion of the “Latino condition” of the evening wasn’t even part of the documentary: on Campbell Brown, John Leguizamo told L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigoza that visiting Los Angeles felt “like traveling into South Africa,” leading to this exchange:

Villarigoza: We have the biggest Latino middle class in America. We have the biggest Black middle class in America.
Leguizamo: Where are they?

Unfortunately, their face-off was cut short. Part 2 of Latino airs tonight, and as it moves to cover the murder of Luis Ramírez, you have to wonder: will it acknowledge not just anti-Latino and anti-immigrant sentiment on American airwaves, but on its’ own network?

Recommended: Brown Is The New Green

CTV News recently reported on a BC based study in which it was found that Canadians with English names have a better chance of getting a job than do people with non-English, specifically Chinese, Pakistani, or Indian, names. CTV News reports

In fact, after sending out thousands of resumés, the study found those with an English name like Jill Wilson and John Martin received 40 per cent more interview callbacks than the identical resumés with names like Sana Khan or Lei Li.

“If employers are engaging in name-based discrimination, they may be contravening the Human Rights Act,” said the study’s author, Philip Oreopoulos, economics professor at the University of B.C. “They may also be missing out on hiring the best person for the job.”

The study also found that the only way the applicants could improve their chances of a callback was to state they had Canadian or British experience.

And before one thinks this may have something to do with acculturation or language issues some new immigrants may have, the study’s author suspects that even second and third generation immigrants are at a “significant disadvantage” if they have a Chinese, Indian or Pakistani name (great – I guess my Pakistani name is going to be trouble for me after all). However, not as much as their parents or grandparents may be. I guess, it’s all in the name.

Of course, one can see how this would be problematic for those with non-English sounding names. Employers would be engaging in discrimination of applicants based on an aspect of a person’s identity that cannot indicate an individual’s competency for the job position. An aspect linked to ethnicity. In other words – racism. In the case of this study, racism toward specific groups of people, many of whom are Muslims. The findings of this study are disturbing indeed and they demonstrate the way in which “Canadian” is defined. Those with English names – yes names originating from England (which if my memory serves me correctly is now considered a foreign country in Canada) – are categorized as “real” Canadians while those with non-English sounding names are seen as non-Canadians, as others.

To begin with, the CTV article itself creates an othering of those with non-English names. By using the terms “foreign names” or “foreign-sounding names” to refer to non-English names CTV makes the assumption that only English names are truly Canadian. Those names that are not English sounding are not Canadian – including Pakistani names. Pakistanis, along with Indians and Chinese, are therefore otherized and assumed to be foreign. Even those born and raised in Canada.

And of course, the results of the study imply a similar othering. Those with non-English names, it seems, do not appear to be Canadians and as such need not be interviewed or considered. They are considered to be “foreign” and as such are seen to be less competent than “real” Canadians (or Britons it seems). Additionally, the study also found that “Chinese resumes that had English first names increased the chances of getting a callback.” All this hints that those with non-Canadian names are not seen as acculturated or Canadian enough. Take on an English name (ie name from England) and all of a sudden you’re more Canadian?

The irony of course should not be lost on readers. English names are just that – English. They are not Canadian. They originated in England. Yet names from England, and therefore people whose roots are in England (a foreign country by the way), are viewed as Canadian. And those whose roots originate in India, Pakistan, or China are not? Additionally, can we really forget that these English names have belonged to the colonizers – those who massacred Canada’s indigenous populations and stole their land? These English names arrived in Canada via extremely violent and vicious means.

How will this discovery bode for Muslim applicants? The implications for Muslims are clear. Most Muslims in Canada have non-English names. According to what this study implies, we are seen as lesser Canadians, if Canadians at all. Our names, regardless of our citizenship and nationality, are “foreign names,” as CTV would put it. We are thus seen as not “real” Canadians. The racism inherent in such discriminatory practices, whether intentional or not, has tried to define for us our place in Canada – as foreigners.

(Image Credit: CTV)

Here’s an interesting article in the San Jose Mercury News that pokes some holes in the generally accepted notion of “success” among Asian Americans living and working in Silicon Valley: Despite their success, Asians not rising to heights of Silicon Valley’s corporate world.

A survey of local executives reveals that while Asians make up more than a third of the work force at some of Silicon Valley’s biggest tech companies, they only represent about 6 percent of board members and about 10 percent of corporate officers of the Bay Area’s 25 largest companies.

According to a new study, among the 25 largest Bay Area companies by revenue, 12 had no Asian board members, and five had no Asian corporate officers. Despite the growing prominence of Asians at Silicon Valley tech companies, they’ve made no gains in the share of seats on the boards of large tech companies since 1999. What’s up with that?

It’s the dreaded Bamboo Ceiling, of course. You’d think that of all places, the Bay Area, where Asians are at least 23 percent of the work force at Silicon Valley companies like Cisco Systems, Intel, Sun Microsystems and eBay, we’d see more Asians at the upper levels of management. But it’s
the same old story!

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Photo of Palo Alto employees Buck Gee and Wesley Hom from the San Jose Mercury News

My fellow Asian Americans, stand up for yourselves in the workplace! According to a new report from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Asian American employees are underrepresented in the senior ranks of federal agencies, and likely are underreporting instances of discrimination on the job: Asian-American employees underreport discrimination, report finds.

The report, which was released earlier this month, says that Asian Americans face a number of misperceptions and stereotypes, factors that have become “the framework of barriers establishing glass or bamboo ceilings which present [Asian American and Pacific Islanders] from moving into the upper tiers of an organization.”

A 2005 Gallup poll found that 31 percent of Asian respondents said they had experienced discriminatory or unfair treatment on the job. But the EEOC noted in its report that enforcement actions reveal that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders file only 3.26 percent of discrimination.

Say what now? We already have enough problems with people thinking we as Asian are passive, good little citizens who do what we’re told. It does us no good to let people walk all over us. It’s one thing to be discriminated against — it’s another thing entirely to stay quiet about it. And we wonder why we’re so conspicuously absent from executive and senior management levels…