Asian American men in tech.

Just a quick reblog before I leave.

https://medium.com/message/the-tech-diversity-story-thats-not-being-told-9a36fb40530f

This story is a bit old (from last year) but I didn't have a blog back then and I couldn't find it earlier.

This is a great piece by Anil Dash who is a blogger, entrepreneur, and technologist.  Previously an independent technology consultant and new media developer for the Village Voice, Dash was the first employee of Six Apart, the makers of Movable Type, TypePad, and Vox. He served as its Vice President and Chief Evangelist until moving to Expert Labs.  He was the director of Expert Labs, a "Government 2.0 initiative that aims to connect United States government projects with citizens who want to become more involved in the political discussion".

The major tech companies finally gave in and published their statistics confirming the stark reality that the technology industry excludes workers who are African American, Latino, Native American and especially those who are women of any ethnic or racial background.
For example, California’s Hispanic population now stands at 39%. But though most tech companies are headquartered in California, their average percentage of employees who identify as Hispanic is less than 5%. Take Google, whose headquarters are located in Mountain View, CA, where Hispanics make up 21% of the population —its staff is only 3% Hispanic. The statistics are just as stark when it comes to gender exclusion: The industry average is that only 1/3 of employees are women.

Mr. Dash makes the correct, obvious conclusion:

But there’s one conclusion that is inescapable: Asian American men who work in tech are benefitting from tech’s systematic exclusion of women and non-Asian minorities. 

He gives some useful tips as well for combating this injustice.  The first two tips are:

• Listen and believe. Talk to your coworkers who belong to underrepresented groups. Listen to their stories and experiences. Don’t be defensive, just listen. And then when they’re done, believe what they’re saying. Don’t explain it away, don’t play devil’s advocate. [Emphasis my own] Believe that they know just as much as you, are as smart and capable as you, and have had experiences that you don’t know about.
• Stop ignoring the issue. Specifically, we should acknowledge that we haven’t said enough about anti-Black and anti-Latino attitudes, and that we have not articulated our complicity in industry sexism and misogyny. Indeed, we have often helped build these systems of exclusion, not merely remained silent while they were enforced.

I will let the rest of Anil Dash's article speak for itself (once again, you can read it here).  Please take a look at the article and educate yourselves!  And remember, as a wise man once said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"