Silicon Valley is its own bubble of exclusivity. We read about the Evan Spiegels, Mark Zuckerbergs, and some random 20-year-old kid that wrote a code in his basement and sold it to some company and became a multimillionaire, and we aim to be like them.
However, today, Steve Bannon, an investor as well as the executive chairman of Breitbart News, made the statement that “When two-thirds or three-quarters of the CEOs in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia, I think…” Bannon said. “A country is more than an economy. We’re a civic society.”
What people like Bannon fail to realize is that this country was BUILT BY IMMIGRANTS. NO ONE EXCEPT FOR NATIVE AMERICANS CAN CLAIM THAT THEY ARE THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
Bannon was appointed Chief Strategist for the Trump administration. Many people are just going to take his word for it and spread the lie that 2/3 or 3/4 of the CEOs in Silicon Valley are of Asian decent. The truth is, as of 2013 only 3.3% of total board seats (CEO, CFO etc) were of Asian OR Pacific Island decent. I’m truly stunned that in 3 years, there was an over 60% increase in the amount of Asian/Pacific Islanders being elected to C-suite positions? HOW DID THIS HAPPEN WHILE NO MAJOR NEWS OUTLETS COVERED IT? Many people are just going to take what Bannon says as fact without conducting a simple Google search to see if his numbers are corroborated by data. This in turn leads to the anti-]insert race here] sentiment that is so pervasive in our society, especially amongst the “working class.” The fiery rhetoric of “these minorities are stealing our jobs (even at executive levels)” is fueled by men like this with money, power, and influence. It’s no longer the common sense judgment of “maybe this Indian man was the best qualified for this position,” instead it turns into the biased statement of “this Indian man came to America and stole the position of CEO.”
This man’s blatant disdain for minorities is being brought into our Capitol where he’s being given the position to influence how Trump and his administration handles things. His antipathy, verging on racism, is being celebrated and rewarded, and the average minority has to pay the price for it. How can anything change when we give men who criminalize hard working people a position of authority?
As a non-white individual pursuing a STEM degree, I see this and I’m so perplexed. On one hand, Mark Zuckerberg, basically the spokesperson for STEM and Silicon Valley, donates $15 million dollars to promote diversity in coding, but on the other hand, a wealthy guy like Bannon basically says that there is too much diversity in Silicon Valley. There are many studies out there demonstrating the fact that there is a disproportionate lack of minority representation in Silicon Valley. What are we supposed to take from studies like this? Should you really believe that Silicon Valley is working to improve diversity or should you believe, with facts supported by data, that the majority of companies in Silicon Valley share the same sentiments as Brannon and don’t care about diversity? As a non-white person will I not be given the opportunity to progress and get that corner office because there’s a minority quota that the company has already filled so they can claim to be “diverse”?
Many people think that diversity is just a word and is not a big deal. What they don’t realize is, if you only surround yourself with people who tell you anything that quacks is a dog, you’ll truly start to believe anything that quacks is a dog. When you encounter what we know as ducks crossing the road and you call it a dog, people will laugh at you and think you’re dumb because you’ve never had anyone tell you that maybe things that quack are called ducks and not dogs which will then cause you to research this topic for yourself. It’s the same thing, if you have people in a company that all think the same thing, you’ll eventually be left bewildered by the fact that the ad campaign you ran resulted in a 45% reduction of sales because everyone told you it was a good idea. In that case, diversity would have been beneficial because you have people from different backgrounds who think differently and one of them would have been able to tell you that running a commercial that stereotypes a segment of the population would not encourage an increase in that demographic’s interest in your products. Diversity isn’t simply a word, it’s good for business.
