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How racism in Silicon Valley stops many Asian-Americans achieving their potential
- Many Asian-Americans in tech face subtle but constant discrimination. The industry claims to be ‘post-race’, but ‘there’s a wall you hit’, says one insider
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Silicon Valley executives sometimes seem to believe they are proprietors of a post-racial paradise. The industry’s corporate campuses abound with immigrants, its investors say they like to bet on underdogs and its biggest companies preach the gospel of workplace inclusivity.
“Diversity is a foundational value for us,” Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet, said last year. “We probably have more resources invested in diversity now than at any point in our history as a company.”
The demographics of Alphabet and its peers, of course, tell a different story: big tech companies employ few black or Hispanic workers, and almost none in technical or executive roles. On the other hand, there is some basis to see Silicon Valley (a tech hub in the United States) as a beacon of progress in the representation of Asian-Americans, who account for a quarter of the population in the San Francisco Bay Area of California.
Alphabet, DoorDash and Zoom all have Asian-American CEOs. Pichai, originally from India, leads a company where more than 40 per cent of the United States workforce is Asian. At Facebook, the figure is even higher, and Asian employees slightly outnumber white ones.
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