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Cultural differences are big here too. Asian American culture leads to personalities which are not considered leadership-worthy in WASP culture. You're not alo

Cultural differences are big here too. Asian American culture leads to personalities which are not considered leadership-worthy in WASP culture. You're not alone there. The same is true for people from most cultures -- African immigrants, Eastern European immigrants, and most other types of immigrants behave in ways which are too foreign. It's not universal -- there are individuals who manage to culturally adapt. But they're a minority, and it's an uphill battle. Actual performance tends to be excellent, but that's not how leaders get chosen in most organizations. Leadership decisions are almost entirely about perception: Do your employees like you and relate well to you? Your superiors? That has a huge cultural component, and a lot of room for racism.

dnautics 7y ago
Why do you assume my dad was an immigrant. His side of the family has been in the Hawaii since the 1880s, before it even became a territory. My father was born in post WWII America to two born in America citizens. His master chief was black, his executive officer was a woman, and his head programmer was white. He was universally loved in the Navy community, especially by his subordinates, and though he did ruffle some feathers with his superiors, I can't believe he pissed them off too much, since they even honored him with a full page cartoon of him explaining his achievement with two other O6s and an O5, and twice with the legion of merit, which you don't get (much less twice) if the admirals are displeased.
- worik 7y ago
  Is it different in Hawaii and California and East Coast? I am a long way from any of those places.
- tech5000 7y ago
  Its possible that the shared values and commitment to public service inherent in choosing to serve in the military caused your father's co-workers in the military to see him more clearly and/or in a different light. It is also possible that his leadership ability did not manifest equally in both settings, for example if he was more passionate about the military than his civilian job and/or if it was a better fit for his skill set. Not to suggest that some institutions don't still discriminate against Asians etc, unfortunately. Hopefully things are changing for the better though.
  - BurningFrog 7y ago
    How well one person fits into a team is a very "butterfly effect" thing. I've both been "the star" and the mediocre kinda struggling guy on different team. It's called "team chemistry" not "team logic" for a reason.
  - dnautics 7y ago
    I assure you there are lots of stupid people in the military who are racist, and "the shared values and commitment to public service" is not nearly as inherent in government as Parks and Recreation would have you believe. Remember, in his full time job he also worked for the Federal Government. In the VA, no less. You'd think that the employees of the VA would have the highest level of commitment to public service and the highest understanding of what it means to be a successful leader in the military, (and for that matter the highest amount of care for the health of veterans), but, that doesn't seem to really be the case.
- bJGVygG7MQVF8c 7y ago
  > Why do you assume my dad was an immigrant. For whatever it's worth, I detected no assumption that your father was an immigrant in the OP. It's worth dwelling on the possibility that no such assumption is needed.
  - magicsmoke 7y ago
    > You're not alone there. The same is true for people from most cultures -- African immigrants, Eastern European immigrants, and most other types of immigrants Following up Asian American with a list of other immigrant groups indicates that assumption pretty strongly. If he wanted to highlight cultural differences from WASP society, he could have listed Black Americans or Southern Rednecks. It's quite clear that Blacks and Redneck society, despite being very different from WASP society, is "native" to America in a way that Asian Americans aren't in public perception.
    - woofie11 7y ago
      I thought about those when writing the post. I chose not to list those simply because they made the discussion more complex, to the point where a post would have turned into an essay. I didn't want to single out Asians (or lump them together), but I also didn't want to get into that. The two groups you list face more discrimination than most Asians precisely because of the assumption you list: they're perceived to be native, and cultural allowances aren't made, but the cultural differences are huge. That's especially true for what you call "Southern Rednecks," of whom you will find approximately zero at e.g. elite schools, mostly due to this sort of discrimination.
slowdog 7y ago
I understand your sentiment and I’m sure you’re well meaning. But Asian Americans are one of the most diverse groups, it’s a huge part of the world and part of the problem is people assuming all Asian Americans are the same personality
- woofie11 7y ago
  I'm not assuming that. I'm assuming many people of WASP descent are put off by differences from their culture. That assumption us backed by plenty of scientific research and supported by plenty of personal observation. That's why in my post I mentioned Africa (which is as diverse as Asia) and Eastern Europe (which is the same skin color). That's discriminatory, but different in how it plays out than discrimination on skin color. If I receive a resume from an equally-qualified Nigerian and an equally-qualified American of Anglo-Saxon descent, unless the Nigerian was able to seamlessly code-shift, the language WILL be subtly or significantly different. Unless you make explicit cultural allowances for that, that WILL bias me towards the individual of Anglo-Saxon descent.
  - ericmay 7y ago
    Isn’t your observation to be expected? I’d say this is would be true even across countries such as the UK and Australia with a shares language, never mind most of the rest of the world. In general, even within groups you’ll have bias whether it’s conscious or not, irrespective of race. An American-born person of Indian decent would potentially be more likely to get hired than a white Australian. I think you can explain a lot of this without dancing around racism without saying it. Do you not think the same thing happens in every other country on the planet? If we think through what you’ve written here, even differences between groups of WASP will prove out a bias. Maybe it’s education level, or someone uses a word that my favorite football coach uses (and they like it too since we are from a more similar background) etc. Was your expectation that this doesn’t play out elsewhere? Do you think the same thing wouldn’t happen in Tokyo, or Toronto?
    - woofie11 7y ago
      It is expected, and it is almost everywhere. If I go to China, Korea, or Japan, I'll be really disadvantaged because of my cultural background, much more so than in America. In India and some parts of Africa, I'll actually have an advantage because of the biases there. But that doesn't mean it's good. OP ought to be able to find a job based on their skills, not based on their culture. And people should have enough cross-cultural competency to be able to adapt to a manager or employee with a subtly or significantly different cultural background. It's especially not good in America, which has an identity as a melding pot, and where most people are either immigrant or of immigrant descent of some sort (except those whose ancestors crossed over the Bering Straight). As a footnote, every single one of my comments in this thread was "cancelled" (many downvotes, without any constructive comments, most likely by someone with multiple accounts or with bots). The ones which were +4 are now down too. I don't really care about up/down-votes, but it's a growing problem on HN. At some point, it will become reddit.
kyawzazaw 7y ago
Could you share specific examples of those?
- Barrin92 7y ago
  Not the OP but I remember reading a blog post from a Chinese (IIRC) man who went to work for an American investment firm and he commented on the fact that the corporate culture dominant in American firms favoured promotion of people who tended to be bold, and who took risky bets that paid off, even if the investments were the results of unsound judgement. He found this to be characteristic of American business culture, and I think this is intuitively right. People in the US that make bold bets and get lucky even if their reasoning was wrong tend to be showered with fame (just take a look at all the celebrity founders), while people who just silently and methodologically work tend to be rather unknown. And that's a business culture definitely more dominant in East-Asian countries in particular.
  - wasdfff 7y ago
    You cannot generalize the culture in investment firms to other businesses. Very toxic working environment for everyone involved.
mannykannot 7y ago
> Asian American culture leads to personalities which are not considered leadership-worthy in WASP culture. On the face of it, there is no way to tell if this is the actual cause of a phenomenon or merely a rationalization for an irrational bias. One might invoke Occam's razor at this point, and say that the simplest explanation - that it is the actual cause, not a rationalization for something else - is the most probable one, but: "The same is true for people from most cultures -- African immigrants, Eastern European immigrants, and most other types of immigrants behave in ways which are too foreign." - the more one advances this point, the more clearly it becomes obvious that foreign-ness is the one common factor in all the cases. Based on your last paragraph, I think we are both making essentially the same point.
- Retric 7y ago
  There are differences between cultural and racial bias. Namely, you can fake cultural fit. It’s common for people to adopt a persona for climbing the corporate ladder, because it works. Looking at people from any racial or ethnic background who succeed and you find they fit the organization they climbed. Not all US companies fit the corporate MBA mold, but it’s extremely common and tends to take over most companies as they age or grow. I am not saying that’s a good thing, but learning the rules of the game are a basic prerequisite for winning.
  - mannykannot 7y ago
    I suspect that the issue here is that learning the rules, or otherwise playing according to the rules, is not necessarily enough in the face of deep-seated stereotypes.
    - Retric 7y ago
      Deep seated stereotypes play a role, but there are many forces at work. Most people are going to fail either way. That’s simply an outgrowth of a pyramid with fewer openings at the top. If 10x more people of type X than type Y play the game and people of type X make it to he top 10x more frequently then that’s in line with this model. Currently there are for example 4 black CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies, which is really low. But, if the proxy is say MBA graduates in 1990, that’s also low. Family connections further muddle the water etc. It’s clearly not a level playing field by any means.
asiachick 7y ago
What cultural differences are these? We're talking about Americans not foreigners. All my Asian American friends are just Americans. If you talked talked to them on the phone you wouldn't be able to tell them apart from any other American.
- woofie11 7y ago
  Cultural traits persist longer than accents. Not forever (if you wait many generation), but longer (often a few generations). If you talked to me or my sibling on the phone, you wouldn't be able to tell I wasn't any other American. On the other hand, many of our personality traits are reflective of the culture our parents were born in. Growing up, I always thought those were places where I was socially awkward and didn't fit in. It wasn't until I did a deep dive into cultures and started managing international teams that I saw that these lined up completely with the culture my roots come from. I can't talk about specific differences since how people from India differ is not the same as how people from Tanzania differ. A good survey for general differences is Hofstede's writing. In addition, there are major differences in communication styles. I will mention a few major ones: 1) How positive one is. Americans always smile. They're always doing "well," "fantastic," or similar. Eggs start at medium, and go up from there. That's not true of most of the world. 2) When and how much one shows emotions or talks about personal details in professional settings. Immigrants from cultures who show them less (e.g. Japan) seem emotionally stilted. People from ones who do this more (including many African American communities -- you can't get more American than that) seem unprofessional. 3) China: Emojis / "cute pictures / etc. in professional communication. 4) When one disagrees (and especially across hierarchies), how, and especially how much confidence one shows. This is a gender difference too. 5) Sense of humor (what's funny -- watch foreign films and see where people laugh) Most people have no problem getting over the big stuff (e.g. Middle Eastern gender relationships), but it's the subtle stuff that puts one in an uncanny valley. There's an almost fractal expansion of nuance in subtle ways language differs, what's appropriate, etc. That's really tough to manage unless both sides are expert in it.
  - coffeeling 7y ago
    > 1) How positive one is. Americans always smile. They're always doing "well," "fantastic," or similar. Eggs start at medium, and go up from there. That's not true of most of the world. Whenever our American boss comes to visit this side of the pond, this drives me so nuts. Like, if things suck, just say so ffs. We royally fucked something up? We've had challenges. Some new thing is good but not mindblowingly amazing? Excellent. Your language has a range of expression, please use it :'D
didntknowyou 7y ago
the whole point of being racist is not accepting other cultures and thinking yours is the "right" one. basically you're saying their culture is different that's why they don't fit. which unfortunately is true when you make a bias system.

dnautics 7y ago

Why do you assume my dad was an immigrant. His side of the family has been in the Hawaii since the 1880s, before it even became a territory. My father was born in post WWII America to two born in America citizens. His master chief was black, his executive officer was a woman, and his head programmer was white. He was universally loved in the Navy community, especially by his subordinates, and though he did ruffle some feathers with his superiors, I can't believe he pissed them off too much, since they even honored him with a full page cartoon of him explaining his achievement with two other O6s and an O5, and twice with the legion of merit, which you don't get (much less twice) if the admirals are displeased.

worik 7y ago
Is it different in Hawaii and California and East Coast? I am a long way from any of those places.
tech5000 7y ago
Its possible that the shared values and commitment to public service inherent in choosing to serve in the military caused your father's co-workers in the military to see him more clearly and/or in a different light. It is also possible that his leadership ability did not manifest equally in both settings, for example if he was more passionate about the military than his civilian job and/or if it was a better fit for his skill set. Not to suggest that some institutions don't still discriminate against Asians etc, unfortunately. Hopefully things are changing for the better though.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  How well one person fits into a team is a very "butterfly effect" thing. I've both been "the star" and the mediocre kinda struggling guy on different team. It's called "team chemistry" not "team logic" for a reason.
- dnautics 7y ago
  I assure you there are lots of stupid people in the military who are racist, and "the shared values and commitment to public service" is not nearly as inherent in government as Parks and Recreation would have you believe. Remember, in his full time job he also worked for the Federal Government. In the VA, no less. You'd think that the employees of the VA would have the highest level of commitment to public service and the highest understanding of what it means to be a successful leader in the military, (and for that matter the highest amount of care for the health of veterans), but, that doesn't seem to really be the case.
bJGVygG7MQVF8c 7y ago
> Why do you assume my dad was an immigrant. For whatever it's worth, I detected no assumption that your father was an immigrant in the OP. It's worth dwelling on the possibility that no such assumption is needed.
- magicsmoke 7y ago
  > You're not alone there. The same is true for people from most cultures -- African immigrants, Eastern European immigrants, and most other types of immigrants Following up Asian American with a list of other immigrant groups indicates that assumption pretty strongly. If he wanted to highlight cultural differences from WASP society, he could have listed Black Americans or Southern Rednecks. It's quite clear that Blacks and Redneck society, despite being very different from WASP society, is "native" to America in a way that Asian Americans aren't in public perception.
  - woofie11 7y ago
    I thought about those when writing the post. I chose not to list those simply because they made the discussion more complex, to the point where a post would have turned into an essay. I didn't want to single out Asians (or lump them together), but I also didn't want to get into that. The two groups you list face more discrimination than most Asians precisely because of the assumption you list: they're perceived to be native, and cultural allowances aren't made, but the cultural differences are huge. That's especially true for what you call "Southern Rednecks," of whom you will find approximately zero at e.g. elite schools, mostly due to this sort of discrimination.

slowdog 7y ago

I understand your sentiment and I’m sure you’re well meaning. But Asian Americans are one of the most diverse groups, it’s a huge part of the world and part of the problem is people assuming all Asian Americans are the same personality

woofie11 7y ago
I'm not assuming that. I'm assuming many people of WASP descent are put off by differences from their culture. That assumption us backed by plenty of scientific research and supported by plenty of personal observation. That's why in my post I mentioned Africa (which is as diverse as Asia) and Eastern Europe (which is the same skin color). That's discriminatory, but different in how it plays out than discrimination on skin color. If I receive a resume from an equally-qualified Nigerian and an equally-qualified American of Anglo-Saxon descent, unless the Nigerian was able to seamlessly code-shift, the language WILL be subtly or significantly different. Unless you make explicit cultural allowances for that, that WILL bias me towards the individual of Anglo-Saxon descent.
- ericmay 7y ago
  Isn’t your observation to be expected? I’d say this is would be true even across countries such as the UK and Australia with a shares language, never mind most of the rest of the world. In general, even within groups you’ll have bias whether it’s conscious or not, irrespective of race. An American-born person of Indian decent would potentially be more likely to get hired than a white Australian. I think you can explain a lot of this without dancing around racism without saying it. Do you not think the same thing happens in every other country on the planet? If we think through what you’ve written here, even differences between groups of WASP will prove out a bias. Maybe it’s education level, or someone uses a word that my favorite football coach uses (and they like it too since we are from a more similar background) etc. Was your expectation that this doesn’t play out elsewhere? Do you think the same thing wouldn’t happen in Tokyo, or Toronto?
  - woofie11 7y ago
    It is expected, and it is almost everywhere. If I go to China, Korea, or Japan, I'll be really disadvantaged because of my cultural background, much more so than in America. In India and some parts of Africa, I'll actually have an advantage because of the biases there. But that doesn't mean it's good. OP ought to be able to find a job based on their skills, not based on their culture. And people should have enough cross-cultural competency to be able to adapt to a manager or employee with a subtly or significantly different cultural background. It's especially not good in America, which has an identity as a melding pot, and where most people are either immigrant or of immigrant descent of some sort (except those whose ancestors crossed over the Bering Straight). As a footnote, every single one of my comments in this thread was "cancelled" (many downvotes, without any constructive comments, most likely by someone with multiple accounts or with bots). The ones which were +4 are now down too. I don't really care about up/down-votes, but it's a growing problem on HN. At some point, it will become reddit.

kyawzazaw 7y ago

Could you share specific examples of those?

Barrin92 7y ago
Not the OP but I remember reading a blog post from a Chinese (IIRC) man who went to work for an American investment firm and he commented on the fact that the corporate culture dominant in American firms favoured promotion of people who tended to be bold, and who took risky bets that paid off, even if the investments were the results of unsound judgement. He found this to be characteristic of American business culture, and I think this is intuitively right. People in the US that make bold bets and get lucky even if their reasoning was wrong tend to be showered with fame (just take a look at all the celebrity founders), while people who just silently and methodologically work tend to be rather unknown. And that's a business culture definitely more dominant in East-Asian countries in particular.
- wasdfff 7y ago
  You cannot generalize the culture in investment firms to other businesses. Very toxic working environment for everyone involved.

mannykannot 7y ago

> Asian American culture leads to personalities which are not considered leadership-worthy in WASP culture. On the face of it, there is no way to tell if this is the actual cause of a phenomenon or merely a rationalization for an irrational bias. One might invoke Occam's razor at this point, and say that the simplest explanation - that it is the actual cause, not a rationalization for something else - is the most probable one, but: "The same is true for people from most cultures -- African immigrants, Eastern European immigrants, and most other types of immigrants behave in ways which are too foreign." - the more one advances this point, the more clearly it becomes obvious that foreign-ness is the one common factor in all the cases. Based on your last paragraph, I think we are both making essentially the same point.

Retric 7y ago
There are differences between cultural and racial bias. Namely, you can fake cultural fit. It’s common for people to adopt a persona for climbing the corporate ladder, because it works. Looking at people from any racial or ethnic background who succeed and you find they fit the organization they climbed. Not all US companies fit the corporate MBA mold, but it’s extremely common and tends to take over most companies as they age or grow. I am not saying that’s a good thing, but learning the rules of the game are a basic prerequisite for winning.
- mannykannot 7y ago
  I suspect that the issue here is that learning the rules, or otherwise playing according to the rules, is not necessarily enough in the face of deep-seated stereotypes.
  - Retric 7y ago
    Deep seated stereotypes play a role, but there are many forces at work. Most people are going to fail either way. That’s simply an outgrowth of a pyramid with fewer openings at the top. If 10x more people of type X than type Y play the game and people of type X make it to he top 10x more frequently then that’s in line with this model. Currently there are for example 4 black CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies, which is really low. But, if the proxy is say MBA graduates in 1990, that’s also low. Family connections further muddle the water etc. It’s clearly not a level playing field by any means.

asiachick 7y ago

What cultural differences are these? We're talking about Americans not foreigners. All my Asian American friends are just Americans. If you talked talked to them on the phone you wouldn't be able to tell them apart from any other American.

woofie11 7y ago
Cultural traits persist longer than accents. Not forever (if you wait many generation), but longer (often a few generations). If you talked to me or my sibling on the phone, you wouldn't be able to tell I wasn't any other American. On the other hand, many of our personality traits are reflective of the culture our parents were born in. Growing up, I always thought those were places where I was socially awkward and didn't fit in. It wasn't until I did a deep dive into cultures and started managing international teams that I saw that these lined up completely with the culture my roots come from. I can't talk about specific differences since how people from India differ is not the same as how people from Tanzania differ. A good survey for general differences is Hofstede's writing. In addition, there are major differences in communication styles. I will mention a few major ones: 1) How positive one is. Americans always smile. They're always doing "well," "fantastic," or similar. Eggs start at medium, and go up from there. That's not true of most of the world. 2) When and how much one shows emotions or talks about personal details in professional settings. Immigrants from cultures who show them less (e.g. Japan) seem emotionally stilted. People from ones who do this more (including many African American communities -- you can't get more American than that) seem unprofessional. 3) China: Emojis / "cute pictures / etc. in professional communication. 4) When one disagrees (and especially across hierarchies), how, and especially how much confidence one shows. This is a gender difference too. 5) Sense of humor (what's funny -- watch foreign films and see where people laugh) Most people have no problem getting over the big stuff (e.g. Middle Eastern gender relationships), but it's the subtle stuff that puts one in an uncanny valley. There's an almost fractal expansion of nuance in subtle ways language differs, what's appropriate, etc. That's really tough to manage unless both sides are expert in it.
- coffeeling 7y ago
  > 1) How positive one is. Americans always smile. They're always doing "well," "fantastic," or similar. Eggs start at medium, and go up from there. That's not true of most of the world. Whenever our American boss comes to visit this side of the pond, this drives me so nuts. Like, if things suck, just say so ffs. We royally fucked something up? We've had challenges. Some new thing is good but not mindblowingly amazing? Excellent. Your language has a range of expression, please use it :'D

didntknowyou 7y ago

the whole point of being racist is not accepting other cultures and thinking yours is the "right" one. basically you're saying their culture is different that's why they don't fit. which unfortunately is true when you make a bias system.