For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

There was a presentation from the Black Diversity group in my company where they described an incident where they gathered for an ERG meeting. They were a collection of engineers, managers, legal, etc from across the company. The front desk security, who also was black, assumed they were cafeteria staff and directed them to the cafeteria without even asking. It was eye opening how deeply unconscious bias occurs.

My Asian friends say that especially Asian women have problems being taken as authority figures as well. My friend was a senior manager at an accounting firm and went to visit a client with a fresh grad who was a tall white male. The client instantly greeted the fresh grad first and assumed he was the manager and she was the subordinate.

Asian women being taken as an authority figure? Heck, anecdotally they can’t even be seen as developers. I have an Asian friend/former coworker. Anytime that we would all go to a local conference they would assume she was QA.

I have a friend who runs a team and hires according to these lines:

  - Management: Europeans
  - Coding: Russians
  - QA: Indians

He will not consider that he might be wrong here.