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Why does the mainstream media keep lying about Silicon Valley demographics?

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The white man who runs Google
The white man who runs Google
The above graph shows the diversity of Silicon Valley firms. There is an under-representation of black Americans and people of Latino cultural backgrounds. But there are many people of Asian ethnic origins. Since “Asians,” defined as people who inhabit the sweep of land between the Indus and east and north toward the Amur river, compose about 50% of the world’s population, it seems that their representation is fair. As someone who has friends who work in Silicon Valley the Asian flavor of the area is pretty hard to avoid. Go to Cupertino, where Asians are ~2/3 of the population, and you’ll see what I mean. Everyone who has spent time in the Valley knows this. Everyone who has been to a Google cafeteria knows this.

But this group does not include most Americans, so they rely on the media to impart knowledge of this region of America. Films like The Social Network, shows like Silicon Valley. And of course journalists and journalism. I’m not one to dismiss mainstream journalism. I pay for both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. But what is going on with articles like this in Quartz, White men dominate Silicon Valley not by accident, but by design. White men dominate Silicon Valley??? What planet are these headline writers living on? Basically, they’re lying, because they have a narrative, and they’re fitting the facts to fit that narrative. Humans have biases, and they tend to fall into preferred narratives. I understand. But this is Pravda level misrepresentation.

Decreased life expectancy is a white privilege
Decreased life expectancy is a white privilege
Here’s a Mother Jones article: Silicon Valley Firms Are Even Whiter and More Male Than You Thought. Read the article, and you find this: “But among those people directly employed in technology positions at Bay Area tech firms, Asians have actually surpassed whites as the dominant racial group….” No. Shit. Sherlock.

Demographic denialism is a thing. And it’s especially strong on the political-cultural Left. For example, the “Model Minority Myth” is not a myth. Look at the statistics on health and wealth. Actually, if you buy the myth that it isn’t a myth, I’m 99% sure you won’t. Rather, you’ll read qualitative ethnographies of Hmong refugees and use that as an equal balance to the literal tsunami of H1-B’s pouring into this country… That’s exactly like reducing the experience of all white people to downtrodden folk in Appalachia. But the same sort who assert that the model minority is a myth because of Southeast Asian refugees wouldn’t dare express the idea that white privilege is a myth because of Appalachian poverty.

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