On Being an Overrepresented Minority in CS

I had a different article I originally wanted to be my first post on this blog but Washington State recently sent me my ballot (also go register to vote!) and that sparked a thought in me about something I’ve been wanting to write for a long, long time.

The Washington ballot contained a vote on Referendum 88, which is about Initiative 1000. For those who do not follow state politics closely (or you know, don’t live in Washington), Initiative 1000 specifically allows the state to use affirmative action for hiring for public jobs (public school teachers, government employees, and government contractors) but disallows for preferential treatment when hiring for those same jobs. Referendum 88 is a vote to the entire state asking whether or not this initiative should become law. This referendum is incredibly interesting to me and reflects an interesting place that Asian Americans have in the United States. However, to discuss why, I’ll need to break it up into three parts: what is an initiative/referendum, what is affirmative action, and how do Asians vote.

What is an initiative and what is a referendum?

Now for those who haven’t taken a civics class in a long time, have never lived in a state with the right to initiative and referendum, or just don’t really keep up with politics, here’s a short explanation of what that all means.

An initiative is a process that allows ordinary citizens who are not elected lawmakers to propose a law either directly to the Legislature or to the People for their approval or rejection. In Washington, getting an initiative to the ballot requires 259,622 people to agree that said initiative should be put to a vote. As soon as an initiative is passed either by the Legislature or by popular vote though, it immediately becomes law.

A referendum (or more specifically in this case, a veto referendum) is very similar to an initiative in that it is a vote on a law proposed by citizens who are not lawmakers. However, a referendum is always voted on by the people and requires half as many signatures as an initiative does to make it onto a ballot.

Basically, for either of these things to make it onto an official ballot requires a very large amount of people to say “Yes, I am in support of this thing and we should vote to make it a law in this state right now”. Clearly, it follows that only issues that are of great importance to a lot of people tend to make it to the ballot as an initiative/referendum. So you might be wondering, what could possibly be so important that we needed the entire state of Washington to vote on?

What is affirmative action?

As a quick summary, affirmative action is the practice of using policies that support members of a previously disadvantaged group. Most often in America, it is talked about in the context of race and applied to the context of school admissions. I’m sure most of us understand why this is so controversial and why it would get enough people to sign off on both an initiative and a referendum. The constitutionality of affirmative action has been debated all the way up to the Supreme Court and elicits a wide range of responses from all different people. It is no surprise then that an initiative and a referendum on that topic managed to get so many people to support putting this measure on a ballot twice. When you look at who backed the two opposing sides to the initiative, you mostly see what you would expect: more liberals on the side of affirmative action and more conservatives standing against it. However, when you look at the financial backers of each side you find something interesting. The pro-affirmative action side was mostly backed by groups such as the ACLU, but the anti-affirmative action side was mostly backed by individual contributors, of which the top three were all Asian.

How do Asians vote?

Now, I am not a political scientist, so a lot of my experience with this is anecdotal. However, Wikipedia does agree with what I’m about to say so there must be something at least a little true about it. Asian Americans^*, particularly Koreans, Japanese, and Chinese, tend to vote more liberal. As with most demographics, the older the person, the more likely they will be to vote conservative (look at the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Chinese Civil War as to why). But as a whole, Asians tend to support liberal candidates and liberal policies. However, this does not hold true for affirmative action. Overwhelmingly, Asian Americans are against affirmative action. This was most recently shown in Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. Harvard where a group representing a collection of Asian students sued Harvard — claiming that Harvard was discriminating against Asian applicants in the name of affirmative action.

So what?

Now, how do these three things fit together? Well, I’m sure most of you are already tracking with me. Asians, especially Chinese and Indians, dominate the field of software engineering. There is a reason that “Indian technical support” and “the nerdy Asian CS major video game god” are the stereotypes and punchlines they are. When it comes to affirmative action, these policies tend to hurt Asians the most. Clearly, I am not the first/most eloquent/most famous/insert other superlative here Asian American to voice their opinion on affirmative action (hi Hasan Minhaj). And obviously, there are no easy answers to combating long-standing, entrenched racial inequality. However, there is one particular train of thought I’d like to explore here. The common argument I hear in favor of affirmative action is “Do you think it’s right for you to get into [insert position here] at the expense of an entire race? Of course not! Therefore, you NEED to support affirmative action!” Of course, there lies the problem. How do you convince the you on the receiving end of the question to believe this? It’s easy to want affirmative action for other people. No one will deny that disadvantaged people should be given a helping hand. But is the individual you at the end of that question willing to give up their spot to help an entire group?

I will be the first to admit, I wouldn’t.

Therein lies the central challenge of being an overrepresented minority. We are not disadvantaged enough to make use of catch-up mechanics, yet we are not privileged enough to make use of currently existing policy. To use college admissions as an example, take the University of Pennsylvania. There currently exist many programs to assist students who are the first in their family to go to college. These programs tend to benefit African Americans and Hispanics. At the same time, there is the legacy system which overwhelmingly benefits white Americans. There are few to no programs benefiting Asian Americans. At the same time, however, UPenn is nearly 25% Asian. We might not benefit from programs, but we still find our way in.

That is the dichotomy of being an overrepresented minority. Individual contributors are overwhelmingly Asian, yet we face the bamboo ceiling. People love our food but hate our language. We are both people of color, yet can code switch into being whitewashed at a moments notice. But things must change.

I cannot and will not claim to know the optimal path forward. However, I do know that all the best paths include Asians supporting other races in fighting inequality, even if it means giving up our spots in schools and workplaces.

Oh, and as for Referendum 88, I voted for it. (Meaning I am in favor of Initiative 1000. The language of veto referendums can get very confusing with all the double negatives.) I might not be willing to give up my spot right now but knowing the mindset that I need to be at is a step in the right direction.

This post is representative of this author’s (American born Taiwanese) opinions and not of anyone else on the LineByLine Team.

Have any comments or recommendations for the LineByLine Team? Please reach out to us at linebyline.team@gmail.com.

^* Yes, I am generalizing Asian Americans a lot and recognize there’s a huge difference between East Asians, South Asians, Southeast Asians, and Central Asians, but for the purposes of this article, we need to stand united. There is plenty to be said about disparity between what people think of as “fancy” Asians and “jungle” Asians (thanks Ali Wong for the terms), but that is not for this blog.