This blog will be about the difficulties and obstacles that people of color face in college and in the workplace. The main issues talked about will be the double standards set up by society and the persisting challenges that follow people into the workforce.
Some people may view their ethnicity as a huge part of them, or just something that they happen to be. However, colleges, society, and the workplace place a high emphasis on it. I am sure we all filled out college applications that asked for our race, or maybe applied for a job that asked for it. It is such a hard line to walk, of saying that our race should not be a factor in decisions that can impact our life, but also seeing the need for it to make for a more diverse workplace. As of right now, according to WhoRulesAmerica, “White still make up 92.6% of the Fortune 500 CEOS. Only 1% of the Fortune 500 CEOs are African Americans, 2.4% are East Asians or South Asians, and 3.4% are Latinx.” I honestly expected these percentages to be lower, but we need to do better as a society. It is discouraging to aspiring young men and women of color who may want to climb the ranks, that it is unusual but hopefully becoming more normalized.
Getting into the workplace also sets up for double standards, even from getting into college, creating a trickling effect of disadvantages. For example, standardized testing can be a defining factor of an application, and often people of color may not have access to the resources that others may have, such as tutoring programs or prep classes. According to USA Today, “Activists point to data that shows that richer, more privileged, children perform better on the SAT. This has led to allegations of cultural bias and systematic unfairness.” After this, say these students make it into college, and graduate, looking to enter the workforce. Another challenge is having the right connections. Some jobs are only accessible, or are easier to get, if you have connections. People of color may not have as many if any connections, especially if they are first generation college students, so already at the next level of their professional life people of color may be at a disadvantage.
In my Intro to Law class, we talked about an affirmative action case, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, which was about a white man who got denied admission into Medical School due to his race. I know this isn’t technically the workplace yet, but Med School leads into the workplace and it is still an area that many people of color are disadvantaged in. It is always interesting hearing cases such as these, because I do understand how if you qualified in all areas apart from your race, it can be frustrating to not get in, but at the same time sometimes White people do not understand that this is a struggle that many people of color face every day. Even though there has been one of the biggest drives for diversity recently, White people still dominate almost all professions. According to AAMC, “Among active physicians, 56.2% identified as White, 17.1% identified as Asian, 5.8% identified as Hispanic, and 5.0% identified as Black or African American.” Additionally, in the legal field according to the American Bar, “86% of all lawyers were non-Hispanic whites…5% of all lawyers are African American…5% of all lawyers are Hispanic…2% of all lawyers are Asians…and 0.4% of all lawyers are Native American.”
Evidently, there is quite a disparity between White people and people of color in the major fields of medicine and law. There is less of a gap between Whites and Asians, but the discrimination Asians have faced in the past 2 years due to the pandemic has been extreme. According to CNN, “In Australia, 66.4% of Asian Australian respondents to a survey last October reported experiencing workplace discrimination, which represented an increase of almost 15% in six months…Asian Australians also suffered a disproportionate drop in working hours last spring, which ‘was more than twice the drop’ for the rest of the population.” So there is not really a demographic that is not White that does not somehow suffer in the workplace. As a consequence, sometimes the care we receive is also impacted. Having more diversity in the workplace allows for more understanding and better care.
To go deeper into the categories of people of color, Asians, Blacks, and Hispanics are the main groups that are focused on in terms of diversity. Blacks debatably face more issues than almost any other group; in terms of diversity, according to Pewresearch, “Black and white STEM employees rate their employers’ commitment to this issue very differently. Roughly six-in-ten blacks (57%) working in a STEM job say their workplace pays too little attention to increasing racial and ethnic diversity. By comparison, just 15% of whites in this field say this. Majorities of whites, Hispanics, and Asians working in STEM think their workplace pays about the right attention to increasing racial and ethnic diversity.”
Going even deeper, black women are probably the most disadvantaged in terms of wages. According to AmericanProgress, “Black women are caught between bad jobs and widespread financial burdens…African American women also work in lower-paying jobs than Black men or white women, which translates to a particularly steep pay gap for Black women. Among those who worked full time all year in 2018, Black women earned 61.9 cents for every dollar that white men earned. In comparison, Black men earned 70.2 cents for every dollar earned by white men, and white women earned 78.6 cents.” Evidently, the pay gap is real and pressing, not just among women, but also for people of color. Opportunities, promotions, and benefits are offered very differently to people of color.
Additionally, there are discriminatory practices that each race faces. According to Brookings, “Asian American women experience racialized and gendered forms of sexual harassment that leads to isolation and results in exclusion from leadership opportunities. Latinas, too, find that coworkers may interact with them based on stereotypes that they are unintelligent or illegally in the country, depictions that then require extra work to disprove.” Not to mention being looked over, being talked over, being given less than one’s potential, the struggles are very real and frustrating for many in the workplace.
In conclusion, people of color may be at a disadvantage from college to professional school to the workplace, whether it is through opportunities, wages, or discriminatory practices. Through doing these blogs, there have been a lot of things confirmed for me, especially as an Asian American woman. However, I believe that the workplace is slowly but surely becoming more motivated to have a diverse workplace and a safe space for all of its employees. I have hope for the future.
https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/diversity_update_2020.html#:~:text=Moreover%2C%20since%20most%20of%20the,%2C%20and%203.4%25%20are%20Latinx.
https://www.aamc.org/data-reports/workforce/interactive-data/figure-18-percentage-all-active-physicians-race/ethnicity-2018
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2021/06/business/asians-workplace-discrimination-covid/
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/young_lawyers/projects/men-of-color/lawyer-demographics/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2021/03/23/standardized-testing-poor-students-sat-benefit-identify-column/4800781001/
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/01/09/blacks-in-stem-jobs-are-especially-concerned-about-diversity-and-discrimination-in-the-workplace/
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/african-americans-face-systematic-obstacles-getting-good-jobs/
https://www.brookings.edu/essay/women-are-advancing-in-the-workplace-but-women-of-color-still-lag-behind/
