What's with these crushed Asians?

(Who remembers that Gilda Radner skit?) Actually what I wanted to write about is a Department of Labor lawsuit against tech giant Oracle for discriminating against the usual suspects.  This caught my eye as a complaint about how Asian-heavy the tech jobs are at Oracle:
Some of the new claims also substitute broad statistics for refined analysis. For example, as the Wall Street Journal points out, the DOL relies for its hiring discrimination claim on evidence that 82 percent of employees hired by Oracle for technical positions are Asians, whereas Asians were “only” 75 percent of applicants.
It sounds to me like being in the ballpark if the racial quotas for applicants and hirees are within 10% or so, so I can't get too excited about the ratio of 75% to 82%. But seriously, 3/4 of the applicants are Asian? Are we not supposed to notice this? Are we supposed to think that's irrelevant to questions about what aspects of race might be important in job statistics besides allegations of racism?

And this is what the Asian statistics look like even with the Ivy League schools grinding them into the dirt as hard as they know how.

13 comments:

MikeD said...

I'd love to know how many of those applicants and hires are H1B visas because "they can't find qualified Americians to work those positions".

E Hines said...

Another aspect of that law suit that was called out by the WSJ op-ed linked to in the OP link was this tidbit:

The complaint says Oracle discriminated against “qualified” blacks, Asians, and women in “product development roles” by paying them less than whites in similar roles. Labor also alleged that Oracle discriminated against blacks, Hispanics, and whites in favor of Asian applicants in two other positions.

So apparently Oracle is discriminating explicitly both against and for Asians.

This is the wage of artificial bigotry, and Acosta ought to know better. By the way, contra USA Today and Power Line, Acosta doesn't seem to have reinstated the suit; he's just not dropped it and is pressing it.

Separate by the way, from Mirengoff's bit: Often agencies escape the dilemma by settling cases. Defendants are satisfied because the settlements are favorable and enable them to costly avoid [sic litigation. At the same time, the agency saves face. Staffers usually aren’t thrilled, but neither are they outraged. I disagree. Defendants would be better satisfied, I think, were the case dropped with prejudice. Agency face is saved by acknowledging the stupidity of the case in the first place. Honesty always saves face in the long run.

Staffers' satisfaction or dissatisfaction is wholly irrelevant. Their pre-decision input is valuable, but once the boss has made his decision, their sole role and duty are to carry it out. If they cannot, or if their dissatisfaction is too great, they can take their disability or their dissatisfaction to someone else's payroll.

Eric Hines

MikeD said...

I can explain the "discriminating for and against". They're primarily hiring foreign workers on H1B visas and paying them rates far below what equally skilled American workers would accept (and then using that refusal to accept the position at the pay offered as "proof" of why they must hire H1B visa applicants since they do not have "adequate" American hires to fill those positions). So thus, they're hiring skilled workers of an Asian (primarily South Central Asia, in this case) background and paying them below what their American hires get paid.

Anonymous said...

Worked at an IT shop that was busy laying off American workers, while at the same time lobbying Congress for more H1Bs - because they could not find enough American workers.

E Hines said...

So thus, they're hiring skilled workers of an Asian (primarily South Central Asia, in this case) background and paying them below what their American hires get paid.

Yeah, that was the excuse unions used, and with which FDR agreed, when the former got the latter to take nationwide a patchwork of State minimum wage laws--blacks were moving north and taking work at lower wages than unions were willing to accept. FDR's minimum wage was designed to price blacks out of the northern labor force and keep them down south.

Eric Hines

Texan99 said...

Whatever may be wrong with hiring cheap foreign visa workers, the issue ain't racial discrimination.

Dad29 said...

Here's a big chunk of the issue: US citizens are usually burdened with enormous college debts to have earned that IT degree; the Asians usually are not. As a result, US citizens are no longer taking the IT part of "STEM" curricula, and in 40 years or less, the field will be left to cheap-labor imports.

The analogy of southern blacks is not valid here, by the way. There WAS an economic difference, to be sure, but not a cultural difference, as there is with South Asians.

And if you think there's no 'cultural difference' you don't have a lot of contact with those folks. Try being in retail and serving them....

Ymarsakar said...

Many Americans are over qualified for various IT positions. Companies don't want to pay the big bucks when they can get a community college graduate, train them up, or get a Visa hire from India that works 70 hours a week without complaint.

They notice this stuff. Pakistani, Indian, and so on people tend to work 12 hours a day and pool resources within a clan framework. Americans are used to vacations and all that jazz.

Even the Czech programmers seem to be working long hours without overtime pay and with a pay decrease to save budgeting. Performance wise, it is more efficient and Silicon Valley for all their fake liberal Leftist alliance leanings, are still in the game for competition.

MikeD said...

Yeah, that was the excuse unions used, and with which FDR agreed, when the former got the latter to take nationwide a patchwork of State minimum wage laws--blacks were moving north and taking work at lower wages than unions were willing to accept. FDR's minimum wage was designed to price blacks out of the northern labor force and keep them down south.

Eric, I'd have more sympathy for this kind of analogy, except for the fact that the H1B visa requires an employer to sign (under threat of perjury) that they are unable to find "qualified American workers" to fill a job position before the visa can be issued for a foreign worker to enter the country to take that job. Literally. And we're not talking about people who want to immigrate and become American citizens. They want to work here, because the wages are so much higher than back home. Companies ARE absolutely perjuring themselves saying they simply can't find qualified Americans, so gosh darn it, they just have to hire an H1B worker to fill that position, and lucky day! They don't even have to pay as much!

To say I'm just basically a racist because I've watched friends lose their job and be required to train their H1B replacement (under threat of not receiving their severance package), well... I have no patience for that. Companies ARE absolutely perjuring themselves saying they simply can't find qualified Americans, so gosh darn it, they just have to hire an H1B worker to fill that position, and lucky day! They don't even have to pay as much!

E Hines said...

Companies ARE absolutely perjuring themselves

You have actual evidence for this?

To say I'm just basically a racist because I've watched friends lose their job

I'm not aware of anyone, at least in the Hall, making this characterization of you.

Eric Hines

Ymarsakar said...

The rules don't apply to the elite overseers.

America is only on the surface, the home of the free and brave.

People believe that because 9/11 unified us or whatever jazz they were fed with, that this means civil war is just some warmonger excuse made up by the minority of crazies.

Actually, there are more than just 2 Americas. It's 1000 factions all going at each other's throat for resources in the USA. It is just covered up and puffed up by State propaganda.

MikeD said...

You have actual evidence for this?

Other than seeing people get laid off, be required to train their H1B replacements, and then work with the H1B replacements while the original workers have to go find other jobs? No, none at all.

I'm not aware of anyone, at least in the Hall, making this characterization of you.

Not in those words directly, no. But when you say that I am using the same excuse the unions did to keep blacks out of the Northern workforce (an act that seems mighty racist to me), it's a difficult conclusion NOT to draw.

E Hines said...

You have one side, not the other. You have one set of perceptions of the facts, not both, and possibly not even all the facts.

Also, don't conflate describing a behavior with describing the behaver.

Eric Hines