With the global headlines embroiled in #BlackLivesMatter, it got me thinking whether such a thing exists in South and Southeast Asia too, and to be specific, within the tech community.
For racism, it’s a systemic thing that I believe exists in almost every nation. The global campaign sparked a similar one in my home country Indonesia, called #PapuanLivesMatter, and exposed the nation that itself has decade-long, inherent problems with racist treatment of the far-west Papuan tribes — just because of the colour of their skin and the stark physical difference they have with a typical Indonesian.
In India, Bollywood artists speaking up using the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag only reveals that it’s become rather easy to ignore the problems when it’s directly related to your upbringing and where you came from, especially when it doesn’t have any significance to your virtual presence.
One Twitter handle pointed out the hypocrisy in supporting #BlackLivesMatter when you’re not black — especially when you can find the same, if not worse, problems in your country when it comes to religion and tribes.
So that’s the context on how easy it is to be tone-deaf when you’re not part of the community, and in our case, when you’re halfway across the world.
It is one thing to be moved to do what you can do in your place, and it is quite another to support for the sake of supporting without even the basic understanding of what happened, and worse, turning a blind eye to what’s going on right under your nose.
We’ve come across several campaigns around the world for equal opportunity, equal representation and equal pay for women in the tech industry, but they were mostly remained on paper.
I did a little digging of whether racism, discrimination, bigotry — or what my teammate called ‘classism’ — is indeed existing in the tech community, and here are my findings:
There’s little finding on discrimination in tech workplace
I think there should be a broader look into the matter, and it’s now a perfect time to do so with, the discrimination being a hot topic everywhere. It’s hard not to be exposed to the topic nowadays, and I think that the harder it is to talk about, the more urgently it needs to be in the conversation.
Also Read: Diversity in the workforce: Where do we go from here?
As you typed in “Southeast Asia tech community discrimination” in Google, there’s not a light shining to the matter of race except for gender-related discrimination. It’s a widespread problem everywhere in the world, and we’ve got a long way to go when it comes to gender equality in the tech ecosystem. And we’re getting there.
In a “State of Asian Startups” survey done by TechInAsia, only 15 per cent of founders and employees were found to be facing discrimination in tech-related workplaces, with race and nationality coming on top, followed by age and gender. Prejudices are most likely to be faced by women than men, but this is another issue.
There’s a mention of racial discrimination rising due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as we are all well aware of what happened in the US and globally. The rest of the search didn’t indicate a strong finding of racial and class discrimination in the Southeast Asian tech community, which brings me to the next point.
Known or not, be prepared
In my previous startup company, for example, it was made clear from the get-go that one of the values that the company upheld is championing diversity. What exactly does it mean to champion diversity at the workplace?
In the past, if we look into how “championing diversity” worked in places like Silicon Valley, it meant giving equal opportunities to people from different backgrounds. In my previous company, it meant accepting employees solely based on their capabilities and not based on their religion or race.
I think that’s a good place to start. Reinforcing diversity as core values in how a company works and actively trying to apply that value in the hiring process are necessary steps to take. It’s definitely not enough to address the diversity through the prism of race but it also has to be done through the lens of gender and religion (still big issues in Asia), and class.
Social class is another thing. My previous workplace, strict as it can be on the diversity talk, was a bit laggard when it came to ‘class’ discrimination. I had seen a colleague of mine was being favoured over the others because she had a rich dad. But is it a wrong thing to do? After all, you need to leverage all connections you have to survive, and that’s been the game since day one.
What does it take for a tech community to take a stance
Besides reinforcing the company value of anti-discrimination and imposing sanction in place, what else can we do to hopefully maintain and eradicate the already low number of discrimination in tech workplaces?
Michael H. Lints, Partner at Golden Gate Ventures, and a black father of two, shares his insights and expresses frustration over the last few weeks’ events that unfolded right in front of his eyes in this Medium article.
Also Read: How the sharing economy is fighting racial discrimination
“I am emotionally tired. Institutional racism is so prevalent that people don’t even notice it. I, and my fellow black men and women, my friends, my family, had to deal with it since we were kids,” Lints remarked.
Lints says he’s been fed up being called the N-word, being looked over for a job despite his qualifications, and being given derogatory looks and nicknames all his life, even at the tech scene he’s been serving.
Learning from Lints, we can start by highlighting the matters using what platform we may possess. However, using your platform is interpreted vastly different for each person and these days, it’s really hard to see a genuine intention behind every social media’s noisy posts and viral attempt.
If we’re talking about a hit and miss of using your platform, then this LinkedIn post from an ex-employee of Facebookmay be a good example. He tried to use his voice, but can’t help but fall into the trap of generalisation.
I would assume he meant well by this, but it’s hard to look beyond how he uttered his intention, and it’s harder not to be cynical at it with what’s been going on. It easily made the person look like he’s trying to ride on the trend to get attention, and that’s what’s problematic.
There’s a word for this: performative allyship, which describes the situation pretty well. When coming from the privileged people, or dare I say race, it can become insincere rather easily to show up now when you’ve been living in a bubble, hence a performative term.
It is a disease raised by a culture of ignorance and a lack of inclusion. The conversation circles back to how important it is to have a good look at yourself before speaking out, to see where your intention points at.
With social media in our arsenal and the whole world watching, it’s easy to think that at least we contribute in speaking out, sometimes without context. It’s even easier for the tech community, with the access to connection and the whole community of the world just one click away.
If this is so systemic, it’s worth checking beyond the data. If you have the resources, it won’t kill you to learn the history and see if the same thing happens in your nation.
I, for one, have been finding out that the same thing happened in Indonesia, with the most oppressed tribe, the Papuans, coming out from the far-eastern part of the country. The island is so rich with gold that it caused bloodshed and industrial war among foreigners, with the most rightful and innocent victims trapped in between.
Closing with the words from Lints:
“So to the people replying to “Black Lives Matter” with “All Lives Matter”, to the people ignoring my experiences and the experiences of other black men and women, to the people denying the enduring prevalence of systemic racism, not just in the United States, but globally: I encourage you to think about the origins of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2013. I ask that you look up Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd. Try to understand how black people’s lives have been treated as expendable, and why black people are afraid for their lives.”
We all can use some learning. Learning tones down your need to speak out for the sake of joining the noises. It checks you out, so for now, just listen and learn.
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Photo by Arthur Edelman on Unsplash
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