Jason Lim is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture.
Are Asian men undesirable?
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By Jason Lim
To its credit, Google has been very transparent about its diversity issues ― 70 percent of Google’s employees are male while 62 percent of its U.S. employees are white while 30 percent are Asian ― and has carefully examined its hiring process and implemented unconscious bias training for its employees.
Unconscious bias training is based on the scientific findings that everyone is a little bit racist and sexist. This is not a huge surprise. We are all products of our cultural background and social experiences. We carry deeply ingrained, mostly unconscious stereotypes of how different types of people are supposed to behave in various, predictable ways.
Do we clutch our bags more tightly or become more wary when a couple of loud black male teenagers crowd onto the elevator? More so than we would when a bunch of Asian male teenagers with glasses crowd onto the same elevator? Probably.
If you were picking players in a playground pickup basketball game and had your pick of black and Asian kids, which one would you pick first? Now say you were picking students for a math competition, would you pick a geeky Asian kid over a lanky black kid first?
And didn’t Vice President Joe Biden recently get into trouble for calling predatory loan sharks shylocks, without consciously knowing that shylock was a historically pejorative term for Jewish moneylenders? These types of stereotypes are deep and pervasive. And they affect how we perceive and behave towards one another. Especially when choosing a mate.
An interesting little tidbit came across the newswire last week. Christian Rudder, a founder of OKCupid, a well-known online dating site, who also happens to be a Harvard-trained data scientist, analyzed the interactions on his site and came up with interesting generalizations about how people behave in dating situations. Of these, one confirms what I have ― along with every other Asian male probably ― observed (often jealously): that women, especially non-Asian women, are generally not sexually interested in Asian men.
TIME Magazine summarizes Rudder’s finding as such:
``According to Rudder’s research, Asian men are the least desirable racial group to women… On OkCupid, users can rate each other on a 1 to 5 scale. While Asian women are more likely to give Asian men higher ratings, women of other races ― black, Latina, white ― give Asian men a rating between 1 and 2 stars less than what they usually rate other men. Black and Latin men face similar discrimination from women of different respective races, while white men’s ratings remain mostly high among women of all races.”
Anecdotal observations bear this out. Frankly, how many Asian women have you seen with non-Asian men (mostly white)? Lots. But how about the other way around? Exactly.
So, going back to Google’s unconscious bias training, what are the hidden biases in today’s American culture that prejudices women, especially non-Asian women, from viewing Asian males as desirable mates? Let’s take at face value the evolutionary biology’s typical argument that a woman chooses a mate based on resources, status, ambition, money, dominance, and leadership because these are proxy metrics for how well he would be able to provide for her and their children. Then it follows that women ― across all races ― mostly equate white men with these traits while consider Asian men as having the least potential to have these traits.
Little girls are not born with such preconceptions. Then it also follows that women learn these unconscious biases through everything they see and hear in our society and culture. I can’t argue the pervasiveness of such messages. I mean, how many superheroes are non-white? Have you seen an Asian romantic leading man lately in Hollywood? Long Duk Dong, anyone?
This is the true nature of white advantage. More specifically, white male advantage. If you are white and male, there are a host of socially and culturally reinforced affirmative stereotypes that predisposes others to look positively at you or, at least, give you the benefit of the doubt.
Even more, there are no negative behavioral stereotypes specific just to white males. Just because Ted Bundy killed all those girls doesn’t make anyone say that all white males are serial killers. Even better, we don’t even think to generalize the behavior of one white male to the rest of the white male population because we know that’s wrong and ridiculous.
But can we say the same for black males? We’ve seen what tragedies such unconscious biases can lead to in Ferguson, Missouri and Trayvon Martin. How about Hispanics or Asians? Different stereotypes but still there.
Just to be clear, we all hold these unconscious biases. Even black women clutch their bags tighter with a black male teenager around. Even an Asian teacher would expect an Asian kid to do better than others on a math final.
The problem is not that non-Asian women don’t find Asian men attractive. The real problem is that such unconscious biases affect how we engage with others and, even more importantly, expect of ourselves.
Jason Lim is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture. He has been writing for The Korea Times since 2006. He can be reached at jasonlim@msn. com, facebook. com/jasonlimkoreatimes and @jasonlim2012.