Asian Americans now make up the majority of the workforce in the high tech industry in the San Francisco Bay Area’s Silicon Valley. The recent report by the Mercury News said jobs for Asian American came at the expense of predominantly white workers and to a lesser extent black & Hispanic workers.
A blog in the EE Times blasted the story saying the article painted a distorted picture of Silicon Valley.
It criticized the Mercury News for not looking at the reasons behind the rise of the Asian American workforce.
Silvie Barak wrote:
“Statistics and numbers are certainly interesting, but put those tools in the wrong hands – say of an extreme politician or the bitter unemployed masses– and you have a recipe for disaster. Or just plain racism.”
Those same concerns were raised in another story in the Mercury News which reported on fears of a possible backlash against Asian Americans, similar to what Chinese & Japanese Americans experienced in the 1800s and 1900s.
