Open letter to my friend Victor Hanson

Victor Hanson has been a friend of mine ever since we both were undergraduates studying Classics together at UC Santa Cruz some 40 years ago. Although we were fellow Banana Slugs at this institution, which has a reputation for being a hotbed of left-wing politics (where, for example, Angela Davis is a professor emerita in the Department of Feminist Studies), our views on American society, politics, and foreign policy developed over time along a similar, largely conservative, trajectory. For that reason, I usually find myself in whole-hearted agreement with what Victor writes and I admire (and envy) the polish with which he writes it. I must take issue, however, with some of the things Victor recently wrote in a column on Silicon Valley:

If Silicon Valley produced gas and oil, built bulldozers, processed logs, mined bauxite, or grew potatoes, then the administration, academia, Hollywood, and the press would damn its white-male exclusivity, patronization of women, huge material appetites, lack of commitment to racial diversity, concern for ever-greater profits, and seeming indifference to the poor. But they do not, because the denizens of the valley have paid for their indulgences and therefore are free to sin as they please, convinced that their future days in Purgatory can be reduced by a few correct words about Solyndra, Barack Obama, and the war on women. [emphasis added]

Victor, I take issue with your claim that Silicon Valley is not committed to racial diversity. Silicon Valley already has one of the most diverse workforces on the face of the planet. If you were to step onto the engineering floor of the typical Silicon Valley high-tech company, you, along with most other white Americans, would likely feel uncomfortable with the amount of racial diversity you would find there. Much of this diversity comes from the large numbers of Chinese and Indian employees that Silicon Valley companies employ. This diversity should be a cause for unbridled celebration. Instead, Silicon Valley companies are vilified for hiring “techno-coolies.” Why is it that Asian diversity does not count as real diversity?

By hiring so many employees from China, India, and other countries, Victor, Silicon Valley has proven that it is willing to go anywhere in the world to find good talent that will work for a reasonable wage. At the company I work for, for example, we recently hired a group of engineers from Novosibirsk, a city in the heart of Russian Siberia, because they are brilliant and they will work for a reasonable wage in exchange for being sponsored in the United States and allowed to pursue the American Dream like all the rest of us. Given our obvious willingness to go so far as Novosibirsk to hire well-qualified engineers, why ever would Silicon Valley not be willing to hire qualified blacks, women, or Hispanics if they could be found in our own back yard? It makes no sense. Facebook is located in Menlo Park on a parcel of land immediately adjacent to East Palo Alto, which has a large black population. Why would Facebook be unwilling to hire talented black engineers in East PA, its own back yard? It is because no such large pool of talented black engineers exists in East PA.

The reason why Silicon Valley companies have a preponderance of white and Asian male employees on their engineering teams is because the pool of available talent that feeds into these teams is made up preponderantly of white and Asian males. Perhaps this disparity exists because of some prejudice in our schools against teaching girls, blacks, and Hispanics math; perhaps it is due to (gasp – shall I dare to utter the politically incorrect words that so damaged Larry Summers) the possibility that white and Asian males have a greater aptitude for science, math, engineering, and technology than females; or perhaps it is due to the possibility that Asian families are less dysfunctional in aggregate than black and Hispanic families and Asian “tiger moms and dads” do a better job of encouraging their sons to work hard on math and science. Regardless of the cause of this disparity, the fact that the talent pool for engineers is made up predominantly of white and Asian males is certainly not the fault of Silicon Valley companies nor is it the result of any conscious effort they have made to discriminate.

Finally, Victor, by joining the chorus of those on the Left, like Jesse Jackson, who rail against Silicon Valley’s supposed racism and sexism, you are simply helping to promote the kind of racial politics that have been so poisonous elsewhere in this country and which, I am convinced, are personally repugnant to you. If Jesse gets his way, Silicon Valley will end up with the same racial and gender quotas and setasides that have become so prevalent elsewhere in our nation and that have proven so divisive. Silicon Valley does not want to become like academia, with its inability to hire, say, a male candidate for a professorship in the Classics Department because a vastly less well-qualified female candidate must be given preference.

Silicon Valley is by no means perfect. Its biggest flaw in my opinion is that it has become the handmaiden of big government, responding like so many other industries to the siren call of lucrative government contracts. Without the hardware and software systems created by Silicon Valley, Obamacare would be an impossibility. Big data tools, like MapReduce/Hadoop, which government agencies like the NSA and IRS and companies like Google use to parse and analyze every aspect of our lives, were developed right here in Silicon Valley. The danger is not that Silicon Valley is run by a bunch of racists and sexists, but rather that Big Data is enabling Big Brother. (We should fear not the military-industrial complex that Dwight Eisenhower warned against, but the government-technology complex that is expanding in Silicon Valley and McLean, Virginia.) Back in the day, when the two Steves, Jobs and Wozniak, were a couple of pot-smoking, long-haired, teenage hippies in Cupertino, Silicon Valley was the very essence of the “Counterculture.” Now, it has become just another appendage of the “Establishment.” That is what we should worry about, not whether Silicon Valley is hiring too many Asian boy geeks.

At any rate, Victor, I continue to value your friendship and commentary on modern life in America and, in particular, here in California and I look forward to reading (almost) everything you write. It's just that I think it might be good if you reexamined some of your ideas (dare I say prejudices) about Silicon Valley companies and the people who work there.