My parents came to the United States after World War II with everything they owned in one suitcase. They were hardly alone—it’s a journey tens of millions have made. Different centuries and origins, same dream. I was lucky in my choice of relatives: My grandfather was mayor of the Japanese city of Chiba and then Japan’s under secretary of transportation; my father was a professor at the Johns Hopkins University.
I’m lucky, too, that my parents passed on the higher-education gene—my two brothers are professors. But outside the family, I had few role models growing up, and in academe I find myself in a singularly small group. Asian-Americans make up only 3.4 percent of executives and administrators in higher education, according to Education Department statistics, and just 1.5 percent of college presidents, according to the American Council on Education. They are “nearly absent from the ranks,” Renu Khator, president of the University of Houston, has said. When her appointment was announced, in 2007, television stations in India interrupted programming; congratulatory e-mails from Asian-Americans proclaimed it “a great day.”
By most measures, Asian-Americans are doing fine. They are the nation’s fastest-growing racial group, and on average better educated and wealthier than Americans as a whole. While they make up just 4.8 percent of the U.S. population, people of Asian descent are heavily represented in business, law, science, and government. As the corporate career coach Jane Hyun argues in her 2005 book, Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling: Career Strategies for Asians, we would expect that in a race-blind meritocracy, people of Asian descent would be better reflected in the nation’s boardrooms, corner offices, and other top leadership positions.
But they accounted for less than 2.5 percent of partners at American law firms, according to NALP, the National Association for Law Placement, and less than 2 percent of Fortune 500 corporate officers, according to the Center for Work-Life Policy.
The same statistical unevenness carries into academe, where Asians represent 6.2 percent of faculty but, again, only 1.5 percent of presidents. Among recently appointed presidents, 2 percent were Asian, a figure that may reflect the recent appointments of several Indian-born presidents.
Still, even among minority groups, this marks a notable disparity. By comparison, Hispanics make up 5 percent of faculty members and 3.8 percent of presidents; and African-Americans, 6.7 percent and 5.9 percent.
What explains these disparities? Obviously racism still exists, as do misogyny, anti-Semitism, and other persistent human dark streaks. But I agree with Hyun, the Bamboo Ceiling author, that what’s primarily at work here is a set of cultural differences that most of us, Asian and otherwise, negotiate without understanding very well.
Many Asians, for instance, learn attitudes and behaviors at home that conflict with those of the typical American workplace. Hyun lists among these an egalitarian view of power, a preference for indirect communication, and a tendency toward emotional restraint. As a group, Asians tend to defer to authority and seek consensus—"The tallest nail gets hammered down” is a traditional saying—and this can be mistaken for a lack of initiative or leadership skills.
In a 2011 New York Magazine article called “Paper Tigers: What happens to all the Asian-American overachievers when the test-taking ends?” Wesley Yang cites a dating consultant who refers to the “Asian poker face,"an apparently impassive mien.
The contradictions in such perceptions—Asians are hyperambitious (tiger mother, anyone?) but also timid; both conspicuous and self-effacing—can be doubly damning in the workplace. Asian-Americans are less likely to complain, press a case for promotion, or assert themselves against a colleague, and consequently are less likely to be promoted (or listened to).
But we challenge stereotypes, too, at our peril. Researchers at the University of Toronto asked people to read about a business consultant named either Sutherland or Wong, his behavior described as either aggressive or agreeable, and then comment on his suitability as a colleague. “In general,” one author concluded, “people don’t want dominant co-workers. But they really don’t want a dominant East-Asian co-worker.” A corporate lawyer interviewed by Yang said he frequently heard from associates, “You have a lot of opinions for an Asian guy.”
In this welter of miscommunication, two problems may be specific to universities. First, meritocracy is more or less assumed in academe, where everything is analyzed, interrogated, held up to the light. Unconscious bias might, perversely, be harder to address where intellectual rigor and fairness are already presumed to be in place.
Second, consider the entrepreneurial impulse. Setting your own ceiling, hanging out a shingle, becoming a meritocracy of one is always a possibility for people who chafe at restrictions in business, law, or science. Asian-Americans are good at it. They’ve been in on the creation of famously successful start-ups—think Andrew Ng, of Coursera; Steve Chen, of YouTube; and Tony Hsieh, of Zappos. But this isn’t an option in our profession—start your own college? So similarly gifted, frustrated people are simply lost.
My parents’ journey couldn’t be more prototypically American. The route to success for many Asian-Americans, though, seems to require more than their share of hard work, luck, and pluck. No one’s prospects ought to be limited by ancestors and origins, or by pervasive, mutual misunderstanding. At a time when we’re engaged in a national debate about race-conscious admissions decisions, academe might well direct some of its acuity and empathy toward tearing down whatever social and psychological barriers to success remain, particularly those all the more imposing for being invisible.