What grade do you give the Engineering Community for Diversity?

Last week was pretty ****** for me on the home front, unrelated to the demonstrations but work and home life didn't have me in the best place  - but I've had the weekend to digest the current state of the world and I've been going back and forth with this page open for a while and am just at a loss as what to type, mostly because I have a tendency to put my foot in my mouth, not that I condone any type of hate.  I have two nephews who were adopted from Ethiopia and a few lifelong friends who are cops.  I don't want to see either of them hurt or hurt other people.  

~This forum has been going on for 15 years? And it seems that other than the occasional troll there is always good and helpful discussion (although we have strong opinions and as engineers we want to "fix" everyone's problem and sometimes that causes vibrant discussions ) - Id like to think that this mentality is the norm in our industry and in the workplace and our lives, but I know it likely isn't.  

I know from my 25 years in the industry we are far from perfect but I have seen growth, how do you think we do as an engineering community?  

A friend refers to me as the white devil, so I probably have rose colored glasses on the subject I presume. without  looking at any metrics, I am in the B+ /A- category, am I being to good on ourselves?

Road Guy said:

how do you think we do as an engineering community?  

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As a person of color, I would (based ONLY on personal experience/observation) give our industry a soft B-/C+.

Overall, I've been REALLY lucky because whatever assumptions are made of me happen err on the side of positive, earned or otherwise. As a "model minority" which, I admit, is a kinda/sorta cringe-y term to my ear, and especially as someone with NO other technical/engineer-y/science-y family or other influence, I am totally self-made from that standpoint and have had to either meet, exceed, or fall short of certain expectations based only on my race from time to time, so that's kind of crummy. Sorry, I'm addicted to using commas!

Needs improvement: First, all but one of my supervisors and managers have been Caucasian. Nothing inherently wrong with that (again, in my experience only), but I think we can all acknowledge that senior management, in almost all industries, are overwhelmingly white and male. However, again based on my personal experience/observation only, nearly all my supervisors have been super nurturing to me as a professional, so that's good! Secondly, while I do have peers who are Asian (common), South Asian (little less common at least in mechanical engineering), Latinx/Hispanic (rare), colleagues are overwhelmingly Caucasian and I have only had one Black colleague in ~14 years working.

So, not sure I can draw any real conclusions from my VERY limited lens into our industry, but I can say we have a LONG way to go with respect to achieving true equality in our biz. I also acknowledge that I've been blessed, just by the sheer dumb luck by accident of birth, to have worked and grown up in a fairly or EXTREMELY (depending on where you, my dear reader, live) diverse region in America so I've been somewhat sheltered from overt/explicit racism (at least, any that I've personally noticed), though I have heard from family members who live elsewhere about their experiences to the contrary. So, that's lame.

I would close with an expression of appreciation for bringing up the topic at all @Road Guy. I mean, to even ask the question, think about its implications/consequences, and acknowledging that we can improve is half the battle and we definitely need more of it.

Lastly, white devil is a pretty pejorative term in Chinese. BUT! Depending on context, can also be very endearing. As in, you're welcomed as a trusted member of the in-group, cool! LS happens to be Caucasian so my dad calls her "round-eye" which is SO BAD but since it comes from a place of love/humor, it's acceptable (but, I admit, only barely). YMMV :rotflmao:

Road Guy said:

And it seems that other than the occasional troll there is always good and helpful discussion (although we have strong opinions and as engineers we want to "fix" everyone's problem and sometimes that causes vibrant discussions ) - Id like to think that this mentality is the norm in our industry and in the workplace and our lives, but I know it likely isn't.  

I know from my 25 years in the industry we are far from perfect but I have seen growth, how do you think we do as an engineering community?  

A friend refers to me as the white devil, so I probably have rose colored glasses on the subject I presume. without  looking at any metrics, I am in the B+ /A- category, am I being to good on ourselves?

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Here is my opinion, for the profession and life itself, regarding race, ethnicity, etc...  Stop frickin' seeing people as a color.  You want to continue problems?  Continue classifying people as a color.  Keep seeing differences and all you'll ever do is see people as different.

For engineers - are you white?  are you black?  are you mauve?  WTF cares.  Can you perform the duties of an engineer?  That's what I care about.  Same for nurses, teachers, astronauts, janitors, train conductors, art historians, chemists, and on and on and on.  

Master slacker said:

are you mauve?  WTF cares.  Can you perform the duties of an engineer?  That's what I care about. 

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150,000% agree! @Master slacker 2020? Yay!

Unfortunately...there still exist those who DO care, and sometimes in the worst way. So, that's just lame. Boo!

Master slacker said:

Keep seeing differences and all you'll ever do is see people as different.

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My favorite takeaway at this time, and always will be, is this:



People are the problem.

For the record, I would never hire a mauve engineer. Can't trust 'em.

That picture doesn't contain my skin tone.  Here, I'll help.

Master slacker said:

That picture doesn't contain my skin tone.  Here, I'll help.

View attachment 17906

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I'm more concerned that it appears your arm is not attached to anything.  r u ok?

JayKay PE said:

I'm more concerned that it appears your arm is not attached to anything.  r u ok?

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Stop with your ableism @JayKay PE. Clearly @Master slacker gets on just fine.

JayKay PE said:

I'm more concerned that it appears your arm is not attached to anything.  r u ok?

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That's not nice.  The part of my arm that's showing has had exposure to the sun so it's more tan.  The rest of me is so pale that I'm clear.

I appreciate this conversation. As a white person, there's not much I can add other than listen to different perspectives listed here.

But one thing I wanted to bring up about the "I don't see color perspective" - from the BIPOC activists that I follow, the issue with "not seeing color" is that it is then too easy to dismiss real systemic issues and injustices that DO happen to BIPOC on a daily basis.  

@squaretaper LIT AF PE I am dying at that photo. 

Master slacker said:

The rest of me is so pale that I'm clear.

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@Master slacker are you so pale this is your *actual* skin tone?

txjennah PE said:

I appreciate this conversation. As a white person, there's not much I can add other than listen to different perspectives listed here.

But one thing I wanted to bring up about the "I don't see color perspective" - from the BIPOC activists that I follow, the issue with "not seeing color" is that it is then too easy to dismiss real systemic issues and injustices that DO happen to BIPOC on a daily basis.  

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And we all only have one vote, so why vote when there are hundreds of millions cast every four years?

JayKay PE said:

I'm more concerned that it appears your arm is not attached to anything.  r u ok?

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That’s not his arm. 

P-E said:

That’s not his arm. 

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As a "白魔鬼" (white devil) I would give the engineering community a B-. 

Like MS said, we basically just look for people who can do the job. Race doesn't play too big of a role there. The real issue is getting the education to be able to do the job.

When it comes to race equality for education, I think this is where we should REALLY do most of the hard work. 

Based on the few conferences I've gone to, along with personal experiences, I'd rate the engineering community at a B to B- in terms of diversification / understanding.

Personally, if the individual can do the job, I don't care what color they may be. I've worked with several individuals that don't appear "white" and each has brought their own experiences to the office which can sometimes help build the team moral & understanding.

Maybe it has to do with my fields (material handling machinery, AE firm, and forensic engineering), but I have seen very little racial diversity in my career.  Out of 5 companies, I have had 3 black and two Indian colleagues.  Far less than the population percentages would suggest.  I haven't seen/heard any outright racism in hiring or treatment of coworkers of color, but I can't speak to whether there was racism in screening of resumes (I've never been responsible for hiring).  

I can say that each of my employers have been very diverse on the male/female spectrum...just not on the race spectrum.

Oh, this is a difficult one to assess, based on my limited experience.  I think we maybe get a C, at most.  I know a lot of white male engineers. I also know quite a few female engineers, although that is partially because of my professional organizations I am a part of.  Let's look only at engineering, (we are full service, so have survey, landscape architecture, architecture and interior design), for just the office I work in.

There are lets say 31 engineers/engineering techs. We have 7 women. So, almost 25%, eh, ok. Of the 31, we have 1 person who is not Caucasian.

If you add in other departments, these numbers look better, but not by much. It goes to 4/60 non Caucasian, and 23/60 are women.

Of the interview panels I have sat on, all but one were white males.

We need to do better, but if the people we are seeing come in the door aren't very diverse (and I don't know, I only see the resumes of the people we interview), we have to start younger to get more diversity into the system.

I thought a lot about this during my 2.5-hour lawn mowing yesterday.

I'll start by saying I think as a whole the country has come a long way in a relatively short time.  My wife was shocked to learn my elementary school played "Song of the South" in class.  We sang songs in school talking about putting down "*****" uprisings.  I clearly remember my teacher explaining that "*****" was just another word for Indian when in reality it's pejorative.  I remember my grandparents talking about the "coloreds" and using the N-word.  Obviously none of this would be acceptable in open society, let alone in school, any more.  Granted there is still plenty of overt racism out there and there probably always will be, but society is changing and recognizing it's out there and isn't acceptable.

On the other hand obviously there is still a long way to go.  I also remember my grandparents talking about how their parents were invited to KKK meetings and attended a couple but decided it wasn't for them.  My grandparents seemed proud of that, but didn't draw a line from that to their own racism.  I think we're in a similar situation when we say things like we don't see color.  That is great, but it doesn't mean there isn't more that needs to change.  My wife's grandfather said he didn't see what the problem was--that there is no color to him.  Which knowing him I know he truly lives that.  But at the same time he can walk down the street and not have to worry about being killed by a police officer or a group of vigilantes like in Brunswick, but a black man can't.  (And I don't blame the police for that per se, but it's a real societal problem.)

I don't pretend to have any answers, but my point is we should be proud that we've come a long way, but at the same time recognize we have a long ways to go yet.

Turning to engineering specifically, I used to feel like my group was really diverse--we have, or have had, quite a few women and minorities--up to 50% of our group.  But in the marathon lawn-mowing it started to dawn on me that all of the minorities I've worked with are foreign-born.  We've had Africans, but no African-Americans.  We have Asians, but no Asian-Americans, we've had middle-eastern people, but none born in the US.  Which got to me thinking about why that is? 

I do a  lot of recruiting for my company and when we go to universities we talk to lots of foreign students, but the American students are almost all white males, with a few white females in the mix.  It's not for a lack of looking because we go to every diversity event we can find for engineering and still have a hard time coming up with a diverse candidate pool.  Why is that?  I don't know really, but suspect it is a combination of a lack of opportunity for minorities coupled with bad schools.  But I can't pretend to know what it's really like growing up as a minority.

I mirror what others said above, that in general in engineering if you have the skills to get the job done, you're accepted into the community.  I give engineering an A for accepting diversity in that respect.  But as far as actually being diverse, I think we're more like a D (but not for a lack of trying.)