Steve Bannon Suggests Having Too Many Asian Tech CEOs Undermines 'Civic Society' (theverge.com)

In an interview last year with Donald Trump -- that The Washington Post resurfaced yesterday -- Breitbart News Network's executive chairman, Steve Bannon, suggested that there are too many asian CEOs in Silicon Valley. "He alluded to the idea that foreign students should return to their respective countries after attending school in the U.S., instead of sticking around and working at or starting tech companies," writes Ashley Carman via The Verge: Trump voiced concern over these students attending Ivy League schools and then going home: "We have to be careful of that, Steve. You know, we have to keep our talented people in this country," Trump said. When asked if he agreed, Bannon responded: "When two-thirds or three-quarters of the CEOs in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia, I think [...]" he didn't finish his sentence. "A country is more than an economy. We're a civic society." While Bannon didn't explicitly say anything against immigrants, he seemed to hint at the idea of a white nationalist identity with the phrase "civic society." The Huffington Post makes note of a May 2015 study in its report, which "found that 27 percent of professionals working in Silicon Valley companies were Asian or Asian-American. They represented less than 19 percent of managers and under 14 percent of executives, according to the report."

Comments

Reverse brain drain

[narcc]

Don't we want the best and brightest from around the world to work here, to our advantage, rather than their home countries?

Re: Reverse brain drain

[PopeRatzo]

"Probably"? Based on what?

Based on his racist, bigoted history. Based on the quote in this article. Based on the quote in his email to his wife that was entered as evidence in his divorce. Based on the past year of Breitbart headlines.

He's a racist piece of crap, and the perfect "Chief Strategist" for the Trump Administration. I'm of the opinion that the best way to see someone destroyed is to give them exactly what they want, so I'm rooting for Trump to keep Bannon and make Giuliani Atty General and John Bolton Sec'y of State and fucking Ben Carson Education Secretary.

It's Trump's government to run and it will be a glorious thing to watch.

The Actual Quote

[Anonymous Coward]

When asked if he agreed, Bannon responded: “When two-thirds or three-quarters of the CEOs in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia, I think ... ” he didn’t finish his sentence. “A country is more than an economy. We’re a civic society.”

While it doesn't exactly seem to have a very positive connotation, there's also not much of a negative one. It's definitely not what the widespread quote has been.

Definition of a civic society (since I had to look it up):

In the United Kingdom, a civic society is a voluntary body or society which aims to represent the needs of a local community. Some also take the role of an amenity society.

A civic society may campaign for high standards of planning of new buildings or traffic schemes, conservation of historic buildings, and may present awards for good standards. They may organise litter collections or "best kept village" cleanups

I'm clearly missing the problem here? He has the wrong statistic (literally the opposite quantity), but what part of his statement doesn't make sense? A country should probably be a civic society, by that definition, to preserve its own self-interests. I also agree that with the other statement that we should look to retain their best and simply block their worst. Why effectively use our institution's tax dollars to train a foreign power's workers?

Re:The Actual Quote

[chiguy]

This is how racial code words work. You are blind to their meaning because you are not impacted by them. They're "just words." Because you will "obviously" never be excluded from "civic society" like Asian CEOs would be excluded. Presumably because I'm guessing you're not Asian or any other minority (or you're Omarosa).

Some examples of code words that will probably never affect you but seriously affect others:

Inner City: “You can’t publicly say black people don’t like to work, but you can say there’s an inner-city culture in which generations of people don’t value work.”

States’ Rights: "while “states’ rights” is a pretty racially neutral issue, you just have to look at what was happening at the moment to realize that everyone knew it translated to the right of states to resist federal mandates to integrate schools and society."

Forced Busing: on its face, was racially neutral, “the Northern analog of states’ rights,” which “allowed the North to express fevered opposition to integration without having to mention race.” After all, kids had been bused to school for quite a while. It was only when the plan took on a racial edge that it became controversial. Politicians didn’t have to say that outright, though—they simply dropped in the phrase to trigger resentment and gain supporters.

Cut Taxes: Dog-whistle politics is partly about demonizing people of color, but it’s also about demonizing government in a way that helps the very rich, says López. So, when Ronald Regan said “cut taxes,” what he was communicating to the middle class was, “so your taxes won’t be wasted on minorities.” A key Reagan operative admitted as much in an interview quoted in Lopez’s book, saying, ” ‘We want to cut taxes’ is a whole lot more abstract than, ‘N*****, n*****.’ ” It continues to be more abstract, and it continues to work.

Law and Order: is a way to draw on an image of minorities as criminals that was used by both Reagan and Clinton. He points to an inverse relationship in Congress between conversations about civil rights and criminal law enforcement. “What you see in the 1960s is that opposition to civil rights becomes ‘what we really need is law and order, to crack down’. ” Of course, the latter is less controversial and, at least on its surface, avoids the issue of race.

‘Welfare’ and ‘Food Stamps’: Welfare, says López, was broadly supported during the New Deal era when it was understood that people could face hardships in their lives that sometimes required government assistance, and, in fact, was purposely limited to white recipients. In this context, it wasn’t heavily stigmatized. Fast-forward to the 1960s, when Lyndon Johnson made it clear that he wanted it to have a racial-justice component. “Then it becomes possible for conservatives to start painting welfare as a transfer of wealth to minorities,” says Lopez. Remember those Reagan speeches about welfare queens? Today, says López, we hear “food stamps” used similarly.

Re:Does not follow?

[JoeyRox]

Try reversing the question - what about a CEO being Asian would detract from a civic society in America? I asked myself the question and couldn't come up with an answer that didn't lean racist in construction. But I'm open to ideas in case my imagination is limited on the topic...

Re: "Civic Society" not a very impressive euphemi

[Anonymous Coward]

I think if you're an immigrant from "whereverstan" and land ashore on one of these boats you've mentioned, learn the local language, get selected to attend the top schools, get hired by the best companies and end up running the companies, you've assimilated pretty f*cking well.

Take your racism somewhere else.

Re: Steve Bannon, not a racist?

[MightyMartian]

I'm white and I've never been called a racist. Then again, I don't say racist things. Hmm, maybe there's a connection

Re: Steve Bannon, not a racist?

[MightyMartian]

I don't propose banning any speech. But neither do I think freedom of speech means freedom from consequence, which is what I think at least some here want. They want to be able to make direct or thinly veiled bigoted statements, and have everyone around them act like that's completely normal. You can tell what delicate little snowflakes the Alt-right are because every time they get called on some nasty slur, they start moaning about SJWs. What they really mean is "I don't want to be held accountable, and anyone that holds me accountable is bad."

Re:Steve Bannon, not a racist?

[Anonymous Coward]

“When two-thirds or three-quarters of the CEOs in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia, I think ... ”

Yep, cut off right before making an explicitly racist comment to then go on...

“A country is more than an economy. We’re a civic society.”

A country is also its people, including those who immigrate here and the policies that acknowledge the rights of those to immigrate. It's also the acknowledgment of the notion that opportunity comes who work hard. It's funny that there's so much BS that argues that blacks in America not getting good CEO jobs proves something about them. And then when "two-thirds or three-quarters of the CEOs in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia" we start talking about "more than an economy" but about "civic society"? The guy is literally a sentence away from begging for Affirmative Action for Whites.

Seriously, at least try to argue for institutional racism against Whites or for Asians in Silicon Valley. If there is any, it's from people who are pro-racist for Asians at least in the "a hard worker" field. When it turns around and means they elevate to CEOs, that's a problem?

Re:Shocker

[MightyMartian]

Nope, I mean "accepts what scientists say." That you can find at least one or two researchers in any field who promote wingnut views doesn't mean those views aren't pure wingnuttery.

In my area of interests, Proto-Indo-European studies, there are a small group of linguists, primarily Indian nationalists, who insist India is the Urheimat of the Proto-Indo-European languages. The overwhelming majority of PIE researchers view this for what it is, politically motivated rubbish, and point to Pontic-Caspian Steppe as the most likely original homeland of the Indo-European speakers, pointing to the fact that the Baltic and Slavic (sometimes grouped together as the Balto-Slavic languages) as possessing far more PIE primitives than virtually any other family of languages with the possible exception of the extinct Anatolian subfamily.

The point of that long aside is to show you that you will find in any field of research a small number of people who for various reasons, some honest and sincere, some absurd and dishonorable, who ride against the consensus. And so it is with climatology. You have a very small number of climatologists (and a much smaller number of active and publishing researchers) who claim AGW is overstated or false, but the overwhelming majority assert that those very small number of contrarians are wrong, and in some cases, clearly intentionally distorting legitimate research and data to make AGW seem overstated. It doesn't help that some of these contrarians, like Frank Spencer, are basically on anti-AGW political thinktank payrolls, raising serious ethical questions about their motivations for writing anti-AGW screeds (not to mention these very few individuals, like their Creationist counterparts in biology, almost never publish any papers that lay out their great destructive critiques of AGW).

My view is that you just don't want to hear bad news, so you've decided that the overwhelming number of researchers in areas related to climatology are liars, and because you're of an childish and cowardly temperment, literallly a delicate little snowflake, you only want to hear from that tiniest fraction of the research community who promotes claims you are emotionally equipped to deal with.

At the end of the day, of course, the universe doesn't fucking care about your tender snowflake feelings. CO2 has the properties it has, and increasing even fractional percentages of overall CO2 in the atmosphere will inevitably lead to more heat being trapped. I do pity your fragile snowflake ego, though. I understand that your mommy and daddy never really explained to you that reality doesn't owe even the tiniest favor.

Re:Steve Bannon, not a racist?

[ClickOnThis]

Can someone please explain the difference in these sets of statements:

• There are too many asian tech CEOs.
• There are too many white tech CEOs.
• There are too many male tech CEOs.

• All Mexicans are Rapists.
• All Trump supporters are Rapists.
• All Muslims are Terrorists

Well, since you asked ... there is no difference. They're all false.

That being said, there is a valid concern as to whether some roles in the upper echelons of business are filled disproportionately by certain groups. That doesn't mean there are "too many" of some group, it just means we need to examine whether there is some barrier that excludes worthy candidates because of some arbitrary characteristic that is irrelevant to their abilities.

Re: "Civic Society" not a very impressive euphem

[unimacs]

I'll take it one step further and suggest that "assimilation" is an anti-American concept. Though in reality we have a checkered history when it comes to this, we regard "religious freedom" as an American tenet. People established colonies here precisely because they didn't want to be assimilated into the cultures of where they came from. We are also one of the few countries that does not have an official language. That's not an oversight.

Given that religious values and language are intimately tied to culture, it's not at all a stretch to say that a diversity of cultures is baked into the fabric of America. What you've described as some new phenomena is what's being going on since the beginning.

Even among whites in the US there are regional dialects and cultural traditions that can be traced back to other countries, - Louisiana Creole for example. Then there's perhaps the best example, the Amish, who've doggedly resisted any sort of assimilation.

You can make the argument that the Amish should take on the values of the larger society but my point is that not "assimilating" is nothing new. And to the extent that melting does occur, it can take generations and is never really complete or uniform.

I find it ironic that some people want to turn the US into the kind of countries that our ancestors deliberately left.

Re:Steve Bannon, not a racist?

[silentcoder]

It is amazing to me how, apparently, none of the people in the Christian right has ever read what their beloved bible has to say about immigration (yes - it addresses the topic DIRECTLY).

The foreigner who moves to your land is to be treated as an equal and welcomed as a citizen and a brother.

That's the biblical decree on immigration. Weird how they all know what Leviticus has to say about gay sex but none of them knows what it said about immigration - it's in the same book. Then again they also ignore pretty much everything else in that book. Too bad they ignore the good things (welcome immigrants and treat them kindly) with the same vigor as they ignore the bad things "sell your daughter into slavery".

Re:Steve Bannon, not a racist?

[silentcoder]

I paraphrased.
Here's the original quote:
Levitcus 19:33 “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. 34 You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God. In fact my paraphrasing is extremely close to the original text - and could very easily be the text in a contemporary translation without altering the meaning in any way.

Also worth noting that this message is repeated in several other texts - for example:
Exodus 21: “You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.

Sojourner would just be an older word meaning 'immigrant'.

There is no doubt in my mind that America's current immigration laws violate the principles of those verses which make them incompatible with Christianity - literally the only reason the bible gives where breaking the law is biblical okay - when the law prevents you from acting as the bible commands, and those texts make no claim of a difference between 'legal' or 'illegal' immigration. It tells you how to treat immigrants, it doesn't say you get to change that treatment because an immigrant hasn't complied with a burocratic process that itself violates those principles and numerous others (like the obligation to care for the poor and destitute and to offer shelter to those fearing for their lives).

Trust the atheist to, as usual, know the bible better than the biblethumpers do.

And that's without me even pointing out that if you oppose offering shelter to refugees fleeing YOUR enemies who want to kill them - then you have become nothing less than a murderer. You fear that one or two Syrian refugees may want to kill Americans ? So you are happy to let hundreds of thousands of them die ? You're a mass murderer if you think that way. Nothing less.