It’s Time for Silicon Valley to Disrupt Its Toxic Asian Stereotypes

The author is casting the white characters in a good light, conveniently ignoring all of their deep flaws, and fixating on the flaws of the non-white characters.

"Meanwhile, Pakistani immigrant Dinesh spectacularly screwed up both a CEO position and a relationship."

Dinesh is perhaps the most likeable character on the show. Yes, he messed up in the CEO role. Just like Richard, and Gavin Belson, and the other CEO of Pied Piper. Just like Erlich and Big Head in running their incubator. Has the author actually watched the show?

Regarding Dinesh's relationship, he ended it, for good reason. Contrast that with Richard's recent experience.

Jian Yang is an immigrant, and Erlich's frequent references to that fact can be grating. But the argument that Jian Yang's bad app idea is racist is ridiculous. People in SV pitch bad ideas all the time. Is the author suggesting that non-white characters can't be shown failing?

I wonder if it ever occurred to some people—let alone the author—that Silicon Valley is not only comedy, but a merciless mockery of its real-life namesake. It is pure satire.

As such, the show takes reality and amplifies it—often to the level of ridiculous caricature.

To suggest that Silicon Valley must censor itself for the sake of people's delicate sensibilities, is to suggest that the show must cease calling out the fact racism exists in the real life Valley, and instead paint a willfully disingenuous picture.

To quote Geogre Carlin:

"It’s the user. It’s the intention behind the words that makes them good or bad. The words are completely neutral. The words are innocent. I get tired of people talking about bad words and bad language."

Silicon Valley's writing is no different. The context is that it's a show which mocks the absolute shit out of its real-life counterpart, and does an excellent job of it.

This is simply a case of wannabe censors bent on cutting off their nose to spite their face. Silicon Valley is playing for their team, they're just too stuck up to realize it.

Are we asking Mike Judge to be the bastion of cultural sensitivity? The same Mike Judge who made Beavis and Butthead?

This show opened with quite a lot of racism and sexism in its first episode. Why not just avoid the show entirely?

Quite trashy article, twisting reality to fit it's agenda.

You could make the argument that the show (despite being a comedy show with caricatures as it's characters) should include more Asians and cast them in as positive a light as the other characters. I'd still disagree (you're trying to dictate how someone should create what-might-be art) but it wouldn't be as distasteful.

Instead of doing that, the writer chooses to try and tell us that the "white" characters are "grappling with the difficulty of translating genius into profit". Despite being presented as hugely flawed episode-to-episode. Despite half of them being presented as simpletons that are faking-it-till-they-fail-spectacularly.

All the characters in Silicon Valley are one dimensional caricatures, so on the one hand it seems unreasonable that two of the characters should have their ethnicity explored in a meaningful way. The show doesn’t treat anything in a deep or meaningful way. When the caricature is based on ethnicity, however, and ethnic stereotypes particularly, then surely there is an onus to treat racial sensitivities, or attempt to do so. The slurs dressed as wit continues to grate, in an otherwise enjoyable comedy.

One caveat is this article quotes a study that shows that Asians are under-represented among top leadership in Silicon Valley. One potential confounder they don't address in the study is they don't differentiate between foreign and native born. I imagine at least some if not all of the gap would disappear if you compared native born to native born.

I don't know if being foreign born is a good a reason to not be in an executive position, but I seriously bet it's a factor.

> Whites create and Asians copy

While I think it's incorrectly worded, I do think cultures encourage behaviours that in turn affects ideas like creative output, but that's not race, only culture.

Example: My native country, Sweden, has a culture of municipal music schools that are relatively cheap. Tons of kids are encouraged, and do, take up some instrument at some point. Very few take it further, but Sweden has a disproportionate number of #1 international pop hits compared to its tiny population. This is obviously also part of that pop music is something that is globally in demand (some countries produce many classical musicians, which may not be as commercially viable).

Kids in the US are encouraged to live the American dream, that anyone can make their own fortune (totally unrealistic, given class structures), and are encouraged to innovate and try things out. Clearly that culture of "self made man" produces a lot of innovation and creative output, which in turn is globally very in demand.

The only asian country I had a little insight into is India. As an outsider, I can't at all claim to understand it, but there appears to be widespread culture of learning a trade, perform that trade the way you learned it, get a good job with a big company and then focus on your family. I trained some outsourced IT staff, and no one there wanted to "stick out" or perform better than the group. People were much more inclined to take collective responsibility for solving a task than individual. I speculate that India as a consequence of this culture, isn't using its full potential for dominance globally, be it creatively, musically etc. Though there are signs of it changing.

Well, first of all, Jimmy O. Yang, the actor and comedian that interprets Jian-Yang is probably the most talented comedian of the bunch.

I do think that, humor aside, reinforcing stereotypes is unnecessary for Silicon Valley to be a successful show so they should try exploring other themes.