BUSINESS & PROFESSIONAL EIHICS JOURNAL, VOL. 6, NO.3 What .docx

BUSINESS & PROFESSIONAL EIHICS JOURNAL, VOL. 6,
NO.3
What is Wrong with
Reverse Discrimination?
Edwin C. Hettinger
Many people think it obvious that reverse discrimination is
unjust. Calling
affirmative action reverse discrimination itself suggests this.
This discussion
evaluates numerous reasons given for this alleged injustice.
Most of these
accounts of what is wrong with reverse discrimination are found
to be defi-
cient. The explanations for why reverse discrimination is
morally troubling
show only that it is unjust in a relatively weak sense. This result
has an
important consequence for the wider issue of the moral
justifiability of
affirmative action. If social policies which involve minor
injustice are
permissible (and perhaps required) when they are required in
order to
overcome much greater injustice, then the mild injustice of
reverse dis-
imination is easily overridden by its contribution to the
important social goal
of dismantling our sexual and racial caste system.!

By 'reverse discrimination' or 'affirmative action' I shall mean
hiring or
admitting a slightly less well qualified woman or black, rather
than a slightly
more qualified white male,2for the purpose of helping to
eradicate sexual
and/or racial inequality, or for the purpose of compensating
women and
blacks for the burdens and injustices they have suffered due to
past and
ongoing sexism and racism.3 There are weaker forms of
affirmative action,
such as giving preference to minority candidates only when
qualifications are
equal, or providing special educational opportunities for youths
in
disadvantaged groups. This paper seeks to defend the more
controversial
sort of reverse discrimination defined above. I begin by
considering several
spurious objections to reverse discrimination. In the second
part, I identify
the ways in which this policy is morally troubling and then
assess the
significance of these negative features.
http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.5840/bpej1987632
3&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2016-02-19
40 Business & Professional Ethics Journal
Spurious Objections
1. Reverse Discrimination As Equivalent To Racism And
Sexism

In a discussion on national television, George Will, the
conservative news
analyst and political philosopher, articulated the most common
objection to
reverse discrimination. It is unjust, he said, because it is
discrimination on
the basis of race or sex. Reverse discrimination against white
males is the
same evil as traditional discrimination against women and
blacks. The only
difference is that in this case it is the white male who is being
discriminated
against. Thus if traditional racism and sexism are wrong and
unjust, so is
reverse discrimination, and for the very same reasons.
But reverse discrimination is not at all like traditional sexism
and racism.
The motives and intentions behind it are completely different,
as are its
consequences. Consider some of the motives underlying
traditional racial
discrimination.4 Blacks were not hired or allowed into schools
because it was
felt that contact with them was degrading, and sullied whites.
These policies
were based on contempt and loathing for blacks, on a feeling
that blacks were
suitable only for subservient positions and that they should
never have
positions of authority over whites. Slightly better qualified
white males are
not being turned down under afftrmative action for any of these
reasons. No
defenders or practitioners of affirmative action (and no

significant segment of
the general public) think that contact with white males is
degrading or
sullying, that white males are contemptible and loathsome, or
that white
males--by their nature--should be subservient to blacks or
women.
The consequences of these two policies differ radically as well.
Affirmative
action does not stigmatize white males; it does not perpetuate
unfortunate
stereotypes about white males; it is not part of a pattern of
discrimination
that makes being a white male incredibly burdensome.5 Nor
does it add to a
particular group's "already overabundant supply" of power,
authority, wealth,
and opportunity, as does traditional racial and sexual
discrimination.6 On the
contrary, it results in a more egalitarian distribution of these
social and
economic benefits. If the motives and consequences of reverse
discrimination
and of traditional racism and sexism are completely different, in
what sense
could they be morally equivalent acts? If acts are to be
individuated (for
moral purposes) by including the motives, intentions, and
consequences in
their description, then clearly these two acts are not identical.
What is Wrong with Reverse Discrimination? 41

It might be argued that although the motives and consequences
are
different, the act itself is the same: reverse discrimination is
discrimination
on the basis of race and sex, and this is wrong in itself
independently of its
motives or consequences. But discriminating (i.e., making
distinctions in how
one treats people) on the basis of race or sex is not always
wrong, nor is it
necessarily unjust. It is not wrong, for example, to discriminate
against one's
own sex when choosing a spouse. Nor is racial or sexual
discrimination in
hiring necessarily wrong. This is shown by Peter Singer's
example in which a
director of a play about ghetto conditions in New York City
refuses to
consider any white applicants for the actors because she wants
the play to be
authentic? If I am looking for a representative of the black
community, or
doing a study about blacks and disease, it is perfectly legitimate
to
discriminate against all whites. Their whiteness makes them
unsuitable for
my (legitimate) purposes. Similarly, if I am hiring a wet-nurse,
or a person
to patrol the women's change rooms in my department store,
discriminating
against males is perfectly legitimate.
These examples show that racial and sexual discrimination are
not
wrong in themselves. This is not to say that they are never
wrong; most often

they clearly are. Whether or not they are wrong, however,
depends on the
purposes, consequences, and context of such discrimination.
2. Race And Sex As Morally Arbitrary And Irrelevant
Characteristics
A typical reason given for the alleged injustice of all racial and
sexual dis-
crimination (including affirmative action) is that it is morally
arbitrary to
consider race or sex when hiring, since these characteristics are
not relevant
to the decision. But the above examples show that not all uses
of race or sex
as a criterion in hiring decisions are morally arbitrary or
irrelevant. Similarly,
when an affirmative action officer takes into account race and
sex, use of
these characteristics is not morally irrelevant or arbitrary. Since
affirmative
action aims to help end racial and sexual inequality by
providing black and
female role models for minorities (and non-minorities), the race
and sex of
the job candidates are clearly relevant to the decision. There is
nothing
arbitrary about the affirmative action officer focusing on race
and sex.
Hence, if reverse discrimination is wrong, it is not wrong for
the reason that
it uses morally irrelevant and arbitrary characteristics to
distinguish between
applicants.

3. Reverse Discrimination As Unjustified Stereotyping
It might be argued that reverse discrimination involves judging
people by
alleged average characteristics of a class to which they belong,
instead of
jUdging them on the basis of their individual characteristics,
and that such
judging on the basis of stereotypes is unjust. But the defense of
affirmative action suggested in this paper does not rely on
stereotyping.
When an employer hires a slightly less well qualified woman or
black over a
slightly more qualified white male for the purpose of helping to
overcome
sexual and racial inequality, she judges the applicants on the
basis of their
individual characteristics. She uses this person's sex or skin
color as a
mechanism to help achieve the goals of affirmative action.
Individual
characteristics of the white male (his skin color and sex)
prevent him from
serving one of the legitimate goals of employment policies, and
he is turned
down on this basis.
Notice that the objection does have some force against those
who defend
reverse discrimination on the grounds of compensatory justice.
An affIrm-
ative action policy whose purpose is to compensate women and
blacks for

past and current injustices judges that women and blacks on the
average are
owed greater compensation than are white males. Although this
is true,
opponents of affIrmative action argue that some white males
have been more
severely and unfairly disadvantaged than some women and
blacks.s A poor
white male from Appalachia may have suffered greater
undeserved disadvan-
tages than the upper-middle class woman or black with whom he
competes.
Although there is a high correlation between being female (or
being black)
and being especially owed compensation for unfair
disadvantages suffered,
the correlation is not universal.
Thus defending affIrmative action on the grounds of
compensatory justice
may lead to unjust treatment of white males in individual cases.
Despite the
fact that certain white males are owed greater compensation
than are some
women or blacks, it is the latter that receive compensation. This
is the result
of judging candidates for jobs on the basis of the average
characteristics of
their class, rather than on the basis of their individual
characteristics. Thus
compensatory justice defenses of reverse discrimination may
involve poten-
tially problematic stereotyping.9 But this is not the defense of
affIrmative
action considered here.

4. Failing To Hire The Most Qualified Person Is Unjust
One of the major reasons people think reverse discrimination is
unjust is
because they think that the most qualified person should get the
job. But
why should the most qualified person be hired?
a. Efficiency
One obvious answer to this question is that one should hire the
most quali-
fied person because doing so promotes efficiency. If job
qualifications are
positively correlated with job performance, then the more
qualified person
will tend to do a better job. Although it is not always true that
there is such a
correlation, in general there is, and hence this point is well
taken. There are
short term efficiency costs of reverse discrimination as defined
here.10
Note that a weaker version of affirmative action has no such
efficiency
costs. If one hires a black or woman over a white male only in
cases where
qualifications are roughly equal, job performance will not be
affected. Fur-
thermore, efficiency costs will be a function of the
qualifications gap between
the black or woman hired, and the white male rejected: the

larger the gap,
the greater the efficiency costs.u The existence of efficiency
costs is also a
function of the type of work performed. Many of the jobs in our
society are
ones which any normal person can do (e.g., assembly line
worker, janitor,
truck driver, etc.). Affirmative action hiring for these positions
is unlikely
to have significant efficiency costs (assuming whoever is hired
is willing to
work hard). In general, professional positions are the ones in
which people's
performance levels will vary significantly, and hence these are
the jobs in
which reverse discrimination could have significant efficiency
costs.
While concern for efficiency gives us a reason for hiring the
most qualified
person, it in no way explains the alleged injustice suffered by
the white male
who is passed over due to reverse discrimination. If the
affirmative action
employer is treating the white male unjustly, it is not because
the hiring
policy is inefficient. Failing to maximize efficiency does not
generally involve
acting unjustly. For instance, a person who carries one bag of
groceries at a
time, rather than two, is acting inefficiently, though not
unjustly.
It is arguable that the manager of a business who fails to hire
the most
qualified person (and thereby sacrifices some efficiency) treats

the owners of
the company unjustly, for their profits may suffer, and this
violates one
conception of the manager's fiduciary responsibility to the
shareholders.
Perhaps the administrator of a hospital who hires a slightly less
well qualified
black doctor (for the purposes of affirmative action) treats the
future patients
at that hospital unjustly, for doing so may reduce the level of
health care they
receive (and it is arguable that they have a legitimate
expectation to receive
the best health care possible for the money they spend). But
neither of these
examples of inefficiency leading to injustice concern the white
male "victim"
of affirmative action, and it is precisely this person who the
opponents of
reverse discrimination claim is being unfairly treated.
To many people, that a policy is inefficient is a sufficient
reason for
condemning it. This is especially true in the competitive and
profit oriented
world of business. However, profit maximization is not the only
legitimate
goal of business hiring policies (or other business decisions).
Businesses have
responsibilities to help heal society's ills, especially those (like
racism and

sexism) which they in large part helped to create and
perpetuate. Unless one
takes the implausible position that business' only legitimate
goal is profit
maximization, the efficiency costs of affirmative action are not
an automatic
reason for rejecting it. And as we have noted, affirmative
action's efficiency
costs are of no help in substantiating and explaining its alleged
injustice to
white males.
b. The Most Qualified Person Has A Right To The Job
One could argue that the most qualified person for the job has a
right to be
hired in virtue of superior qualifications. On this view, reverse
discrimination
violates the better qualified white male's right to be hired for
the job.
But the most qualified applicant holds no such right. If you are
the best
painter in town, and a person hires her brother to paint her
house, instead of
you, your rights have not been violated. People do not have
rights to be hired
for particular jobs (though I think a plausible case can be made
for the claim
that there is a fundamental human right to employment). If
anyone has a
right in this matter, it is the employer. This is not to say, of
course, that the
employer cannot do wrong in her hiring decision; she obviously
can. If she
hires a white because she loathes blacks, she does wrong. The
point is that

her wrong does not consist in violating the right some candidate
has to her
job (though this would violate other rights ofthe candidate).
c. The Most Qualified Person Deserves The Job
It could be argued that the most qualified person should get the
job because
she deserves it in virtue of her superior qualifications. But the
assumption
that the person most qualified for a job is the one who most
deserves it is
problematic. Very often people do not deserve their
qualifications, and
hence they do not deserve anything on the basis of those
qualifications.12 A
person's qualifications are a function of at least the following
factors: (a)
innate abilities, (b) home environment, ( c) socio-economic
class of parents,
(d) quality of the schools attended, (e) luck, and (t) effort or
perseverance.
A person is only responsible for the last factor on this list, and
hence one only
deserves one's qualifications to the extent that they are a
function of effort.13
It is undoubtedly often the case that a person who is less well
qualified for
a job is more deserving of the job (because she worked harder
to achieve
those lower qualifications) than is someone with superior

qualifications. This
is frequently true of women and blacks in the job market: they
worked
harder to overcome disadvantages most (or all) white males
never faced.
Hence, affirmative action policies which permit the hiring of
slightly less well
qualified candidates may often be more in line with
considerations of desert
than are the standard meritocratic procedures.
The point is not that affirmative action is defensible because it
helps
insure that more deserving candidates get jobs. Nor is it that
desert should
be the only or even the most important consideration in hiring
decisions.
The claim is simply that hiring the most qualified person for a
job need not
(and quite often does not) involve hiring the most deserving
candidate.
Hence the intuition that morality requires one to hire the most
qualified
people cannot be justified on the grounds that these people
deserve to be
hired.14
d. The Most Qualified Person Is Entitled To The Job
One might think that although the most qualified person neither
deserves the
job nor has a right to the job, still this person is entitled to the
job. By
'entitlement' in this context, I mean a natural and legitimate
expectation
based on a type of social promise. Society has implicitly

encouraged the
belief that the most qualified candidate will get the job. Society
has set up a
competition and the prize is a job which is awarded to those
applying with the
best qualifications. Society thus reneges on an implicit promise
it has made
to its members when it allows reverse discrimination to occur. It
is dashing
legitimate expectations it has encouraged. It is violating the
very rules of a
game it created.
Furthermore, the argument goes, by allowing reverse
discrimination,
society is breaking an explicit promise (contained in the Civil
Rights Act of
1964) that it will not allow race or sex to be used against one of
its citizens.
Title VII of that Act prohibits discrimination in employment on
the basis of
race or sex (as well as color, religion, or national origin).
In response to this argument, it should fIrst be noted that the
above
interpretation of the Civil Rights Act is misleading. In fact, the
Supreme
Court has interpreted the Act as allowing race and sex to be
considered in
hiring or admission decisions.1S More importantly, since
affIrmative action

has been an explicit national policy for the last twenty years
(and has been
supported in numerous court cases), it is implausible to argue
that society has
promised its members that it will not allow race or sex to
outweigh superior
qualillcations in hiring decisions. In addition, the objection
takes a naive and
utopian view of actual hiring decisions. It presents a picture of
our society as
a pure meritocracy in which hiring decisions are based solely on
qualillca-
tions. The only exception it sees to these meritocratic
procedures is the
unfortunate policy of affIrmative action. But this picture is
dramatically
distorted. Elected government offIcials, political appointees,
business
managers, and many others clearly do not have their positions
solely or even
mostly because of their qualillcations.16 Given the widespread
acceptance in
our society of procedures which are far from meritocratic,
claiming that the
most qualifIed person has a socially endorsed entitlement to the
job is not
believable.
5. Undennining Equal Opportunity For U'hite Males
It has been claimed that the right of white males to an equal
chance of
employment is violated by affIrmative actionP Reverse
discrimination, it is
said, undermines equality of opportunity for white males.

If equality of opportunity requires a social environment in
which everyone
at birth has the roughly the same chance of succeeding through
the use of his
or her natural talents, then it could well be argued that given the
social,
cultural, and educational disadvantages placed on women and
blacks,
preferential treatment of these groups brings us closer to
equality of
opportunity. White males are full members of the community in
a way in
which women and blacks are not, and this advantage is
diminished by
affIrmative action. AffIrmative action takes away the greater
than equal
opportunity white males generally have, and thus it brings us
closer to a
situation in which all members of society have an equal chance
of succeeding
through the use of their talents.
It should be noted that the goal of affIrmative action is to bring
about a
society in which there is equality of opportunity for women and
blacks with-
out preferential treatment of these groups. It is not the purpose
of the sort of
affIrmative action defended here to disadvantage white males in
order to take
away the advantage a sexist and racist society gives to them.

But noticing that
this occurs is suffIcient to dispel the illusion that affIrmative
action under-
mines the equality of opportunity for white males.18
Legitimate Objections
The following two considerations explain what is morally
troubling about
reverse discrimination.
1. Judging On The Basis Of Involuntary Characteristics
In cases of reverse discrimination, white males are passed over
on the basis
of membership in a group they were born into. When an
affIrmative action
employer hires a slightly less well qualified black (or woman),
rather than a
more highly qualified white male, skin color (or sex) is being
used as one
criterion for determining who gets a very important benefIt.
Making dis-
tinctions in how one treats people on the basis of characteristics
they cannot
help having (such as skin color or sex) is morally problematic
because it
reduces individual autonomy. Discriminating between people on
the basis of
features they can do something about is preferable, since it
gives them some
control over how others act towards them. They can develop the
charac-
teristics others use to give them favorable treatment and avoid
those
characteristics others use as grounds for unfavorable

treatment.19
For example, if employers refuse to hire you because you are a
member of
the American Nazi Party, and if you do not like the fact that you
are having a
hard time rmding a job, you can choose to leave the party.
However, if
a white male is having trouble finding employment because
slightly less well
qualified women and blacks are being given jobs to meet
afftrmative action
requirements, there is nothing he can do about this
disadvantage, and his
autonomy is curtailed.20
Discriminating between people on the basis of their involuntary
characteristics is morally undesirable, and thus reverse
discrimination is also
morally undesirable. Of course, that something is morally
undesirable does
not show that it is unjust, nor that it is morally unjustiftable.
How morally troubling is it to judge people on the basis of
involuntary
characteristics? Notice that our society frequently uses these
sorts of features
to distinguish between people. Height and good looks are
characteristics one
cannot do much about, and yet basketball players and models
are ordinarily

chosen and rejected on the basis of precisely these features. To
a large
extent our intelligence is also a feature beyond our control, and
yet
intelligence is dearly one of the major characteristics our
society uses to
determine what happens to people.
Of course there are good reasons why we distinguish between
people on
the basis of these sorts of involuntary characteristics. Given the
goals of
basketball teams, model agencies, and employers in general,
hiring the taller,
better looking, or more intelligent person (respectively) makes
good sense. It
promotes efficiency, since all these people are likely to do a
better job.
Hiring policies based on these involuntary characteristics serve
the legitimate
purposes of these businesses (e.g. proftt and serving the public),
and hence
they may be morally justifted despite their tendency to reduce
the control
people have over their own lives.
This argument applies to reverse discrimination as well. The
purpose of
affirmative action is to help eradicate racial and sexual
injustice. If
affirmative action policies help bring about this goal, then they
can be
morally justifted despite their tendency to reduce the control
white males
have over their lives.

In one respect this sort of consequentialist argument is more
forceful in
the case of afftrmative action. Rather than merely promoting the
goal of
efftciency (which is the justiftcation for businesses hiring
naturally brighter,
taller, or more attractive individuals), affirmative action
promotes the non-
utilitarian goal of an egalitarian society. In general, promoting a
consi-
deration of justice (such as equality) is more important than is
promoting
efficiency or utility.21 Thus in terms of the importance of the
objective, this
consequentialist argument is stronger in the case of affirmative
action. If one
can justify reducing individual autonomy on the grounds that it
promotes
efficiency, one can certainly do so on the grounds that it
reduces the injustice
of racial and sexual inequality.
2. Burdening White Males Without Compensation
Perhaps the strongest moral intuition concerning the wrongness
of reverse
discrimination is that it is unfair to job seeking white males. It
is unfair be-
cause they have been given an undeserved disadvantage in the
competition
for employment; they have been handicapped because of

something that is
not their fault. Why should white males be made to pay for the
sins of
others?
It would be a mistake to argue for reverse discrimination on the
grounds
that white males deserve to be burdened and that therefore we
should hire
women and blacks even when white males are better
qualified.22 Young
white males who are now entering the job market are not more
responsible
for the evils of racial and sexual inequality than are other
members of society.
Thus, reverse discrimination is not properly viewed as
punishment
administered to white males.
The justification for affirmative action supported here claims
that bringing
about sexual and racial equality necessitates sacrifice on the
part of white
males who seek employment. An important step in bringing
about the de-
sired egalitarian society involves speeding up the process by
which women
and blacks get into positions of power and authority. This
requires that white
males find it harder to achieve these same positions. But this is
not
punishment for deeds done.
Thomas Nagel's helpful analogy is state condemnation of
property under
the right of eminent domain for the purpose of building a

highway. Forcing
some in the community to move in order that the community as
a whole may
benefit is unfair. Why should these individuals suffer rather
than others?
The answer is: Because they happen to live in a place where it
is important
to build a road. A similar response should be given to the white
male who
objects to reverse discrimination with the same "Why me?"
question. The
answer is: Because job seeking white males happen to be in the
way of an
important road leading to the desired egalitarian society. Job-
seeking
white males are being made to bear the brunt of the burden of
affirmative
action because of accidental considerations, just as are
homeowners whose
property is condemned in order to build a highway.
This analogy is extremely illuminating and helpful in explaining
the nature
of reverse discrimination. There is, however, an important
dissimilarity that
Nagel does not mention. In cases of property condemnation,
compensation
is paid to the owner. Affirmative action policies, however, do
not compen-
sate white males for shouldering this burden of moving toward
the desired
egalitarian society. So affirmative action is unfair to job

seeking white males
because they are forced to bear an unduly large share of the
burden of
achieving racial and sexual equality without being compensated
for this
sacrillce. Since we have singled out job seeking white males
from the larger
pool of white males who should also help achieve this goal, it
seems that
some compensation from the latter to the former is
appropriate.24
This is a serious objection to affirmative action policies only if
the
uncompensated burden is substantial. Usually it is not. Most
white male
"victims" of affirmative action easily [md employment. It is
highly unlikely
that the same white male will repeatedly fail to get hired
because of affirm-
ative action.25 The burdens of affirmative action should be
spread as evenly
as possible among all the job seeking white males. Furthermore,
the burden
job seeking white males face--of finding it somewhat more
diffIcult to get
employment--is inconsequential when compared to the burdens
ongoing dis-
crimination places on women and blacks.26 Forcing job seeking
white males
to bear an extra burden is acceptable because this is a necessary
step toward
achieving a much greater reduction in the unfair burdens our
society places
on women and blacks. If affirmative action is a necessary
mechanism for a

timely dismantlement of our racial and sexual caste system, the
extra burdens
it places on job seeking white males are justilled.
Still the question remains: Why isn't compensation paid? When
mem-
bers of society who do not deserve extra burdens are singled out
to sacrifice
for an …
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Part One
Chapter 1 - The Chinese Mother
Chapter 2 - Sophia
Chapter 3 - Louisa
Chapter 4 - The Chuas
Chapter 5 - On Generational Decline

Chapter 6 - The Virtuous Circle
Chapter 7 - Tiger Luck
Chapter 8 - Lulu’s Instrument
Chapter 9 - The Violin
Chapter 10 - Teeth Marks and Bubbles
Chapter 11 - “The Little White Donkey”
Chapter 12 - The Cadenza
Part Two
Chapter 13 - Coco
Chapter 14 - London, Athens, Barcelona, Bombay
Chapter 15 - Popo
Chapter 16 - The Birthday Card
Chapter 17 - Caravan to Chautauqua
Chapter 18 - The Swimming Hole
Chapter 19 - How You Get to Carnegie Hall
Chapter 20 - How You Get to Carnegie Hall, Part 2

Chapter 21 - The Debut and the Audition
Chapter 22 - Blowout in Budapest
Part Three
Chapter 23 - Pushkin
Chapter 24 - Rebellion
Chapter 25 - Darkness
Chapter 26 - Rebellion, Part 2
Chapter 27 - Katrin
Chapter 28 - The Sack of Rice
Chapter 29 - Despair
Chapter 30 - “Hebrew Melody”
Chapter 31 - Red Square
Chapter 32 - The Symbol
Chapter 33 - Going West
Chapter 34 - The Ending
Coda
Acknowledgements

Notes
About the Author
ALSO BY AMY CHUA
Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance—
and
Why They Fall
World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy
Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability
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First published in 2011 by The Penguin Press, a member of
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Copyright © Amy Chua, 2011
All rights reserved
Portions of Chapter Four first appeared as “On Becoming
American” in Defining a Nation: Our America and the Sources
of
Its Strength, edited by David Halberstam (National Geographic,
2003).
Photograph credits
Bachrach Photography: page 30
© Susan Bradley Photography: 168

Peter Z. Mahakian: 216, 223
All other photographs from the author’s family collection.
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Battle hymn of the tiger mother / Amy Chua.
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For Sophia and Louisa
And for Katrin

This is a story about a mother, two daughters, and two dogs. It’s
also about Mozart and Mendelssohn, the piano and the violin,
and
how we made it to Carnegie Hall.
This was supposed to be a story of how Chinese parents are
better
at raising kids than Western ones.
But instead, it’s about a bitter clash of cultures, a fleeting taste
of
glory, and how I was humbled by a thirteen-year-old.

Part One
The Tiger, the living symbol of strength and power, generally
inspires fear and respect.
1

The Chinese Mother
A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereo-
typically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to
produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it’s
like
inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can
tell
them, because I’ve done it. Here are some things my daughters,
Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do:
• attend a sleepover
• have a playdate
• be in a school play
• complain about not being in a school play
• watch TV or play computer games
• choose their own extracurricular activities
• get any grade less than an A
• not be the #1 student in every subject except gym and drama
• play any instrument other than the piano or violin
• not play the piano or violin.

I’m using the term “Chinese mother” loosely. I recently met a
supersuccessful white guy from South Dakota (you’ve seen him
on
television), and after comparing notes we decided that his
working-class father had definitely been a Chinese mother. I
know
some Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Irish, and Ghanaian parents
who
qualify too. Conversely, I know some mothers of Chinese
heritage,
almost always born in the West, who are not Chinese mothers,
by
choice or otherwise.
I’m also using the term “Western parents” loosely. Western
parents come in all varieties. In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and
say
that Westerners are far more diverse in their parenting styles
than the Chinese. Some Western parents are strict; others are
lax.
There are same-sex parents, Orthodox Jewish parents, single
parents, ex-hippie parents, investment banker parents, and
military parents. None of these “Western” parents necessarily
see
eye to eye, so when I use the term “Western parents,” of course
I’m not referring to all Western parents—just as “Chinese
mother” doesn’t refer to all Chinese mothers.
All the same, even when Western parents think they’re being
strict, they usually don’t come close to being Chinese mothers.
For example, my Western friends who consider themselves
strict

make their children practice their instruments thirty minutes
every day. An hour at most. For a Chinese mother, the first hour
is
the easy part. It’s hours two and three that get tough.
Despite our squeamishness about cultural stereotypes, there are
tons of studies out there showing marked and quantifiable
differences between Chinese and Westerners when it comes to
parenting. In one study of 50 Western American mothers and 48
Chinese immigrant mothers, almost 70% of the Western mothers
said either that “stressing academic success is not good for
children” or that “parents need to foster the idea that learning is
fun.” By contrast, roughly 0% of the Chinese mothers felt the
same way. Instead, the vast majority of the Chinese mothers
said
that they believe their children can be “the best” students, that
“academic achievement reflects successful parenting,” and that
if
children did not excel at school then there was “a problem” and
parents “were not doing their job.” Other studies indicate that
compared to Western parents, Chinese parents spend
approximately ten times as long every day drilling academic
activities with their children. By contrast, Western kids are
more
likely to participate in sports teams.
This brings me to my final point. Some might think that the
American sports parent is an analog to the Chinese mother. This
is
so wrong. Unlike your typical Western overscheduling soccer
mom, the Chinese mother believes that (1) schoolwork always
comes first; (2) an A-minus is a bad grade; (3) your children
must
be two years ahead of their classmates in math; (4) you must
never compliment your children in public; (5) if your child ever
disagrees with a teacher or coach, you must always take the side

of the teacher or coach; (6) the only activities your children
should
be permitted to do are those in which they can eventually win a
medal; and (7) that medal must be gold.

2
Sophia
Sophia
Sophia is my firstborn daughter. My husband, Jed, is Jewish,
and
I’m Chinese, which makes our children Chinese-Jewish-
American,
an ethnic group that may sound exotic but actually forms a
majority in certain circles, especially in university towns.
Sophia’s name in English means “wisdom,” as does Si Hui, the
Chinese name my mother gave her. From the moment Sophia
was
born, she displayed a rational temperament and exceptional
powers of concentration. She got those qualities from her father.
As an infant Sophia quickly slept through the night, and cried
only
if it achieved a purpose. I was struggling to write a law article
at

the time—I was on leave from my Wall Street law firm and
desperate to get a teaching job so I wouldn’t have to go back—
and at two months Sophia understood this. Calm and
contemplative, she basically slept, ate, and watched me have
writer’s block until she was a year old.
Sophia was intellectually precocious, and at eighteen months
she
knew the alphabet. Our pediatrician denied that this was
neurologically possible, insisting that she was only mimicking
sounds. To prove his point, he pulled out a big tricky chart,
with
the alphabet disguised as snakes and unicorns. The doctor
looked
at the chart, then at Sophia, and back at the chart. Cunningly, he
pointed to a toad wearing a nightgown and a beret.
“Q,” piped Sophia.
The doctor grunted. “No coaching,” he said to me.
I was relieved when we got to the last letter: a hydra with lots
of
red tongues flapping around, which Sophia correctly identified
as
“I.”
Sophia excelled in nursery school, particularly in math. While
the
other kids were learning to count from 1 to 10 the creative
American way—with rods, beads, and cones—I taught Sophia
addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, and
decimals the rote Chinese way. The hard part was displaying the

right answer using the rods, beads, and cones.
The deal Jed and I struck when we got married was that our
children would speak Mandarin Chinese and be raised Jewish. (I
was brought up Catholic, but that was easy to give up.
Catholicism
has barely any roots in my family, but more of that later.) In
retrospect, this was a funny deal, because I myself don’t speak
Mandarin—my native dialect is Hokkien Chinese—and Jed is
not
religious in the least. But the arrangement somehow worked. I
hired a Chinese nanny to speak Mandarin constantly to Sophia,
and we celebrated our first Hanukkah when Sophia was two
months old.
As Sophia got older, it seemed like she got the best of both
cultures. She was probing and questioning, from the Jewish
side.
And from me, the Chinese side, she got skills—lots of skills. I
don’t
mean inborn skills or anything like that, just skills learned the
diligent, disciplined, confidence-expanding Chinese way. By the
time Sophia was three, she was reading Sartre, doing simple set
theory, and could write one hundred Chinese characters. (Jed’s
translation: She recognized the words “No Exit,” could draw
two
overlapping circles, and okay maybe on the Chinese characters.)
As I watched American parents slathering praise on their kids
for
the lowest of tasks—drawing a squiggle or waving a stick—I
came
to see that Chinese parents have two things over their Western
counterparts: (1) higher dreams for their children, and (2)
higher
regard for their children in the sense of knowing how much they
can take.

Of course, I also wanted Sophia to benefit from the best aspects
of American society. I did not want her to end up like one of
those
weird Asian automatons who feel so much pressure from their
parents that they kill themselves after coming in second on the
national civil service exam. I wanted her to be well rounded and
to have hobbies and activities. Not just any activity, like
“crafts,”
which can lead nowhere—or even worse, playing the drums,
which leads to drugs—but rather a hobby that was meaningful
and highly difficult with the potential for depth and virtuosity.
And that’s where the piano came in.
In 1996, when she was three, Sophia got two new things: her
first
piano lesson, and a little sister.

3
Louisa
Louisa
There’s a country music song that goes, “She’s a wild one with
an
angel’s face.” That’s my younger daughter, Lulu. When I think
of
her, I think of trying to tame a feral horse. Even when she was
in
utero she kicked so hard it left visible imprints on my stomach.
Lulu’s real name is Louisa, which means “famous warrior.” I’m
not
sure how we called that one so early.
Lulu’s Chinese name is Si Shan, which means “coral” and
connotes

delicacy. This fits Lulu too. From the day she was born, Lulu
had a
discriminating palate. She didn’t like the infant formula I fed
her,
and she was so outraged by the soy milk alternative suggested
by
our pediatrician that she went on a hunger strike. But unlike
Mahatma Gandhi, who was selfless and meditative while he
starved himself, Lulu had colic and screamed and clawed
violently
for hours every night. Jed and I were in ear-plugs and tearing
our
hair out when fortunately our Chinese nanny Grace came to the
rescue. She prepared a silken tofu braised in a light abalone and
shiitake sauce with a cilantro garnish, which Lulu ended up
quite
liking.
It’s hard to find the words to describe my relationship with
Lulu.
“All-out nuclear warfare” doesn’t quite capture it. The irony is
that Lulu and I are very much alike: She inherited my hot-
tempered, viper-tongued, fast-forgiving personality.
Speaking of personalities, I don’t believe in astrology—and I
think
people who do have serious problems—but the Chinese Zodiac
describes Sophia and Lulu perfectly. Sophia was born in the
Year
of the Monkey, and Monkey people are curious, intellectual, and
“generally can accomplish any given task. They appreciate
difficult
or challenging work as it stimulates them.” By contrast, people
born in the Year of the Boar are “willful” and “obstinate” and
often “fly into a rage,” although they “never harbor a grudge,”
being fundamentally honest and warmhearted. That’s Lulu

exactly.
I was born in the Year of the Tiger. I don’t want to boast or
anything, but Tiger people are noble, fearless, powerful,
authoritative, and magnetic. They’re also supposed to be lucky.
Beethoven and Sun Yat-sen were both Tigers.
I had my first face-off with Lulu when she was about three. It
was
a freezing winter afternoon in New Haven, Connecticut, one of
the coldest days of the year. Jed was at work—he was a
professor
at Yale Law School—and Sophia was at kindergarten. I decided
that it would be a perfect time to introduce Lulu to the piano.
Excited about working together—with her brown curls, round
eyes, and china doll face, Lulu was deceptively cute—I put her
on
the piano bench, on top of some comfortable pillows. I then
demonstrated how to play a single note with a single finger,
evenly, three times, and asked her to do the same. A small
request, but Lulu refused, preferring instead to smash at many
notes at the same time with two open palms. When I asked her
to
stop, she smashed harder and faster. When I tried to pull her
away from the piano, she began yelling, crying, and kicking
furiously.
Fifteen minutes later, she was still yelling, crying, and kicking,
and
I’d had it. Dodging her blows, I dragged the screeching demon
to
our back porch door, and threw it open.

The wind chill was twenty degrees, and my own face hurt from
just a few seconds’ exposure to the icy air. But I was
determined
to raise an obedient Chinese child—in the West, obedience is
associated with dogs and the caste system, but in Chinese
culture,
it is considered among the highest of virtues—if it killed me.
“You
can’t stay in the house if you don’t listen to Mommy,” I said
sternly. “Now, are you ready to be a good girl? Or do you want
to
go outside?”
Lulu stepped outside. She faced me, defiant.
A dull dread began seeping though my body. Lulu was wearing
only a sweater, a ruffled skirt, and tights. She had stopped
crying.
Indeed, she was eerily still.
“Okay good—you’ve decided to behave,” I said quickly. “You
can
come in now.”
Lulu shook her head.
“Don’t be silly, Lulu.” I was panicking. “It’s freezing. You’re
going
to get sick. Come in now.”
Lulu’s teeth were chattering, but she shook her head again. And
right then I saw it all, as clear as day. I had underestimated
Lulu,

not understood what she was made of. She would sooner freeze
to death than give in.
I had to change tactics immediately; I couldn’t win this one.
Plus I
might be locked up by Child Services. My mind racing, I
reversed
course, now begging, coddling, and bribing Lulu to come back
into
the house. When Jed and Sophia arrived home, they found Lulu
contentedly soaking in a hot bath, dipping a brownie in a
steaming cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows.
But Lulu had underestimated me too. I was just rearming. The
battle lines were drawn, and she didn’t even know it.
4
The Chuas
My last name is Chua—Cài in Mandarin—and I love it. My
family
comes from southern China’s Fujian Province, which is famous
for
producing scholars and scientists. One of my direct ancestors on
my father’s side, Chua Wu Neng, was the royal astronomer to
Emperor Shen Zong of the Ming Dynasty, as well as a

philosopher
and poet. Obviously wide-ranging in his skills, Wu Neng was
appointed by the emperor to be the chief of military staff in
1644,
when China faced a Manchu invasion. My family’s most prized
heirloom—in fact, our only heirloom—is a 2000-page treatise,
handwritten by Wu Neng, interpreting the I Ching, or Book of
Changes, one of the oldest of the classic Chinese texts. A
leather-
bound copy of Wu Neng’s treatise—with the character for
“Chua”
on the cover—now sits prominently on my living room coffee
table.
All of my grandparents were born in Fujian, but at different
points
in the 1920s and 1930s they boarded boats for the Philippines,
where there was said to be more opportunity. My mother’s
father
was a kind, mild-mannered schoolteacher who became a rice
merchant to support his family. He was not religious and not
particularly good at business. His wife, my grandmother, was a
great beauty and devout Buddhist. Despite the antimaterialistic
teachings of the Bodhisattva Guanyin, she always wished her
husband were more successful.
My father’s father, a good-natured fish-paste merchant, was
also
not religious and not particularly good at business. His wife, my
Dragon Lady grandmother, made a fortune after World War II
by
going into plastics, then investing her profits in gold bars and
diamonds. After she became wealthy—securing an account to

produce containers for Johnson & Johnson was key—she moved
into a grand hacienda in one of Manila’s most prestigious
neighborhoods. She and my uncles started buying upTiffany
glass,
Mary Cassatts, Braques, and condos in Honolulu. They also
converted to Protestantism and began using forks and spoons
instead of chopsticks, to be more like Americans.
Born in China in 1936, my mother arrived in the Philippines
with
her family when she was two. During the Japanese occupation
of
the Philippines, she lost her infant brother, and I’ll never forget
her description of Japanese soldiers holding her uncle’s jaws
open, forcing water down his throat, and laughing about how he
was going to burst like an overfilled balloon. When General
Douglas MacArthur liberated the Philippines in 1945, my
mother
remembers running after American jeeps, cheering wildly, as
U.S.
troops tossed out free cans of Spam. After the war, my mother
attended a Dominican high school, where she was converted to
Catholicism. She eventually graduated from the University of
Santo Tomas first in her class, summa cum laude, with a degree
in
chemical engineering.
My father was the one who wanted to immigrate to America.
Brilliant at math, in love with astronomy and philosophy, he
hated
the grubbing, backstabbing world of his family’s plastics
business
and defied every plan they had for him. Even as a boy, he was
desperate to get to America, so it was a dream come true when
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology accepted his
application. He proposed to my mother in 1960, and later the

same year my parents arrived in Boston, knowing not a soul in
the
country. With only their student scholarships to live on, they
couldn’t afford heat their first two winters, and wore blankets
around to keep warm. My father got his Ph.D. in less than two
years and became an assistant professor at Purdue University in
West Lafayette, Indiana.
Growing up in the Midwest, my three younger sisters and I
always
knew that we were different from everyone else. Mortifyingly,
we
brought Chinese food in thermoses to school; how I wished I
could have a bologna sandwich like everyone else! We were
required to speak Chinese at home—the punishment was one
whack of the chopsticks for every English word accidentally
uttered. We drilled math and piano every afternoon and were
never allowed to sleep over at our friends’ houses. Every
evening
when my father came home from work, I took off his shoes and
socks and brought him his slippers. Our report cards had to be
perfect; while our friends were rewarded for Bs, for us getting
an
A-minus was unthinkable. In eighth grade, I won second place
in a
history contest and brought my family to the awards ceremony.
Somebody else had won the Kiwanis prize for best all-around
student. Afterward, my father said to me: “Never, never
disgrace
me like that again.”
When my friends hear these stories, they often imagine that I
had

a horrible childhood. But that’s not true at all; I found strength
and confidence in my peculiar family. We started off as
outsiders
together, and we discovered America together, becoming
Americans in the process. I remember my father working until
three in the morning every night, so driven he wouldn’t even
notice us entering the room. But I also remember how excited
he
was introducing us to tacos, sloppy joes, Dairy Queen, and all-
you-
can-eat buffets, not to mention sledding, skiing, crabbing, and
camping. I remember a boy in grade school making slanty-eyed
gestures at me, guffawing as he mimicked the way I pronounced
restaurant (rest-OW-rant)—I vowed at that moment to rid
myself
of my Chinese accent. But I also remember Girl Scouts and hula
hoops; roller skating and public libraries; winning a Daughters
of
the American Revolution essay contest; and the proud,
momentous day my parents were naturalized.
In 1971, my father accepted an offer from the University of
California at Berkeley, and we packed up and moved west. My
father grew his hair and wore jackets with peace signs on them.
Then he got interested in wine collecting and built himself a
one-
thousand-bottle cellar. As he became internationally known for
his work on chaos theory, we began traveling around the world.
I
spent my junior year in high school studying in London,
Munich,
and Lausanne, and my father took us to the Arctic Circle.

But my father was also a Chinese patriarch. When it came time
to
apply to colleges, he declared that I was going to live at home
and
attend Berkeley (where I had already been accepted), and that
was that—no visiting campuses and agonizing choices for me.
Disobeying him, as he had disobeyed his family, I forged his
signature and secretly applied to a school on the East Coast that
I’d heard people talking about. When I told him what I had
done—
and that Harvard had accepted me—my father’s reaction
surprised me. He went from anger to pride literally overnight.
He
was equally proud when I later graduated from Harvard Law
School and when Michelle, his next daughter, graduated from
Yale College and Yale Law School. He was proudest of all (but
perhaps also a little heartbroken) when Katrin, his third
daughter,
left home for Harvard, eventually to get her M.D./Ph.D. there.
America changes people. When I was four, my father said to
me,
“You will marry a non-Chinese over my dead body.” But I
ended
up marrying Jed, and today my husband and my father are the
best of friends. When I was little, my parents had no sympathy
for
disabled people. In much of Asia, disabilities are seen as
shameful,
so when my youngest sister Cynthia was born with Down
syndrome, my mother initially cried all the time, and some of
my
relatives encouraged us to send Cindy away to an institution in

the Philippines. But my mother was put in touch with special
education teachers and other parents of children with
disabilities,
and soon she was spending hours patiently doing puzzles with
Cindy and teaching her to draw. When Cindy started grade
school,
my mother taught her to read and drilled multiplication tables
with her. Today, Cindy holds two International Special
Olympics
gold medals in swimming.
A tiny part of me regrets that I didn’t marry another Chinese
person and worries that I am letting down four thousand years
of
civilization. But most of me feels tremendous gratitude for the
freedom and creative opportunity that America has given me.
My
daughters don’t feel like outsiders in America. I sometimes still
do. But for me, that is less a burden than a privilege.

5
On Generational Decline
Newborn me and my brave parents, two years after they arrived
in
America
One of my greatest fears is family decline.There’s an old
Chinese
saying that “prosperity can never last for three generations.” I’ll
bet that if someone with empirical skills conducted a
longitudinal
survey about intergenerational performance, they’d find a
remarkably common pattern among Chinese immigrants
fortunate enough to have come to the United States as graduate
students or skilled workers over the last fifty years. The pattern
would go something like this:
• The immigrant generation (like my parents) is the hardest-
working. Many will have started off in the United States almost
penniless, but they will work nonstop until they become
successful engineers, scientists, doctors, academics, or
businesspeople. As parents, they will be extremely strict and
rabidly thrifty. (“Don’t throw out those leftovers! Why are you
using so much dishwasher liquid?You don’t need a beauty

salon—
I can cut your hair even nicer.”) They will invest in real estate.
They will not drink much. Everything they do and earn will go
toward their children’s education and future.
• The next generation (mine), the first to be born in America,
will
typically be high-achieving. They will usually play the piano
and/or
violin.They will attend an Ivy League or Top Ten university.
They
will tend to be professionals—lawyers, doctors, bankers,
television anchors—and surpass their parents in income, but
that’s partly because they started off with more money and
because their parents invested so much in them. They will be
less
frugal than their parents. They will enjoy cocktails. If they are
female, they will often marry a white person. Whether male or
female, they will not be as strict with their children as their
parents were with them.
• The next generation (Sophia …
Twitter has a woman problem: of all its executives and
directors, only one is female
Twitter filed for an IPO yesterday, and amidst all the excited
speculation, I couldn’t help but notice that yet again, we are
about to witness the gender gap in corporate America widen
ever so slightly. Among the faces of the company’s leadership
team, its executive officers and board of directors, and its key
shareholders, I see only one woman: Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s
general counsel and secretary of the board. I count 11 men, on
the other hand, and that’s not including the venture capital

firms listed—none of which appears to have a woman partner.
Of course, this won’t likely raise many eyebrows; after all, only
27% of Fortune 500 companies have even one woman on their
executive teams, and women CEOs head up just 22 of those 500
firms. And the tech industry is notoriously male-dominated.
In supposedly-meritocratic Silicon Valley, it’s unlikely many
will bat an eyelash as these men cash in their chips and become
wealthy beyond most people’s wildest dreams. While I’m
tempted to rail against the economic injustice of it all, and point
to the widening gap between America’s wealthiest citizens and
the rest of its population, I doubt any of that will convince
corporate CEOs or investors to get more women into the C-
suite. So let’s talk about the business case for gender diversity.
For starters, there’s the research showing that diverse teams are
more innovative—surely a concern for Twitter as it shifts from
a privately-held concern to one that will be working to
maximize shareholder returns.
There’s also evidence that companies with more women on the
board of directors perform substantially better in terms of return
on equity, return on sales, and return on invested capital.
And finally, there’s the common-sense argument that if your
customer growth is slowing down, and your user base skews
male, there might be a substantial benefit to getting some
women in the room to help you figure out how to get more
women using your platform.
Tech may indeed have a pipeline problem, but if companies like
Twitter want to continue to push the edges of innovation and
garner significant shareholder returns, they’d do well to at least
get their women-to-men ratio into the double digits.
Social Network Nextdoor Moves To Block Racial Profiling
Online
Aarti Shahani

Think before you post.
That's not the message you typically get from Internet
companies. The ethos on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram is to
(over) share. But Nextdoor, a social network, has decided to
block users from publishing certain posts, specifically when
they appear to be racial profiling.
A techie tackles race
Talking about race and racial profiling does not come naturally
to Nirav Tolia, the CEO of Nextdoor. And yet, he's doing it
anyway.
"What someone considers to be racist is something that is,
unfortunately in many cases, in the eye of the beholder," he
says. "Why do some people like Trump and some people think
that he's Satan?"
Tolia is a tech entrepreneur, not a politician. Nextdoor is a
popular social network for neighborhoods. You use your real
name and address to join an online group with your real
neighbors.
The company is confronting a tough problem: How do you stop
an activity when people can't even agree on how to define it?
Jaywalking and speeding are easy. Racial profiling does not
have a universally accepted definition, as criminology experts
note.
In the face of public criticism by users who felt the site was
permitting racism and fear mongering, Nextdoor decided to
create a working definition that is relatively broad: anything
that allows a person to stereotype an entire race. And
throughout this summer, in a move that's highly unusual for a
tech company, Tolia and his engineers have been testing ways
to put a stop to it online.
Nextdoor CEO Nirav Tolia says a pilot project using algorithms
to check for racially charged terms has helped cut racial
profiling posts by roughly 50 percent.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
People engage in racial profiling "often not on purpose," Tolia
says. It's implicit bias. For example, he says, a user might think:

"If I look out my window, and I see someone breaking into a
car, and the only thing I see is that they're dark-skinned, why
can't I post [it]? That's all I see."
The problem with that post — "a dark-skinned man is breaking
into a car" — is that, while the activity sounds like a crime, the
description of the alleged perpetrator lacks any useful detail,
like what he was wearing, his sneakers, his hairstyle or height.
"Because that message goes out to the entire neighborhood,
where presumably many of the neighbors reading the post are
dark-skinned, that would be considered racial profiling," Tolia
explains.
Nextdoor was no stranger to such posts. The end effect, he says,
was more hurtful than helpful, generating animosity among
neighbors, rather than useful tips for law enforcement.
How it works
In a pilot project running in select neighborhoods across the
U.S., the company has altered the rules for posting. When a user
goes to post about a crime or suspicious activity, in the Crime &
Safety section, a new form requires two physical descriptors —
e.g. Nike sneakers, blue jeans, crew cut, brunette — if the user
chooses to include the race of the person.
An algorithm under development spot checks the summary of
the suspicious activity for racially charged terms, as well as for
length. If the description is too short, it is presumed to lack
meaningful detail and is unacceptable.
If a draft post violates the algorithm's rules or the form's
mandatory fields, the user has to revise. Otherwise, it's not
possible to post.
"This is a very, very, very difficult problem in society," Tolia
says. "Do I believe that a series of forms can stop people from
being racist? Of course I don't. That would be a ridiculous
statement."
Fear of friction
The move to block posts sparked heated internal debate, Tolia
admits. "It's highly unusual for a social network to say: If you
don't do this, you cannot post. Highly unusual. I mean, think

about Twitter or Facebook or Snapchat. There's no friction at all
in the process of posting."
In tech, "friction" is a dirty word. Engineers rack their brains
over how to shave seconds off the time it takes to broadcast you
to the world.
Some Nextdoor engineers argued that the company should just
politely suggest, not require, a better description. They pointed
out that when people complain — about bullying, hate speech,
revenge porn — on other social networks, those companies don't
change their product.
Are Smartphone Apps Making It Easier To Racially Profile?
"They may write a blog post, they may make a donation to
charity, something like that," Tolia says.
Thus far, the company says there's been roughly a 50 percent
reduction in racial profiling posts. Tolia's goal, he says, is to
drive the number of instances down to zero.
Backstory: A local campaign
There's an interesting backstory here. Ultimately, it was a
sustained grass-roots campaign in Oakland, Calif., that
compelled the tech company to act.
A group called Neighbors for Racial Justice met with Nextdoor
and handed over a blueprint for how to change the platform.
Then, they got city officials to weigh in aggressively. For
example, at a hearing last December, City Council member
Desley Brooks said that if the company doesn't take steps to
stop racial profiling, "we as a city ought to say that we will not
allow our employees to continue to post on Nextdoor and
validate this poor behavior."
Nextdoor recruits police and city agencies into the network.
They're an added feature, a kind of Community Policing 2.0 that
many users want. In the wake of the Dallas shootings, the police
department there turned to Nextdoor to communicate safety
updates to residents, and later to recruit for the police force.
The network says it's partnering with more than 1,600 public
agencies in the U.S.
Oakland Council member Annie Campbell Washington says at

first Nextdoor employees involved in the discussion weren't
willing to fundamentally alter the product. That changed when
the CEO stepped in.
She says it's a rare win in Silicon Valley, to get a company to
ask users sitting behind their screens "to think about the person
on the other side of the screen who's of a different race, a
different ethnicity, and think about how that post may affect
their lives."
Some residents worried the grass-roots campaign was just the
PC police. Campbell Washington recalls people writing in with
questions: "Why would you engage in anything that limits
people's expression? And especially people who are trying to
keep their neighborhoods safe."
Then, the regular police weighed in. Oakland Lt. Chris Bolton
says he would "much rather" have a detailed description about a
factor that is "very unique" — the man who robbed me was
wearing tennis shoes with red laces — than a vague description
of just the sex and race of a person. He says the changes make
Nextdoor more, not less, helpful for real police work.
Nextdoor plans to roll out changes to its entire U.S. network in
the coming weeks.

BUSINESS & PROFESSIONAL EIHICS JOURNAL, VOL. 6, NO.3 What .docx

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