"The differences in unemployment rates, participation rates, and average earnings between whites, blacks, and Hispanics aren't just stark. They're also sturdy, rarely yielding over the last 40 years.
Whites account for about 81 percent of the workforce. But there are 33 occupations counted by the BLS (particularly those on farms, around heavy machines, in doctor's offices, and in C-suites) where whites officially account for nine in ten of all workers, or more. Here they are."
— The Atlantic Online
while my own experience doesn't fully bear this out, it's sadly not surprising to see us end up on a list like this (if the numbers are true). in short, yes, it seems fully plausible that our profession is really as white as the walls we paint.
i'm not teaching on a full time basis any more - can people please give me some hope that the generations coming through reflect a little more color variation? pretty please?
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Not much good without the other end of the list for comparison.
Why not? I think what's missing is the vastly more interesting middle ground - what's the demographic of people coming in (say over the last 20 years) and how many have 'stuck around'? This kind of study could only measure people with current licenses - how many have simply let theirs lapse? How many non-white (and female) professionals have been essentially driven from the profession, either financially or for other reasons?
But knowing the percentages of what the majority of people of color are doing won't change the overall color of this report...
I'm tired of critics and media outlets citing statistics to show how "racist" or "sexist" this or that profession is.
What are you doing to try to solve the problem? Are you mentoring a black kid in design? Or are you just writing eye-catching headlines about how sexist/racist the profession is.
Yes, that will REALLY make the profession more diverse. (Actually, it only becomes more white).
I am ( a Turk) teaching design to inner city metropolitan Los Angeles students. I have 11 students in my studio. 8 Mexicans, 1 Japanese, 1 Chinese and 1 African American. All bilingual. I would like to have couple of white kids from the barrio also. These students are extremely urban savvy and very talented. We are doing a difficult urban design/housing studio and they will participate in Rotterdam Biennale. I am determined to make a difference.
Thanks for posting this, Gregory!
Anecdotally, I went to a very ethnically mixed high school (around 1/3 white) and I didn't know anyone who aspired to be an architect or who had an architect for a parent.
White is a very tricky concept. White is often defined as one with origins in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Sure, some of these folks might be more "ethnic," but they are still white. Fortunately, white is not simply WASPs. Also, this makes the intersection of white and having European Spanish roots, although a native of Latin America, a confusing thing. You have a situation where the unmistakably European Argentine or Brazilian who is the GM at a 5 star hotel is white, but a person from Ecuador with some indigenous roots may not be, for purposes of self-identification. The bar chart needs to break out Hispanic white, because I think the point they're trying to prove is that these professions are WASPy.
I have to laugh at some of these. I can definitely see construction managers and estimators as being corn fed jocks who grunt. I don't see architecture as being that WASPy. My program wasn't that WASPy. A program 100% full of WASPs would have been insufferable ... not to mention having to buy the spray repellant! We had numerous Hispanic (all kinds), Asians (all kinds), and foreign students (some real hoots from Europe) in the program. What a cast, so I'm sure the profession is changing. I could see CM, and related, as staying whiter, though.
I don't think it is lack of diversity in schools that is being illustrated here. This graph is about the workforce, people actually working. The discrepancy is what is alarming. What is happening?
say what? most of my co-workers are either Indian, Filipino, Chinese or Persian - there are only 3 whites in my office -
The discrepancy is what is alarming. What is happening?
What is happening is that a lot of people are self-selecting out. The table doesn't even address gender. Many women leave, and actually make that choice prior to graduating from school, opting for allied fields.
I think what is happening is that many see it as a predominately white and affluent "good ole boy" "gentleman architect" type of field. If in Jackson MS or Jackson Hole WY, I would imagine it to be that way. One would have to court the golfy Southern developer and the person who has the coin for a second home for their ski vacations, respectively. In NY, Chicago, Miami, SF, and L.A., it is definitely not that way. However, in the bulk of America, it is. One only needs to go to an AIA convention and look at who's sitting in those seminars. While there are a couple of dudes with shoulder length white hair and intellectual looking glasses, there are a lot of them are middle-aged white guys who look like suburbanites. I was expecting more diversity, mirroring some of the more colorful places in which the convention has been held.
xen, maybe so, but the graph does show % whites in the workforce and when compared to Orhan's class for instance, that is a huge discrepancy. If people are getting into architecture school and doing good work, why are they not represented in the workforce? It is almost like there are invisible hands working.
In other words, it is not the like of Orhan's class that is giving people the desire/need to find engagement elsewhere, it is specifically the workforce.
In a way, I don't know why we're bitching here.
Look at veterinarians. They lead the list. A lot of land-grant schools in the West are big vet. schools. One of them graduated once squeaky clean John Ensign of Nevada who turned politician.
Pilots? Holy smokes. Not only are they white, they look like clones of each other, and they reportedly cheat on their wives, either doing the "mile high club" or in the hotels on layovers, because of the mystique of the uniform ... and their salaries.
Sales reps: white frat boys who worked on their golf game more so than their GPA who back slap with others like them and hit the watering holes to chase skirt, continuing to do so until they get fat and are then are in denial that they still have "game."
Speech pathologists tend to be white women and there are practitioners among them who specialize in accent reduction, pushing an Anglo-normative service to those clients.
All the construction trades on the list: white dudes in Dodge Ram trucks, for that extra boost of testosterone, with a metal construction box in the back and who chew tobacco.
Isn't profiling dandy? But it is REAL.
Basically, if you are a minority or a woman, you can still attain these goals. It just won't be as easy. They may also experience discrimination once in the workforce, where the choice to win the battle or win the war may come into play.
^
Brain fart: "lose the battle and win the war."
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