I held off posting this when the story broke on ESPN over the weekend, but it looks like the NFL is diving into Eugene Chung's claims that he was discriminated against in an interview for a coaching position. He didn't name the team, but it looks like it won't stay a secret much longer.
Specifically, he was told he was "not the right minority", and with the recent focus on anti-Asian racism, this one is garnering headlines outside of the sports world–I just saw it on the front page of CNN:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/24/us/eugene-chung-nfl-not-right-minority-trnd/index.html
For those who aren't old enough to remember, Chung was a VT center, 1st round pick and is the father of recent VT OL Kyle Chung.
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He was there when I was a student. One of those "I feel so old" moments for me was when Chung II was coming to VT. I was thinking, 'Oh, Eugene Chung's younger brother is going to VT.' Then, when I realized that it people I was in school with had kids that are college age, it was , 'Oh man I am old.'
As an Asian, I can Say I faced this type of scenario including at VT. In fact, my senior year I had a complaint going all the way up to the Provost, the EEO, off course it was my word against "Management". so in the end it was nothing but a letter stating, "hey we interviewed X number of people" and that was really the end of it unless I wanted to sue the university and my love for VT even as a 20-year old (at that time in 1999) was too much so I wasn't going to go there. But I have to say in my experience, the Dean of Students and their staff was absolutely awesome and took the time to listen to me and guided me in the right direction. In the end I just didn't have the heart to sue the university that I loved so much for the action of certain individuals.
20+ years later, its painful to think about it and bring back all kinds of emotions.
Never dealt with it at Tech, myself. Lots of other places in life, though.
Actual quote: "Your people tend to be successful, so you're not a real minority."
yikes..sorry to hear that.
See it in industry/corporate world a lot, too. Tons of Asian people getting pigeon holed into individual contributer/subject matter expert roles. Definitely discriminated against in leadership roles, except for Indian people for some reason. My company has tons and tons of Indian VPs.
I was laid off in 2015, a week before Thanksgiving, a young parent with 2 very young kids at the time. My supervisor who was laying me off, looked me dead in the face, "You're Indian, shouldn't you be an engineer or something, and not a project manager? I don't think construction is the right spot for you."
Fast forward six years later, I'm still in construction.
As Marcus Rashford said recently: