Dealing with Ethnic Stereotyping
People stereotype others out of ignorance and convenience, not malice. As a minority in the corporate world, you may find yourself subtly or blatantly treated differently than your peers because of your assumed strengths, weaknesses and traits. This special treatment may not necessarily be unpleasant or negative. But you need to identify who is making what assumptions, and how these erroneous assumptions impact on your work life. If there is any negative impact on your image at the company, and hence your long-term professional development, it is important to address the situation gracefully and request the same treatment your peers receive.
Stereotyping is often unconscious on the part of your colleagues. For example, there's an old stereotype that all Asians are good at math. And maybe you are Asian and really are quite good at math. So on, say, your first management consulting project, it seems to make sense for you to do the back office analysis while someone else interviews the client executives. But the more you do the back office number crunching, the better you become at it and the more it makes sense for you to do it again next time. Eventually, if you keep holing up with your calculator, you will fall behind in developing communication skills, professional presence and client relationships. Break the cycle and make sure you are learning an appropriately broad set of skills before you become pigeonholed as the "expert" of one task.
In the next section, we will outline common stereotypes of women, minorities and gay men. Specific ethnicities, age groups, and sexual orientation will trigger specific stereotyping too numerous to cover here. These examples are meant to give you some idea of direct and indirect discrimination you may face based on commonly-held stereotypes. Generally, stereotypes stunt your professional development by skewing the mix of work you get, while your peers receive a more balanced training.
If you decide you are fine with the situation because it is an anomaly, is short-term or has upsides, that's fine. If you want to change the situation, you have to speak up early before the precedent is repeated too often. Whether or not you want to address the stereotype directly, at least you can inform your manager that you would like to broaden your skill set and get a good mix of challenging and diverse work. Don't approach your boss complaining. Tell him your reasoning and your proposed solutions, so that you steer the conversation toward getting his support for one option, and the transition itself is assumed. The sooner you demonstrate consistent, undeniable interest and accomplishment in the areas outside of the stereotype, the sooner people will see you as a unique individual. It is not fair that it takes extra work, but the investment is worth it.
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