A new study suggests that women and minorities are less likely to

A new study suggests that women and minorities are less likely to receive early support from potential academic mentors. Researchers from Wharton, Columbia and NYU ran an interesting field experiment: Pretending to be students, they e-mailed more than 6500 professors at top U.S. universities admiring each professor’s work and asking to meet. The e-mails were all identical except for the senders’ names.

Names that one can associate with a gender or race — like Brad Anderson, Meredith Roberts, LaToya Brown, Juanita Martinez, Deepak Patel, Sonali Desai, Chang Wong, and Mei Chen — were used.

The researchers found that faculty were most likely to respond to e-mails from white males. But more surprising was the high level of racial bias against Asians and Indians — professors were likeliest to ignore e-mails from these students.

One of the researchers noted, “We see tremendous bias against Asian students and that’s not something we expected. … A lot of people think of Asians as a model minority group. We expect them to be treated quite well in academia.”

The study highlights the pernicious nature of the “model minority” stereotype of Asians, and the fact that Asians are still viewed as the most foreign “other” in our American culture — perhaps the biggest outsiders in the politics of “not like us.”

A common refrain I hear from well-meaning friends and colleagues is: “What’s so bad about the Asian stereotype? Seems to me Asians have done all right.” I get it. As a woman of color, I’m keenly aware that on the spectrum of bias, there are plenty of worse things to be called than good at school. It doesn’t sound so terrible to be thought of as hardworking or quiet when there are so many more obviously sinister racial myths out there to bust.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/19/opinion/wan-bias-against-asians/