Power, hierarchies and our economic world all have the same thing in common; they are run and controlled by White upper class males. This is one thing in our system that has seen little or no change. The “white men of power” concept says that more often than never, power lies in a high class white male. I do agree that this concept does lay in our society. I am by no means saying it is okay because now reading and bringing into light how important diversity is in a group, I think we need to keep pushing minorities into power and start a new way of life. I like how the book says, “we need to revise the social norms that underlie the economic realities of our culture that have proven resistant to long term change.” Revising and improving on what it is that keeps us as a Nation, business, small group or even a team together and building off of not only our past but the unknown can only make us stronger.
The only time I think we really see the white male being overthrown was in this past election. It took until just a few years ago for a man of non-European decent to lead our country. It was in that same race that the first woman was running for vice president as well as a woman in high ranks to run for the President. A good example of this would also be how President Obama was just here in the Bay Area for dinner with some of the most powerful men in the area, the Apple CEO, Google, Orical and a few others. Clearly when we look at who was at the dinner table there was very little diversity going on.
Great post! You definitely hit one one of the oldest examples of white man of power - the presidency! Looking at our former US presidents we definitely see older white men of European descent. Now of course that has changed a little bit, but you made a good point about his recent dinner in the Bay. It's interesting that still even with the diversity in our culture and the globalization of the Internet we still see that most successful businesses (Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Google, Oracle) are run by white males. I think that just goes to show how deep the roots of the problem are - Institutions like Stanford and Harvard that churn out these future CEOs are likely predominantly white. On the other hand we don't hear about too many billionaire doctors or engineers, the ones who are usually different ethnicities and have different cultural backgrounds.
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