IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2020 - 23

Our illustrations of this frame
relate to the notion that the small
number of people of color in engi-
neering is a result of natural occur-
rences, not of systemic oppression.
For example, one of us regularly
hears from engineering faculty and
staff the argument regarding both
student admissions and faculty hir-
ing that " We don't have many peo-
ple of color in our application pool
because the [supply] pool is very
small. " In other words, because of
the small number of people of color
who earn Ph.D.s, the number of
people of color applying for faculty
positions will be small. We can work
this excuse back through the pipe-
line - because of the small num-
ber of people of color who graduate
with bachelor's degrees, the Ph.D.
applicant pool is small, or because
of the small number of people of
color who graduate high school, the
bachelor's program applicant pool
is small. The problem with this rea-
soning is that it never interrogates
what structural features produce a
" small pool " but takes as inevitable
the truth of the statement, the con-
cept of a pool and its size, and the
absolution it provides the speaker
(or institutional level) of any respon-
sibility for rely ing on a system
which produces small pools through
structural inequality. It suggests
that because people of color are
numerical minorities in the general
population, it is " natural " to expect
" leaks " from the educational pipe-
line and have progressively fewer in
engineering bachelors' programs or
faculty applicant pools.
Operating from this train of reason-
ing allows committees to reconcile
with not including any students or
faculty of color in their pool of candi-
dates, instead of making short-term
or long-term efforts to ensure that
there are faculty of color candidates,
or by replacing an assimilationist
selection method (as described by
DECEMBER 2020

Matsuda [25]) with one that embrac-
es the material realities and embod-
ied knowledges of faculty of color.
This train of thought also allows
committees to remain unaware of
the extensive history of affirma-
tive action advantages accorded to
white people of which white can-
didates today are the " hereditary "
beneficiaries. We argue this func-
tions as a naturalization argument
in that it accepts as inevitable (or
" natural " ) the small number of peo-
ple of color who might apply to an
institution instead of prompting the
speaker and its institution from
seeing small numbers as produced
through racist phenomena.

Cultural Racism
Bonilla-Silva defines the concept
of cultural racism as " a frame that
relies on culturally based arguments
such as " Mexicans do not put much
emphasis on education' [...] to explain
the standing of minorities in society "
[31, p. 76], [40]. This is a frame that
relies on negative culturally-based
arguments to create cultural expla-
nations of why people of color are
inferior. The frame also presumes a
biological inferiority that is based on
race or ethnicity to portray their cul-
tures in a negative way, despite the
wealth of evidence demonstrating
that race is a social construct and
not a biological reality.
Fairly recently, a legal scholar
working at one of our institutions
co-authored an op-ed claiming that
" all cultures are not equal " [41]. The
article claimed that there are some
cultures that are more suitable to be
productive in advanced economies
like the United States. African Amer-
icans, Latinxs, and Native Ameri-
cans were portrayed as individuals
whose cultures were " incompatible "
with what is required by democra-
cies and free-market economies.
The authors also claimed that the
" bourgeois norms " of the " ordinary
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IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

Americans " has been abandoned
and replaced by the cultures of peo-
ple who simply do not fit in [41]. To
quote the op-ed:
All cultures are not equal. Or at
least they are not equal in prepar-
ing people to be productive in an
advanced economy. The culture
of the Plains Indians was de-
signed for nomadic hunters, but
is not suited to a First World,
21st-century environment. Nor
are the single-parent, antisocial
habits, prevalent among some
working-class whites; the anti-
" acting white " rap culture of
inner-city blacks; the anti-assimi-
lation ideas gaining ground
among some Hispanic immi-
grants. These cultural orienta-
tions are not only incompatible
with what an advanced free-
market economy and a viable
democracy require, they are also
destructive of a sense of solidari-
ty and reciprocity among Ameri-
cans. If the bourgeois cultural
script - which the upper-middle
class still largely observes but
now hesitates to preach - can-
not be widely reinstated, things
are likely to get worse for us all.
Despite the problematic rhetori-
cal strategies these authors employ
(such as failing to provide evidence
for upper-middle class people " he-
sitating " to preach the benefits of
education, and making a racial argu-
ment which conveniently overlooks
the racial overtones of who consti-
tutes an " upper-middle class " ) we
expect there are many in engineer-
ing who agree with the substance of
this neoliberal argument. Moreover,
the authors of this op-ed empha-
size cultural racism through racial-
ization. They indicate that " some
working-class whites " also exhibit
these " cultural orientations " that
are not suited for an " advanced

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