[doytch]

Language probably plays a non-insignificant role. I'd hazard a guess that more Indians and Chinese (the nationalities that are fairly well-represented in US leadership positions) are learning English than German, Polish or Slovak.

[whimsicalism]

Europe also largely just has a less pluralistic and diverse society than the coastal US.

Difficult to get the exact stats because it is illegal to measure demographic breakdowns in many European countries.

[FirmwareBurner]

>because it is illegal to measure demographic breakdowns in many European countries

It really isn't illegal to measure, where did you come up with that?

[eldaisfish]

It is literally illegal to gather race or ethnicity based data in Europe.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/16/france-and-ger...

[FirmwareBurner]

Where in that article does it say it's illegal to gather ethnical data in the EU? You're talking nonsense, I lived in 2 EU countries and government had ethnical data on citizens.

From where I read the article, it it says the contrary, Germany has racism and discrimination on the labor and housing market, but it can't be proven because it gathers no data.

So having no data actually makes the problem worse since racism and discrimination will continue to exist in practice (humans gonna be tribal) but you can't prove it because you have no data because you don't wanna be seen as racist.

It's a self fulfilling prophecy. You're just turning a blind eye on racism while touting yourself as a crusader against racism.

[eldaisfish]

I wouldn’t claim so boldly that my claims are nonsense. In many European countries affected by the Holocaust, gathering ethnic data is illegal. The article even mentions the example of Germany and i know it is illegal in France too.

If anything, your claims are unsubstantiated.

Edit: here is a good source, see page 16 https://one.oecd.org/document/SDD/DOC(2018)9/en/pdf

My original wording was clumsy. Most EU countries do not collect race or ethnicity data. Those that do are all in Eastern europe and the UK, Ireland are the only Western exceptions.

[em-bee]

so don't track race, but track location of birth, location of birth of parents (and grandparents) and all their respective native languages and local language capacity.

in europe most of that should correlate with the questions we want to answer since there shouldn't be many immigrants that have been here for more than a few generations and speaking the local language fluently. those who have been here longer should be well integrated by now.

in the US that wouldn't work because discrimination happens despite people having been there for many generations all speaking fluent english.

[whimsicalism]

It says that efforts to collect discrimination data in France are viewed as unconstitutional, verbatim in the article. Clearly, at minimum, collecting this data is not easy in many european countries.

> I lived in 2 EU countries and government had ethnical data on citizens.

Could you provide that data for France? I never said it was true of all EU countries.

e: Actually, reading your comment I am left a little confused - aren’t your latter paragraphs the exact point I am making?

[hot_gril]

Every time I view so-called ethnic stats in Europe, it's just nation of origin or something else that's not the same as race in the US. I don't see stats like number of people of X descent (which is not the same as being born there).

[epolanski]

Yeah, seems racist, why do it?

Never understood the fixation in US of breaking every stat by ethnicity or skin color.

[whimsicalism]

Because to identify discrimination, you need to measure it.

Without taking these stats, the Jim Crow South suddenly looks like an even-handed application of voting tests.

e: I will say, the number of comments I get from European commentators favoring the “putting your hands in front of your eyes” approach when it comes to racism in Europe does make it completely unsurprising how non-diverse their C-suite is as well as why they have difficulty attracting high-skilled immigrant talent.

[epolanski]

Delusional arguments.

Out of the richest 1000 Americans how many are blacks? 1? 2?

And what's the % like in prisons?

Wasn't Oprah the only black billionaire in US like for a decade?

US attracts talents because there's much more money in US than elsewhere and the political and bureaucratic environment favors entrepreneurship.

Please quit lecturing people around the world bantering a moral ground you don't have.

[hot_gril]

We Americans do it for "reverse discrimination," and yes it's racist.

[whimsicalism]

Yeah I am sure there is no lingering racism in countries that were literally running colonial societies in Africa within living memory.

My dad grew up in a European country with colonies in Africa, with state sponsored racism against africans, but yeah it’s all reverse now.

[gryn]

it's the case at least in france

https://www.insee.fr/en/information/2388586

[FirmwareBurner]

>Language probably plays a non-insignificant role.

Maybe so, but even Sony and Nissan had non-Japanese speaking CEOs for a while and Japan is not really know for its openness and progressiveness to foreigners.

Also, we're talking about global tech companies which reap profits from the global economy, so fluency of the local language that's only spoken by 5% of the world's population shouldn't matter that much, when those mega-corps hire teams of cultural and language experts for each market anyway.

I'd say it's more culture, mentality and protectionism of the status quo, than the language itself.

[whimsicalism]

Which Sony CEO are you referring to?

I think the Nissan case is a bit of an exception and if anything demonstrates how reluctant the Japanese are to have major Japanese multinationals run by someone not Japanese.

[FirmwareBurner]

Howard Stringer and Andrew House were head honchos at Sony.

[tapoxi]

House was Sony Computer Entertainment (PlayStation) which is based in San Mateo.

[gambiting]

Literally everyone under 30 years old in Poland or Germany will speak English(with a varying degree of proficiency, but English lessons are mandatory at school from the age of 7 until 18). No idea about Slovakia but I can only assume it's similar.

[RugnirViking]

I believe the parent was insinuating that it's harder for immigrants TO poland or germany to rise to high positions in buisness because they start learning german/polish later. Of course they will be able to communicate in english, but it's not a substitute when it comes to leading people and culture/charisma (I have personal experience with this sort of thing, living in a country but not speaking the language well)

[gambiting]

Ah. Then yes, sorry I misunderstood.

[lm28469]

It's mandatory in the EU, so also in Slovakia, to pick up a second language from relatively early in the scholarship, it can theoretically be French, German or English but in the vast majority of cases it's english.

https://www.eursc.eu/BasicTexts/2019-01-D-35-en-4.pdf

[wddkcs]

This could be changing, ai translation knocking down communication barriers.