CHAIR EARP: Good morning everyone. The meeting will now come to order. Thank you all very much for being here this morning. In accordance with the Sunshine Act, today's meeting is open to public observation of the Commission's deliberations and voting.

Before I ask Bernadette Wilson to announce the notation votes, I would like to take a moment to welcome the newest member of the Commission, Commissioner Constance Smith Barker.

Commissioner Barker hails from Montgomery, Alabama, why did I think Birmingham?

COMMISSIONER BARKER: No, not Birmingham.

CHAIR EARP: Montgomery, Alabama, which we all know has great significance in the Civil Rights Movement. I am confident that Commissioner Barker's experience as a judge, as a prosecutor and as a corporate attorney will enhance the Commission.

She might also add a little bit of accent diversity. Being from Alabama, she will compliment Commissioner Griffin being from Boston. So we are very, very happy to have Commissioner Barker with us.

At this time, I'm going to ask Bernadette Wilson to announce any notation votes that have taken place since the last Commission meeting. Ms. Wilson?

MS. WILSON: Good morning. Madam Chair, Madam Vice Chair, Commissioners and welcome to EEOC Commissioner Barker. I'm Bernadette Wilson from the Executive Secretariat.

We'd like to remind our audience that questions and comments from the audience are not permitted during the meeting and we ask that you carry on any conversations outside of the meeting room, departing and reentering as quietly as possible.

Also, please take this opportunity to turn your cell phones off or to vibrate mode. I would also like to remind the audience that in addition to the elevators, in case of emergency, there are stairways down the hall to the right and left as you exit this room. Additionally, the restrooms are down the hall to the right.

During the period June 17, 2008 through July 18, 2008, the Commission acted on four items by notation vote.

Approved litigation on two cases; Approved the Final Rule revising 29 C.F.R. Part 1615; and,

Approved television cameras at the July 22nd Commission meeting.

Madam Chair, it is appropriate at this time to have a motion to close a portion of the next Commission meeting in case there are any closed meeting agenda items.

CHAIR EARP: Thank you Ms. Wilson. Do I hear a motion?

COMMISSIONER ISHIMARU: So moved.

CHAIR EARP: Is there a second?

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: Second.

CHAIR EARP: Any discussion?

(No response.)

CHAIR EARP: Hearing none, all those in favor say Aye.

ALL: Aye

CHAIR EARP: The ayes have it, the motion is carried, thank you Ms. Wilson.

Good morning again. It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to this Commission meeting. One housekeeping note before we begin. I'd like to remind everyone that we have a very full agenda today and we're on a tight schedule. To afford each panelist their full allotted time to speak and to allow the Commissioners time to ask questions, I've asked our Legal Counsel to make use of the timing light.

The timing light will turn yellow giving each panelist and Commissioner a one minute warning. When the light turns red, it means stop, your time has expired.

You may finish a thought, but please respect the time limit so that those scheduled later in this meeting are not rushed. I promise we will stay here if it takes all day until the issues have been fully vetted.

Now, let's turn to the substance of today's meeting: Issues faced by Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders in the federal workplace.

Shortly after I arrived at EEOC, Mr. Farook Sait, who is an attorney with USDA, was also at the time an officer with FAPAC, the Federal Asian.Pacific American Council. Through frank and open discussions with representatives of the Asian community, mostly facilitated through Mr. Sait, we decided to get together a small group of representatives from this segment of the federal employee community and talk openly and candidly about what federal agencies were doing right and what federal agencies desperately needed to improve.

I heard stories during this time that clearly illustrated some Asian.American employees were having major problems in the federal workforce. Some of these stories angered me, some of these stories inspired me, some of them made me convinced that we needed to get to exactly where we are today.

The concerns raised by Asian federal employees were not just about employment or the lack of upward mobility. Surprisingly, there were also problems with a lack of support at the agency level for special emphasis programs.

By the fall of 2007, based on conversations with the community, I formed an interagency workgroup to review problems in three categories. Specifically, the employment of AAPIs, special emphasis programs and complaints, or more specifically with complaints, why there are so few coming from this community. I extend a sincere thanks to the workgroup members and I'd like to just take a moment and acknowledge those who are here today.

Linda Bradford.Washington, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development; Sherrie Davis, National Institutes of Health; Anna Hui, Department of Labor; Robert Jew, the National Archives; Gazal Modhera on my staff; Piyachat Terrell, EPA; Farook Sait with USDA; James Su with FAPAC and Sharon Wong who's with the Asian.American Government Executives Network.

The AAPI Workgroup has been studying these three focus areas for almost a year. Today's meeting allows us to continue gathering information and begin sharing best practices. But we also need to ensure that there is equality of treatment, even as agencies improve programs, we need to ensure those AAPIs currently employed receive equal opportunity.

Panels 1 and 2 are an extension of the fact gathering process and we will start with Panel 1, the Status of Federal AAPI Employment, Changing Demographics, Labor Market Growth and Employment.

Our panelists are our very own Carlton Hadden, Director of the Office of Federal Operations, John Palguta, Vice President, Partnership for Public Service. And our experts are Dr. Paul Ong, who is a Professor at UCLA School of Public Affairs and the Department of Asian.American Studies and Dr. Sharon Goto, who is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Asian.American Studies, Pomona College.

Please, would you come forward and take your seats. Thank you. Carlton, we'll start with you.

MR. HADDEN: Good morning Chair Earp, Vice Chair Silverman, Commissioner Ishimaru, Commissioner Griffin and welcome Commissioner Barker.

Since my formal statement for today's meeting provides greater specificity, I wanted to just highlight a couple of points for you this morning. And first, I begin with the Commission's policy directive.

MD 715 is really critical to the discussion today. As you know, that directive requires agencies to implement model EEO programs and the central aspect of doing that is the identification and elimination of barriers to equality of opportunity in the federal workplace.

EEOC defines a barrier as an agency policy, principle or practice that limits or tends to limit employment opportunities for an EEO group.

In order to eliminate barriers, an agency must conduct a barrier analysis of its workforce. This means using a variety of sources to identify the barriers. It includes periodically taking, reviewing and refining snapshots of the workforce.

An agency must investigate and identify barriers and identify triggers or anomalies in the data that show low participation of a particular EEO group.

Once a barrier is identified, an agency must devise a plan to address the cause of the barrier. As well, the agency must determine whether a barrier is job related and consistent with business necessity. If they are not, the agency should plan to eliminate that barrier.

Now that we've had a few years with MD 715, we have found that it is in this area of barrier analysis that some agencies need to focus their effort.

The other point I want to make illu

strates the need for more rigorous barrier analysis with regard to AAPIs in the federal workforce.

Certainly at first glance, when you look at the overall federal workforce data for AAPIs, you see that the federal government arguably could be considered the employer of first choice.

The percentage of AAPIs for FY 2006 in the federal workforce was 6.06% and that's compared to a CLF of 3.8%. It's an improvement from 10 years ago when the percentage was just 4.71%.

Moreover, when you look at the pay grades above GS.15, you will see that in 1997 AAPIs held only 1.98% of federal jobs. And in comparison, in FY 2006 the percentage increased to 3.73%.

Even with this increase, the percentage of AAPIs in these senior grades is well below the overall rate of participation in the federal workforce. When you drill down below this government-wide percentage and look at how AAPIs are fairing in various federal agencies, the result is more mixed.

We see a wide range running from 16.45% at DOD's Commissary Agency to the TVA with .3%. Even when we look at an agency that has shown a large increase in its workforce percentage, there still may be gaps at the senior pay level.

Health and Human Services is one such agency. Over a five year period its AAPI workforce increased by over 2%. If you look at the HHS GS.14 level, there was a 9.12% participation rate. At the GS.15 level, there was a 6.06% participation rate. However, when you look at the senior executive service pay level, the AAPI level drops dramatically to 2.19%. This is a type of trigger for which a solid barrier analysis is needed.

We know from the work of the EEOC AAPI task force, agencies need to do more in this area. As part of its work, the EEOC AAPI task force surveyed 55 agencies. Of those surveyed, only 15 identified triggers in their workforce data regarding AAPIs. Even fewer identify any barriers, any actual barriers to employment.

The task force also examined AAPI participation in mid.level management and in senior level positions and found that while there's a large pool of Asians and native Hawaiians to choose from in many agencies, their participation rate begins to decline at higher levels.

So in conclusion, while there clearly has been progress government-wide in regards to the number and percentages of AAPIs, the focus really needs to be on individual agency results in regard to AAPIs in the workforce.

Moreover, agencies really need to refocus their effort and I'm sorry, refocus their use of barrier analysis as part of the MD-715 effort.

Again, thank you for the opportunity to share these thoughts with you and I'll be delighted to take any questions at the right time.

CHAIR EARP: Thanks. Mr. Palguta?

MR. PALGUTA: Good morning Chair Earp, Vice Chair, Commissioners, colleagues and friends. Delighted to be here today to join in this discussion.

The Partnership for Public Service, where I am now the Vice President for Policy - and prior to that I spent 34 years in government - the Partnership has two basic missions, one is to inspire quality talent to government and to transform the way government works so that we continue to make good use of that talent.

We know that good government starts with good people. We also know that achieving a truly diverse workforce is not only a good business practice, but for government, it is an imperative.

I would like to, during my five minutes, focus on three specific issues. One, the current status of Asian-American Pacific Islanders in the federal workforce. Some challenges and opportunities, number two, that will be occurring within the government over the next five years and beyond. And then three, some of the barriers that I believe still exist in the Executive Branch, which may hinder our ability to make as good of use of that talent, particularly AAPIs, as we should.

First, in terms of the current status, Mr. Hadden has already provided some statistics there. I would simply add that as Mr. Hadden noted, I think it's important to recognize and to celebrate the success that we have had in the representation of AAPIs in government.

In my written statement, I took a different slice of time, but it's the same basic result. Over the last seven years, drawing from data in the Federal Equal Opportunity Recruitment Report, submitted each year by OPM to Congress, we've seen increases in total representation, we've seen increases for AAPIs at all salary levels. However, that overall picture does mask some very real differences beneath the surface. For example, in 2000, AAPIs met or exceeded the representation in the relevant civilian labor force in 14 of 17 departments and agencies.

By 2007, that was true for only 7 of 18 executive departments. In 2000, AAPIs met or exceeded their representation in the relevant civilian labor force in 15 of 22 independent agencies. In 2007, that was only true for 11 of 24 independent agencies.

And of course, AAPIs, along with almost every other demographic group, continues to be under represented among the 7,000 members of the Senior Executive Service, in the Executive Branch.

So clearly, while much progress has been made, there remains much room for further improvement.

Looking ahead, my area number two, the federal workforce is graying. I'm an example of that. Within the next five years, there will be at least half a million full time permanent workers who will leave the federal government. These are not individuals who will become retirement eligible, these are individuals who will go out the door. Most of them through retirements, many others, however; through resignations or moving on to other opportunities. While this is certainly a challenge, this is also a great opportunity in terms of increasing the diversity of government particularly at the higher levels.

We conducted, at the Partnership for Public Service, a study of projected hiring needs. We have a report on our website where the jobs are. But in brief, about 80% of the projected new mission critical hires for government, and that's about 193,000 jobs that will be filled over the next two years. Eighty percent of those fall into five occupational areas.

Security protection, compliance and enforcement agencies were projecting 62,800 new hires. Public and medical health positions, 35,000 new hires and that's probably a low estimate.

Accounting, budget and business, 21,200 new hires needed. Program management analysis and administration, over 14,000 new hires needed.

Comparing these numbers to earlier projections, there were several trends. The projected increase in compliance and enforcement jobs, of course, not surprising, many of those jobs in the Department of Homeland Security and DOD. And the demand will simply increase.

And that red light went on very quickly. In my written testimony, there are five barriers that I think will be important to take a look at and I'd be happy to address some of those in our conversation after.

CHAIR EARP: Thank you.

COMMISSIONER ISHIMARU: Madam Chair, just as a point of reference, in the .. when it�s posted on the website, I assume that the full statements, the written statements will be posted as well. So people can reference it on the website.

CHAIR EARP: Yes.

COMMISSIONER ISHIMARU: Thank you.

CHAIR EARP: Dr. Ong?

DR. ONG: Okay. Good morning. I want to thank you for your invitation to be here. I'm honored to be here. I want to make three sort of points.

One is an overview of the Asian.American Pacific Islander workforce, two, some remarks about the managerial category, and three, what academic studies tell us.

In terms of the labor force, the Asian.American Pacific Islander workforce is an important and growing segment of the American economy. Between 1980 and 2005 the AAPI workforce grew about roughly 10 times as fast as the workforce as a whole.

Projections for the next 25 years indicate the AAPI workforce will grow roughly three times faster than the whole. In 2005, there is roughly 9.5 million AAPIs in the working age population of which 6.5 were actively in the labor market.

It is ethnically a very diverse population divided among dozens of groups, but major groups include the Chinese, Filipinos, Koreans, Japanese, Asian.Indians, Vietnamese, and a host of others.

It is a population that's also very diverse in terms of nativity, roughly two.thirds to three.quarter are immigrants, but among the immigrants the vast majority have been in this country for 10 years.

Given the immigrant characteristics in the workforce it's not surprising to see that over two.thirds of all AAPI workers are in households where English is not the spoken language.

It is also a very diverse population in terms of what it brings to the labor market in terms of human capital. It is over represented at the bottom end, those without a high school education, but also significantly over represented among those with advanced education.

It is also very geographically concentrated among the seven metropolitan areas with high numbers of Asians. That accounts for roughly 44% of AAPIs compared to only 18% of the total workforce.

One thing to note is that concentration in large metropolitan areas have consequences in terms of earnings and cost of living. And part of what we observe is sort of relatively high earnings among AAPIs attributed to the metropolitan distribution as well as the human capital.

AAPIs are distributed throughout the economies, but actually they are disproportionately in the private sector. There is a stereotype of AAPIs being self.employed. Certainly there are self. employed AAPIs, but it's actually at a lower rate than non.Hispanic Whites.

In terms of occupational distribution, partly because of the education, AAPIs are over represented in the scientific and technical professions, but they are also over represented in service among service workers, restaurant workers and so forth. And this is particularly true among Pacific Islanders.

There's also under representation in the managerial categories. If we look at the managerial categories compared to non.Hispanic Whites, Asians are less likely be chief executives or very high managers.

They are under represented among the highest paid managers and where they are over represented, not surprisingly, are managers who oversee information technology and computing operations.

Interestingly, if we compare managers in terms of their disproportionate under-representation, if we look at the federal government versus the state and local government versus the private sector, large firm private sector; that the gap between their representation of the total workforce versus the representation of managerial categories, the biggest gap exists within the federal government.

So, one of the difficulties is trying to understand what all this means, because this is a very complex community, complex workforce in terms of the background. So some of the existing academic studies attempt to unravel the causes of where Asian.American Pacific Islanders stands points to a few things, certainly individual characteristics account for where we stand as well as contextual factors.

Individual characteristics we mean human capital, we mean race and gender, we also mean other factors as related to nativity such as years in the U.S., language and so forth.

Contextual one, again going back to the metropolitan area that one's in as well as maybe some of the industrial sectors that one's in. After accounting for that, I want to just sort of briefly summarize what the literature tells us.

One is that we do observe unexplained gaps between Asian.American Pacific Islanders and non.Hispanic White. That is, it can't be explained by those factors we normally attribute to the performance in the labor market.

But there is a great deal of variation in terms of those labor market outcomes and those gaps. Among males, there are unexplained gaps. It can't be explained by age, experience, education, nativity and those things that go with nativity.

For AAPI females, there is also a gap that can't be explained away. The red light's on. I would just like to say that some of the gaps can be explained by cultural factors, and we don't quite understand what that means in the labor market.

Some of it seems to be just pure discrimination and there's some issues as related to discrimination both as perceived within the Asian.American community and outside the Asian. American community. Thank you.

CHAIR EARP: Thank you. Dr. Goto?

DR. GOTO: Chair Earp, Vice Chair, Commissioners, colleagues and friends, I thank you for the opportunity to present .. to participate in this event today.

I have spent the last 15 years researching and working with business and community groups on issues and challenges faced by Asian.Americans in the workplace. And I believe that two of the most important of these are perceived discrimination and the glass ceiling.

So today I'm going to focus primarily on perceived discrimination, which might speak to some of the unexplained issues that Dr. Ong was speaking to.

Much of the research uses epidemiological or aggregate data so that individualized perceptions of discrimination can be studied systematically.

From the Filipino American Community Epidemiological Study, where over 2,000 persons of Filipino heritage living in Honolulu or San Francisco were surveyed, concern for workplace discrimination reported was 3.1 on a 4.0 scale.

Another epidemiological study looked at 788 working Chinese Americans in Los Angeles and they found that 21.7% reported having experienced unfair treatment due to either racial or language discrimination or both.

Regarding the federal sector, Asians are as likely as African Americans to feel that they have experienced discrimination. The heterogeneity of Asian.Americans has been widely documented, of particular importance here, Asian.Americans vary widely with respect to immigration, acculturation and education.

Based upon the diversity of Asian America, it seems likely that more than one process or mechanism feeds the glass ceiling and other issues. Indeed, barriers to equal employment experienced by recent immigrants are likely to be very different than those experienced by fifth generation Asian Americans.

Perceptions of Asian.Americans in the workplace range from �go home,� �forever foreigner,� to �Asian-Americans are becoming White.� Sources of discrimination or unfair treatment based on perceived category membership are presented in the following:

The first is language or accent discrimination. Over 13% of working Chinese Americans report experiencing unfair treatment due to language or accent. According to Ancheta, between dominant and subordinate English speakers, this is a quote, "The foreign accent or the low status accent can be a source of subordination."

Language and accent discrimination has a negative effect for Asian.Americans, where some groups might experience actually a perceived competent boost from their accent, this is clearly not the case for Asian.Americans. Communication skills and perceived competence in general are negatively affected by language and accent discrimination.

A second source of discrimination are perceptions of Asian.Americans as a model minority. This stereotype has persisted since the 1960's and again, it does persist today. This myth applies to only a subset of Asian-Americans.

For those Asian.Americans that are not mythically successful and thus have not broken the glass ceiling, this stereotype prevents the needed assistance that they need. Therefore, Asian.American networking associations may not be fully supported, skill deficits may not be proactively met, mentoring relationships may not be developed and systematic discrimination may not be understood as .. may only be understood as an African American and other problem and not an Asian.American problem.

Interestingly, the stereotypes of Asian.Americans as hardworking have changed somewhat since the 1960s. According to the empirically verified stereotype content model, Asian.Americans are perceived to be competent and excessively so.

This can lead to perpetration of the model minority myth, resentment and differential work assignments. One respondent that I interviewed recalled, "It's job related. They ask Chinese to do lots of things as if we were machines."

Additional assignments are not in themselves problematic as long as the appropriate recognition or compensation occurs and this may not be the case.

Laboratory research has shown that in highly educated sophisticated Yale undergraduates, using explicit self report measures, Asian.Americans were perceived as being American, but, under implicit subconscious measures, Asian.Americans were perceived as being foreign.

These perceptions of Asian.Americans as foreign can negatively impact assessments of communication ability, competence and importantly trustworthiness. And there are also perceptions of social deficiency.

Asian-Americans experience mixed envious racial prejudice. The model indicates that individuals from out groups fall into one of two clusters of perception.

There are paternalized groups that are liked as warm, but disrespected as incompetent and there are envied groups who are respected as competent, but disliked as lacking warmth.

The studies indicate that Asian.Americans fall into the latter cluster. In a laboratory study, perceived low social ability drove the rejection of Asian.Americans. Thus, perceptions of low social ability can lead to exclusion from social networks and exclusion from positions requiring social prowess. Perceptions of leadership will also be addressed.

Despite general perceptions of Asian.Americans as competent and hard workers, they have been largely kept out of leadership position in organizations as we have heard some panelists speak about.

Looking for individuals to occupy leadership positions is a vague and sometimes byzantine process, but importantly also one where the risks are great.

Under these situations of great risk and of subjectivity, it is likely that many of the sources of discrimination previously discussed come into play. Asian.Americans may be perceived as unassertive, team players more than leaders and lacking self promotion.

A successful, smart and affable retired vice president from a multi.national computer firm that I interviewed said, that he progressed through the ranks quite comfortably, but when it came to further promotion to the most exclusive levels, he was told that he did not have presence.

What is presence? That question has haunted me. Like leadership, it is prone to perceptions like many of the sources of discrimination previously discussed.

If there is not a willingness to perceive presence in a person, it will not be found regardless of competence and merit. Okay, so the red light is on.

Discrimination affects hiring and promotion decisions and may be responsible for the higher rates of quitting found among Asian.Americans as Asian.Americans try to advance their career elsewhere. At the individual level, there are certainly mental health and regular physical health costs.

In conclusion, discrimination against Asian.Americans in the workplace can be particularly insidious and invidious due to the model minority stereotype.

And it's really important that we pro.actively meet this challenge, especially since Asian.Americans may be more reluctant than others to come forth with incidents of discrimination due to loss of face, lack of awareness and stigma. Thank you.

CHAIR EARP: Thank you. Panel 1, you've been wonderful. I want you to stay put for a few minutes. The information you presented actually sets the stage for the next two panels.

Also, I want to acknowledge Susan Aramaki, who came in a few minutes ago, the Director of Civil Rights at Commerce.

At this point, there's so much information, I want to make sure I give my fellow Commissioners an opportunity to make opening statements, respond to what they've heard and if they have time, still adhering to the five minute warning, to begin the process of asking questions.

COMMISSIONER ISHIMARU: So we're only going to have five minutes total for all of that and not opening statements and then a round of questions? I just want to be clear, so I ..

CHAIR EARP: Well, for the first opening statements, we want to try to stick to the five minutes if we can, and if we have time, answer questions, but we'll have as many rounds as we need to fully vet the issues.

COMMISSIONER ISHIMARU: Of questions, okay. All right. Fair enough. Thank you very much.

CHAIR EARP: Yes. In order of seniority, I'll start with my Vice Chair.

VICE CHAIR SILVERMAN: Thank you Madam Chair, thank you panelists. I too wanted to start off by welcoming and wishing our newest Commissioner, Constance Barker, an official and warm welcome to the Commission. Title VII was created� you know, created a five member Commission that would constantly change, allowing for new blood every year with the departure of one Commissioner and the arrival of another. And I think this is a really good thing.

Each of us brings a different work and life perspective to the Commission, which is a policy making body. And I realize looking back, it's been two and a half years since we welcomed our new Commissioner, Chris is sick of going last and it's been nearly two years since we were a full Commission.

And at this point, in terms of Commission life, I think we're almost like an old married couple when one of us opens our mouth, the other ones know exactly what's going to come out.

So I can't tell you how happy we are to have you with us here today Connie. You bring a wealth of experience to the job, I think all of the Commissioners and I can speak for all of us, we're all just so pleased that you're with us today. So welcome.

And as I said, I also wanted to welcome the speakers here today, you're only here with us today, not, you know, for the duration, but we're so pleased to have you.

And I want to thank the Chair and her staff, especially in particular, Gazal Modhera for establishing and leading the Inter agency Asian.American and Pacific Islander Working Group, which has been examining the employment experience of the AAPIs in the federal government over the past several months.

I'm really pleased that through the workgroup and through today's Commission meeting, we're calling attention to some of the obstacles faced by Asian.Americans and Pacific Islander employees in federal agencies, a group that is so often overlooked when we focus on diversity and other anti.discrimination efforts.

You know, although the media tends to focus on the educational achievements of many AAPIs, as we've already heard, the segment of the population quietly continues to face prejudice and stereotypes that create barriers in hiring and promotion into the highest levels of organizations and in certain industries and occupations.

It's really my hope that today's meeting will shine a light on these issues. As members of the EEOC, it is our job to help dispel existing stereotypes and to heighten awareness about the discrimination suffered by employees.

And I'm pleased today that we are addressing a community that is often forgotten when we talk about Civil Rights. I'm also looking forward to learning more about some of the best practices utilized by federal agencies that have been particularly proactive and successful in this area.

And I'm really so thankful to all the speakers that have joined us today. I've read your testimony this morning, I thought it was thorough and really well thought out, and you obviously spent a lot of time and put a lot of effort into it and we really appreciate your joining us here today.

So with that, I know I'm going to ask questions when we actually have our first round.

CHAIR EARP: Okay. Commissioner Ishimaru?

COMMISSIONER ISHIMARU: Thank you Madam Chair. I too want to welcome the panel, especially welcoming Professor Ong, Professor Goto, who came from California, both bring a tremendous amount of expertise to the table and welcome again and thank you for coming to Washington.

I want to thank you Madam Chair for establishing the AAPI Workgroup. It's really the first time we've done something like this at the EEOC. I think it's well overdue.

I know when my predecessor, Paul Igasaki first came to the Commission back in the `90s, he really started the first efforts here for the Commission to deal with issues involving Asian and Pacific Americans and they made good progress during that time, but it was really the start. And I think this workgroup has been helpful in looking at these issues, looking at it from the federal sector side. I know four years ago I helped organize and then moderated a meeting, a quasi.meeting the Commission did on the Realities and Opportunities for Asian Pacific Americans in the 21st Century Workplace. One of the initiatives that was led by our former Chair, Cari Dominguez. And that discussion dealt with the whole broad range of issues involving Asian.Americans, not just in the federal sector, but in the private sector as well. And from the data we've seen this morning, Asian.Americans are generally in the private sector and yet the issues are so similar that both are worthy of taking a look at.

I'm glad that your workgroup is looking at the issues faced by Pacific Islanders because that too is a separate discreet group. And we've talked about that here in the past and I'm glad we're taking a look at that.

I hope during the course of the questioning in the next round that we'll have a chance to delve into the more complex and emerging issues such as structural bias and the more subtle types of discrimination that's faced by Asian Pacific Americans, such as things faced by scientists who worked in the national labs during the 1990's when they were pulled into the accusations against Dr. Wen Ho Lee who was accused of spying. There was a whole set of issues that were raised during that time period that it would be helpful to have aired in talking about the types of bias that arose at the time.

The other thing, we talk about the diversity of the community. And the one thing that we lose I think when we talk in the rubric of Asian Pacific American community is how truly diverse it is. And Dr. Ong touched on that during his oral remarks, but in the diversity of both where people come from and the diversity of when they came and Dr. Goto talked about how different the experience is for someone like me who's a third generation American versus someone who's an immigrant who just got here.

And, you know, those sorts of experiences get lost, I think, in the aggregate data that Director Hadden talked about. When we collect data for the EEOC, quite often, it doesn't get to the heart of the problem because it talks about the overall rates.

And the overall rates may in fact, hide the actual problem. And I think one thing that's been very helpful with the workgroup is that they've been trying to get below the aggregate and trying to look at those various layers that are there.

And I think that's helpful. Quite often, when you look at these subgroups, the smaller subgroups aren't talked about. If you talk about Cambodians, Laotian, Hmong; they have far lower percentage of college graduation, they have lower average income. These figures that they represent are similar to other minority groups and have similar problems to other groups as well. And I think by breaking it apart, you're able to get to some of these other issues and frankly, to the discrimination that many people in the community face that's unacknowledged for a variety of reasons.

And I hope, when we start in our questioning, that we'll have a chance to talk about the bimodal nature of the federal workforce. How, so much of our energies are looking at the top layer, which we should be looking at. We should be looking at why Asian Pacific Americans aren't able to break into the management levels, aren't seen as leaders. Why does this keep happening time after time and how do we break the cycle? How do we make forward progress to change this?

I hope we have a chance to talk about this during the further discussion. I thank you Madam Chair, the red light is on.

CHAIR EARP: Thank you. Commissioner Griffin?

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: Well I will be the last to actually welcome Commissioner Barker. Notice Barker, Barker, and I've added an "ah" to her first name, she's now Connie to me.

COMMISSIONER BARKER: Right. Absolutely.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: So you will get a good sense of these diverse accents up here. I definitely want to welcome you, it's great to have you here and I look forward to all the good work that we'll do together in the future.

I want to thank Chair Earp for actually having this meeting and forming the workgroup. This is an issue that I became interested in when I worked here in 1995 and `96 for Paul Igasaki when he was the Vice Chair.

I was one of his special assistants and as he traveled across the country, he frequently told us about different experiences that people would tell him about with regard to the discrimination they faced within the federal government. And we talked about it a lot.

And I know that, you know, some of the obstacles identified by individuals with whom Vice Chair Igasaki would speak with, were really the cultural bias of selecting officials and all the stereotypical misconceptions, the fears, myths and stereotypes about the leadership skills of Asian.Americans.

In addition, it appeared that the selection process in a number of the instances were either intentionally or unintentionally - the process screened out Asian.Americans and really screened them out of consideration for a variety of jobs as well as promotions.

So the statements make it clear that many of these problems still exist. And while we've seen some progress and some numbers, we're still seeing the same types of barriers and I don't think we're really doing anything until now to really start thinking about that and thinking about ways that we can address it.

So this is really a great beginning. And it is just a beginning. This meeting is just a beginning. And I really look forward to seeing us .. seeing the recommendations of the workgroup and working with all of you to actually start addressing some of the barriers you've identified. So I'm looking forward to the future.

CHAIR EARP: Thank you. Commissioner Barker?

COMMISSIONER BARKER: Well I want to first of all thank my fellow Commissioners for their very warm welcomes. I am thrilled to be here today and I really appreciate the very warm welcome that I have received from all four of my Commissioners.

They've been extremely helpful to me, especially knowing that I was sworn in last Monday and today they're throwing me into this meeting. But I spent some time reading your testimonies and was really intrigued by the information you had in here. And I appreciate the time that each of you spent preparing these because I know it is considerable. And I also appreciate those of you who, like Dr. Ong and like Dr. Goto have come from so far. California is way far away from me.

And I want to say too that this is a particularly intriguing issue to me because coming from my perspective I have just switched gears from being corporate counsel for several Korean.owned and operated companies in Montgomery. We have the Hyundai factory there and that has brought with it a number of supplier companies.

So this is enlightening and frankly very disappointing to me coming from my perspective representing Koreans, Asian.Americans who are highly respected in my community and are leaders in my community to find out that in the federal government that they are not allowed to rise at the ranks to which they should be allowed to rise.

So I'm very intrigued, I'm very concerned about these issues and I appreciate your contributions today. Thank you.

CHAIR EARP: Thank you. So we begin with a few questions for this panel.

VICE CHAIR SILVERMAN: Mr. Palguta, is that ..

MR. PALGUTA: Yes.

VICE CHAIR SILVERMAN: Okay, I didn't want to butcher your name. You said that several large federal departments, such as the Navy and the Department of Commerce, DHS, you mentioned specifically, had been really successful in attracting and hiring and developing and retaining AAPIs, what do you think that these agencies are doing right in terms of specific practices and policies?

And in your opinion, what's preventing other agencies from following that path?

MR. PALGUTA: Well, those agencies in particular, and particularly DHS, have been aggressively hiring and they've been hiring, my observation, in a very open manner. They've been recruiting from all segments and they're looking for great talent and I think they're going beyond the traditional sources. They're looking high and low for the best folks for the jobs.

I think in some cases, also, we're finding agencies that are looking and this goes to the bimodal nature of the workforce; we're finding that it's not going to be sufficient to try to fill jobs at the entry level solely.

There will always be a good intake from our colleges, universities; we're going to have to hire experienced folks as well. I think those agencies that are recognizing and are starting to bring folks in, in mid.management jobs and a third of our senior executives will be leaving in the next few years, so there's a great opportunity there.

I think looking for great folks, being open, looking not only at entry level but mid.level, I think really has provided the agencies that have had success in filling their positions and also increasing the diversity of their workplace. Those that have followed the traditional route have ended up with the traditional results.

VICE CHAIR SILVERMAN: You know it was interesting when I was reading your testimony and you were talking about the traditional way that we, as agencies, go about getting external candidates in USA Jobs and all of that, but then you also talked in the next testimony that we have the tools, that we are able to go beyond that.

And I was also thinking about how you talked, I believe you talked at the beginning of the testimony, about older workers who are retiring, you know, and still looking for other careers. I recently heard a speaker talk about, the Baby.Boomers and how they're a lot like Generation Y and they want to have second and third careers. And I think there's a golden opportunity there to get, new folks into the government with different experience.

MR. PALGUTA: Absolutely. And I think this can also accelerate our ability to increase diversity at higher grade levels. We don't have to wait for someone to move up the ladder over a 15, 20 year first start of their career, we can bring them in right off the bat with experience.

VICE CHAIR SILVERMAN: And diversity of experience like we were talking about at the Commission.

MR. PALGUTA: Absolutely. Absolutely. A great opportunity.

VICE CHAIR SILVERMAN: Ms. Goto, your findings about how often Asian.Americans feel discriminated against are certainly consistent with what we heard about with the Gallup poll that we were involved with several years ago.

And you said that Asian.Americans may be more hesitant to report discrimination due to concerns about losing face or being stigmatized, et cetera.

Do you have any, you know, practical suggestions for how agencies, EEO directors or specifically, this agency can reach out and ensure that acts of discrimination against AAPIs are reported, that people are willing to report given this dynamic?

DR. GOTO: Well, I'll take some of the thoughts from the mental health literature, which suggests that Asian.Americans aren't likely to report mental health problems either.

So what they find there is that oftentimes if it is another Asian.American that is asking them, they will feel more likely to disclose to a perceived in.group member.

I think if you define discrimination in a very explicit way and don't leave the ambiguities to the interpreter .. for them to interpret, what is discrimination, what is not and they will .. my guess is more readily respond to affirmatively that they have been discriminated against. That, that is indeed the case.

So it's about who asks, and it is about the way that you ask. I think those two things would be very important.

VICE CHAIR SILVERMAN: But in the polls, they say that they feel discriminated against, but they're not always willing to say, okay this is . . maybe they feel put down. It's unlawful discrimination, is that what you're saying? They don't know if it really reaches the legal standard or the threshold for complaining about it?

DR. GOTO: Yes.

VICE CHAIR SILVERMAN: Is it not reaching the threshold or an unwillingness to sort of take the next step or a little combination of both?

DR. GOTO: Yes, I think it's both.

VICE CHAIR SILVERMAN: Okay.

DR. GOTO: I think it's exactly both, right.

VICE CHAIR SILVERMAN: All right. I see my time's up.

COMMISSIONER ISHIMARU: Let me follow up on the Vice Chair's line of questioning because one of the points I think you were making is that it depends on who's asking the question.

And if you look at how we're set up and how federal EEO offices are set up, there quite often are not Asian.Americans there in those offices. We have struggled here at EEOC over the years to try to get in bi.lingual staff members who speak Asian languages. And we have the literal handful in offices around the country. It's been a huge challenge for us to actually get people in place, for a variety of reasons.

But one of your suggestions is, if there are more, people are more likely to be willing to talk to that person, to talk to someone who looks like them. How important is that though? Is it a generational issue? Would the literature find that the longer people are in country, a further generation along, would they be more comfortable in complaining?

DR. GOTO: I think that's a good question. I think it is, yes, I think it probably varies, if it's a recent immigrant and then you do have language barriers.

And however, I think even for people who are fourth, third, fourth, fifth generation Asian.Americans, I think they would feel perhaps, especially when these things are very risky.

COMMISSIONER ISHIMARU: Yes.

DR. GOTO: I think they'd be more likely to disclose to a person who either looks like them or, they don't necessarily have to look exactly like them, they just need to know that the process will be a safe one.

And maybe if they can .. so I think the whole idea of not wanting to stick out, an

d if you do stick out, that it be a very safe process is really very important for Asian.Americans.

COMMISSIONER ISHIMARU: Professor Ong, could you give us more of a feel for the diversity of the community? Much of your testimony talks about the various subgroups and how diverse it is and yet, we also talk in aggregate and it gets lumped back together.

Could you spend a few minutes talking about the various subgroups that are there and the challenges that, especially subgroups that we don't normally hear about, the challenges that they face?

DR. ONG: First, diversity I think we should recognize is the gap between Asian.Americans and Pacific Islanders. They're a very different population in part because the Asian.American population is an immigrant community.

The majority of the adult population is comprised of immigrants and continues to be so. Pacific Islander is an indigenous population, we need to recognize that.

I think there is between the two groups, there are huge differences. In many ways Pacific Islanders are similar to American Indians in terms of treatment, in terms of lack of access to resources, in terms of educational attainments and some of the barriers they face being essentially made strangers in their own land.

And we need to keep that .. and even among Pacific Islanders, we have also a difference between those who are from the Pacific Islands who come, not as American citizens, but as immigrants versus the populations that have some stake because either they live in Hawaii or some territory.

And again, there are very large differences in those communities. And then when we look at the Asian.American population, I think we ought to divide it along nationality lines and generational lines.

Nationality lines is clearly a byproduct of our immigration policy, including our refugee policy. On the one hand, we have a policy that created a very highly educated, very skilled labor force.

It's part of our efforts in terms of bringing in those of high educations through the occupational categories, but later on through chain migration of their families.

So it's not surprising because it is creaming that we have a disproportionate number of people in the health fields, in the scientific fields in engineering and so forth.

It is a product of our policies, our immigration policy. At the same time, we have very large numbers of people who come in as refugees. Some of the initial refugees are very well.educated, but later on otherways are essentially are people who are not very well. educated, have very few skills that are marketable in the U.S. economy.

It's also a population, particularly Southeast Asian refugees, that have difficulties being incorporated into the economies. Disproportionately relying on income transfer program, welfare programs, there's a huge issue about how they make the transition under welfare reform. In California, for example, Southeast Asians on welfare are enormously disproportionately represented among those who are timed out.

And the red light's on. Could I just say something about prejudice, stereotypes and so forth?

COMMISSIONER ISHIMARU: Sure.

DR. ONG: One thing is that some of the research tends, even among Asian.Americans who feel discriminated against, there's a question about how they interpret, you know, who's to be blamed. And there is a certain sense of, you have to do it yourself.

And so I think that sort of inhibits blaming sort of larger things and then complaining. I think there's also a question about .. there's a form of question, I think there are types of discrimination that's hard to perceive.

So it's just not a question of whether one perceives or not, how to get at some of the sort of structural problems and patterns that individuals can't interpret. I mean, it's hard to interpret hiring practices and decisions because you're not privy to many things.

And the third one, is I think is additional barriers that although a high percentage of Asian.Americans describe themself as being discriminated against, if you ask non.Asian.Americans the vast majority, huge majority say that Asian.Americans are privileged and not discriminated against.

That creates several problems. I think partly, there is this perception that people will not accept Asian.American complaints. There's also a policy issue if we do not recognize that, that as a policy we don't move forward. Thank you.

CHAIR EARP: Thank you. Commissioner Griffin?

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: I too want to thank you for the time and effort that you've taken, you know, to come here today and testify.

Carlton, I would like to ask you .. I had prepared questions and now other questions always generate other questions.

Do we know how many Asian.American federal employees actually work in some of our EEO offices for our federal agencies?

MR. HADDEN: No, that's not data that we currently collect.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: Does anybody collect that? Is there .. no?

MR. HADDEN: We could probably do, while looking at some of the data that OPM has to see if the job categories, and look at it that way, do it sliced that way.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: Because I'm just thinking, you know, if you're a federal employee and you're going to file a complaint or at least seek counseling about whether you've experienced discrimination or not and you don't see anyone like you, you might not be doing it.

Do we collect any data about how many Asian.American federal employees are leaving the federal government every year?

MR. HADDEN: Yes, that's removable termination data.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: We do have that, okay. Did you .. you didn't address, but are we seeing anything there?

COMMISSIONER ISHIMARU: Removal and termination, only would it be voluntary leavings as well?

MR. HADDEN: Separations from the government, separations from the government and you'd look further to see the reasons for the separation from the government.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: So we could look at that and see if that .. I'm assuming if there was .. if we were seeing some big trend, you may have brought it here or should I not assume that?

MR. HADDEN: Well I think that's certainly one thing the task force ..

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: Will be looking at?

MR. HADDEN: .. will look at.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: Okay.

MR. HADDEN: And if they don't, certainly we're going to look at it.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: Yes, great. Okay. And are we doing anything to address the, I guess the absence of Asian.American and Pacific Islanders in the higher ranks, especially the SES ranks? Are we doing anything or is that something also the workgroup will ..

MR. HADDEN: Yes. I mean that's an issue, without, you know, going into the lengthy resuscitation of, you know, past efforts. I mean from the highest levels of, you know, each administration comes in and has a government.wide task force that looks at that issue. And I think this is as far as I know, the first effort the Commission has done to focus on the federal sector.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: Yes.

MR. HADDEN: �and from this, I presume, as a result of the report of the workgroup, will identify solutions to build on that, how to fix some of these issues.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: All right. Great. I really look forward to us doing that because it affects, you know, what we do affects other groups as well. And we learn every time we do something like this, we learn lessons that really help everyone.

Mr. Palguta, did I say that right?

MR. PALGUTA: You did.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: We're all going to ask that I'm sure. I actually am very interested in your organization and I read the Daily Pipeline.

MR. PALGUTA: Thank you very much.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: I get that on my Blackberry and for those of you that don't know, the Pipeline is the newsletter that the Partnership puts out via e.mail, sign up for it and you too can get it. And they actually take very interesting federal.employee.related stories from various places and put them in their Pipeline.

I'm very interested in the barriers that you identified. Now, I also think that they go across a number of different groups, particularly I agree with number four, which actually says, the federal hiring process is broken.

MR. PALGUTA: Yes.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: I think we all sort of agree with that, and you can just go on USA Jobs and find that out very quickly. It's very difficult to apply for a federal job, no matter who you are.

But number seven barrier you actually talk about direct hiring authorities and that we're not, as a federal government, managers are not using them. Are they not .. I think you're saying Congress should give them the green light to use them or give them more or whatever.

And that's one I don't actually agree with because I think we have some that we don't use and I think that's a problem.

MR. PALGUTA: Well, in the direct hire area, one, there are some direct hire authorities, and for those who are not familiar with the term, basically as I describe it as an old HR person is a hunting license. You've demonstrated that you've been unable to find the right talent for your job and rather than going through a month.long competitive process when you find someone who is really good, you can make an immediate offer.

So, it's something that's restricted to a shortage category situation, typically mission critical jobs and the Office of Personnel Management will grant agencies some direct hire authorities. From the viewpoint of the agencies they basically believe that they have to show that, you know, they're broken before they can use something. And they would like to have greater authority to make the determination with OPM oversight that they have a critical need and they want to go out and find great talent. And also, direct hire authority would let them better target their recruiting.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: Well, I think, I mean the authority exists and people don't use it because it takes effort and no one seems to want to do that. And in addition to that, I worry about granting more liberty to do it if people are so inclined because I think we could use it as a way to get around diversity issues. And I would worry about that. I do think it would need very good oversight.

MR. PALGUTA: Absolutely.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: Sometimes the term best and brightest means ..

MR. PALGUTA: Different things to different people.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: You look like me, you know, who's ever doing the hiring.

MR. PALGUTA: Absolutely. Part of the accountability and oversight would be looking at the results achieved as well. And if you're not achieving diversity, that would be certainly an issue.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: All right, well my time�s up, but I actually have more questions.

CHAIR EARP: Commissioner Barker?

COMMISSIONER BARKER: Dr. Ong, there was a statement in your testimony that I'm intrigued by and would like to hear a little bit more from you on it.

When you were talking about the problem with AAPIs not rising to the highest levels of management, you said that there was a disparity in the findings as far as males versus females. Can you talk to me a little bit about that?

DR. ONG: Yes, actually there's a very distinctive gender differences and let me sort of .. more broadly, if we look at earnings analysis, what we see is that Asian.American males are disadvantaged. That's after you account for education, other characteristics, that they earn less. These are the classical disparity studies.

What we find among Asian.American females is that they perform roughly as well as non.Hispanic white females, that is, we can't discern much of a difference in outcomes, whether we're talking about earning or entering in the certain occupational categories between Asian.American females and non-Hispanic white females. And I'm using non.Hispanic white females as a benchmark. So how do we interpret that?

The classical way of interpreting the male results is that the unexplained characteristics point to some barriers discrimination, otherwise that can't be explained away by those factors that we normally should take into consideration for hiring, promotion, so forth, something else is at work.

For females, the results indicate essentially one has to be very careful about interpreting. Essentially, it indicates that there doesn't seem to be a racial difference among females between Asian.American females and non.Hispanic white females.

But another way of saying that is that they face the same barriers, Asian.American females as non.Hispanic white females in terms of earnings, career advancements and moving into management.

And so, essentially that's .. there seems to be a fair amount of consistency in those sort of findings.

COMMISSIONER BARKER: So in other words, it's not necessarily good news that AAPI females are doing as well as white non.Hispanic females, it may just be that they are equally disadvantaged . .

DR. ONG: Disadvantaged. Yes, I mean that's one way of interpreting it. And so again, one needs to be careful in terms of empirical results. And I would interpret it the way you just interpreted it. I think that's a good way of interpreting it.

COMMISSIONER BARKER: Thank you, Dr. Ong.

DR. ONG: Yes.

CHAIR EARP: Are there additional questions for this panel?

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: I actually have another question.

COMMISSIONER ISHIMARU: I have a few more too, but not many, Madam Chair, because I know there's a lot of people on the rest of the day.

Professor Goto, you had mentioned in your testimony of how the Asian Pacific American community is increasingly multi.ethnic and multi.racial. What sorts of implications does that raise? We struggled with that issue here of how should we have employers report data to us. And given the growing numbers within the AAPI community of multi.ethnic people, people being able to check one or more boxes on the census form or on the employment form, what sort of implications does that have for us?

DR. GOTO: It has actually very complex implications. For example, people that are multi.racial, they have different last names depending on who their mother versus father is and sometimes last name makes a difference in terms of who gets hired and who doesn't, and they still might be Asian.American.

And phenotypically, they may look very different. And phenotype actually matters too, whether you look more Euro.American, if you are half white and half Asian.American or whatever your combination may be.

And so just the experience of discrimination gets more complex when you talk about multi.racial individuals and also in terms of who they might seek for social support, social networking from. So that becomes more complex.

Also, the way that they might racially identify then also makes a big impact. So they may racially identify as Asian.American or whatever their other racial portion may be, so.

COMMISSIONER ISHIMARU: Would you recommend that we collect more data or less? Because one of the issues we faced is do we collapse this, when it's reported to us into a de facto multi.racial category, a two or more category or should we keep it separate so we're collecting what people actually report?

DR. GOTO: I think, the question is out, is unknown. But my inkling would be to collect more data. More data is always better than less data, especially because the experiences might be very different depending on the multi.racial categories. And that is huge.

COMMISSIONER ISHIMARU: Professor Ong, you study the huge pictures out there. And I was wondering from your perspective, do you have any policy recommendations for the Commission on how we should be looking at these issues?

DR. ONG: I have a couple of them. One is that, I want to go back to the statement, if we rely on people coming forth to complain about discrimination, I think we capture only part of the issues.

The ones I'm most concerned about are those more structural things, institutionalized practices, that are hard to discern. It's hard to discern whether or not, for example, your name really made a difference or not, your surname, whether your accent made a difference or not.

What I'm intrigued by are some of the audit studies that have been done. So one example of the audit study is sending in resumes that have the same qualifications, but different surnames. And we notice that there are differences in terms of requests that come in for in.person interviews.

HUD does these audit studies. And actually that's very insightful because actually I was very surprised, the last audit study was done about six, seven years ago, it was quite awhile ago.

But what I found surprising is that Asian.Americans face roughly the same level of housing discrimination that African Americans and Latinos face also. And I was actually shocked. I was expecting some discrimination, but not at the same level.

You can't get at those things just by having people come in and file complaints. You ought to get people to feel comfortable, come in to do that, but there are other practices in the labor market structural ones, institutional practices that people, individuals can't discern, or may be reluctant, or may be, you know, they're not sure. In the face of uncertainty, they may not come forth. I think so there are these issues that we ought to look at.

I just want to go back on the multi.racial category, we do know analysis of Pacific Islanders, particularly Native Hawaiians, that there are big differences between Native Hawaiians who are

predominately Native Hawaiians by ancestry versus those who are only part Native Hawaiian.

There are differences in terms of preliminary outcomes; there is differences in terms of wealth accumulation. Being Native Hawaiian in parts do disadvantage you, but there seems to be empirically looking at the data in terms of outcome, very large differences.

And so I would encourage, until proven otherwise, to gather that additional data because I do suspect that there are differences and we have already seen it in the studies that we've done on Native Hawaiians.

COMMISSIONER ISHIMARU: I know we have a lot of other speakers. I hope, Madam Chair, we'll have a chance to have this panel back someday because it's really sort of scratching the surface for me as to areas we might go.

And as you know, we've talked about a number of these issues, especially the auditing issue of how do you get to these issues on a proactive basis from the agency. And that's something I know we've talked about, I know we're interested in. The question is how do we put it into place.

But I thank the panel, it was very enlightening.

CHAIR EARP: Commissioner Griffin?

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: I have a question about applicant flow data, because it's something that we actually asked the agencies to report to us because, if you're not looking at who�s applying and you don't know who's, you know, you can't compare to who you're actually getting in the door. So this has become an issue for us and some agencies report it and some don't and OPM frankly is one of the agencies that chooses not to.

And I was wondering if anyone, John, anyone wants to talk about, you know, how important that is if we're really going to measure whether we're successful or not.

MR. PALGUTA: Well, Partnership for Public Service is a big believer in metrics and measures, what gets measured gets accomplished.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: It's treasured, as my friend Stuart Ishimaru once told me.

MR. PALGUTA: And in fact, we even have a state of the public service initiative where we're trying to gather metrics to measure the overall health of the civil service.

In terms of applicant flow data, I think it can be extremely valuable. There are some issues, obviously, in terms of gathering it, it cannot be required, applicants can opt out. But I think if you're not looking at your applicant pool, you don't know when you should be expanding that search. So I think we should definitely be looking for opportunities to gather as much usable information as is feasible and reasonable. And I think, you know, once you have that data, of course, then you also take a look at your selection data to see if there's disparities.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: Right, I know the Partnership has a great influence with OPM, you've done a lot of work with them over the past few years. Is that something that you would recommend to them to reconsider?

MR. PALGUTA: Well, I�d be happy to recommend to them. I'm not sure how much influence we actually have, although I will say the soon.to.be acting director, Howie Weizmann, did come from the Partnership to OPM.

And I know these are things that Howie, as he likes to be called, cares about. But yes, we certainly have had continuing conversations with OPM about the need for metrics and measures.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: That would be great, because I really think, you know, whether it's, you know, Asian.American, Pacific Islanders, people with disabilities, whoever it is that we're trying to take a look at, if we don't have that data, we're really missing an important piece.

MR. PALGUTA: Yes, absolutely. I would also mention very quickly, we do "The Best Places to Work in Government" rankings and we include in there some demographic breakdowns in terms of employee perceptions about their agency. And I think we find that quite useful as well in terms of analyzing your own agency as a place to work.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: Yes, great. Thank you. One other question, Dr. Goto, has anyone looked at .. are there any studies about the intersection of disability and being Asian.American or Pacific Islander?

DR. GOTO: I don't know of any.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: Yes.

DR. GOTO: Although, it should certainly be pursued. I think Asian.Americans in the workforce in general is under.studied, and certainly when you look at intersections of disability, yes.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: That would be interesting.

DR. GOTO: Very Interesting.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: Maybe I can put a plug in to you and Dr. Ong to either do it or convince somebody to do it because I think it would be an interesting issue. Thank you all very much.

CHAIR EARP: I have a final question and it's also an intersection question, and it goes to the intersection of color, because EEOC is not only concerned about nationality and race.

Given the diversity of the Asian community, Dr. Ong, Dr. Goto, do you find any distinctions either in pay or perceptions of discrimination that falls along color line that perhaps might distinguish the way Chinese.American, Japanese.Americans perceive their treatment versus Pakistani.American or Indian.Americans.

Any comments or data along those lines?

DR. GOTO: Well, what I will say is that I know the Filipino American Epidemiological Study presents a higher rate of perceived discrimination than the Chinese American discrimination. So I would say that there is some evidence of that.

CHAIR EARP: So you would attribute at least a part of that to color?

DR. GOTO: Not having the data, in asking that question specifically, I would guess that it could be due to that.

CHAIR EARP: Okay. Dr. Ong?

DR. ONG: There are clearly differences in terms of reaction to perceived discrimination. We don't know if the differences in self.reported discrimination across ethnic groups reflect a reality in terms of the rate of discrimination versus how it's interpreted.

But there's also differences in terms of how responsive and how vocal different groups are. And that's, I think, imbedded in the culture. There's a huge question out there as to what degree that we talk about culture, ethnicity, language becoming racialized.

There's a fine line, I think, in terms of what is considered cultural ethnic linguistic barriers and what becomes racial barriers.

To what degree do some of the practices that may create, hinder Asian.American, Pacific Islanders based on culture, race and language really is a sort of front for race. And also, to what degree among Asian.Americans themself, they begin perceiving themself in sort of racial categories.

We do know that in the general public, there is a racialization of Asian.American Pacific Islanders, that is the inability to distinguish across ethnic racial cultural religious lines by categorizing it.

So there is this sort of foggy process, there is no question that for an immigrant population, again, language, culture, nativity, religion counts for a lot in terms of what happens. But there's also a process that essentially racialize Asian.Americans and Pacific Islanders. And a lot of it is external to the population.

CHAIR EARP: Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much to the panel. While Panel 2 is preparing to come forward, I would like to take a five minute comfort break with the permission of my Commissioners?..

COMMISSIONER ISHIMARU: No objection.

CHAIR EARP: Okay. Thank you. Five minutes.

(Whereupon, the foregoing matter went off the record.)

CHAIR EARP: Thank you. The meeting will continue with Panel 2. Panel 2 is what we generally at EEOC call, �putting a face to the case.� Essentially the stories you�re going to hear are compelling and personal. Our three panel members will address the realities and barriers faced by AAPIs in the federal government.

Dr. Jeang from the National Institutes of Health, John Lee, President, National Association of Asian American Law Enforcement Commanders and Dr. Basu, now.retired executive, USDA. Dr. Jeang, we'll start with you.

DR. JEANG: Thank you very much. Chair, Vice Chair, Commissioners, colleagues and friends, I'm extremely grateful for the opportunity to speak to the Commission today on the topic of the glass ceiling for Asian.Americans in federal leadership positions.

Before I offer my brief remarks, let me tell you a little bit about myself. I was born in Taiwan, but from ages five to 12 I grew up in North Africa in Libya. In fact, I was there in 1969 when Muammar Gaddafi took over in a bloodless coup.

And I was also there during the famous 1967 six.day war. So as you can tell, I've been all over the place and seen a lot of different things.

I arrived in the U.S. at age 12 and attended public schools. At age 16 I was fortunate to be accepted to one of our great institutions in Boston, MIT.

Two years later at age 18, I left MIT to go to perhaps an even greater institution in Baltimore called the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine where at age 25 I earned my M.D. and Ph.D. degrees.

Now, since 1985, which is one year after I graduated with my M.D. and Ph.D. degrees, I joined the National Institute of Health, first at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland as a scientist. So if you do the math, from `85 now to 2008, you will come up with a number 23. So I have been now at NIH for 23 years. Now in common vernacular, every 20 years represent a generation. So you can say that I�m here to bear witness to a generation of Asian.American hopes and progress at arguably our nation's premier biomedical research institution.

So having seen one generation of change, how would I characterize the state of Asian.American affairs at the NIH today? In 2005, I was asked the same question by Jeff Mervis from Science Magazine. My short answer to him then and my answer to you now is that we have come a long way, but we still have miles to go before we can rest.

Today, if you were to walk into a seminar room at the National Institute of Health, where the seminars would be presented on the latest findings, it would not surprise you to turn around and look in the room and see 40% or more of the faces in there are clearly recognizable as Asian. That scenario is not surprising because NIH statistics show that Asian Pacific Americans make up 15% of the total workforce and at the doctorate level, the APA compose of 62%, 1,120 out of 1,800 post doctoral visiting fellows, 37% of the research fellows, 25% of the entry level primary investigators, the tenure track investigators, and 11% of the tenured scientists.

And I think it would not surprise you that if you would open the leading journals and look at the productivity and the progress that is produced from the NIH, that Asian and Pacific Americans account for a very large percentage of that output.

So, what happens then when you walk into a room full of chiefs, as I was asked to do a few months ago? In that setting, you might encounter one Asian face.. on that occasion, mine.. in a room of two dozen or more individuals.

This is also not very unusual because the entire NIH today has only 11 Asian and Pacific American laboratory branch chiefs comprising less than 5% of the leadership positions at that rank. Note please that Asians make up roughly 12% of people qualified to be in that rank.

Now you will note that the National Institute of Health is made up of 27 different institutes and centers. So if you do the simple mathematics, there are only 11 chiefs that are Asian, there are 27 institutes and centers, you will come to the conclusion that the great majority of the centers don't actually have Asians at the chief level.

So, I would say to you that we have basically a bottom heavy, top light Asian.American representation at the NIH. So what is the problem and how do we go about asking the question?

I think the problem partly resides on the fact that we have to ask ourselves, do we see diversity in federal leadership as a plus or as a minus? I think also it is important to note that when we go about the selection process, there are concerns in the Asian.American and the minority community that the selection process is not sufficiently transparent.

We are all aware of past examples where laboratory chiefs were hired with no advertising for the positions, and it is my understanding that under current conventions, if a director chooses to promote internally, he can do so without going through open and fair competition.

So I think in the face of the numbers being what they are, if we continue to follow this type of procedure, it is very unlikely that this convention creates confidence in Asian.American groups or any other minority groups.

I think it is important that we take concrete steps to change the process, I think it's important that we ask the existing leadership to address and recognize the issue and that we institute steps for accountability to see those numbers can be changed in the coming years.

I thank you for your efforts and your attention.

CHAIR EARP: Thank you. Mr. Lee?

MR. LEE: Good morning, Chairman Earp, Vice Chair, Commissioners, colleagues and friends. My name is John Lee and I serve as the President of the National Association of Asian American Law Enforcement Commanders or NAALEC.

The Association was founded in 2002 as a way for law enforcement commanders to network and promote qualified Asians into the highest levels of government. On behalf of NAALEC I am honored to be speaking to you today and have the opportunity to address the lack of AAPIs in the workforce and the senior executive service.

I'm a third generation Chinese American born and raised in San Francisco, California. I've been in law enforcement for over 21 years, first working for the San Francisco Police Department, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and ATF, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for the past 16 years.

I progressed through a number of positions within ATF and have been in supervision for the last seven years. While blatant racism appears to be rare in today's work environment, subtle and hidden discrimination is still common practice in law enforcement.

Whether it is racism or ignorance, AAPIs face unique challenges compared to other minority groups. AAPIs are often passed over for promotion or high profile assignments and we are viewed as quiet, lacking in leadership qualities and assertiveness.

Because of our physical stature and youthfulness in appearance, we are viewed as needing more training or experience when other groups of similar or lesser backgrounds are considered prepared or more qualified.

Regrettably, representation in the senior executive service by AAPIs in law enforcement has not improved. While no agency in government exceeds the 5.89 for the entire Federal Executive Branch Fiscal Year 2006, the numbers for law enforcement for AAPIs in the SES are far smaller.

One of the problems in particular is the lack of readily available information for the law enforcement job series. The Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security are the two largest employers of special agents and other uniformed law enforcement officers.

In fact, DOJ is one of the worst departments in the federal government in the preparation and promotion of law enforcement SESs by AAPI descent.

The total number of SES employees in DOJ is four, one of which is female, that puts all of DOJs sworn and non.sworn at .7% through September, 2007.

Department of Homeland Security fairs no better than DOJ. In September, 2007, DHS reports .6% AAPI representation in the SES, 2.4 at the GS.15 level.

Again, these numbers are department.wide, do not reflect the extremely poor representation of AAPIs in law enforcement. We at NAALEC are in agreement with many of the recommendations put forth by the AAPI Diversity Study Group, one of which is including tying outstanding performance ratings and awards to effective diversity initiatives undertaken during a review period.

Directors and administrators of an agency must be held accountable for the actions or inactions of their agencies. The proposed Senior Executive Service Diversity Assurance Act in Congress would bring much needed Congressional and OPM oversight, but force leaders of government to finally take affirmative steps to assure AAPI diversity within the SES.

AAPIs are severely under represented as a group in law enforcement, and as such, need to be counted and categorized different from other diversity groups.

To elaborate, in EEOC reports, red flag triggers are identified in what EEOC considers to be severely under.represented groups based upon percentages in comparison to the civilian labor force or CLF.

In law enforcement positions, AAPIs often have zero or one SES incumbent, but as a group do not trigger red flags as the percentages are within a certain range compared to the CLF.

Our recommendation is that when an agency has zero or one AAPI SES or SES candidate, an automatic red flag should be triggered forcing an agency or department to implement strategies for improvement. Currently, certain DOJ components with zero representation in the SES ranks do not trigger a red flag.

In summary, law enforcement AAPIs face many hurdles in the quest for upward career mobility, racial stereotyping, physical requirements, perpetual foreigner syndrome and a lack of role models are many of the roadblocks promoting the success of AAPIs.

The serious lack of AAPI representation in the SES ranks will become more acute as the number of current AAPI SESs are slated for retirement within the next five years.

Federal law enforcement agencies need a committed strategic plan to recruit and retain AAPIs in the SES program to address this issue of diversity and to truly reflect the communities in which we serve.

I would again like to thank the opportunity to testify and present this point of view on behalf of AAPIs in the law enforcement community.

CHAIR EARP: Thank you Mr. Lee. Dr. Basu?

DR. BASU: Chair Earp, Vice Chair, Commissioners, colleagues and friends, it is a great honor and privilege for me to be here and appear as a witness and submit this testimony or the statement regarding lack of equal opportunity of Asians in the federal sector and towards that end I will share my experiences in the USDA where I work.

After finishing my college degrees and everything else, I worked for 10 years with two land grant universities.. Colorado State and West Virginia University.. and I've been part of the cooperative extension service.

And then in 1977 I joined the USDA as a Deputy Director of Civil Rights in the Science and Education Administration. And after that I just became the Director of Civil Rights in the National Resources Conservation Service of USDA and I served there for almost 17 years.

It was a great privilege for me to work in those capacities because I worked all 50 states doing extensive reviews and monitoring progress, et cetera, et cetera. That really opened my eyes to what are the problems of civil rights and how we need to address those.

I'm going to give a quick background, I mean, about my experience at the USDA. The experience at USDA is a very interesting to see that Asians are systematically shut down or they're cut out from the upper level management positions.

Whenever they apply, they make tremendous progress in terms of scoring high results through their experiences, training and background.

As a result, they also have to go through a process called the interview process. And they go through the interview process and the system is set up in such a nice way that always marks them down with a statement like �did not respond clearly.�

And I find the agencies that make the decisions, essentially make the selection on the basis, on the grounds that they gave us that these selectees showed better leadership qualities. We don't know what they are.

But anyway, even for those non.managerial and non.supervisory positions, they thought leadership was an essential thing. I personally field quite a bit of complex problems in the USDA, the thing of it is, you know, I was probably .. bad luck started when I was competing and qualified for an SES training. And I went through a national selection process and I was selected to go through the process, completed the training and was certified by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management as qualified to enter the cadre of SES.

Once you are certified, I mean as an SES, you don't apply for positions. I was told that, you know, as positions opened up, you would be placed and given consideration, et cetera.

So six years passed and almost 37 positions were filled. Here is the only Asian being trained and qualified by the OPM.. did not get a chance to be posted to any of the vacancies. That's when I filed my complaints and eventually went and found that when these things were going so erratic, I appealed to the EEOC. In one instance the EEOC also ruled that the agency had indeed retaliated against me and I personally met the Director of Civil Rights of USDA and asked for intervention about this situation, and there wasn't any action on their part and then subsequently, the retaliation started, I could tell because of my complaints.

Number one, I was named as Acting Director of Civil Rights after being there for 17 years. And number two, I was made eventually a specialist outside the Civil Rights arena and was assigned to a position that where I had nothing to do except with a desk and a chair.

And finally, they found that allegations of misconduct was filed against me through the Office of General Counsel to the OIG and - Inspector General, I'm sorry. And the OIG found no evidence of any wrongdoing on my part and harassment continued. So when this was going on after facing all of these things, you know, and with the rising crescendo of the other Asian employers from the USDA agencies, who experienced similar problems that I had experienced, say in November 1999 I filed a class complaint, Arun C. Basu, et al v. Veneman.

When I filed the class complaint, the Director of Civil Rights refused to talk to the EEO counselor. And the department refused to consider engaging in any sort of mediation. But interestingly in 2004 when this was .. the case was still in the EEOC for certification purposes.. I was asked to go to a mediation process with two attorneys from the Office of General Counsel within the USDA asking me to compromise and settle my complaints and go away.

We'll give you a substantial amount of money and hopefully you'll decide that you'll retire, which I declined.

Out of the many of the class complaints, only the Basu complaint was settled and the Assistant Secretary of Civil Rights, Mr. Vernon Parker was advised by the General Counsel that this is a case you are to settle because it has been determined to be a vulnerable situation.

With that, after seven years, the case was settled, which resulted in my promotion to the SES rank. I have a couple of things to say about the USDA. The biggest failure on the part of the Civil Rights of the USDA, it does not conduct compliance reviews of these agencies even when there are evidences of problems.

Given the situation with all these years of experience in Civil Rights, I found three things that worked. Number one is educate, monitor and enforce. This is seriously lacking in the entire Department of Agriculture. And I think it will . basically this has to be addressed and it has to be from the MD 715 reports. I don't want to get into this, but I think number one, the Asians are severely under represented in the USDA even today, and they are victims of discrimination, harassment and abuse.

Number two, the Civil Rights program whether it is structured under the Director of Civil Rights or the Assistant Secretary of Civil Rights, never gets things done and essentially it is awfully inadequate, under-funded and understaffed.

With this situation, I don't think things are going to change much. But again, I would urge the EEOC as well as USDA.. hey, let's educate, monitor and enforce. Thank you.

CHAIR EARP: Thank you. Madam Vice Chair?

VICE CHAIR SILVERMAN: Thank you. I want to thank all of the witnesses on this panel for your testimony and your stories. Dr. Jeang?

DR. JEANG: Jeang.

VICE CHAIR SILVERMAN: Jeang, you pointed out how the leadership of NIH looks dramatically different from the other scientists and the other employees, and you heard our earlier discussion about AAPIs tending not to come forward and complain about discrimination. In your experience at NIH, do employees come forward to complain either about the disparity at the top or at least the way people are selected where you don't go through any kind of process at all?

It seems like government, you have either too much process or no process at all, sometimes to me. And I'm just wondering, do they overtly complain, just complain amongst themselves? I mean, what's going on?

DR. JEANG: So, I can't speak for everybody at NIH, but I can say that some of us have, you know, gotten together and in 2005 we met with the Intramural Director. And also in 2005, you know, I wrote a letter to the Director, Dr. Zerhouni, about this issue.

COMMISSIONER ISHIMARU: The Civil Rights Director or the Director of NIH?

DR. JEANG: Director of NIH, Dr. Zerhouni, yes. So, to say to him that whatever, you know, ideas.. and I don't presume those are your ideas. . but if your ideas are that Asians are not capable, not interested and, you know, not willing to step forward, I want to disabuse you of these ideas. And we are, you know, large in numbers and capable and very much interested and willing to provide leadership and to contribute our share. Please call upon us.

So I did write to the Director of NIH and I did meet with several of my colleagues with the Intramural Director of NIH about this question. And at least, you know, from what I can see, you know, nothing really has changed substantively since 2005.

VICE CHAIR SILVERMAN: It seems like I've heard over and over again today this barrier of quantifying, qualifying leadership qualities and I was thinking about it, because oftentimes when we go out and speak we try to provide advice for people to stay afoul, not you know, of our laws.

And we talked about interviewing by panels to prevent individual biases. And I was trying to think about it as you all were talking, what could we do to get at leadership qualities that maybe other people don't perceive in the AAPI community that are clearly there?

I mean, are there questions we could ask, are there, you know, things we can think about and has anyone looked into this issue? Because it seems like this is our huge barrier, it's perception. I mean, number one of course is educating people that this is a bias, but number two is getting to it, it's getting to those questions and interviews and things like that. Has anyone given that any thought? I mean, Dr. Basu, you spoke directly on this.

DR. BASU: If you don't mind, repeat the question again for me please.

VICE CHAIR SILVERMAN: What I'm wondering is to get to leadership qualities in an interview setting, to make sure that they shine, to make sure that, you know, biases against this segment of the population, is there something that, you know, advice we could be giving, both within the government and outside.

DR. BASU: As a group, I don't think, you know, there are any deficiencies in terms of presenting anything in a positive way in terms of leadership qualities, et cetera. But, there is inherent bias amongst those folks who recruit and interview and all these kinds of things.

So as such, that creates the problem, that's ..

VICE CHAIR SILVERMAN: Right. But I was thinking .. okay, so the interviewer has a bias, but if they were required to ask certain questions, then they could be educated perhaps. I mean, maybe that's a naive approach. I was just trying to think what we could do, you know, what advice we could offer.

DR. BASU: It would probably take, you know, some kind of an action from the EEOC levels, some guidance and some, you know, but coming from within the service within the agencies is not going to make a difference.

VICE CHAIR SILVERMAN: Okay. My time's up.

CHAIR EARP: Commissioner Ishimaru.

COMMISSIONER ISHIMARU: Thank you Madam Chair. I just want to make or be clear on something here. Your testimony is, is that Asian Pacific Americans are applying for these positions of advancement, of leadership and yet are not obtaining them. Is that correct and could you elaborate on how often people apply, are interviewed and then not selected? I'd actually like to hear from all of the panel members starting with Dr. Jeang.

DR. JEANG: So, I can tell you my own personal anecdotes because of course my access to information is also limited and I can also tell you the experience of other individuals that are my colleagues that we converse about this.

So I can tell you that I have applied at least twice, okay. And in the most recent case, it was sort of an interesting situation. In the process of applying for a position, you would of course, ask your senior colleagues to write letters for you, right, so you get their commitment because you're going to submit the application form.

So, as I asked one of my senior colleagues to write the letter for me, he said to me, he says, �T, do you really want me to write this letter for you?� And I said,

�Yes of course. I mean, I think I'm very well qualified and I have a good chance at this position.�

And he said to me, �Don't you know that this position is groomed for XYZ?�

COMMISSIONER ISHIMARU: So for a certain person?

DR. JEANG: Yes.

COMMISSIONER ISHIMARU: Yes.

DR. JEANG: And I thought, wow. I thought, well I've always sort of heard, you know, that this kind of thing goes on, okay, but I wasn't really quite sure that it actually, you know, that it would actually take place, right?

So I said, well let's give it a try anyway. And I figured that perhaps he was just, you know, confabulating or he was just making up a story or he was, you know, guessing.

And sure enough, after selection process, XYZ was selected. Okay, now, I should say XYZ is extremely qualified, okay, so I don't want to take anything way from this individual, okay. A colleague of mine, someone I respect, okay.

But nevertheless, I mean, the process was, you know, that was .. that's what I can tell you, that's my personal story, okay. And I'm sure other people can have their other stories ..

COMMISSIONER ISHIMARU: But from your experiences at NIH, are your Asian Pacific American colleagues applying for positions or are they waiting to be sought out? Are they actually applying and then not getting selected?

DR. JEANG: People like me, and there are a substantial number of people like me, okay, just from listening to me and from, you know, asking me questions, you know that I would go and apply for positions, that I would not wait for people to come and seek me out.

And I would argue there are many like me, okay. And we have in fact, you know, when we met with Dr. Gottesman in 2005, one of his suggestions was that, he said well, you know, there could be a problem in a sense that I don't know the names of people, so please bring me the CVs.

So, we went out and canvassed qualified Asian American scientists. We brought him 13 CVs to say next time there's a chief position open, please consider these, okay?

And I want to say to you that Dr. Gottesman is indeed very supportive of this effort, but he does not do the direct hiring, okay, it's the scientific directors of each of the individual institutes, okay.

COMMISSIONER ISHIMARU: But he would hold them accountable would he not?

DR. JEANG: I certainly hope so. I certainly hope so. So, to my knowledge, none of those 13 names in the ensuing three years, none of them has been tapped for a chief's position. And in the ensuing three years, I think there have been several different turnovers in that time.

So I'm not saying that there is any sort of deliberate machination, I don't think that there is sort of a conspiracy, but I do think that there is a problem.

COMMISSIONER ISHIMARU: Right. No, but I guess my question was getting to the fact, are people in fact applying? Are they making known their interest for these jobs? And you are saying yes they are.

DR. JEANG: I think so.

COMMISSIONER ISHIMARU: Okay. Mr. Lee?

MR. LEE: In the law enforcement community, in the middle .. in the ranks of .. to come up from field working to a supervisor, we are getting some applications. We are .. our numbers are small all around, so we do get some applications, that's where I'm sitting now in mid.management.

At the upper levels, no. I briefed those that are the SESs we do have at the highest levels and they continually tell me the same types of stories that they are not getting applications. I'll give you an example.

A colleague of mine left the ATF for this particular reason. He was told when he was brought into Headquarters, first of all culturally, we don't move a whole lot, so moving is a big difficult thing for Asian.Americans.

And so he came to Headquarters and was told, listen, we want to promote you, but you're going to have to move five more times. And he put family first and left ATF shortly thereafter and went back to California.

These are the examples and the reasons that are being told at many of the SES levels at the biggest agencies that we do have, which are very few.

The big agencies, DOJ and at the IRS are at our highest levels and we only have a few, a couple each in each agency, department level wise.

COMMISSIONER ISHIMARU: Dr. Basu, your experience at USDA?

DR. BASU: I shared earlier in my statement that when the interview process, you know, that's where they're limited.

COMMISSIONER ISHIMARU: Right, but ..

DR. BASU: At the interview process.

COMMISSIONER ISHIMARU: Right, but I guess my specific question is, were Asian Pacific Americans at USDA, were they applying for these jobs?

DR. BASU: Yes.

COMMISSIONER ISHIMARU: Yes.

DR. BASU: The answer is yes and to give you a good example, in one instance a job was advertised which required a minimum of four years of college training, meaning bachelor's degree.

The position that was applied for, the gentleman who applied for the position had two masters and a Ph.D. and as well has got a quite a bit of research experiences in that particular field. A high school graduate was selected for the job. And they justified, the selection team, this is the best candidate we got.

COMMISSIONER ISHIMARU: Thank you Madam Chair.

CHAIR EARP: Commissioner Griffin?

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: Mr. Lee, actually to all of you, thank you very much. I know this isn't the easiest thing to do.

When you talked about the moves, you know, is that understood for everybody that there's a requirement that you have to move 10 times in order to advance or is this, you know, a way of screening out people?

MR. LEE: A lot .. most of the agencies do have a move policy.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: Is it specific?

MR. LEE: To law enforcement, yes. I can only speak for law enforcement.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: Okay.

MR. LEE: We all sign a mobility clause when we sign on and I think every federal agent does, I believe. I'm not 100% sure of that. But certainly in the large agencies, we sign a mobility clause the day we sign on. And we expect, if we go into management, to be moved. But not as many times as some of the times we are being required to.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: Okay. That would be interesting too. You maybe think that, you know, some of this study, you know, how many moves are we making different people and ..

MR. LEE: Right. And this policy is not applied, it's not a written policy ..

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: Oh, okay.

MR. LEE: .. and it is not a formal policy, it is a policy that changes by whoever is in the administration at that time.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: Interesting.

VICE CHAIR SILVERMAN: When I was in private practice I challenged a mobility clause at an agency on disparate impact on women.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: Really?

VICE CHAIR SILVERMAN: We got a settlement, just so you know.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: Interesting.

CHAIR EARP: It's not unprecedented.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: I like your idea about a separate report issued by the EEOC regarding, you know, the recruitment, hiring, advancement and retention of law enforcement officers who happen to be Asian.American and Pacific Islander. And I would hope that the workgroup, when they come up with their recommendations, would include that. I think there probably could be a series of separate reports and we have done things like that in the past. And I think they really serve to illuminate a particular issue within a particular group of people and even within a particular job category. So I would hope that we would be able to do something like that.

Dr. Basu, you talked about, you know, obviously a very long and challenging process that you went through to finally get the results that you got. And you obviously had a lot of interaction with our agency by doing that. And I was wondering, you know, is there any advice that you can give us or, you know, sort of helpful criticism about things that you faced while going through the process that would help us make the process better for people?

DR. BASU: I think one solid thing that we have going between the departments and the EEOC is the MD 715. That, very in.detail, lays out the data by grade levels, where are those and by also by ethnic categories.

The thing of it is, the EEOC can take that information, which has been submitted by the department and the department also get from the agencies.

That data in itself tells a lot of stories. I see what are the deficiencies and what is lacking. Why isn't it enforced on those data, on the basis of the data? Why are the agencies are not acting? Why the department is not enforcing?

So the question of again, monitoring enforcement is the answer to some of these problems. Without that, the things would be business as usual.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: Yes. I think we grapple with the enforcement piece, and I think this agency has grappled with it a long time and we've tried a lot of different approaches in order to get agencies to do everything from doing investigations in a timely manner to really looking at their workforce and really identifying what are the barriers that are preventing some people from either getting in the door, or once they get in the door, from advancing.

And it's something we continue to grapple with.

DR. BASU: We find the enforcement also is lacking at the departmental level.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: Absolutely.

DR. BASU: When the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights has got that information, he or she can enforce some of those on the agency heads to do something about it, which has not been done.

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: Yes. It's always interesting to me the agencies that don't seem to know about this data that they actually report to us. So I know that DOJ once got angry at me for saying in a speech that they, believe me, that's not the only category they're lacking in.

And I cited their facts, they just happened to be facts and someone actually said, where did you get that, I can't believe you said that about us. And I said, you gave us that data, we didn't make it up.

So a lot of agencies, although they report it, and maybe the agency had signed something when they sent it over, they're not paying attention to it, and they don't see it as important. And I do think it's our job to make them realize it's important. So thank you all very much.

CHAIR EARP: Commissioner Barker?

COMMISSIONER BARKER: I want to thank you all, along with the other Commissioners, for coming here today. And you know, I've read your testimonies last night and I thought I understood them and appreciated them, but I'll have to say that hearing that same testimony from you today had a totally different impact on me.

It's one thing to read what you have written, but to actually hear you say it and see your faces, you know, you can't help but really understand the depth of the situation, and I appreciate that.

And I think I just have one question for Dr. Jeang. As I listen to all three of you describe the individual situations that you had gone through, and express what I think was some indication that things have improved slightly, but still there's a lot that needs to be done, a lot of problems.

I'm wondering, Dr. Jeang, you have risen to a very high position, well it sounds like a very high position to me, I can't even pronounce it, within the ranks of NIH, and I'm wondering, to what extent do you think a young person, a young Asian.American following in your shoes, starting out with a career in the federal government as a scientist or as a physician would experience the same type of barriers?

And I guess what I'm particularly honing in on is the decision makers, the people who choose the people of the highest ranks. When those people retire, as we hear there is a large percentage of federal employees who will be retiring, do you think that our younger generation will have the same prejudices and the resistance to Asian. Americans that, frankly, my generation has apparently had?

DR. JEANG: Yes, thank you for that question. So first I want to correct, I don't actually have a very high position. So I'm sort of at a, sort of an entry level, sort of management position.

COMMISSIONER BARKER: For those of us who don't have science backgrounds ..

DR. JEANG: It sounds like a high position.

COMMISSIONER BARKER: Anything I can't pronounce sounds very impressive to me. So I'm impressed.

DR. JEANG: Yes. So, I look forward to the day when I think, you know, if and when the turnover comes, that there would be greater access by Asians into positions of leadership.

On the other hand, I hesitate to say that this is somehow a discriminatory sort of setting. In the sense that I think what hasn't really been done is to ask the hard questions and to get the answers back from the leadership.

So for example, the question was asked by Vice Commissioner Silverman, you know, what are the qualities that we're missing here, okay? You know, those of us on this side of the fence don't perceive that we have any deficiency in qualities.

COMMISSIONER BARKER: Certainly.

DR. JEANG: What I'm not clear about is those people sitting on the other side of the fence doing the selection, why is it and what is it that they're perceiving that I lack in order to join them on that side of the fence?

So I think those questions have to be asked. You have to ask, why, if you look in a room of Indians, they're 40, 50% Asians doing the work and why when you turn around and look in the other room of Chiefs, there is not a single Asian face, okay.

The numbers don't compute, okay. Why is that? And if you can give us a good reason, okay, then perhaps we can address that reason. But so, right now I think we are at the stage where I don't think enough people in the right places are asking those questions.

Now, those of us, sort of the people below the ceiling are trying to ask these questions. And suppose the people above the ceiling just pretend that they're deaf. What are you supposed to do then? Okay.

So I'm hoping that we ask the questions, we get the answers, we work towards the constructive solutions to address the answers if there are substantive issues to address. And then we come in with the monitoring and the enforcement to see over time, okay, that there are indeed tangible progress.

That is what I'm hoping that will come out from all of these discussions.

COMMISSIONER BARKER: Thank you Dr. Jeang.

CHAIR EARP: Commissioner Barker, I want to probe your question a little bit deeper. Now, Dr. Jeang, having been at NIH for 23 years, you are aware that until relatively recently, roughly 1993, `94, the rules for tenure track were not formalized.

DR. JEANG: Right.

CHAIR EARP: Nonetheless, any lab chief or branch chief at NIH that you randomly picked to say, who's going to make for a good tenure track scientist, they all thought they knew and they would tell you something.

My question is, both related to Commissioner Barker's question and your comment about the questions that need to be asked, what do you think the reaction would be to ask NIH to seriously study the lab and branch chief track in the same way 15 years ago it studied tenure track, and to begin the process of trying to regularize and formalize what's required to make that next step?

Is science so serendipitous that the community would bristle at that, or do you think something like that would be a viable solution to moving from bench to leadership?

DR. JEANG: I think that's an excellent first step that we should try to take is to formalize the process and to try to understand why certain individuals apparently can access that promotion and others cannot.

And right now, it's sort of, the selection process is not transparent and I think we need to really formalize, as we have done with the formalization of the tenure track criteria. I think that's an excellent proposal which we should try to embrace.

I really believe that the community at large is ready to embrace that. I just think that, you know, the questions and the proposals have not come from the right quarters.

CHAIR EARP: Okay. Thank you. Are there additional questions?

VICE CHAIR SILVERMAN: I just wanted to make one clarification and then .. what I was trying to say, Dr. Jeang, is what can we do to get the interviewers to ask the questions to get to those leadership qualities instead of making false assumptions?

So I just wanted to be clear that we recognize that the issue is on the interviewer and their bias and not the performance.

And I was thinking as you were talking about your experience at NIH when you applied and what I was hearing was, you know, I think what we refer to as sort of an old boys� network where someone taps somebody else often it looks like them and that's their successor.

Also, a very, you know, highly.talented person, I'm not sure that they finished with a Ph.D. by 25, but, you know, from MIT and Hopkins and M.D. and all of that, I mean that's amazing.

And I was thinking, well, what is out there to sort of counter this and, you know, the Chair who knows NIH very well has a thought and I was just thinking about, because I've been involved in a lot of diversity private sector groups, another way to get to what we do here at the agency.

And I was thinking about, and this sounds like such a simple concept, but really high.level mentoring issues. A lot of companies are looking at groups that aren't moving up the glass ceiling, the bamboo ceiling, what have you, and trying to figure out, okay, what are they missing, what experiences, what relationships.

And forming relationships together with other people at those higher levels looking at their job assignments, looking at what they're, you know, who they're meeting and what they're doing to make sure that they are getting that same platform so that they can rise. And, you know, the private sector and the public sector are different, but I do think programs like that might be a great way to kind of counter the ceilings that we're talking about here, so.

DR. JEANG: Right. And so my response to your suggestions, my response is that, those are very good points that you make, but what we are poised at now is taking the next step. So we have Asians who have been mentored, we have Asians who have gone through the training programs, we have Asians who have answered the right questions and the interviewers have asked the right questions.

Now we want the selection, the next step, okay, is what you do after you ask the right questions, okay.

VICE CHAIR SILVERMAN: So you're still getting to that same thing?

DR. JEANG: I think very few individuals in leadership position would come up to you today and tell you, well, you know, the reason we don't hire Asians is that they're just not qualified, okay, they can't do the job, okay.

I would, you know, I would challenge you to go and ask those questions and I think most of them will say, �Oh, you know, I just haven't really thought about this question and I didn't really see that there was a problem,� okay. I think that would be the most common answer you would get back, okay.

So I think it's important for the existing leadership to recognize a problem, to accept that it is a problem, to take concrete steps and then for there to be metrics monitoring and enforcement, okay?

And unless you do these stepwise, I think, you know, leadership is human nature and human nature tends to take the path of inertia and the path of least resistance. And if we're going to have to make change, change is always going to come with some difficulty.

CHAIR EARP: Do you have additional questions?

COMMISSIONER ISHIMARU: I actually do, Madam Chair. You know, you had said, Dr. Jeang that it's probably not discrimination, yet from where I sit as a civil rights lawyer and at an enforcement agency, it brings me back to the situation in Alabama with the state patrol back in the `70s and `80s where you had a virtually all.white police force and this was litigated as a discrimination matter all the way up to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court ruled there that, you know, if there are no people being hired, if people are just not being hired yet qualified to do so, there's a problem here. There's a violation of the laws of this country and we need to provide remedy to deal with it.

Here you have a situation where, as you said, people have done all the things that have been suggested; they've been mentored, the right questions have been asked, and yet at the end of the day, people are not being selected.

And you don't want to ascribe bad faith to somebody because it's a very .. selection is a very complex and difficult issue, but time and time again, when people are not getting selected for these jobs you have to ask what's wrong with this picture, and two, does it violate any federal law.

And for us here at the EEOC the question is, what should we be doing, what should we be doing within the authority that we have to go after situations like all of these where people are being interviewed, are not being hired, time and time again.

And I think, Madam Chair, it's something that we need to look at within the powers we have, within the powers of the Office of Federal Operations, what sort of roles should we be playing vis-�-vis the other federal agencies, and it can't all be done here, but we have a role to play.

You know, the one thing that I am disappointed in the makeup of this hearing is when are we going to talk to the people who actually do the hiring, who control the big picture, people from the Office of Personnel Management and from the various agencies?

How do you hold people accountable? And it's not a, you know, it's been a long.time problem. This is not a new issue, this issue has gone on for years.

But as we look forward for the new type of federal employee that we heard about in the first panel, that young people are coming in and out of government, how do we ensure, for the future, that people will come to the federal government and will pursue opportunities here and have a reasonable assurance that they will be able to proceed up the career ladder and not be excluded because they're from one group or another.

I think, Madam Chair, this has been a great start and a great opportunity to hear from one group. And I know many other groups have had complaints and issues. I know Commissioner Griffin has spent much of her tenure here pushing for hiring of more federal employees, people who have targeted disabilities. I think that's important. People from the Hispanic community have raised these issues and I know you've started a workgroup there.

And I think these sorts of meetings are good and they bring up tough issues that I think we need to grapple with, but just holding meetings, just issuing reports are only a start. And what I'd like to avoid is the cynicism that comes up when people say, well, they had a hearing on this, they've issued a report and then nothing's happened.

And I hope we're able to take those follow.up steps and I look forward to your thoughts on those as we go on through the course of the afternoon.

CHAIR EARP: Thank you. Any other questions for this panel?

COMMISSIONER GRIFFIN: I just have one. I want to agree with Stuart. I do think that, you know, no matter what it is .. and I think at a level at NIH, you know, people don't want to believe that it's discrimination.

But, whatever it is, if it's, you know, even if it's not, you know, done in a, you know, in a difficult way or, you know, with animosity, anything that results in, you know, 40 percent of the employees not making it in any meaningful way to the high ranks is discrimination.

It may be based on fears, myths, stereotypes, whatever, but that equals prejudice and it equals discrimination. So, I do believe that, that is what's going on no matter how you want to, you know, talk about it.

And I just want to say that, Mr. Lee actually mentioned this that there is this SES diversity bill, where Congress is actually looking at this issue along with OPM and I'm sure the Partnership is looking at that, as well.

To ensure that these panels of people that are picking these folks actually have representation from all of these different groups so that at least you'll have, hopefully some .. an Asian.American person on the panel educating the rest of them and when they hear things that may sound a little discriminatory they're able to actually challenge that.

And I would hope that, that does result in some changes within our federal system for SES. And I worry about the young people that do come in to any agency and look at the top. You know, and they look, these kids are smart, they look before they leap and they look at the top ranks and the Partnership is trying desperately to get younger people interested in federal service. And yet, if I was some of these folks and I was Asian.American and wanting to go to NIH, I'd say, hmm, something wrong with this picture. And this may not be the agency I go to. So, it has a really, I think, profound impact on people who want to come into federal government when they look at the situation. So, anyway, thank you.

DR. BASU: Madam Chair, in context of the discussion here, I think I might just want to add one element whether it is USDA or NIH or any other place.

Folks who can make things happen, who prevent things from happening are those sort of managerial positions at higher levels. I remember being part of that group for a while. It was a very rigorous process to write your position description standards, the standards for your performance.

And every performance standard was .. directly had to have linkage to the agency mission, their vision, and the program goals, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

When it came to the civil rights standard, there's nothing. It's so generic, although the agency is having serious deficiencies under.representation problem, et cetera, et cetera.

None of those performance standards are linked to those problems or to the civil rights plan or the strategic plan. This is something I think that maybe the Office of Personnel Management as well as EEOC could look into it and see what can be done to string that aspect to make things happen in the future.

CHAIR EARP: I would agree with my fellow Commissioners, I think that this is just a first step, but it is a very important one. Each of you present different perspectives and the underlying cause of the problems are, I think, somewhat different.

We may be dealing with a disparate impact situation at NIH, where it's not a disparate treatment individually singling out any group, but the policies and procedures that that organization has operated on for more than 100 years just excludes people that don't look like the group that founded NIH more than 100 years ago.

Law enforcement is one of those non.traditi

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