For Your Engineering Success

Communicating Effectively in Color (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion)

DEI Power Electronics Magazine IEEE Volume 11 Issue 4

When you and I look at something blue, does it look the same to both of us? Probably. Something red? Maybe. Something green? Definitely not.

I have moderate deuteranopia, commonly called red-green colorblindness. This genetic condition and others like it affect 8% of men and 0.5% of women of European descent, and a slightly lower percentage of men and women from around the world, including me, my brother, my son, and my daughter. Considering the demographics of electrical engineering, colorblindness probably affects 1 in 16 of your colleagues. It is caused by a recessive, defective gene that is carried on the X chromosome.

The daughter of a colorblind man inherits a defective gene on one X chromosome. If she inherits a normal gene on the X chromosome from her mother, she’ll be a carrier. Then her children will have a 50% chance of receiving a defective gene. Her sons that receive this gene are colorblind because they do not have another X chromosome to provide a normal gene. Her daughters that receive it will either be carriers or, as in the case of my unlucky daughter, will receive a defective gene on the X chromosome from their colorblind father, and therefore be colorblind themselves.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10839151

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