High-Tech Continues to Excuse Anti-Black Discrimination
By: Zachey Kliger
Earlier this year, April Curley, a former diversity recruiter for Google, published a series of tweets about her experience working at the tech giant. Curley’s criticism of Google’s hiring practices didn’t come as a shock; a cursory glance at any of the company’s recent annual hiring reports reveals a glaring underrepresentation of Black people in their workforce. What did attract national news headlines was Curley’s claim that Google’s work environment was “white toxic”.
“I quickly became aware of all the racist s*** put in place to keep Black students out of their pipeline,” Curley tweeted.
On one occasion, a white female manager told Curley that her Baltimore accent was a “disability”.
Curley’s story is one of many in recent years highlighting workplace discrimination in the technology sector. For years, executives at big tech firms have pointed to a “limited pool of Black talent” to excuse the persistent underrepresentation of African Americans in their companies. But recent data illuminates the shortcomings of this oft-cited explanation. For one, the percentage of African American STEM graduates greatly exceeds their representation in technical fields. In 2017-18, African Americans received roughly 10% of undergraduate STEM degrees, and accounted for 11% of Science and Engineering master’s degree recipients (up from 8% in 2000). Yet, at the nation’s largest technology companies, including Google, Facebook and Microsoft, African Americans make up less than 5% of the overall workforce.
The problem lies not just with big tech, but with the tech industry at large. Between 2005 and 2017, more than 90% of technology-intensive innovation-sector growth occurred in just five metro areas: New York, Boston, San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle. Over that span, college enrollment rates among African Americans increased from 31 to 37 percent, while those of White adults budged slightly from 39 to 42 percent. African Americans also bridged the digital gap with White Americans, particularly in urban centers, due in part to expanded broadband access and the increased affordability of Smartphones. Yet, in each of these cities, the share of African Americans in high-digital occupational groups, such as engineering, computer and mathematics, and management, has stalled or, in some cases, fallen.
In Boston – a hub for technology and innovation – White workers outnumber Black ones by about 27-to-1 in computer- and mathematics-related professions, compared with the overall ratio of 9.5-to-1 for workers in the city. In Seattle, home to Amazon, White workers outnumber Black workers nearly 28-to-1 in computer- and math-related fields.
Simply put, gains in educational attainment and digital skills among African Americans have not translated into increased representation in high-tech. Instead, evidence points to the reluctance of high-tech firms to recruit, train, and invest in Black employees as the driving force behind the lack of Black representation in tech.
Fraeda Klein, a partner at the venture capital firm Kapor Capital, argues that the industry’s reliance on personal relationships to grant access and opportunity produces a network effect that “militates against Black inclusion”. Google’s recruiting practices in particular have come under increased scrutiny in the aftermath of recent revelations from Curley and other former employees. In January, Curley tweeted that Google never hired an HBCU student into one of their key engineering roles because they “didn’t believe talent existed at these institutions.”
When high-tech companies do hire Black employees, they do little to provide them with institutional support to succeed. Timnit Gebru, a Black woman who led Google’s ethical artificial intelligence team, spoke out about how she felt targeted at the company: “They wanted to have my presence, but not me exactly,” she said. “They wanted to have the idea of me being at Google, but not the reality of me being at Google. I was constantly devalued.”
Gebru’s experience is not uncommon. According to a Pew survey, 45% of Black STEM workers say that they have had someone treat them as not competent because of their race, compared with 28% of Black workers in other occupations. And 29% of Black workers in technical occupations have felt isolated in their workplace because of their race, compared with 16% of Black non-STEM workers. In short, African Americans in tech face workplace racism more than those in other industries.
The rapid pace of the high-tech industry incentivizes firms to simply buy new skills instead of developing them, and it’s plausible that this mentality has contributed to the toxic and exclusionary workplaces that have become common in the industry. Regardless, recent evidence suggests that reversing the broad exclusion of Black people from tech occupations that promise upward mobility will require more than just increasing the talent pipeline through investments in education and expanded access to digital resources. It will require tech companies themselves to mitigate workplace racism, invest in outreach to underserved communities, and prioritize worker up-skilling and re-skilling. And it will require state governments to reserve economic incentives and tax breaks to those high-tech firms that commit to employer-based job training and inclusion.
Zachey Kliger (MPA ‘22) is the Editor-in-Chief of The Morningside Post. He is studying Social Policy with a specialization in Technology, Media, and Communications.