In the field of racial “equity,” the gap between the talk of woke American corporations and their actions grows wider every time you look. Nowhere is that gap wider than at Google.
As readers here know, I was involved for decades in the efforts of a major law firm to recruit, hire and retain increasing numbers of blacks and other minorities. From that experience, I know that this is a difficult, long-term and often frustrating process. A large dose of humility is in order. No one company or institution, no matter how big, will create utopia in a day.
Well, the giant tech companies don’t do humility. After all, they started from nothing just twenty or thirty years ago, and today they are worth trillions. Obviously, their leaders are geniuses, and therefore qualified to lecture everyone else about proper woke morality and how to perfect the world by some time tomorrow afternoon. And proper woke morality of this moment focuses on “antiracism” and “diversity, equity and inclusion.”
Christopher Rufo is the Manhattan Institute guy who is doing more than anyone else to shine light on the hysterical and racist “diversity” initiatives that are increasingly infesting American institutions. Yesterday he posted an article at City Journal on the subject of race training at Google. The title is “Don’t Be Evil: A Google employee program claims that America is a ‘system of white supremacy’ and that all Americans are ‘raised to be racist.’”
It seems that Rufo has gotten hold of materials currently being used at Google in a “racial re-education” program going by the name “Allyship in Action.” Included in the program is a series of interviews with stars of the Critical Race Theory movement, including Nikole Hannah-Jones and Ibram Kendi. Rather than characterizing the materials, Rufo mostly just quotes from them and lets them speak for themselves. Here are some choice excerpts:
From the Hannah-Jones interview: “If you name anything in America, I can relate it back to slavery” . . . “If you’re white in this country, then you have to understand that whether you personally are racist or not, whether you personally engage in racist behavior or not, you are the beneficiary of a 350-year system of white supremacy and racial hierarchy.”
From the Kendi interview: “‘To be raised in the United States, is to be raised to be racist, and to be raised to be racist is to be raised to almost be addicted to racist ideas.’ . . . Denying one’s complicity in racism, Kendi argued, is only further proof of a person’s racism. ‘For me, the heartbeat of racism is denial and the sound of that denial is “I’m not racist,”’ he says. Ultimately, Kendi argued that policymakers should deem any racial disparities the result of racist policies—and work to undo the deep-seated racism that permeates every institution in our society.”
And finally, from an internal Google document headed “Anti-racism resources” (created by Google diversity, equity, and inclusion lead Beth Foster): “One graphic in the document claims that ‘colorblindness,’ ‘[American] exceptionalism,’ ‘Columbus Day,’ ‘weaponized whiteness,’ and ‘Make America Great Again’ are all expressions of ‘covert white supremacy.’ Another graphic, titled ‘The White Supremacy Pyramid,’ advances the idea that conservative commentator Ben Shapiro represents a foundation of ‘white supremacy’ and that Donald Trump is moving society on a path toward ‘mass murder’ and ‘genocide.’”
Now you might think that before endorsing the statement that “any racial disparities [are] the result of racist policies” Google would have been sure that it had fixed the problem of “racial disparities,” at least within its own ranks. So let’s check. As I have noted in previous posts (including here), starting in 2014 Google and other big tech companies succumbed to pressure from Jesse Jackson to publish annual “diversity reports,” revealing the breakdown of their workforces by racial and gender categories. That June 2020 post linked to Google’s Diversity Annual Report for 2019. And here is Google’s Diversity Annual Report for 2021, that just came out in July 2021.
A good summary of the 2021 Report is dozens of pages of public relations happy talk all designed to snow you in the hope that you never make it to the damning statistical tables at the end. A few randomly selected quotes from the happy talk part: “We’re listening, learning, and taking action”! . . . “Hiring changes drove our best year yet for women in tech globally and Black+ and Latinx+ people in the U.S.”! . . . “We’re expanding access to hiring opportunities for underrepresented groups in many parts of the world by centering racial equity across every part of our hiring process.” Blah, blah, blah-de-di-blah-blah-blah.
On to the tables. Workforce representation of blacks, company-wide: 4.4%. That’s all the way up from 2.4% in 2014. Blacks among “leadership” (however they define that): 3.0%, up from 1.7% in 2014. And blacks among “tech” workers: 2.9%, versus 1.5% in 2014.
They don’t say how they define “tech” workers. You can be sure that they have taken every possible liberty with the definition to get as many blacks as possible into the pool. How about a category limited to software developers and programmers? They won’t tell you. You can be sure that that percent for blacks in that category would be way below the 2.9% for all “tech” workers.
Well, Google, you are the one who endorsed and promulgated the statement that “any racial disparities [are] the result of racist policies.” How can you even justify staying in business at this point?
While we’re at it, perhaps we should check into the annual diversity reports of the other big tech companies, like Facebook, Microsoft and Apple. Here is the Facebook 2021 Diversity Update, released on July 15. It’s shorter than the Google Report, but with the same basic approach — lots of PR baloney before getting at the very end to some charts that they hope you won’t read. In that chart at the end, in the teensiest possible print, it is revealed that the percent of black “tech” workers at Facebook is now 3.1%. Hey, it’s more than the 2.9% at Google.
Microsoft here says that it won’t publish its 2021 diversity data until “fall 2021.”
Apple? They may be the worst of the bunch. Here’s their most recent Report, which doesn’t have an issue date, but says that it includes data from January to December 2020. This Report is even more filled with PR platitudes than the others. (Excerpt: “Across Apple, we’ve strengthened our long-standing commitment to making our company more inclusive and the world more just. Where every great idea can be heard. And everybody belongs.” Excuse me while I puke.). When you finally get to the chart at the end, it does not display all data at the same time, but requires you to click various options to get different pieces one at a time. If you make the effort, here’s what you will find. The percent of black employees in “tech” was 6% in 2014. By 2016 it had moved up to 8%. And in 2020 it was back down to 6%. As with Google and the others, I would have no doubt that they have taken every possible liberty with the definition of “tech” workers to get the percentage as high as possible.
I would be inclined to have some sympathy for these companies if they would just have a little humility and stop lecturing the rest of us and accusing us of being “white supremacists” and “structural racists.” As it is, they deserve to be held to their own standards, as Saul Alinsky advised. The next Republican administration should investigate them all for racism. If they are proclaiming to the world and to their own workforces that “any racial disparities [are] the result of racist policies,” what is their defense?
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