cylde21
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As of late, there have been numerous reports (backed by countless statistical data) exposing the institutional racism that is prevalent within the hierarchy of high profile tech companies that reside in California’s Bay Area, also known as “Silicon Valley”.
In a May 28, 2014 story featured on pbs.org, Google released its demographic data revealing that out of its employee base that is roughly 50,000 in number, only two percent of these employees are Black, and this includes both Black male and female employees who work for the Mountain View, CA based tech giant. A story written on the New York Times’ site in June 2014 suggested that more of the same hiring activity was occurring at another company in Silicon Valley. Google’s web browsing contemporary, Yahoo, also displayed the same two percent Black employee rate as well. However, the one area that this Sunnyvale, CA based company isn’t in competition with Google, is its eagerness to release the diversity numbers of the employees who work for Yahoo, in which case, both companies begrudgingly released this data.
Apparently, the “Apple” doesn’t fall far from the tree when it comes to this very same issue. Tim Cook, CEO of Apple Inc. has admitted that he is “not satisfied” with the disparaging employee diversity numbers that reflect on his company. Whether or not his concern involves wanting more of a Black presence at the company is uncertain, but certain affluent Blacks have taken notice. They want to use their financial and sociopolitical platform to connect more Black American (many of whom do in fact possess significant traces of African ancestry, but chose to deny their African lineage to gain social and political favor here with the dominant society here in the U.S.) Americans to companies such as Apple and Google to expose them to more employment opportunities.
Ordeals such as the one occurring in Silicon Valley could be proof that Blacks have no choice but to create, own, and control their own economic bases, which also includes carving out their own niches in the tech industry. These Black benefactors may very well be full of good intent, but should they have those good intentions re-directed to focusing more on Black-owned entities that could one day rival the Googles, Apples, and Oracles that currently reside in Silicon Valley? As the saying goes, “Build it, and they will come”. Proper planning and building by Black know-how and tech-savvy talent could make what may now seem like an impossibility an everyday reality, regardless of whether Black professionals in the tech industry garner the support and support of wealthy Blacks or not.
by B. Clark
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