They’re looking for life on Mars but can’t find Black tech workers on Earth…
Fast Company has partnered with Black startup publication The Plug for a series called “Black in Tech.” The series compiles interviews of Black professionals in the field on diversity, equity and inclusion.
A common theme is how Big Tech’s leverage—its money, its control of information, its visibility—could be transformative. Yet it’s not. While companies might pour money into highly visible PR oriented statements of DEI, there’s not much of that happening within the companies, nor in their product.
“Tech companies have built computers that can recognize faces, right? They are working on going to Mars,” says Mimi Fox Melton, who is CEO of Code2040, a non-profit focused on advancing Black and Latinx careers in tech.
“This industry [is full of] wild goalsetting and striving to accomplish things that are inconceivable in the moment,” said Melton. “So, to look at a social problem, and throw [their] proverbial hands up and say, ‘Well, I guess this is just how it is,’ is inexcusable, and it’s offensive.”
Surveillance expert Chris Gilliard is a Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center Visiting Research Fellow. He sees Tech talking about diversity but often creating anti-Black product – think Nazi content on social media, while the platform is endorsing Black Lives Matter. Or, in Gilliard’s own field, facial recognition software that has been found to incorrectly identify and indict Black faces.
Gilliard suggests that having Black and Latinx involvement in development would be open to asking how a new technology might have a negative impact on minorities.
“These are among the richest companies that have ever existed in the history of the world. So, what seems like a staggering number—let’s say someone gave $50 million, $100 million,” said Gilliard. “And so, it’s money well spent. But the other thing is they haven’t changed their practices. Google is busy firing ethicists, high-profile Black women. Facebook is under investigation for being a serial offender in terms of like creating an anti-Black workplace.”
Now let’s zoom out
Big Tech is highly visible now, but it’s not just Big Tech that’s faltering on DEI. It’s all the other “Big” industries that we’re all part of. Think of all the profit-driven innovations in your own industry and consider how that same development power can create a diverse workplace, management team and leadership.
We, as individual professionals, need to bootstrap the transformation from the inside.
When your company is hiring:
- Share the opening with your influential and diverse network.
- Ask your hiring manager if they’re reaching out to HBCUs.
- Discuss ways your workplace is or isn’t inclusive and make suggestions to improve.
- Rethink your boiler plate job prerequisites–maybe certain life experiences are more valuable than advanced degrees.
- Study how your industry sector does with diversity and discuss it in your business groups and trade associations.
We all like to think we’re working in a meritocracy, but that’s a myth if “the merit” – top schools, choice internships, study abroad — is out of reach to disadvantaged workers in the first place,
Illustration: Adobe Stock
