Google Says It Supports Diversity, Yet Just 2% Of Its Employees Are Black. Is It A Racist Company? (Hispanic, school)
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Based on the abysmal amount of women majoring in computer science if anything they are over represented. The only thing they would be improving is their political correctness,
That is just not a field that attracts women for whatever reason.
I went to college in the late 80's majoring in CS (college of Engineering). Many times I was the only girl in the class; other times there were 2 other girls. The classed were dominated with Asians and Indians.
You have to be good in and like math and science.
Look at PISA scores and then look at various state standardized test scores.
The US is not top in either Math or Science.
And when you drill down the the demographic breakdown Blacks and Hispanics score much lower than Whites and Asians.
Engineering (CS, EE, etc) is a hard degree to get with lots of higher level math classes and science classes.
IT is easier as it's from the College of Business and not so heavy with the Math/Science.
I'm sure Google employs both but is heavier into the Engineering degree people.
Google does not have only STEM related positions. Any company should have a sizeable support operations such as HR, Accounting, Building management, Legal team, business and risk analysts, lots of corporate paper pushers that don't need STEM degrees. Anyone with a communications degree can work in a Public relations dept or marketing team.
I believe most hiring done is 50% subjective 50% competancy. This is why good looking people often win jobs over not good looking ones and whites typically beats out other race with the same skills and capabilities.
When I became a manager, I made sure I gave minorities other than my own race a chance. I didn't hire just people of my own color I also hired whites and people of different backgrounds and gave them a chance to promote their talent.
I was greeted with a color barrier as I move higher and higher in the ranks. Often there are silent racism at play when several white managers obviously had other conversations or made decisions without managers of other races at present.
It's not going to change until more minorities get into business startups. Companies owned by minorities often hire more minorities than ones owned by whites.
I was going to say this about start ups.
When people are the majority, they don't realize how many IMPLICIT biases they hold. Even if another candidate was extremely qualified, if they are ugly then they probably wouldn't get the job compared to a more attractive candidate.
Google Says It Supports Diversity, Yet Just 2% of Its Employees Are Black.
In the workplace today, "diversity" doesn't mean just black/white. The term/policy encompasses a wide range of situations: regional and national heritage, foreign language speakers, gender, race, gay, straight, young, old, types of contractors and suppliers, etc. The workplace at Google is very diverse.
I'd be interested in seeing the demographic breakdown of the top 20% of the typical graduating classes in the computer science departments at places like Carnegie Melon, MIT, Georgia Tech, Stanford and Berkeley. Those are the type of people Google hires.
if blacks are say 17%of the population, then there should be at least 17% in every company?? or state/federal office??
how bout professional sports, should the nba be 17% ??? or do they go on merit- who best qualifies for the position?
and why isn't this racist to every other race but blacks ?? (on your premise)
At a minimum, if Google is not racist (and/or sexist), something very hypocritical is afoot here, because they have always alleged that they support diversity.
You could call the nursing profession sexist because there are so few men in it, by your reasoning. As with any quota-based criterion in matters like this, you have to consider if the "excluded" group has enough interest in being included in the particular enterprise, and enough motivation to make themselves qualified. Examining barriers to entry into a field is also important, but if you go into this kind of examination with your mind made up beforehand, you'll be able to manufacture some barriers where few or none exist. Blacks do face reduced opportunities in education, but many of these have to do with economics, poverty, some pockets of inner-city culture that doesn't prize education as much as bourgeois culture, and a host of factors beyond the control of Google. Most universities are committed to some sort of affirmative action, both in terms of student admission and hiring.
-- Furthermore, nerd-tech culture has largely been a culture of lonely white boys with poor social skills, robotic thinking, and some ethical cluelessness, and despite the financial rewards in the field, other associations with that culture aren't very attractive.
-- You also mention sexism. Larry Summers got ridden out of Harvard on a rail when he mentioned that differences in aptitude MIGHT be one factor alongside of discrimination and other factors in women's under-representation in the sciences. He was right in mentioning it, but gender politics are such that prejudice trumps facts, and he had to resign his presidency. Academic positions in science are awarded to the top scientists (as opposed to lab-tech positions), and if you look at the range of GRE scores by occupations, the highest ranges belong to the people in the hard sciences. The bell curve for male IQs is flatter than that for women-- there are more male outliers, both geniuses and developmentally impaired. Regardless of sex, the sciences tend to skim off the highest scorers, and there are more men among these than there are women. Furthermore there are lots of studies that point to gender differences in the kinds of intelligence people tend toward, though these are somewhat controversial.
-- Simplistic quota mentalities lead to lots of prejudice. Equal opportunity doesn't always lead to equal outcomes. Another example of blockhead prejudice is the 1992 American Association of University Women report on education that led to the "Raising Ophelia" cottage industry. Despite the fact that in 1992, boys had far worse outcomes in terms of dropout rates, failure to continue to higher levels of education, suicide, drug involvement, criminal outcomes, and other major life outcomes, the report's authors found that middle-school girls suffered massive assaults to their self-esteem, and came up with lots of "reasons" for their conclusion. What they didn't consider was that boys also suffered massive hits to their self-esteem, too. Early adolescence is a rough passage for all kids, and though classrooms had already become quite girl-friendly by 1992, there was a major push to make them more so, with the result that today, schoolteachers (who demographically lean to the left) instituted a kind of "You go, girl!" program of support, directed toward girls (because they're girls) and withheld from boys. Today, girls constitute 60% of college students, and smug feminists like Hannah Rosen mouth phrases like "Girls are simply better at education than boys," without mentioning the essentially discriminatory support system that prevails in American education that brought into being the current situation.
-- It's well known that testosterone is associated with violent tendencies, but what's not considered here is that testosterone is also associated with an internal violence in the experience of emotion and passion. Men's emotions kick their butts, and women who take testosterone for libido-enhancement complain about their emotions raging out of control. But today's conventional wisdom doesn't want to look at men's experience sympathetically. If it did, the "fragile male ego" would be seen as men's greater emotional vulnerability, and this would explain why men tend to repress their emotions and why patriarchal traditions counseled men to transcend their primitive passions and turn their attention to spiritual, intellectual, and moral matters. (It was men, and men in more authentically patriarchal times, who invented logic, mathematics, universities, and modern science, to name but a few.)
-- Conventional wisdoms have to round off the rough edges of reality to maintain some coherence in an infinitely complex reality. Patriarchies did it, and today's feminized conventional wisdom does it, too. Feminists devised a critique of male, sex-biased, phallocentric thinking, but didn't follow up with an equal examination of female, sex-biased, uterocentric thinking, or of its inadequacies or harmful effects. This is indeed a strange outcome for a movement that purports to be a sexual-equality movement.
-- Feminists and people in other fields affected by today's more feminized conventional wisdom have defined reality, humanity, and the criteria for equality in feminine terms, just as the patriarchs of old did in masculine terms. Authentic patriarchies tend to trivialize violence, degrade commerce and other material aspects of life, and preach the avoidance of primitive emotions and passions. In their narrow mindedness, they focused on women's power to break men by means of emotional and sexual manipulation. And patriarchal morality focused on spirituality and chastity. Today, our priorities are material and physical, and much of our ethical discourse is focused on access to material wealth, physical security, and freedom for material and physical gratification.
-- In some future century, today's conventional wisdom will be mocked in the way we mock that of the Middle Ages. The "best thinking" of the Middle Ages didn't question the fundamental assumptions of what it saw as progressive and enlightened thinking. We tend to forget that conventional wisdoms see themselves as progressive, and the Middle Ages saw itself as a civilizing advance out of primitivism, and didn't look at its own shortcomings as the causes of its problems. The same holds true today, though with different content in our notions of "progressive" and "obsolete," and we certainly aren't living in a perfect world, despite 600 years of advancing modernity.
-- Perhaps the cycle of sexual narrow-mindedness can be broken someday, but it won't happen soon.
-- Regarding race, there has been some attention paid recently to the moral issues of sexual continence and family life, and perhaps the old traditions have at least a grain of truth to them, once the excrescences are stripped away. Perhaps there would be more blacks flowing into higher education if their family lives were more stable.
-- This isn't an advocacy for a return to the past. But conventional wisdoms become conventional because they have some appeal for the people and some workability as social systems. Not all traditions are garbage, just as not all of today's conventional wisdom is garbage. It's very difficult, though, to transcend the "our age is enlightened" jingoism that has prevailed in every age.
"We’ve always been reluctant to publish numbers about the diversity of our workforce at Google. We now realize we were wrong, and that it’s time to be candid about the issues. Put simply, Google is not where we want to be when it comes to diversity, and it’s hard to address these kinds of challenges if you’re not prepared to discuss them openly, and with the facts. So, here are our numbers:"
Color me stunned at the incredibly small 2% black employment figure from a corporation that has always supported liberals and liberal politics. At a minimum, if Google is not racist (and/or sexist), something very hypocritical is afoot here, because they have always alleged that they support diversity.
Tell you what.
Go to an area math competition, science fair, robotics competition.....then go to a soccer, basketball and football camp.
Report back to me on the ethnic breakdowns of the participants that are putting in extra effort to be good at the sport or math etc.
Meanwhile, the racist NBA has about 75% of their players black?
We see study after study on the impact of historical racism, on the poorer test scores for blacks, the bad schools in the inner city, the lack of blacks in STEM and so forth......and then when a major tech company has few black employees you blame THEM for not being diverse?
Moderator cut: implicate inappropriate language...you don't even know that diversity means you hire the best available REGARDLESS of race etc. Instead you are complaining because they aren't essentially meeting a quota by not using the % of blacks that were high acheiving and in STEM fields etc. but from the general population without regard.
You could call the nursing profession sexist because there are so few men in it, by your reasoning. As with any quota-based criterion in matters like this, you have to consider if the "excluded" group has enough interest in being included in the particular enterprise, and enough motivation to make themselves qualified. Examining barriers to entry into a field is also important, but if you go into this kind of examination with your mind made up beforehand, you'll be able to manufacture some barriers where few or none exist. Blacks do face reduced opportunities in education, but many of these have to do with economics, poverty, some pockets of inner-city culture that doesn't prize education as much as bourgeois culture, and a host of factors beyond the control of Google. Most universities are committed to some sort of affirmative action, both in terms of student admission and hiring.
-- Furthermore, nerd-tech culture has largely been a culture of lonely white boys with poor social skills, robotic thinking, and some ethical cluelessness, and despite the financial rewards in the field, other associations with that culture aren't very attractive.
-- You also mention sexism. Larry Summers got ridden out of Harvard on a rail when he mentioned that differences in aptitude MIGHT be one factor alongside of discrimination and other factors in women's under-representation in the sciences. He was right in mentioning it, but gender politics are such that prejudice trumps facts, and he had to resign his presidency. Academic positions in science are awarded to the top scientists (as opposed to lab-tech positions), and if you look at the range of GRE scores by occupations, the highest ranges belong to the people in the hard sciences. The bell curve for male IQs is flatter than that for women-- there are more male outliers, both geniuses and developmentally impaired. Regardless of sex, the sciences tend to skim off the highest scorers, and there are more men among these than there are women. Furthermore there are lots of studies that point to gender differences in the kinds of intelligence people tend toward, though these are somewhat controversial.
-- Simplistic quota mentalities lead to lots of prejudice. Equal opportunity doesn't always lead to equal outcomes. Another example of blockhead prejudice is the 1992 American Association of University Women report on education that led to the "Raising Ophelia" cottage industry. Despite the fact that in 1992, boys had far worse outcomes in terms of dropout rates, failure to continue to higher levels of education, suicide, drug involvement, criminal outcomes, and other major life outcomes, the report's authors found that middle-school girls suffered massive assaults to their self-esteem, and came up with lots of "reasons" for their conclusion. What they didn't consider was that boys also suffered massive hits to their self-esteem, too. Early adolescence is a rough passage for all kids, and though classrooms had already become quite girl-friendly by 1992, there was a major push to make them more so, with the result that today, schoolteachers (who demographically lean to the left) instituted a kind of "You go, girl!" program of support, directed toward girls (because they're girls) and withheld from boys. Today, girls constitute 60% of college students, and smug feminists like Hannah Rosen mouth phrases like "Girls are simply better at education than boys," without mentioning the essentially discriminatory support system that prevails in American education that brought into being the current situation.
-- It's well known that testosterone is associated with violent tendencies, but what's not considered here is that testosterone is also associated with an internal violence in the experience of emotion and passion. Men's emotions kick their butts, and women who take testosterone for libido-enhancement complain about their emotions raging out of control. But today's conventional wisdom doesn't want to look at men's experience sympathetically. If it did, the "fragile male ego" would be seen as men's greater emotional vulnerability, and this would explain why men tend to repress their emotions and why patriarchal traditions counseled men to transcend their primitive passions and turn their attention to spiritual, intellectual, and moral matters. (It was men, and men in more authentically patriarchal times, who invented logic, mathematics, universities, and modern science, to name but a few.)
-- Conventional wisdoms have to round off the rough edges of reality to maintain some coherence in an infinitely complex reality. Patriarchies did it, and today's feminized conventional wisdom does it, too. Feminists devised a critique of male, sex-biased, phallocentric thinking, but didn't follow up with an equal examination of female, sex-biased, uterocentric thinking, or of its inadequacies or harmful effects. This is indeed a strange outcome for a movement that purports to be a sexual-equality movement.
-- Feminists and people in other fields affected by today's more feminized conventional wisdom have defined reality, humanity, and the criteria for equality in feminine terms, just as the patriarchs of old did in masculine terms. Authentic patriarchies tend to trivialize violence, degrade commerce and other material aspects of life, and preach the avoidance of primitive emotions and passions. In their narrow mindedness, they focused on women's power to break men by means of emotional and sexual manipulation. And patriarchal morality focused on spirituality and chastity. Today, our priorities are material and physical, and much of our ethical discourse is focused on access to material wealth, physical security, and freedom for material and physical gratification.
-- In some future century, today's conventional wisdom will be mocked in the way we mock that of the Middle Ages. The "best thinking" of the Middle Ages didn't question the fundamental assumptions of what it saw as progressive and enlightened thinking. We tend to forget that conventional wisdoms see themselves as progressive, and the Middle Ages saw itself as a civilizing advance out of primitivism, and didn't look at its own shortcomings as the causes of its problems. The same holds true today, though with different content in our notions of "progressive" and "obsolete," and we certainly aren't living in a perfect world, despite 600 years of advancing modernity.
-- Perhaps the cycle of sexual narrow-mindedness can be broken someday, but it won't happen soon.
-- Regarding race, there has been some attention paid recently to the moral issues of sexual continence and family life, and perhaps the old traditions have at least a grain of truth to them, once the excrescences are stripped away. Perhaps there would be more blacks flowing into higher education if their family lives were more stable.
-- This isn't an advocacy for a return to the past. But conventional wisdoms become conventional because they have some appeal for the people and some workability as social systems. Not all traditions are garbage, just as not all of today's conventional wisdom is garbage. It's very difficult, though, to transcend the "our age is enlightened" jingoism that has prevailed in every age.
Moderator cut: Inappropriate, such comments should only be made in a DM
My point remains that if you say you support something, such as diversity, it would be wise to have it reflected in your actions (behavior). Otherwise, if a revelation is made that indicates you could well be saying one thing but doing something else, people may rightly think that the maker of the fealty pledge is but a pure hypocrite.
My point remains that if you say you support something, such as diversity, it would be wise to have it reflected in your actions (behavior). Otherwise, if a revelation is made that indicates you could well be saying one thing but doing something else, people may rightly think that the maker of the fealty pledge is but a pure hypocrite.
Ok, let me condense that Moderator cut for you:
If blacks make up 15% of the US population but social, economic and cultural forces lead only 2% to entertain a degree in a tech field ,it's stupid to expect a company like google to be closer to 15% than to the 2% number.
Last edited by Oldhag1; 05-30-2014 at 02:12 PM..
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