“Jesse Jackson called on the Obama administration Monday to scrutinize the tech industry’s lack of diversity,” Wendy Koch reports for USA Today. “‘The government has a role to play’ in ensuring that women and minorities are fairly represented in the tech workforce, Jackson told a USA TODAY editorial board meeting. He said the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission needs to examine Silicon Valley’s employment contracts.”
“‘There’s no talent shortage. There’s an opportunity shortage,’ he said, calling Silicon Valley’s record ‘far worse’ than many others such as car makers that have been pressured by unions,” Koch reports. “Jackson has lobbied nearly two dozen tech companies to disclose hiring data, and about a dozen have done so. The result is sobering: Men make up 62% to 70% of the staffs of Twitter, Google, Facebook and LinkedIn while whites and Asians comprise 88% to 91%, according to company data released in the last two months.”
“‘This is the next step in the civil rights movement,’ Jackson said, noting minorities represent a sizable share of consumers but not workers,” Koch reports. “He said it’s bad business not to include them. Of Twitter’s U.S. employees, only 3% are Hispanic and 5% black, but those groups along with Asian Americans account for 41% of its U.S. users. Pandora and eBay will soon release their hiring data, and Apple has said it will also do so but didn’t specify when, according to Butch Wing, a national political coordinator at the Rainbow Push Coalition, an advocacy group founded by Jackson.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: What’s the logic for the demographic breakdown of electronics consumers to be echoed in the electronics company’s employment demographics? We fail to see the correlation.
Let’s change the scenario to test the soundness of Jackson’s “logic” with the following: Roughly 60% of the NBA ticket buyers are caucasian. Using Jackson’s logic, he should demand that of the five players each NBA team puts on the court, three of them should be white guys. However, the NBA instead seems to be saying that the teams should simply put the best players they possibly can in the game. After all, that’s what results in the best possible product for consumers.
So, Jackson’s “logic” is illogical. There’s no sound basis for the demographic breakdown of electronics consumers to be echoed in the electronics company’s employment demographics.
Diversity is good, but getting the absolute best would seem to be the better goal. Forced diversity carries its own set of problems. Would the group be comprised of the best-qualifed people possible or would it be designed to hit pre-defined quotas? Would some [employees], consciously or unconsciously, consider certain [employees], or even themselves, to be tokens meant to fill a quota?
This could also work in Apple’s and other company’s favor. Truly looking at qualified people from a larger pool could result in delivering different viewpoints and new ways of looking at things and tackling problems than a more homogenized [workforce] would be capable of delivering.
Regardless and of course, someday it would be nice for everyone to just be able to look at a group and only see people, not skin color and/or gender.
Related articles:
Tim Cook: Apple will release diversity data ‘at some point’ – July 9, 2014
Jesse Jackson targets tech’s lack of diversity; sends letter to Apple, Google, HP, others – March 19, 2014
U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. blames Apple iPad for killing thousands of American jobs – April 16, 2011
And the ass-hat of the day award for the 1456th time goes to…..JESSE!
Dad succeeded in spawning a son cut filling his shoes admirably:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Jackson,_Jr.
To Jesse Jackson, apparently, Asians aren’t a minority.
guess uncle jesse has never been to china if he thinks asians are a minority. apple’s market is global. that’s the rainbow coalition’s problem. vision through a soda straw. at least it as rainbow stripes.
diversity by the numbers is a game to keep the downtrodden riled up. if you have competency, you don’t need a “quota” boost.
Asians value education and productively advancing themselves. They don’t need Jesse.
I want to know who’s going to investigate why there’s no white guys playing basketball! Maybe because the best are out on the floor. Give this race-baiting shit up already.
I think there are other problems that need attention than that stupid crap….
Eternal perpetual babbler
I wish Jesse Jackson would read “Please Stop Helping Me” and realize that all these heavy handed, top down tactics have hurt the African American’s community to stand on its own.
Lol really? Did it say blacks were better under slavery too, under their compassionate masters who took care of their every need? Please.
g, spot on….
But did it say Jesse freed the slaves?
No (you just couldn’t find another way to represent the White Left).
Can’t wait to see the comments on this one…
Comments? Pavlov’s dogs. I’ve seen enough.
Nice take MDN.
Jesse is a racist.
Yup.
The Number One Most Racist Man in America.
Guess he is a little short of cash years later after shaking down Denny’s, et al.
Poverty pimp.
Jackson is a race hustler, looking to make a quick buck! He and sharpton maintain their lifestyles from this practice. The country is going to hell in a hand basket!
More accurately, he is a shakedown artist. This was well-documented in Kenneth Timmerman’s book “Shakedown: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson”.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/shakedown/id593444684?mt=11
This man is one of the problems with Black America. However, he has been appointed spokesman for Black causes by the powers to be.
There us definitely more tech companies can do to increase minority employment. I worked in that industry for years and found it was a continual struggle to get more emphasis on minority outreach and hiring.
Lack of diversity? Now we need to have quotas on who designs and engineers our products? How about hiring the best of the best and forget about color! If 100 blacks are the best of the best, hire them! If 100 American Indians are the best of the best, hire them! If 100 Asians are the best of the best, hire them! If 100 whites are the best of the best, hire them! Jesse Jackson the Adulterer’s very reason for being depends on race-baiting. He needs to STHU!
You are exactly right, iMaki. Jessie Jackson merely noted that the world hasn’t paid him any attention for a month or so and wanted the limelight back himself. Everyone should just ignore him.
Clearly, young black kids tend to gravitate towards different interests than white and asian kids. Those interests prime them for their utility later in life. Ergo, today we have a disproportionate representation of blacks in the NBA. No one in their right mind complains that the NBA is biased against whites.
If the black community doesn’t like the fact that too few people of color are in software engineers in Silicon Valley, they can go out onto the streets and drag their kids off the basketball hoops and sit them down in front of books on technology.
Taking Jackson’s logic to its logical conclusion, the federal government should investigate the obvious racial profiling going on with criminal trials related to multi-million-dollar corporate embezzlement cases. Balding, middle-aged, overweight white males are overwhelmingly disproportionately represented amongst those convicted of that crime. This can only be the product of racism.