A Look at Big Tech & Corporate America’s Pledge to Change
By Donna Lecky & Katherine Johnson
The 2020 #BlackLivesMatter Movement sparked momentum among big tech & corporate America to pledge to address inequalities in their industry through promising to support black workers, organizations, and companies by making investments, donations, and hiring pledges. Fast Company’s (‘FC’) article, 1 year, $3.8 Billion Later: How 2020’s Race Reckoning Shook Up Big Tech, combined a survey conducted by The Plug on 42 large US-based tech companies and interviews with Black Americans in the industry to examine whether or not significant change was accomplished. They found that, while some progress was made, it is still uncertain whether the tech industry is actually committed to change or it just leveraged Black individuals for a good PR moment. But one thing is for sure, Black founders and industry professionals do not plan on staying silent any longer on racial discrimination. Let’s dive in!
Although the commitments of firms made to promote Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion have provided some glimmer of hope, such as increased funding to black founders ($129M in Q1 2020 to $1.2B in Q1 2021) and additional transparency in diversifying companies, an analysis of the numbers reveals that more could be done. Let’s start with the sum of donations. Tech giants poured a total of $3.8B into DEI initiatives. Microsoft committed the most out of the firms, $772.5 million. However, in context, that is equivalent to 5 days of profit for the company. Despite these funds, the percentage of black employees at the big five tech firms (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google) has remained stagnant since 2017, with little to no improvement. For example, there are 9% black employees in the total workforce for Apple, 6% in tech roles, and 3% in leadership roles. What about policy shifts? FC’s survey asked the 42 companies when they established mandatory anti-racist training for their employees. A whopping 48% claimed that they do not have any sort of mandatory training or have declined to respond. At the same time, 30% claimed that the events of 2021 changed their answer from a no to a yes.
Furthermore, donations do not directly correlate with shifts in attitude, policy, and action. They aren’t enough by any means for big tech firms to solve the deep-rooted racism and inequality in corporate America. Corporations must work to implement fundamental changes, such as shedding light on the systemic racism in the corporate ecosystem and workplace, disbanding of unfair practices, and hiring and advancing more Black Americans.
Many Black founders and industry professionals have taken matters into their own hands and are speaking out and taking action. Lawrence Humphry, a design consultant & strategist at IBM, started Tech Can Do Better to help companies address systemic racism & inequities in the tech industry. The sheer number of whistleblowers exposing companies’ discriminatory practices has increased substantially in the last few years. Ifeoma Ozoma, former Pinterest public-policy manager who went public with allegations of race & gender discrimination, lobbied for a California Bill to release workers who have been discriminated against to remove them from their nondisclosure agreements. This past April, 2021, a federal jury granted $11.1M to an employee who accused IBM of race discrimination and retaliation. As Rhett Linsey, a former Facebook employee and Founder & CEO of SIIMEE, stated, “It takes people standing in their truth and shedding light on the disconnect that’s happening for there to be true change.”
