Companies, not just Google, seem to have a real blind spot here, insofar as they seem to think they can just wait for Harvard or Stanford to graduate more Black students with the degrees they want. A lot of the Black people they want to hire are at HBCUs. Many upper middle class Black people—the folks whose kids had access to technology to tinker with growing up, just like the upper middle class white and asian people who make up much of Google’s workforce—attended HBCUs. And their kids want to go to HBCUs, both to be in a supportive environment but also out of a sense of contributing their economic and social capital to a primarily Black college or university. (Obviously this doesn’t describe all Black people. But it describes a very large group of Black people, and is something that has no analog among white or Asian people. I myself was totally unaware of this dynamic until moving to an area with a lot of affluent Black people.) If companies cared about equity, they should be lining up to hire from HBCUs.
Re: Google’s approach to Black schools explains why there's few Black engs in Tech
#11Some more context: https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/31/business/google-hbcus/index.h.... The allegations about Google discriminating against graduates of HBCUs are deeply troubling. For historical, cultural, and political reasons, HBCU’s are a cornerstone of both economic mobility for lower income Black people, as well as the maintenance of economic and social capital among upper income Black people: https://cmsi.gse.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/EMreport_R4....