Minority In Tech

Before I go into this, I want you to understand that this is not an attack on minorities, nor am I defending large technology companies that I mention below. I am just giving my perspective on a hot topic right now that I am passionate about.

I am a 28-year-old African-American man who works for a well-known technology company in Orange County, California. I've been the minority in many situations and for most of my life (at school, at work, friends, etc.) and at a certain point; I just didn't pay much attention to it anymore. Then over the last few months, diversity reports were released from major technology companies like Apple, Facebook, Google and others that were pretty eye opening, but for me, for the reason one might think.

The reports show that many of the big technology companies, mainly the ones mentioned above, have a very low percentage of minority (African American and Hispanic) employees. If you look closer at the information, you will see that Apple does have a great number of minority employees, but only at 7% and that does also include their retails stores – something the others do not have. It would be easy for a person to look at this data and assume that technology companies, especially in Silicon Valley, are not hiring minorities and pull out the race card. But before you reach into your back pocket to grab that out, think about it for a minute. This is an issue that starts well before the hiring process. Yes, there are some employers that will only hiring from certain Ivy-league colleges, but there are plenty who try to remain fair and open-minded; primarily by focusing their hiring decisions on “the most qualified” candidates. However, the issue stems back to many things such as a person’s motivating factors, which they may have experienced in their early life (i.e., education, household income, family values).

I grew up in metro Detroit, went to public school all my life, and continued my undergrad at Rochester College, a Christian college in the area. I went to school for Communications as well as Radio Broadcast ultimately to work in Marketing. Shortly after I graduated in 2013, I moved to California so that I could expand my marketing credits and get out of my comfort zone of living in Detroit. The point of this story is to let you know that I had a vision for my life, and I was not going to allow any shortcomings or setbacks that anybody or society put on me. As I mentioned before, I stopped worrying about being a minority a long time ago.

While I was in school, I knew the importance of STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics), and I was able to find motivation within my own world to better myself so there would be no excuses. Unless you are an actor, there are no jobs out there that are specifically asking for black people, and why would you want a job like that? I would rather not get hired because I’m black than to get hired because I am. That’s why affirmative action never worked.

I’ve had many conversations on this topic with a good friend of mine who works in technology for Sony Pictures in Los Angeles. He has been in the technology industry for as near as makes no difference, 10 years. He, himself a young African-American man, has continued to work hard and find motivation within his life. And according to Diverse Education, that makes him one of the 17% of African Americans employed over the age of 25 with a degree in STEM. But also, let’s take it a further step back — African Americans and Latinos are generally underrepresented in higher education. Simple math will show that if we increase the rate of STEM graduates for African Americans and Latinos to that of Asian American for science and engineering that alone will increase the rate by 48,000 new STEM graduates per year. Simple enough, right?

The question remains, why are minorities not going into college for STEM in the first place? Is it a lack of example or motivation? Or the problem could just simply be some minorities are not afforded the same education as others when it comes to science and mathematics and that hinders them from going forward. A little research shows that many of them have the same desire as others to go to college for STEM at the same rate as White and Asian American students.

Last week, I read this amazing roundtable interview in Fast Company that really hones in on my point here. We have to continue to peel back the layers and really see what the root of the problem is. Yes, sometimes it can be laziness, but often times it’s something else. Sometimes, minorities are not being prepared enough in life. Not everyone has the same upbringing as myself or my friend does in life, but we all can work together to help fix this problem to have the most diverse workplace as possible.