Dear tech companies: what does Juneteenth mean to you?

A message from our CEO, Dwana Franklin-Davis.

Since 1865, Juneteenth (June 19th) has been a day of celebration commemorating the end of slavery. For as long as I can remember, that celebration has largely stayed within the Black community. As the Black Lives Matter movement reaches new heights, we’ve seen corporations make acts of solidarity with the Black community through initiatives, donations, and statements. This year, some companies have decided to treat Juneteenth as a holiday.

While it’s great to see companies acknowledge Black culture, it’s not enough when so many of them employ so few Black people.

I’m all for celebration and acknowledgement of this day, but I urge the tech sector to think about Juneteenth as more than another day off or a new three day weekend. Let’s use this day of celebration as an opportunity to make an ongoing commitment to the Black community. Companies have the power to be intentional about their approach to racial equity, today, tomorrow, over one year, or over ten years. You don’t have to do all five of these tomorrow, but pick one to start with (if you haven’t started already):

• Evaluate the impact of your CSR programs. Ask the grantmaking arm of your company to examine organizational investments. How do they support racial equity? Can you track the impact of these programs to see what the impact looks like? Our Metrics Dashboard is tailored to women in tech, but you can use it to guide your own internal reflection about both race and gender.
• Push for disaggregated data. Do you know how many Black people your company interviews at every level? How many of them receive offers of full-time employment, and how many accept? How does your company’s retention rate differ by race and gender? This disaggregated data is critical, especially as companies develop unique interventions that account for the intersectional struggle that impacts Black women (and all women of color) specifically.
• Work with talent acquisition teams on diverse hiring slates. If your company is hiring, insist on a diverse pool of candidates. Requiring diverse slates of candidates helps to reduce the implicit and unconscious biases that can come into play during interviews. It’s also an important signal to employees and interviewees that racial equity is a core priority
• Account for pay discrepancies. Take a long, honest look at pay discrepancies between Black employees and non-Black employees. If they exist, dig deeper. These pay discrepancies should be thoroughly interrogated.
• Give your leadership team some homework. There are a lot of conversations about what to read and consume right now. Go beyond the social media suggestions and assign some reading that is specifically relevant to your organization and your equity programs. For us at Reboot, that might include this Intersectionality 101 essay from Jennifer Kim or Kimberlé Crenshaw’s TED Talk. Make your shared reading specific to your work to make it lasting.

A day off is just the beginning. We still have work to do and we must remain committed to showing up for the Black community. Let’s not think of Juneteenth as just a holiday, but as an opportunity to reflect and rejoice on the contributions the Black community has made to society. If you’re not using this day to reflect honestly on how you actively support racial equity and planning to improve your support of the Black community going forward, you’re not doing it right.