Category: Racism is Alive and Well

The blank page mocks me.

I had been working on a piece about the Ferguson riots. I’ve decided that all of it has been said, I have nothing new to offer.

I’ve been following the metamorphosis of the protests with interest. It’s been fascinating to see the “Call for Justice for Michael Brown” change into a generic indictment of racism in America, to specific finger pointing saying that White People are the problem with this country.

I’m amused that the protesters fail to see the irony in their calls for an end to racism while simultaneously screaming “Down with Whitey”

In the past six days I’ve seen some of the most racist comments I’ve ever seen. Oddly, those comments were leveled at white people typically by nonwhite people.

The exchange to the right is the most benign of the bunch. I had to point out that if Nicole He were a white man, She’d already have been fired from her job at Kickstarter.

This is representative of the double standard. I wonder if we can start a meme called #minorityprivilege or would that be racist?

This page still mocks me…

It’s only fair, right? After all White folks MUST be punished for their hard work and success.

All you young white males out there.  GIVE UP! You’re fucked!

Learn to drive that forklift, and don’t forget Military Careers are gone now too.

Whatever you do, you’re not going to be allowed to work in technology firms anymore. Probably should look at leaving this country too. I hear the Russians, Germans, & Chinese, are looking for skilled technology workers.

Here’s the deal. During the past few months, Silicon Valley has been called upon to release “Diversity” reports and BIG surprise… Those reports are showing that overwhelmingly White Males, followed by folks from Asia, are at the top of the food chain in technology.

The latest report is from Twitter.

Honestly I don’t find this at all surprising. I noticed a long time ago that the Captains of industry were predominantly white. It actually makes a kind of sense. The civil rights movement was in full swing only 50 years ago.

If you factor in the time needed to improve and integrate the schools, and make sure that black kids had all the same opportunities that white kids had then get the black kids interested in education and prepare them for college… You still come up short. You have folks especially in the early years that simply couldn’t afford college so they didn’t go. Plus you had a mind set in the black community that wasn’t educationally focused. Those issues take time to fix. 

Figure that you lose 15 to 20 years while minds, beliefs, and financial issues get taken care of. Which leaves you with a good 30 or so years during which black kids were being educated right along side white kids. Then hopefully moving on to college. Which means that two maybe four groups of black kids have been educated start to finish through college, with all the same opportunities as white kids. So now they’re waiting in the wings to move up the corporate ladder.

Except that no-one is moving up the corporate ladder except H1B1 Visa holders. That’s another issue entirely.

Then along comes Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton demanding to know why there aren’t more black faces in the pages of Forbes. 

Well, looking at President Obama’s management style perhaps we can see why there aren’t more African Americans in management. Having some experience with a supervisor who was far more interested in not rocking the boat and doing anything to keep peace, I can tell you, this isn’t the way to promotions. In any business situation, sometimes you have to take risks, and stand up for what you believe in. Not taking risks or maintaining peace at any price, makes you anything but management material.

It also tends to cause a lot of turnover in employees working for that supervisor.

Some employees have goals and want to move up the corporate ladder.  They can’t do that under a milquetoast supervisor because in addition to keeping peace at any price, this kind of supervisor also limits upper management’s view of their employees, Typically the supervisor takes all the credit for good work, and hangs an employee out to dry if a project or other work goes bad.

Lots of employee turnover tends to limit how far up the corporate ladder this type of supervisor can go. Which suggests management classes may be in order for African American supervisors and certainly for President Obama.

I don’t think this bad management style is a personal style choice, I think it’s endemic to most African American managers. I can only assume it’s a style born out of fear of losing a hard won job, there’s probably a psychology paper in there somewhere.

Which brings me back on point.

There aren’t that many African Americans in upper management for a couple of reasons.

1 Poor management style limits access to higher management responsibilities.

2 We’re still waiting for seasoned African Americans to come up through the ranks from entry level positions to upper management.

The two issues are inter-related but I think, subtly different.

These diversity reports are going slam midlevel white male workers the hardest. Regardless of these workers qualifications, they’re going to lose out to institutional racism.

The equation is simple, businesses fear bad publicity. Bad Publicity hurts the bottom line and so must be avoided at all costs. Even if the cost is hiring people who are not qualified for a job. It makes good business sense to isolate someone from management decisions and pay them a salary to look pretty, if their presence spares the company bad publicity.

It even makes sense to hire a lot of people who are unqualified or barely qualified for a series of jobs peppered throughout departments to make your diversity numbers look better. Some of the barely qualified folks will catch on and become good employees. The rest, a company takes as a write-off in productivity.

All of which means, White Males aren’t going to get tech jobs for the foreseeable future.