Silicon Valley Innovation

Technology is supposed to be about innovation, opportunity and inclusion, but, sadly, patterns of exclusion remain the order of the day. 

In fact, the tech industry is perhaps America's worst industry when it comes to inclusion and diversity.

Rainbow Push, has brought this message to the industry through direct participation and speaking at the shareholder meetings of HP, eBay, Facebook and Google. 

What it has been saying is that Silicon Valley is America's valley: built through American R&D, American education, American tax credits and tax havens. It should reflect America's best values and principles.

It also focused on the hard data documenting the race and gender composition of the tech industry's workforce, challenging an industry that staunchly resisted efforts to reveal data about minority participation in the industry. 

In 2010 and 2013, major technology companies successfully went to court to prevent the release of such data.

Since Rainbow Push launched its digital connections initiative in March of this year, these same companies, including Google, Apple, Linkedin, Yahoo, Salesforce and Pandora, have now released it.

The facts don't lie: black people comprise just 1–2% of the tech workforce of most companies, Latinos just 2–4%. Women lag far behind men. 

We have gone from resistance to release, creating an unprecedented climate of transparency. The industry is now facing up to the sobering facts on inclusion and diversity and moving to change them.

African Americans and other non-white Americans consume more technology than the average American but are under-represented in the boardrooms. 

They are under-represented in the participation in bond offerings and IPOs and in professional service firms in accounting, advertising and legal services.

Note:  While I have nothing against those people mentioned in the above paragraph, neither I or apparently they have the proper credentials to sit in the chairs in these boardrooms.  And, if I did have these credentials, I would still have to be asked and still have to be motivated enough to accept.  I am not willing to compromise my ethics, principles, integrity, and morals to sit in those chairs or any other chair made available by Corporate America…  at least not any time soon and not in this lifetime.  Representation leads to being put in a position to make “bottom line” decisions that very often has little to do with doing what is right or honorable.