Google Allegedly Canceled Diversity Projects to Appease Conservatives

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You might have heard of this saying before. It’s often credited as an old German saying, though the jury’s out on whether or not it’s actually an old German saying. It’s become more prevalent since 2016, for one reason or another. In English, it’s something like this:

If you have a table with one Nazi and ten people talking to that Nazi, you have a table with 11 Nazis.

The idea is that, by accepting extremism, you permit it to exist. By not fighting against that extremism, you provide a platform for it. You support it. By not choosing a side, you’ve chosen a side. Extremists rely on the silence of those who aren’t their direct targets. They can’t cause the harm they seek if their group is dwarfed by those who stand up for their targets for hate and harassment.

When the far-right criticized Google, they had a choice. Stand tall against hate, or side with it. According to employees at Google, the company chose the latter. Google canceled diversity projects made to amplify minorities within the company to appeal to conservatives.

At Google, hate won.

Cut Diversity Programs

In a report from NBC News, seven current and former Google employees spoke out about the death of diversity and inclusion programs at Google. They spoke under anonymity, to help protect their current and future careers. After all, Google has fired people for speaking out against sexism, racism, homophobia, and transphobia at the company before. Others in the tech industry may be slower to hire people willing to speak up about these issues, as they know their own workplaces are far from diverse. These stories were all individually corroborated through NBC News.

Death of Sojourn

Sojourn was a popular diversity initiative at Google. The program helped new and existing employees learn about racial injustice as well as biases, both intentional and unconscious biases, that exist in the workplace. This discussed issues in hiring, promotion, pay, and equal treatment.

In 2018, Google seemed to be dialing back on diversity and inclusion in a number of ways. This was after James Damore’s sexist and racist screed went viral, and after an alt-right backlash to their diversity programs, including Damore’s now dropped lawsuit against the company. 2018 was the last year that any Google employees took part in the Sojourn program. In 2019, Google canceled it completely, a fact that Google has confirmed.

Google claims they canceled Sojourn because it dealt with racial injustice issues that are primarily seen in the United States. Instead of tailoring the program for individual countries’ biases, such as racial, religious, and sexist biases existing in many cultures around the world, Google canceled it. Their reasoning that this was U.S.-centric and therefore didn’t carry global importance is easy to see through. A vast majority of Google’s employees are situated in the United States, and diversity programs are easy to adapt. Teaching people not to think someone is worth less or capable of less than they are because they’re different isn’t rocket science. It’s basic empathy.

Outsourced Diversity and Inclusion

Google once had dedicated, full-time employees planning and organizing diversity and inclusion events at the company. They were also involved in policy making and training, to ensure Google was a safe working environment for everyone. However, Google reduced this workfroce down to nothing. These full-time positions became part-time, then contracted work, and finally eliminated from the company completely.

Now, Google’s using a company called Ibis consulting. Google claims they didn’t have the internal capacity to maintain their domestic and international diversity programs. The company, which rakes in over $10 billion in revenue each year and has tens of thousands of employees couldn’t find the capacity to expand diversity and inclusion efforts. So they contracted Ibis consulting, a company with just 10 employees.

For a company the size of Google, Ibis Consulting seems like a cop-out. They could easily tailor their diversity and inclusion efforts internally, however, they’re using a small external firm. However, they’re not the only ones. Ibis Consulting’s clients also include Microsoft and Intel.

It needs to be said that companies like Ibis Consulting, who help companies improve race relations and recognize bias, are incredibly useful. However, a company like Google, with the size, capital, and existing programs that Google had, does not need such a service, or, rather, does not need to use only that service. It’s possible that they found their own diversity and inclusion efforts insufficient, but that’s a reason to use Ibis Consulting to work with your internal diversity and inclusion groups, not in place of them.

Canceled Events

“A hundred black employees could testify to the pain they feel in a climate that’s inadvertently hostile towards them and management will go back and say, ‘I need to get more data,’ and then three angry white men complain and everything comes to a halt.”

– A Google employee responsible for organizing an event about racism and bias

Google’s black employees make up about 3.3% of their total workforce. That’s not very much. However, if every one, or even a majority of them, claim there is a problem with racism at the company, it’s exceedingly clear that the problems are pervasive.

Google canceled an event to help white Googlers better navigate discussions around race. The idea was it would help educate these Google employees about privilege and biases. Breitbart, a right-wing propaganda site, accused Google of breaking its own policies by singling out white people. Of course, you could just do the same thing by saying it’s an event for those who have not faced prejudice and hardship due to their race to understand those who have. The division would be the same. But as a person involved with the event joked, “white fragility shuts down discussions of white fragility.”

“D&I,” Not “Diversity and Inclusion”

One former Googler claimed they were at a meeting in mid-2018, where they were instructed to no longer use the word “diversity” in official communications. This was a few months after Damore’s screed went viral and a number of far-right voices, both inside and outside of Google, came to his defense. Director-level and above Googlers were to only use “D&I,” which stands for “Diversity and Inclusion.” However, by calling it “D&I,” it diminishes the importance of the tasks, as well as their goals. It’s the idea behind 1984’s Newspeak, removing emotion behind communication to limit its impact, and it’s double-plus ungood.

This was a first step towards phasing out these programs altogether.

New Programs Focus On Withstanding Racism

Employees report that new programs within Google aren’t about stopping racism, reducing prejudice, or fighting bias. Instead, they’re about “how black people can navigate racism in the workplace,” according to an employee at Google. Rather than fight the problem, Google’s telling people they just have to put up with it.

Diversity Improvement, But Not Enough

Less than 10% of Google’s workforce is black or Latino. In fact, around 3.3% of their employees are black. These numbers have improved over an extremely small margin over the past year, but they’ve also gotten worse in other areas. It seems every year, Google improves in small areas, but makes cutbacks in others. The only consistent demographics at Google are White and Asian men. New hires of black employees grew 2018 to 2019, but new hires of Latino employees dropped over the same time period.

Google just can’t seem to leave their consistent demographic behind. Without diversity and inclusion training that educates employees about unconscious bias, they have no hope of fighting the unconscious biases that keep people of color, women, and LGBTQ people out of even entry level positions, let alone management.

Tech’s Problem

I’m a female software engineer, and I have a few friends who are as well. We often talk about companies to avoid, or specific managers who were problematic when job hunting. For some time now, Google has been on our list of companies to avoid. A long culture of sexism and clear racial biases make the company unattractive. Still, for a time, it looked like Google was grappling with its own biases, and would make improvements. They fired James Damore, which should have been a turning point. However, from there, they fired people who spoke out against alt-right harassment, sexual harassment, and sexual abusers receiving large sums of money from the company. They fired women and POC who spoke out about closed arbitration for issues of sexual harassment or racial bias.

But Google’s not alone. Many companies in tech suffer from insufferable people, rife with sexism and racism. Often it’s minuscule, small biases that add up. Lacking any women in engineering management, or having no POC in roles of management. It comes from being incapable of recognizing internalized biases and favoritism towards one’s own social group. Education programs like Sojourn were vital for improving culture at Google, who could have lead the way for many other companies in tech. Instead, Google killed it. They fired or pushed out people who complained about dying diversity and inclusion programs. Google chose to make their company less inclusive, and the pattern couldn’t be more clear.

The National Labor Relations Board is currently investigating Google for firing four employees last year. The Chief Diversity Officer left the company last year as well. Numerous employees have left over sexism and racism, and some left after facing retaliation for complaining about harassment. Seemingly, Google has leaned into their most negative attributes, instead of fighting to change them.

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Sources:

• April Glaser, NBC News
• Tristan Greene, The Next Web
• Nicholas Reimann, Forbes
• Maya Shwayder, Digital Trends
• Tyler Sonnemaker, Business Insider