Silicon Valley, Seeking Diversity, Focuses on Blacks

Silicon Valley has been engulfed in a diversity debate for more than a year, in part because data released by giant tech companies like Google, Facebook and others showed how overwhelmingly tilted the population of tech workers is to white males. The data highlighted that the low number of African-American tech workers is particularly acute, worse than even the dearth of women and Hispanics in the industry.

According to the United States Census Bureau, African-Americans and Hispanics have been consistently underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) occupations. In 2011, blacks represented 11 percent of the total work force but only 6 percent of STEM workers. Hispanics were 15 percent of the total work force and 7 percent of STEM workers. The figures released by the tech companies have led to a flurry of initiatives to address the issue. The idea with all of the new efforts is to create a generation of black entrepreneurial “uploaders” — those who create profit-making apps instead of simply downloading them.