Congressional Black Caucus Begs Apple For Its 'Trade Secret' Racial Data

theodp writes: In Silicon Valley this week, Rep. Barbara Lee called on Apple and other holdouts among the nation's tech companies to release federal data on the diversity of their work forces. She was with other members of the Congressional Black Caucus to turn up the heat on the tech industry to hire more African Americans. "If they believe in inclusion," said Lee, "they have to release the data so the public knows that they are being transparent and that they are committed to doing the right thing." Apple has refused to make public the EEO-1 data that it routinely supplies to the U.S. Dept. of Labor on the demographics of their workers. In the absence of the race and gender data, which Apple and others historically argued were 'trade secrets' and thus not subject to release Freedom of Information requests, tech companies were free to make unchecked claims about their Black employee ranks (Google's 2007 Congressional testimony) until recent disclosures revealed otherwise. The National Science Foundation was even convinced to redirect NSF grant money specifically earmarked for getting African American boys into the computer science pipeline to a PR campaign for high school girls of all colors and economic backgrounds.

Comments

invalid data

[swell]

I worked for Apple for a time. And many other companies. I never revealed my race on those forms and I don't know of anyone who did. I doubt there are any valid statistics to be found.

Re:invalid data

[alvinrod]

Because it is of no benefit for Apple to release it. The only people who care about this data just want to use it to harangue Apple for not conforming to some predetermined standard of workforce racial distribution. Sure, "trade secret" is a bullshit reason, but the reason for wanting the data is just as bullshit, so it's only fair.

Re:invalid data

[cavreader]

Race is the most meaningless metric of all when it comes to evaluating an ideal workforce. The last thing minority activists want is for competence to become the deciding factor when determining who to hire. If competence can be overridden by the color of someones skin than that only bolsters the idea that there are inferior races that need to be graded on a different scale. And justifying a bias based on race to make up for some historical wrongdoing just perpetuates injustice. Why should someone today accept reverse discrimination for the actions of others hundreds of years ago? And releasing data to be "fair" begs the question of who judges what is fair and what is not? Standing around waiting for the world to be fair will only guarantee failure propped up by an appalling entitlement complex.

WTF

[drinkypoo]

Apple has refused to make public the EEO-1 data that it routinely supplies to the U.S. Dept. of Labor on the demographics of their workers.

How is this even a thing? Why are these filings not required to be public? We can't figure out if the government is doing its job (in this case, tracking this information) without public disclosure so we can follow up.

Re:WTF

[quantaman]

Apple has refused to make public the EEO-1 data that it routinely supplies to the U.S. Dept. of Labor on the demographics of their workers.

How is this even a thing? Why are these filings not required to be public? We can't figure out if the government is doing its job (in this case, tracking this information) without public disclosure so we can follow up.

So your argument is we should get to see a company's private information so we can tell if the government is doing a good job in obtaining the company's private information?

That strikes me as somewhat dubious.

I'll say that I do think there's a problem but I don't think it's Apple's fault and I don't like forcing them to reveal their demographic information for the purpose of a public round of shaming.

It's pretty obvious that all the tech companies are trying to increase diversity but the talent simply doesn't exist in the industry. There needs to be more minority and female students taking computing science in university, which means better recruitment for girls coming out of high school and better schools for minorities in general.

Re:WTF

[Gravis Zero]

It's pretty obvious that all the tech companies are trying to increase diversity but the talent simply doesn't exist in the industry. There needs to be more minority and female students taking computing science in university, which means better recruitment for girls coming out of high school and better schools for minorities in general.

but why do there need to be more minorities and females in IT? forced diversity is blatant prejudice.

Diversity? Of the CBC?

[bradley13]

The CBC, of course, has openly stated that they refuse entrance to people of other races. So their diversity is exactly zero.

Get rid of protection to increase diversity

[trout007]

The quickest way to increase diversity is to get rid of discrimination protection. It is very risky to hire someone from a protected group. If they are not a good fit for the company there is a substantial legal risk to firing them and overhead for carefully creating a paper trail to CYA. It is much easier to hire people from non-protective groups. If they don't work out you fire them and try someone else. Of course for businesses they like the H1-B's the most because if you fire them they get deported which really puts them in a position of power.

God damnit

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

Stop it with this stupid "diversity" crap already. Not everyone is predisposed to like doing the same thing. It varies by race, sex, beliefs, interests, etc. Asking or even forcing the tech industry to have the same numbers of white/black/asian/etc and 50/50 male/female employes is just incredibly dumb and short-sighted.

Why are women under-represented in construction yards? Why is there a lack of men in nurses and flight attendants jobs? You will find discrepancies like that in all domains. Some are due to male chauvinism but for the most part I think women, in general, are more interested in particular types of jobs and the same goes for men. It's not about inequalities, it's just life. Get over it.

Complaining about diversity is like women complaining that guys prefer blondes or men complaining that women don't like their fat ass. Everyone is different, the population of the planet doesn't come from a dozen pre-made moulds to help you sort them all in neat little boxes afterward.

Re:WTF Not Prejudice, Discrimination.

[Technician]

Using the definition of Discrimination, that needs to be called out for what it really is.
This Affirmative Action is by the action and expectations, is Discrimination based on race and gender. Get it right.

We need to end all discrimination.

All lives matter is correct.
All black lives matter is discriminatory because it is race based discriminatory protection by race.

United Negro College Fund is openly Discriminatory. It does by name and action, discriminate by race. Why are we allowing intentional race discrimination.
Affirmative Action is openly Discriminatory. It does by name and action, discriminate by race and gender. Why are we allowing intentional race and gender discrimination.
How long would a United Caucasian College Fund be allowed to exist if it's charter and campaign was exactly the same as the United Negro College Fund?

Help call out and end All race and gender discrimination.

Norway, the sickest country

[SuperKendall]

There needs to be more minorities because a society where certain minorities are largely absent from high end professions is not a healthy society.,

So that means every sort of insular culture in Europe (like Norway or Iceland) is not healthy?

Perhaps the unhealthy thing is propagating a society or ideology that allows for lower education standards for those of specific races and skin colors.

If you want to end racism, stop treating people differently by race... you'd think that would be pretty obvious but a lot of people have not yet figured that out.

Ha ha ha ha.....

[argStyopa]

Dear Apple,

Please give us the employment data that you otherwise aren't in any way obligated to, so if it doesn't show the results we prefer, we can attack you publicly.

Thanks,
Stupid democrats