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It’s Time We Dealt With White Supremacy in Tech
‘Make the hire. Send the wire.’
A man was lynched last month.
Whether we wanted to be or not, the video recorded by a courageous 17-year-old bystander plopped us all right on the sidewalk, too, as witnesses to George Floyd’s murder. And thanks to being right there with him, yet powerless in that moment to save him, we were all confronted with this country’s sordid history of police brutality, gross abuses of power, racial profiling, and white supremacy as they all pinned George down by his neck under that police officer’s knee. Knee. Noose. Knee as noose.
A man was lynched last month.
And now, here we are this week after the country erupted in protests, the president teargassed protestors for an extraordinarily awkward photo opp, and the man who took a knee on George’s neck was finally charged with murder. Will this be the moment this country changes? And if so, why? How?
As with a lot of the problems George’s murder (and Breonna Taylor’s and Ahmaud Arbery’s) resurfaced, the how comes down to a matter of will. What are we willing to do?
What are we willing to do differently to dismantle white supremacy in the technology sector and because of technology’s pervasive influence, dismantle white supremacy in society?
Are we willing to reckon with the role the technology sector played in the moment we find ourselves? Are we willing to reckon with the founder of a company that draws an extraordinary amount of revenue from cities (aka tax dollars) holding fundraisers for a president who sends asylum seekers to their deaths? Are we willing to reckon with investors who think investing in Black entrepreneurs is an act of charity―and thus, offer embarrassing, token amounts? Are we willing to stop sponsoring and attending technology conferences with mostly white male speaker lineups? What are we willing to do differently to dismantle white supremacy in the technology sector and because of technology’s pervasive influence, dismantle white supremacy in society?
Here’s part of the problem: A lot of non-Black people in tech are under the…
