There's an odd piece over at Valleywag about Google's supposed lack of diversity. The headline screams "Google Is Only 2 Percent Black"; in the body of the post there is much tut-tutting over it's "mostly white, mostly male" staff. Inconvenient truths—such as the fact that five percent of Google's employees are black and hispanic appears to match the fact that five percent of computer science majors are black and hispanic—are quickly pushed aside to make room for the "correct" narrative.* The two percent figure was also picked up by many Twits:
Google’s workforce is only 2% black. Ugh. Tech companies invest so little developing a diverse workforce. http://t.co/EWhXOhCtVH
— Alex Vessels (@alexvessels) May 29, 2014
Google Is Only 2 Percent Black http://t.co/FdjHVT6wfI
— Wes Willison (@weswillison) May 30, 2014
Google Is Only 2 Percent Black http://t.co/ittnsB7tMG
— Miguel (@officialmiguelm) May 29, 2014
google is only 2% black http://t.co/BnVS2HJJGD
— Sam Faulkner Biddle (@samfbiddle) May 29, 2014
You get the idea.
I'm going to set aside the question of gender for today and instead focus on race. Because while it is technically true that Google is "mostly white," this is a remarkably misleading way of putting things. In reality, whites are underrepresented at Google. No, really! According to the Census, the United States is 63 percent white while Google's workforce is 61 percent white. Google isn't exactly the Third Reich Reborn.
So if Google is suffering from a "diversity problem"—and, frankly, given all the facts at hand I'm not convinced that they are—it's not because white folks are locking minorities out of jobs. Nope. It's because Asians are massively overrepresented at Google. Thirty percent of staffers at Google are Asian, roughly six times their proportion in the general population.
So I guess the only question left to ask is this: Why do Google's critics hate Asian people and begrudge them success in the tech industry?
*Racism, natch.