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Congressional Black Caucus Begs Apple For Its 'Trade Secret' Racial Data 337

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

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  • This is Ridiculos (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I work in Apples tech support and there are enough black folks around here.

  • invalid data (Score:5, Insightful)

    by swell ( 195815 ) <jabberwock@poetic.com> on Saturday August 08, 2015 @02:59PM (#50276159)

    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: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I worked for a shop a few years back and got to know one of the HR folks fairly well. They told me that their online system would export all the candidates who applied for a position to a spreadsheet with the click of a button, so the HR manager could review them. It had a column for what the applicant selected under the optional question about race.

      It would be directive at some times to not hire anyone who clicked the box for 'caucasian'. That meant the HR manager wasn't going to waste their time invest

    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      If it's a bunch of "did not answer" entries then why not release the data? There must be some reason for keeping it a secret, and "trade secret" sounds like bullshit.

      • Re:invalid data (Score:5, Informative)

        by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Saturday August 08, 2015 @06:16PM (#50276855)
        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 (Score:5, Insightful)

          by cavreader ( 1903280 ) on Saturday August 08, 2015 @07:13PM (#50277029)

          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.

          • by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Saturday August 08, 2015 @07:44PM (#50277103) Journal

            > 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.

            I wish I could mod this up. It's infuriating that Jesse Jackson and the other race baiters tell my daughter that's she's too stupid to compete on her merits, that everyone should give her extra points to make it fair because black people like her aren't as good as white people.

            My daughter is smarter and harder working than than you, Mr liberal whiner, and therefore more competent. Se doesn't need your pity, protection, or special favors. She needs you to get the heck out of the way so she can fix the mess you made because you refuse to do simple arithmetic and planning, instead thinking everything will work out if you wish hard enough.

            • I really hate to be the one who breaks this to you, but affirmative action is the reason your daughter has a chance to get into Harvard.

              I can say this conclusively because your name is Morris, not Chan. If they let people into Harvard purely on the merits, then no white people at all would ever get in because when white people hear a fifth grader ask "Mommy can I skip a grade in science?" they don't go "Thank God! She's finally showing some fucking ambition!" They think "Fuck! If I let her do this she'll tr

          • 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.

            There are competing goals at play here. Some might want an ideally efficient workforce, whatever that means. I think the proponents of releasing the racial data are aiming for something else, i.e., for equal opportunity across races. I think both goals are arguably desirable. One of the great complications in evaluating equity is the complexity in evaluating competence and how that competence was attained. The argument behind race-based considerations is that competence is relative, and the disadvantag

        • 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.

          Close. The part that's predetermined is "Apple isn't hiring enough minorities." The actual ratio or raw numbers are irrelevant. I hate Apple as much as anyone, but this is the government shaking them down.

    • 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.

      If you don't choose a race, the company is required to guess.

  • WTF (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Saturday August 08, 2015 @02:59PM (#50276161) Homepage Journal

    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: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Brett Buck ( 811747 )

      How the hell is it the job of the governement to tell private companies who they should hire?

      • How the hell is it the job of the governement to tell private companies who they should hire?

        The government was complicit in slavery, so the government must also be part of the solution.

        • by JBMcB ( 73720 )

          Slavery was never legal in my state. Why should the federal government stick it's nose in the business of a company here?

          • Slavery was never legal in my state.

            Slavery was legal in northern states during the colonial period, and northern states profited from the slave trade. Northern states also profited from processing cheap cotton and other products produced in the South with slave labor.

            Anyway, I don't think slavery should be the basis for prohibiting discrimination in hiring. There are plenty of other reasons, and EEO laws apply to plenty of people where are not the descendants of slaves.

            • Sorry legislating equal outcomes is ridiculous.

              • Sorry legislating equal outcomes is ridiculous.

                EEO doesn't legislate equal outcomes. It prohibits discrimination in hiring. Many tech companies have very unequal workforces (1% black in a country that is 12% black). That is legal, as long as the process is nondiscriminatory.

                • (1% black in a country that is 12% black)

                  The question is, what percentage of computer science graduates are black. I can't believe that there are large numbers of unemployed black software developers.

        • The government was complicit in slavery,

          Not the government in Washington DC. They fought a rather large war to end slavery. Perhaps you've heard of it.

          • by NatasRevol ( 731260 ) on Saturday August 08, 2015 @06:27PM (#50276901) Journal

            No, they fought a war so that federal rights > states rights, in spite of the constitution.

          • Not the government in Washington DC. They fought a rather large war to end slavery. Perhaps you've heard of it.

            Even taking that for granted, which as you can see from siblings to this comment is not a foregone conclusion, they were for it (or at least stood by, watched, and reaped the economic benefits for the nation as a whole) before they were against it.

    • Re:WTF (Score:5, Insightful)

      by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Saturday August 08, 2015 @03:17PM (#50276253)

      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 (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Saturday August 08, 2015 @03:42PM (#50276341)

        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.

        • Re:WTF (Score:4, Interesting)

          by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Saturday August 08, 2015 @03:54PM (#50276379)

          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?

          There needs to be more minorities because a society where certain minorities are largely absent from high end professions is not a healthy society. It's unfair to those minorities who become a lower class, unstable because those minorities are resentful and tend to cause crime, and under-performing because you're losing out on their economic potential.

          Imagine how much better the US would be if you could transform the ghettos into middle class communities.

          As for females there needs to be females because an office that is 90% male sucks for both the 90% who are guys and the 10% who are girls.

          forced diversity is blatant prejudice.

          How did you read "better recruitment for girls coming out of high school and better schools for minorities in general" and end up with "forced diversity"?

          • by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Saturday August 08, 2015 @05:08PM (#50276607)

            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.

            • 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?

              If they're discriminating against minorities I'd say yes.

              If it's simply the case there's not many minorities, or the ones who are there aren't disadvantaged but simply haven't had the generation or two it takes to integrate into the economy I'd say no.

              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.

              I think that's part of it. The other part is a lot of US schools have effectively segregated schools, and since schools are locally funded the black schools end up being extremely low quality schools immersed in a culture of underachievement and underclass tha

        • by Technician ( 215283 ) on Saturday August 08, 2015 @04:07PM (#50276431)

          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.

          • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            Black lives matter is simply pointing out the discrimination - that black lives appear to matter less than white ones in some cases. It does not seek to exclude white lives or ask for special treatment, just equal treatment.

            On the other hand, fake claims of reverse discrimination is discrimination, because it is designed up prevent black people getting equal treatment by addressing the existing deficit.

            • Black lives matter is simply pointing out the discrimination - that black lives appear to matter less than white ones in some cases. It does not seek to exclude white lives or ask for special treatment, just equal treatment.

              Why don't they point out the discrimination that the whole nation goes crazy with demonstrations and public outcry when a cop kills a black guy, but when a cop kills a white guy, nobody really cares?

  • by BECoole ( 558920 ) on Saturday August 08, 2015 @03:00PM (#50276163)

    to voluntarily give up racial stats to politicians & lawyers.

  • by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Saturday August 08, 2015 @03:02PM (#50276173) Homepage

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

  • by trout007 ( 975317 ) on Saturday August 08, 2015 @03:04PM (#50276191)

    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.

    • by chipschap ( 1444407 ) on Saturday August 08, 2015 @03:23PM (#50276273)

      The quickest way to increase diversity is to get rid of discrimination protection. It is very risky to hire someone from a protected group.

      File this under sad-but-true. The very laws and rules that are intended to protect a group can end up causing them harm.

      I'm totally opposed to discrimination in any form. Hiring based on qualifications and competence--- period--- is, in my thinking, absolutely non-discriminatory.

      If there are disadvantaged groups, tackle the problem at the source, not at the hiring table. If certain ethnic groups are not being hired in the ratios that might be expected, figure out why they are not becoming qualified in the first place and look for solutions to that. Is it economics? Culture? Something else?

      For sure, hiring someone who is not qualified and/or competent, just to meet a demographic requirement, doesn't help anyone and only makes things worse.

      • The only place I disagree with you is in government because there is no market to correct the discrimination. Since everyone is taxed then quotas should be enforced. It wouldn't be fair or safe to have an all white police deparment (or judges) over a minority community.

    • The quickest way to increase diversity is to get rid of discrimination protection.

      Yes, because that worked so well for the first 150 years America was a country...

      • Actually it was.

        http://m.townhall.com/columnis... [townhall.com]

      • Yes, because that worked so well for the first 150 years America was a country...

        Which is a completely specious, pointless comparison. Which you know.

        So the question is, why would you compare present day things like the lowering of test standards to allow in people to meet an HR skin color quota with the exact opposite sort of segregation policy 50 years ago?

    • by dj245 ( 732906 )

      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.

      There is a substantial risk in firing anyone. My company creates a paper trail for anyone who isn't performing. Making a bigger paper trail for someone in a protected group would be discrimination. We treat everybody the same. Not performing? We'll try to help them. If they can't help themselves, we start building a paper trail. The people who can't be bothered to help themselves usually make it pretty easy to document their ineptitude.

  • by TsuruchiBrian ( 2731979 ) on Saturday August 08, 2015 @03:05PM (#50276193)

    I'm sure this subset of congress doesn't have more important things to do, like working on getting better schools in impoverished areas.

    Apple is a for-profit corporation. They are not racist. They care about profit. If there were tons of qualified applicants of the right colors (whatever they may be), apple would hire them and profit from it. If you want a different distribution of colors of employees at apple, work on making those colors of people the best educated in STEM.

    You could just try to pass a law forcing Apple to hire people they don't want to hire, but then they would probably end up like all the companies who no one cares what kind of diversity they have.

    If diversity matters to you, work on diverse talent, not diverse employment. Furthermore, I would suggest the idea that diversity is more than just skin color and gender. Simply hiring people who look different doesn't guarantee that those people think differently.

    • by k6mfw ( 1182893 )

      I'm sure this subset of congress doesn't have more important things to do, like working on getting better schools in impoverished areas.

      I always thought this "companies should hire more African Americans" is bankrupted because many people in this demographic grew up in poor neighorhoods and poorly performing schools. By the time they are 18, they are no match to others that grew up in affluent neighborhoods (and with parents and their friends where they can learn customs and nuances of successful people in the tech industries). Of course they can start at the bottom taking courses at JC though difficult when having to work three minimum wag

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      You are naÃve if you think corporations motivated by profit can't have diversity issues. Perhaps not outright racism, but for example by having poor job advertising and networking a corporation can end up unintentionally reducing the number of candidates from certain groups.

      It's not a binary thing, it's not a simple subject.

    • I'm sure this subset of congress doesn't have more important things to do, like working on getting better schools in impoverished areas.

      They may have more important things to do, but since schools are State-level, getting better schools isn't one of those things.

      If you're concerned about the quality of your elementary/high schools, look to your State government for fixes.

  • God damnit (Score:5, Insightful)

    by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M ( 4212163 ) on Saturday August 08, 2015 @03:10PM (#50276221)

    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.

    • When it comes right down to it, there are two primary reasons why a large company would not have a more or less proportional population of diverse worker.

      1) straight up racism - but we are told that corporations are greedy to a fault, not racist.
      2) cultural differences - but to change this you must argue that cultural differences (aka diversity) is wrong, which is racism.

      The idea that Apple or Google is racist is clearly absurd, so we are left with those criticizing Apple and Google as actually being t
      • by godrik ( 1287354 )

        I do not know Apple's worker demographic. But at college level, we see wide variations. In CS majors, females only represent about 20% of the student population. Provided that female are also more likely socially to be the one to sacrifice their career for their family, it might be VERY hard to get to over 35% of female worker in your software business.

        The issue with diversity in CS is not a college level problem. Only few female student register for the class and they do not really come to information sess

        • I was in Barnes and Nobles last week and passed by the children's book section. One side was labeled boys books and had books about trains, cars and plane. The other was labeled girls books and was about princesses, fashion and poneys.

          You seem to think the B&N is trying to create a divide between the genders, when in reality it is just accepting and tolerant of the differences that already exists.

          Any alarm about there being both a boys and girls section at B&N is just your intolerance showing through. You seem to be unwilling to tolerate a difference between boys and girls.

    • 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 do the very same egalitarians that are outraged by calls for diversity and demand a "meritocracy" suddenly piss down their legs whenever they hear about companies hiring people with H1B

      • I'd only call it hypocrisy if the same people who complained about H1Bs depressing skilled labor wages didn't care about the flood of "undocumented workers" crossing our southern border and depressing unskilled labor wages. Both illegal immigration AND H1B visa abuse are wrong because it makes an end-run around our national sovereignty and immigration laws. Companies or individuals that abuse these policies are benefiting from the comfort, stability, and infrastructure of being located in the US (and paid

  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday August 08, 2015 @05:03PM (#50276577)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by theodp ( 442580 ) on Saturday August 08, 2015 @05:11PM (#50276621)

    From Steve Jobs' Passion for Diversity [urbanfaith.com]: "Can you help us hire black engineers?" he said. "Do you know how many black engineers we have?" Before I could say anything he shared a shockingly low number and confessed how poorly Apple was doing in finding black candidates. I'll skip the full exchange, but suffice it to say, I got an intimate peek into Steve's passion and energy. He was seriously upset at Apple's efforts in that area. His last words to me that day were, "If you have any ideas on how we can hire more black engineers, send me an email."

  • Ha ha ha ha..... (Score:5, Informative)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Saturday August 08, 2015 @07:26PM (#50277055) Journal

    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

  • Looks like somebody still believes that the number one company operates on something other than merit-based employment and compensation.

  • Why are people with racist names for their organizations seeking racist data?

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