If you were to visit and stroll along the open plan offices of the coolest, creative, innovative and profitable companies in Tech City East London, on every occasion, you will be greeted by the pink elephant in the room.
Racism is alive and kicking in the UK Tech industry. And this is no means a sweeping statement or a juvenile excuse to raise the card. As a black woman in my middling years, who had worked in this sector in my twenties, I witnessed the non-existent demographics of young black employees in this sector. Even today, as a teacher of technology, this statistic has not changed. And as a visitor to technology seminars, Hackathons or Meetups, I am guaranteed to be the only black female present. So why is diversity non-existent in these forward, thinking tech companies?
This industry has had all the right conditions to grow rapidly, transforming globally the way people work, consume and communicate. Investors, service industries and property developers wanting to cash in with this phenomena. Sycophantic politicians are keen to be seen in the media with these young, suit less, techy, hipsters. From the very beginning, it’s ethos was proudly drawn from being different (hence, Apple’s slogan, “Think Different”) and equally celebrated the outsider with an anti- establishment swagger. Steve Jobs used this USP for his own business persona. But surely it would be a kick in the stomach for these idealised companies to be labelled the same as the ones they wanted to rebel from - institutionally racist?
One might argue that, maybe that it is only white men that turn up to the doors for these jobs. Or the indignant white elephant would might protest that its cousins in India are providing diversity through the cost-effective business of outsourcing code to highly talented Ruby on Rails, PHP or My SQL programmers in Deli. But this counter argument of cheap slave labour, takes this into a different segment of this industry still does not get to the root of the question.
Does the question lie in education, education, education? As a young university student, on entering my first computing class, I was welcomed and overwhelmed by the sea of white male faces. A similar experience on entering a school dinner hall in the 1970s faced for the first time with a choice of British food. However as with this great fare, I quickly began to enjoy the experience, as with my academic achievements and peers at university. What can be done to encourage more young people from African and Caribbean backgrounds in the UK to take computing courses at University?
If young people from African and Caribbean backgrounds are not in technical positions in these companies, what about other roles such as editorial, administration or HR roles? Well it appears that lack of diversity permeates through the whole of the pyramid from the base to the top.
“But hold up”, protests our large mammal friend. “ What about demographics?” Africans and Caribbean only make up 20% of the population in London. Unfortunatey the official statistics for diversity does not replicate these figure. This problem is also an international one, Silicon Valley has also come under fire for this. So, to answer the question, is the lack of diversity due to inherent racism? If so, does this cause for an international boycott on the use of search engines, social media, purchasing of computers, tablets and phones. Boycotting of South African goods was one of most powerful weapons used to free one of the greatest icons that ever lived. Can we use the same tactic to get rid of the white elephant in the room?