A lawsuit filed last week has accused Google of systemic racial bias against Black employees, saying the company steers them to lower-level jobs, pays them less, and denies them opportunities to advance because of their race. The complaint was filed in the federal court in San Jose, California, according to reports. The plaintiff, April Curley, said the Alphabet Inc unit subjected Black employees to a hostile work environment, including by often requiring they show identification or be questioned by security at its Mountain View, California, campus. Curley said Google had hired her in 2014
Race and gender discrimination in technology remain an issue, according to Dice’s newly released Equality in Tech Report. The report said that between 2020 and 2021, there was little change in sentiment around gender and racial discrimination. And the perception of racial discrimination increased for both Black technologist respondents (57%, up from 55% in 2020) and technologists who identify as women (at double the rate of technologists who identify as men.) The report said that perception of a lack of leadership opportunities and salary and benefit inequities were cited as a common
The Cultural Custodian recently celebrated dozens of African women leading the way when it comes to NFTs and Web3. Hence, we thought to jump on the wave and shout out the women of color worldwide who are also pioneering in this space. It’s important to celebrate women every day and not just on International Women’s Day. Deborah Ojengbede is the first name that comes to mind. Deborah amasses a following of 16.6K on social media and is the CEO of Afen Blockchain Group. The ‘group’ is an NFT project dedicated
Briana Marbury, executive director of the Interledger Foundation has spoken candidly with POCIT for an in-depth interview. As one of the only Black women leading the major tech philanthropy, she is overseeing a $100 million foundation and the Grant for the Web fund that has already committed more than $10 million to projects around the world. Growing up in Detroit, she witnessed the lack of financial access that many people who were living below the poverty line endured, forcing them to use predatory check-cashing services and now she’s working directly
Less than 1% of investment went to teams of Black entrepreneurs, according to the Extend Ventures report which also noted that across the 10-year period “a total of 10 female entrepreneurs of Black appearance received venture capital investment (0.02% of the total amount invested)… with none so far receiving late-stage funding”. Despite these odds, young Black women founders in the UK are helming businesses and driving innovation in areas as diverse as beauty, e-comm, and real estate, and total a total of 16 Black women have raised funding. Both inside
Ahead of international women’s day – Instagram announced that it will be introducing a special tag for professional accounts and influencers that ensures they receive credit for their content. The enhanced tagging feature lets Instagram users show additional information on “People Tags” on their posts. Beyond just a profile’s username, the tags will highlight the creators’ self-designated profile category (titles are chosen from Instagram’s list of categories, like “rapper” or “fashion stylist” or “photographer”) as well as their account’s full name or title. The information is shown when users tap
Taking a trip down memory lane has gotten Nas in a bit of trouble and he’s now facing a new lawsuit with none other than Hip-Hop photographer Al Pereira, who also went into a legal battle with Kyle and Kendall Jenner back in 2017. Pereira has reportedly filed over 450 copyright infringement lawsuits since 2015. After Nas posted a picture of himself, Tupac, and Redman from July 1993 to his Instagram, Pereira filed a lawsuit against him in February for sharing it without permission or licensing the work, according to
After less than two years as Netflix’s chief marketing officer, Bozoma Saint John is leaving the streaming giant. Variety was the first outlet to break the exclusive story and according to their report, Saint John’s departure from the company was “mutual and amicable.” The company, which also confirmed the moves on Thursday, did not elaborate on why Bozoma is departing. But in a statement, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos said he “loved working with Boz and have been inspired by her creativity and energy” and that she’s “attracted world-class marketers to the company
The accuracy of facial recognition has improved drastically since ‘deep learning’ techniques were introduced into the field about a decade ago but there’s still a long way to go. A few years ago – the world’s largest scientific computing society, the Association for Computing Machinery in New York City, urged a suspension of private and government use of facial-recognition technology, because of “clear bias based on ethnic, racial, gender, and other human characteristics”, which it said injured the rights of individuals in specific demographic groups. So this is clearly a big issue
Just one percent of VC-funded founders in the US are Black and the rates of investment in European Black-owned businesses are even lower. Just three percent of Londoners working in the tech sector are Black and only 8.5% of senior leaders in the UK tech sector are from Black, Asian, or minority ethnic backgrounds. If we were to break these numbers down further – the numbers would be very low for Black women. But this isn’t because they aren’t creating amazing things. Take Sheilisa McNeal Burgess for example – a
