Double Standard

So companies are falling over themselves to talk about how and what they are going to do to recruit and retain women workers. They are looking at places where they are lacking and requiring their managers to make plans.

Sandberg even got time on 60 minutes to talk about this. I find it all VERY amusing. Why? Because no one has asked the question that has been on my mind: How many black employees do you have? Is it proportional to the national population? Is it proportional to the population in the locale in which your company operates?

How many black folks are on the board of FB? What about the management? And I'm not even getting into splitting black men and women.

What about Cisco? Here's a company publicly talking about what it hasn't been doing for women. Check out the executive team

Where are the black folks. From what I see, Cisco doesn't have a women problem as much as it has black problem. There are 8 women on Cisco's team and not a SINGLE ONE is Black. Not a single one.

Christopher Young may be African-America but I hold a pretty high bar for calling someone black and from his picture I'm not convinced. But let's assume he is. One person out of 63 executives (1.58%) are "black" in a country where 13% of the population is "black". So if the argument is entirely about "proportional representation" (which from what I've seen has been the entire argument for all these 'we gotta do something about the women" books and whatnot) then CISCO has a lot of problems and should be taken to task for it.

When I go through my tech feeds on my iPad and I see plenty of articles about companies started or run by a group of white men (and I'm not in any way opposed to that). I see numerous articles about women run companies and I see accompanying photos with rows of white women (not opposed to that either). Some with rows of equal numbers of white women and white men. I have seen articles with accompanying photos of Asian men (and women) from various Asian cultures.

I rarely and I mean rare like meat running red with blood, see black folks.

Why is it suddenly so fashionable and permissible to go around talking about what companies aren't doing for women when many, if not most of these same companies may as well have a "Negroes not welcome here" sign on their front door?

It's high time these so called journalists start asking the hard questions rather than pandering. Shoulda asked Sandberg how many black people, male or female, are on the exec track at Facebook. How many are management. Don't know the answer to these questions, then go here for 2007's lineup as well as Facebook's own page here Which only lists the top persons. Here's the SEC filing listing the Board. I'm guessing there are no negroes on the board