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Tag: minorities

  • Facebook Is Requiring Minorities Be Considered for All Open Positions

    Facebook Is Requiring Minorities Be Considered for All Open Positions

    Facebook has a diversity problem. Facebook is far from the only company in the Valley with a diversity problem, but it exists nonetheless. When it comes to the company’s over 10,000 employees, the landscape is very white and very male.

    So, what’s Facebook doing about this? It’s in the process of instituting its own “Rooney Rule”.

    Established in 2003, the Rooney Rule requires NFL team to interview minority candidates for coaching and senior operational positions. Facebook’s version of the rule forces the company to consider at least one minority candidate for any open position before making a hire.

    Apparently, Facebook started doing this a while ago in some departments, but plan to roll it out company wide soon. From Bloomberg:

    The rule went into effect in some Facebook departments in the last few months, according to a person familiar with the matter. If it helps increase the presence of people who are black, Latino or otherwise minorities, it will be implemented at the social network widely. Facebook spokeswoman Genevieve Grdina confirmed the effort, while declining to comment further.

    Last June, when Facebook released its first diversity report, we found that the company’s global makeup is 69 percent male and 31 percent female. In terms of ethnicity, Facebook is 57 percent white, 34 percent Asian, 4 percent hispanic, and 2 percent black.

    “As these numbers show, we have more work to do – a lot more. But the good news is that we’ve begun to make progress,” says Maxine Williams, Facebook’s Global Head of Diversity at the time. “Diversity is something that we’re treating as everyone’s responsibility at Facebook, and the challenge of finding qualified but underrepresented candidates is one that we’re addressing as part of a strategic effort across Facebook. Since our strategic diversity team launched last year, we’re already seeing improved new hire figures and lower attrition rates for underrepresented groups.”

    Like I said before, Facebook isn’t the only one struggling with this.

    Image via Facebook Menlo Park, Facebook

  • Are Los Angeles Police Dogs Racist?

    Perhaps it’s not as critical as the Rampart controversy in the late 90’s, where a flock of rogue cops, who were associated with gangs, robbed a bank, engaged in a fatal road rage incident, and were accused of killing rapper Biggie Smalls. It’s (debatably) not as reckless as that early morning on February 7th of this year, when a pickup truck that looked like it belonged to cop killer Christoper Dorner was shot up 100 times.

    No, the police of Los Angeles are suffering a different type of controversy, one that questions the very sanctity of what it means to be “man’s best friend”; racist dogs.

    A report by the Police Assessment Resource Centre (PARC), a Los Angeles-based non-profit organization, found that in the first six months of 2013, all 17 Los Angeles Sheriff Department (LASD) K-9 unit dog bites were inflicted upon African American and Latino individuals. The report mentioned that between the years of 2004 and 2013, Latino individuals bitten by LASD canines rose 30 per cent (39 individuals bitten), while African Americans bit were increased by 33 per cent (12 individuals bitten).

    The report mentions that  the large minority populated areas of Century, City of Industry, Compton, Lakewood, and South LA and Lennox incur more dog bites than all the other 21 districts that the LASD patrols combined.

    So is there a discrepancy? Is this a case of institutionalized racism? Is the crime in those areas just higher? Are the dogs not socialized?

    The US Department of Justice found that in the areas patrolled by the LASD, “African Americans, and to a lesser extent Latinos, are more likely to be stopped and/or searched than whites, even when controlling for factors other than race, such as crime rates.” A report in 2008 by the Los Angeles Times found that “For every 10,000 residents, about 3,400 more black people are stopped than whites, and 360 more Latinos are stopped than whites. Stopped blacks are 127% more likely to be frisked — and stopped Latinos are 43% more likely to be frisked — than stopped whites.”

    A critic over at Blur Brain says that crime is the reason for the increased dog bites, mentioning that, “The most obvious being that the vast majority of crimes in LA are committed by either blacks or Latinos.” And that PARC is actually “another Democrat money laundering front who’s cover story is to create excuses for wanton criminality among the Democrat’s victim class constituents. But their real purpose is to kickback a some of the money they receive to the DNC.”

    Since racism is a learned behavior, the dogs are, perhaps, just conditioned and not socialized with those of color. One redditor commented on the story, saying that it’s a matter of socializing the pooches:

    So, who’s barking up the wrong tree here?

    (Pictures via WikiCommons (1), (2))

  • Obama Gay Marriage Support Sees Urban Backlash

    The Presidential election season is upon us and things are going to start to get nasty. Now that we know, for sure, who the two candidates are going to be, they will start to solidify their beliefs and try to demonize the other guy. Last week, President Barack Obama came out in support of gay marriage. While this was a flip flop from his previous stance, it pretty much reflects the party line. But he may have hurt himself more than helping himself in this instance. After the announcement of his support, there has been some complaints from his urban base. Here is a recording of a morning radio show on hip hop station Hot 97 in New York City:

    As you can see from this selectively edited video, people who listen to this station are angry. Some don’t think that it is right for gay people to get married, some do not agree with gay people at all. It was summed up perfectly when the hosts asked a caller identified as Anthony: “Anthony, how do you feel about Obama? You’re not feeling him, huh?” Anthony’s response is what many African Americans seem in general to feel, and while the overall support numbers for minorities and gay marriage are gaining, they are still mainly against it. He said “No, because I’m totally against that same-sex marriage, man. I’m 27, I grew up in the days where a female’s supposed to marry a female, I mean a male supposed to marry a female.”

    Proposition 8 was on the ballot in California in 2008. It was a measure that, as described in Wikipedia, would add a new provision, Section 7.5 of the Declaration of Rights, to the California Constitution, which provides that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” While it passed by a slim margin of 52.24% who voted yes to 47.76% who voted no, the biggest eye opener for the Democratic party and liberals in general is that 70% of African Americans voted yes on prop 8.

    So it seems as though Obama has a bigger hole to pull himself out of now, because a New York Times/CBS News poll found Sixty-seven percent said they thought Obama’s announcement was made “mostly for political reasons,” while 24 percent said it was “mostly because he thinks it is right.” Also found in the poll was that 70 percent of Independents attribute the president’s move to politics, along with nearly half of Democrats. A caller on Hot 97 had pretty much the same sentiment saying: “I’m not going to vote for Obama because I feel like… he knew he was losing votes and he needed to get people’s attention. And that’s what he did. Why did he want to do this now?””