Affirmative Action: Re-visited- High Tech
Discriminatory effects can be seen today, as high tech companies are predominately white and male. This proves to be significant as we move into a highly information based industry with new leaders. According to a report by Todd Weiss, Microsoft had 21,429 workers, of which 2.6% or 553, were African-American and of the firms 5,155 managers, 1.6%, or 83 were African-American (Weiss, 25). Lack of diversity in the technology sector, especially in management positions, is dangerous because it creates a corporate atmosphere that may sway qualified applicants from applying. For example, Microsoft in particular has not had a good reputation of fair policies within the company; actually, the company was recently sued in a class action suit. According to Johnston and Trott, sis black former and current employees joined a $5 billion racial discrimination lawsuit against Microsoft last week, alleging that the company has passed them over for promotions, discriminated against them in hiring and firing, practices, and forced them to endure a plantation-type mentality at the company. (Johnston, 10). Affirmative action policy issues have affected the private sector intensely, which can be seen through this Microsoft example. It could also be argued that policies such as Proposition 209, as Bagby points out below can be seen as a catalyst for the death of fair practice and equality in the private sector as well.
The other aspect of these affirmative action rulings is the effect they have on employment. It is not just publicly funded schools that have to abandon affirmative action programs but also government agencies. The various statewide decisions have produced decreased hiring of minorities in federal agencies. (Bagby, 247).
Discrimination comes in different forms, not only in gender and race but as society is redefined the policies may encompass different areas of equality, as current digital divide issues suggest. The society we are spinning digitally toward needs all to participate but we need to employ affirmative action policies that will help protect those already in the workplace as well as those who can’t get their foot in the door through lack of education and access.
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