The Discrimination Double Standard

[Commentary] This week in Silicon Valley, it’s trendy to speak out against discrimination. But last week, many of the same people weren’t quite so forthcoming. Led by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and Apple CEO Tim Cook, Silicon Valley is loudly complaining about homophobic laws passed in Indiana and Arkansas in recent days that allow businesses to refuse service to customers based on religious beliefs.

That’s great and even admirable, except that here on the home front, Silicon Valley has its own very obvious discrimination problems. Gender is a big one. Race is another. The numbers are so incredibly skewed for the majority -- the published diversity numbers in technology are something like 70 percent men, 60 percent white -- that the situation is very often unhealthy for people who don’t or can’t fit in. In Silicon Valley, fighting homophobia is an easy issue. Instant alliances can pop up -- as long as the villain is outside of ourselves. But when it comes to the harder topics here at home, and it turns out the enemy is us? That’s a problem that all these genius techies can’t seem to grok quite as easily.