Diversity

[Commentary] The internet is fundamental to economic opportunity, social action and innovation in the modern age. It has the power to democratize information, it allows us to communicate instantly and effectively, and in recent years, it has facilitated innovation and been the catalyst for social justice movements. That’s why the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) supports a free and open internet.

You may be wondering why the NAACP is weighing in on net neutrality. Throughout our 108 year history, the NAACP has always opposed discrimination and has fought for justice and equal opportunity for all. We see the fight for net neutrality as an extension of that mission. In fact, during our 108th annual convention in Baltimore, our board of directors and members unanimously passed a resolution firmly stating our position on net neutrality.

With the fate of net neutrality on the line, the NAACP urges Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to respect the congressional intent behind Title II of the Telecommunications Act, to protect the free flow of information and not jeopardize it by removing high-speed broadband from the equalizing framework of Title II. ISPs should not be able to discriminate against any information, or against any groups of people, based on their profit margins or their whims. Information is power and no one should be allowed to strip that power away—and definitely not on our watch.

[Derrick Johnson is interim president and CEO of the NAACP and founder of One Voice Inc.]

From his first public controversy in the 1970s, when the federal government sued Trump and his father over discriminatory rental practices in their New York real estate empire, to the opening salvo in his 2016 presidential campaign, when he said that Mexicans entering the United States were criminals and “rapists,” President Donald Trump has regularly fanned the flames of racial controversies. What do his comments reveal about his personal attitude toward the nation’s wrenching history of racial discord? Are Trump’s racially divisive remarks just another example of his impulsivity and propensity to be provocative, or do they represent an abiding tolerance of racist views? Some say Trump’s eagerness to speak up for at least some of the people who took part in the alt-right demonstrations in Charlottesville must be viewed as a reflection of his attitude on race.

Plans to protest outside Google’s offices this weekend have been postponed, but conservatives are taking America’s culture wars directly to Silicon Valley, a place that was long insulated from political rancor but is now one of the most important ideological battlegrounds.

Organizers postponed the event — which was scheduled to take place in cities where Google has offices — saying that the news coverage surrounding their plans had led to threats from left-wing “terrorist groups.” The rallies were inspired by James Damore, the former Google engineer who was fired last week for posting a 10-page internal memo arguing that the lack of women in tech could be attributed to biological differences. His dismissal sparked an outcry from conservatives who say their opinions are being muzzled by liberal technology companies and led Damore to criticize his former company for promoting a “particularly intense echo chamber.”

President Donald Trump buoyed the white nationalist movement as no president has done in generations — equating activists protesting racism with the neo-Nazis and white supremacists who rampaged in Charlottesville. Never has he gone as far in defending their actions as he did during a wild, street-corner shouting match of a news conference in the gilded lobby of Trump Tower, angrily asserting that so-called alt-left activists were just as responsible for the bloody confrontation as marchers brandishing swastikas, Confederate battle flags, anti-Semitic banners and “Trump/Pence” signs.

Members of the president’s staff, stunned and disheartened, said they never expected to hear such a voluble articulation of opinions that the president had long expressed in private. The National Economic Council chairman, Gary D. Cohn, and the Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, who are Jewish, stood by uncomfortably as the president exacerbated a controversy that has once again engulfed a White House in disarray. He spoke of “very fine people on both sides.” And of the demonstrators who rallied on Friday night, some chanting racist and anti-Semitic slogans, he said, “You had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest.”

In the wake of deadly protest violence in Charlottesville, the liberal Bay Area will find itself at the epicenter of conservative demonstrations beginning this weekend. Even though planning for two of the Bay Area protests apparently began before the clashes in Virginia, the death of a 32-year-old woman there and the images of protesters with torches reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan, is casting a glaring spotlight on far-right actions here. Three hard-right actions are planned this month, starting at Google in Mountain View on Aug 19, with another Aug. 26 in San Francisco and a third in Berkeley on Aug. 27. This region, famous as a center of resistance to President Donald Trump and a haven of political correctness, makes an attractive target for the far right, said Texas Southern University history professor Cary Wintz. “You’re taking your fight directly to Satan,” Wintz said.

MacArthur announced $5.7 million in grants to seven organizations to support professional nonfiction media makers from diverse backgrounds. A total of $2.25 million will be re-granted directly to independent film projects over three years, with remaining funds providing support for fellowships, workshops, training programs, and professional development.

The grants include support to both interactive and feature documentary projects through the Sundance Documentary Fund's New Frontier and Native Programs; enable black filmmakers to experiment with non-linear digital storytelling through Black Public Media's 360 Incubator + Lab; provide a new stream of grant funds specifically for filmmakers in the U.S. South through the Southern Documentary Fund; and equip social movements with nonfiction short films created by filmmakers representing and accountable to affected communities through the Docs in Action project at Working Films. These organizations join eight other nonfiction multimedia storytelling institutions already supported by MacArthur, including Firelight Media, American Documentary, ITVS, Kartemquin, Tribeca, AIR, Chicken & Egg, and the recently launched IDA Enterprise Documentary Fund. Over the last two years, the Foundation has been steadily growing its investment in the documentary community through new partnerships with organizations that can provide comprehensive support to a growing number of filmmakers and new media artists.

[Commentary] I was fired by Google Aug 7 for a document that I wrote and circulated internally raising questions about cultural taboos and how they cloud our thinking about gender diversity at the company and in the wider tech sector. I suggested that at least some of the male-female disparity in tech could be attributed to biological differences (and, yes, I said that bias against women was a factor too). Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai declared that portions of my statement violated the company’s code of conduct and “cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.”

My 10-page document set out what I considered a reasoned, well-researched, good-faith argument, but as I wrote, the viewpoint I was putting forward is generally suppressed at Google because of the company’s “ideological echo chamber.” My firing neatly confirms that point. How did Google, the company that hires the smartest people in the world, become so ideologically driven and intolerant of scientific debate and reasoned argument? If Google continues to ignore the very real issues raised by its diversity policies and corporate culture, it will be walking blind into the future—unable to meet the needs of its remarkable employees and sure to disappoint its billions of users.

[Damore worked as a software engineer at Google’s Mountain View campus from 2013 until this past week.]

[Commentary] In a perplexing dance toward consensus, left and right have united to pour vinegar on Sinclair Broadcasting Group’s effort to add Tribune Media’s 42 television stations to the 173 it already owns. You’d think that Sinclair—which hikes on the conservative side of the news by forcing its stations to air commentaries by former Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn and other right-tilting segments (“Terror Alert Desk”)—would be cheered by its fellow media ideologues. But no. Newsmax, One America News Network and Glenn Beck’s the Blaze have joined with the lefties from Public Knowledge, Common Cause, Free Press and Media Matters for America to decry the $3.9 billion acquisition. The opposition doesn’t stop there. Such businesses as DISH Network and T-Mobile have decanted their protests, too, demanding that the Federal Communications Commission block the deal, as have broadcast trade associations.

The lefty opposition against Sinclair actually seems to be an argument against media diversity and for media homogeneity. Nowhere on television—not even on Fox-owned stations—is the conservative point of view pursued as aggressively as it is at Sinclair. If rejecting what other journalists are doing and following a unique viewpoint isn't the mark of media diversity, I don't know what is. If the left truly wished death upon Sinclair, it would urge the FCC to change ownership rules so that big broadcasters with different news “philosophies”—ABC (Disney), NBC (Comcast), and CBS—could buy more stations. But the left remains too stitched up in its 1950s thinking about consolidation to advocate that. Might Sinclair’s fight for Tribune’s stations turn out to be a fool’s bargain? For the media diversification reason chronicled above, the conventional television business model has passed its golden years. In 2015, the Bernstein research outfit predicted a “period of prolonged structural decline” for the television industry as viewers continue to defect from ad-supported outlets to on-demand services like Netflix and Hulu. Maybe instead of discouraging Sinclair from making the deal, the company’s foes and competitors should encourage them to close it.

The culture wars that have consumed politics in the United States have now landed on Silicon Valley’s doorstep.

That became clear after Google fired a software engineer, James Damore, who had written an internal memo challenging the company’s diversity efforts. The firing set off a furious debate over Google’s handling of the situation, with some accusing the company of silencing the engineer for speaking his mind. Supporters of women in tech praised Google. But for the right, it became a potent symbol of the tech industry’s intolerance of ideological diversity. Silicon Valley’s politics have long skewed left, with a free-markets philosophy and a dash of libertarianism. But that goes only so far, with recent episodes putting the tech industry under the microscope for how it penalizes people for expressing dissenting opinions. Damore’s firing has now plunged the nation’s technology capital into some of the same debates that have engulfed the rest of the country.

Such fractures have been building in Silicon Valley for some time, reaching even into its highest echelons. The tensions became evident with the rise of President Donald Trump, when a handful of people from the industry who publicly supported the then-presidential candidate faced blowback for their political decisions.

We’ve heard lots about Silicon Valley’s toxic culture this summer — its harassing venture capitalists, its man-child CEOs, its abusive nondisparagement agreements. Those stories have focused on how that culture harms those in the industry — the women and people of color who’ve been patronized, passed over, pushed out and, in this latest case, told they’re biologically less capable of doing the work in the first place. But what happens in Silicon Valley doesn’t stay in Silicon Valley. It comes into our homes and onto our screens, affecting all of us who use technology, not just those who make it. It’s bad enough for apps to showcase sexist or racially tone-deaf jokes or biases. But in many cases, those same biases are also embedded somewhere much more sinister — in the powerful (yet invisible) algorithms behind much of today’s software.