Intel is hosting a workshop organized by Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition about how to increase diversity in the technology industry. The December 10 meeting will discuss strategies for bringing more diversity to the tech industry, and more than 20 companies have confirmed that they will attend.
Jackson has been taking an active role in technology lately. On Wednesday, he went to a Microsoft shareholder meeting to talk on the topic.
Earlier this year, the Rainbow Coalition pressured tech companies to release diversity reports, which revealed that most tech employees are white. Now, they’re instructing the companies on how they should change that.
“I argue there is no talent deficit, but an opportunity deficit,” Jackson said at the Microsoft meeting.
But according to tech companies, that’s not necessarily true. As Laszlo Bock, Google’s senior vice president for people operations, pointed out in May, women earn just 18 percent of U.S. computer-science degrees, and blacks and Hispanics each earn less than 10 percent, so finding diverse candidates isn’t always that easy.
— Katherine Timpf is a reporter for National Review Online.