DINT #65 - Will Court Ruling Affect Corporate Diversity in Tech?

Today’s issue of DINT is dedicated to Monica Brown Andrews.

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News and Notes

FTC Finally Pushes Back on Fake Online Reviews
(TechCrunch / Devin Coldeway)

Meta to Give EU Citizens Access to App Downloads
(The Verge / Alex Heath)

Weary Consumers Leverage Phone Bots to Discourage Telemarketers
(Wall Street Journal / Robert McMillan)

Police Need a Warrant to Search Your Facebook Posts: NJ Supreme Court
(New Jersey Monitor / Nikita Biryukov)

Oracle Founder: Firm to Spend Millions of Nvidia Chips in 2023
(Reuters / Stephen Nellis)

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Diversity, Technology, and the Case for Entrepreneurship

Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court voted 7 to 2 in favor of a judgement that rules race-based admissions structure unconstitutional.

This comes just a few years after a man was choked to death on video for nine minutes by an officer sworn to uphold the law. It also comes in the aftermath of this murder where more attention is being paid to diversity in the form of corporate initiatives and hiring quotas to ensure diverse workforces.

Colder Climate for Diversity Efforts

Many businesses in the digital infrastructure space, such as Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google), Twitter, and Meta (Facebook) committed to ambitious diversity metrics in 2021 and 2022. The year 2023 brings a growing push-back against initiatives aimed at diversifying anything, calling such efforts w*ke.

Along those lines, legal scholars organizations say the recent Supreme Court decision banning race-based admissions spells death to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in corporations. To avoid legal issues, pundits say organizations need to rename their DEI programs to Title VII Compliance Departments and change the title of DEI Director to Compliance Director.

No matter what it’s called, initiatives to promote fairness and equality have an important place in corporate structures, say researchers.

• The likelihood of financial outperformance (beating competitors) increases by 36% when workforces are ethnically diverse (McKinsey and Company)

• 45% higher revenues (from innovation) among companies with above-average total diversity (Boston Consulting Group)

• 75% of organizations with diverse decision making teams exceeded their financial targets in 2022 (Gartner)

What’s the Solution?