Invisible Doors and Racial Inequality: Social Capital and Cultural Fitness in the Tech Industry

• In Event: 148 - Regular Session. Racial and Ethnic Inequality

Abstract

How do employees of tech companies understand and define “diversity” in their workplace? We examine this question in an industry context where Blacks and Latinos together constitute less than 4% of the overall workforce. Drawing upon participant observation and interviews with 30 tech workers of diverse racial backgrounds working in San Francisco, we identify a discourse of “cultural fitness” through which prospective employees are assessed on the basis of their fit with an organization's culture. We show how this discourse of “fitness” is used to elide the structural exclusion of Blacks, Latinos, and women from the tech industry’s ranks. In addition, we find that tech workers in our sample often secured their own jobs through social networks. These network connections, built on structures of race and class-based forms of residential and educational segregation, operate as “invisible doors” to access one of the world’s most coveted and well-compensating industries. We argue that referral based hiring practices and race- and power-evasive language both function to conceal the virtual absence of non-Asian domestic minorities. We discuss the implications, including how this leads the tech industry to successfully claim diversity according to their employee’s nation of origin, rather than their race, class, or gender.

Authors

• Lauren Alfrey, University of Portland

• France Winddance Twine, University of California, Santa Barbara