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BLACK TECH MILLENIALS

So tell me, what do you know about the Bay Area? It does have an intriguing name, doesn’t it? The Bay Area, otherwise known as the San Francisco Bay Area, is a region within Northern California housing about 7 million people in cities like Oakland, Napa, San Jose, Alameda, Marin, Contra Costa, Sonoma Counties, etc. The Bay Area region can be broadly divided into four major parts: North Bay, East Bay, Peninsula, and South Bay. The Bay Area is widely famous for its politics, lifestyle, and concentration of high-tech industries. It is also home to the likes of Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover, and George Lucas, but that’s not what this article is about. This article is centered around the black millennials in the tech community, the silicon valley black kings and queens. Why are they here? Who are they? What makes them tech?

BLACK MILLENNIALS LIVING IN BAY AREA

The 25–30 age demographic, infamously known as the millennials, is notorious for being the most important and influential generation thus far. A report by the Brookings Institution reports that Millennials make up 30% of the voting population in the US and 40% of the labor force. Furthermore, the millennial generation is acclaimed for being more ethnically and racially diverse. Apart from a few of its side attractions, the millennials in the Bay Area are predominantly there because of the great Silicon Valley. Most tech companies, like Apple, Google, and Facebook, have headquarters in San Francisco, and for young tech enthusiasts, the Bay Area is the place to be. Despite the recent increase in house rent and the cost of living in recent years, a few millennials are still sticking it out, but the data specifically of black Americans in the Bay Area moving out, has however become worrisome.

An article by Darwin BondGraham: ”the East Bay’s Changing Demographics”, states that it has been projected that by 2030, the black population in Bay Areas like Oakland could fall drastically to as little as 70,000 people. Over the past decades, cities within the Black Area have been experiencing significant migration away from these cities, for example, in Richmond, Edmonton reports that there has been a decrease of one-third of black residents over the past 15 years. In Berkeley, the population of black people numbered about 14,000 in 2000 but as of this year, they have reduced to a mere 9,700 and by 2030 could be significantly lower. What then could be the cause of this exponential “de-blackening”? according to Edmonton, a lot of it has to do with the cost of housing and living generally in these areas. An increase in rent combined with restricted access to a reasonably paying job for black people.

Although the cost of living is high for the average millennial, for those lucky enough to be earning from the silicon valley, below is a list of the top 10 places to live within the bay area:

  • Upper laurel
  • Oakland
  • Vallejo
  • Old San Leandro
  • South gate
  • Parkway
  • Greenhaven
  • Sacramento
  • Valley hi
  • Broadmoor district.

Also if you’re looking for where the young black tech-heads kick it out, check out this quick list:

  • The Mission District
  • Yoshi’s at Japantown
  • SF jazz centre
  • Fisherman’s Wharf
  • Little Italy
  • Castro
  • Dragon’s gate
  • Embarcadero
  • Union square

YOUNG, BLACK & TECHY- the 99 problems

Millennial African-Americans ranging between 25-30 make up a huge percentage of the target market for the tech industry. A study by Nielsen reports that about 70% of black millennials are always on the quest to stay on top of technological trends and are more likely to be one of the first to purchase a new tech. He further reports that about 162 billion dollars a year are spent by black millennials in the tech industry. You’d think this means there ought to be inclusive participation of black millennials in the tech industry right? Shocker. Let's face hard facts backed by data, shall we?

This situation is so gross that Maxine Waters a democratic representative from south Los Angeles during her visit to silicon valley with members of the congressional black caucus was so stunned to find out the black workers at a lot of reputable tech companies made up 1-2% of the whole workforce. She retorted this fact without mincing words; “ I’m not urging, I’m not encouraging. I’m about to hit some people across the head with a hammer. I know how to do this and I know how to do this well.” This was an angry outburst at the prevalent racial imbalance in most tech companies.

An article by Fortune’s Bloomberg tagged; ”Tech Companies are still struggling to hire black workers” found that blacks made up 7% of the US tech workforce and 3% of the Silicon Valley workforce.

The disheartening thing is that for the majority reading this, these are just statistics, but for the black millennials involved, it is a sad reality that they struggle with. Allison Scott, chief researcher at Kapor Center for Social Impact commented on his visit to a team social event of a high-tech company. According to him, the black people at the party reminded him of a scene in the movie “Get out” because the black employees looked like mere “oh look! We are a culturally diverse company” props.

Sampling the diversity in some Silicon Valley Companies:

  1. Facebook: Although Facebook’s chief diversity officer argues that there have been visible changes in the employee demographic with a 25% increase in black women and 10% increase in black men, Ellen Pao, the co-founder of the diversity consulting NGO project argues that there needs to be at least a general 13% increase of black employees and 17% increase for Latinos. An unimpressed Pao stated; “There isn’t a startup that’s actually where it should be. All of them are problematic.”
  2. Lyft: as at last September’s annual diversity report of lyft, a little change was evident from the previous year as the report showed 52% of its employees as whites. Recently, lyft announced a need for inclusion and diversity, Monica Poindexter the new diversity officer of lyft in an interview to reporters stated that she intends on “tackling the diversity problem holistically and is taking her time to understand the process”, we just hope she realizes time indeed waits for no man or woman.
  3. Pinterest: Pinterest is not an exception to this diversity inclusiveness problem. Pinterest is predominately white and Asian with black Americans making up only, wait for it….1%! of its workforce.
  4. Twitter: why is data released by Twitter on its diversity report of 2018, reflect a whopping 42.3% of whites and a mere 4.5% of blacks working at Twitter? Sad to say the least
  5. Microsoft: a 2018 Microsoft blog post by Lindsay Rae Mclntyre the chief diversity officer at Microsoft reports that as of the 30th of June 2018, the percentage of black employees “increased” from 3.8% to 4%. Laudable don’t you think.?
  6. Google: Google’s 2019 diversity report reveals that the number of black Americans who were hired offered leadership positions greatly declined in 2018 despite Google’s claim of being the big brother of diversity inclusiveness since 2014. This leaves much to be desired and begs the question, is Google talking the talk and walking the walk?

BREAKING THE BOUNDARIES

Despite the struggles of the black millennials to break even within the Bay Area, the past five years haven’t been bad for some. A lot of these struggles have spurred black millennials to create their tech communities to serve as support. E.g the Black Arts and Innovation Expo is a networking initiative that helps connect young black tech guys to potential employers through hosting annual tech events. There’s the Black Tech Nation, a social organization created for tech millennials for inclusion into the technological community, they also partner with other diversity groups and tech companies to tackle the problem of young black people in the tech industry. The black girl’s code is an NGO established in 2011 which seeks to encourage young black females to harness their tech ingenuity, The Yes We code organization was founded in Oakland California and aims at providing technological skills to low-income young persons and aid inclusiveness within the silicon valley.

Finally, this list of black millennial guys making it in the tech industry despite all odds is encouraging and you should check them out:

  • Abadesi Osunsade- Co-founder of Elpha
  • Kike oniwinde- Founder of BYP
  • Davinia Tomlinson- Founder, Rainchq APP
  • Marc Jones- CEO, AERIS
  • Francois Locoh-Donou- President, F5 Networks Inc
  • Jessica o. Matthews- CEO, Uncharted Power
  • Erica Joy Baker- Senior Engineer at Slack, founder- Black Girl’s code
  • Khalia Braswell: User Experience Engineer at Apple
  • Ime Archibong- VP of Strategic Partnerships, Facebook
  • Kamilah Taylor- Senior Software Engineer at LinkedIn
  • Christopher Lafayette- founder, The Armada
  • McKeever Conwell- founder, Given.to

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