Rev. Jackson’s hypocritical, illogical attack of Amazon

The Reverend Jesse Jackson and his activist group, Rainbow Push, is mad at the place I use to buy bulk toilet paper, off-brand iPhone power cords, and 24 packs of Zevia Cola.

They’re mad at Amazon because they say it’s not diverse enough.

For the first time, Amazon released details on its workforce diversity and some folks don’t like the numbers. It’s got about 150,000 employees worldwide, but according to the report, it’s 63 percent male and 37 percent female.

Of that, stats for the U.S. workforce are: 60 percent white, 15 percent black, 13 percent Asian, 9 percent Hispanic, and 3 percent other.

Now, of course, there are critics – particularly Rev. Jesse Jackson.

According to The Seattle Times, “Jackson said Amazon’s workforce is not representative of the country or of the customers who shop on the site. What’s more, Jackson noted, the company’s board and senior leadership are all white.

“It’s skewed toward white-male supremacy,” Jackson said. “They do not look like America.”

Amazon doesn’t need to look like America. That notion is ridiculous. It needs the best employees it can get so Amazon can be the best company it can be.

“The numbers are embarrassing to them,” Jackson said. “Their marketplace is very American. But their workplace is not.”

Now, even though a diverse workforce can be beneficial to the company’s culture and a diverse workforce can help companies see issues from different perspectives, the tech industry workforce is reflective of the type of people who study the tech field in college.

Jackson said there is no shortage of talented minorities who could provide a more diverse workforce at Amazon, according to the Times. But, he’s wrong.

If you look at the statistics, Amazon is more diverse than colleges that offer majors in technology.

According to U.S. News and World Report and the College Board, men outnumber women in computer science classes eight to two. In other words, only 20 percent of these classes are women, but Amazon has 37 percent female employees.

According to statistics from the National Science Foundation as outlined in VentureBeat, African Americans make up about 10 percent of computer science degrees nationally; Latinos, 8 percent.

Amazon’s workforce is 15 percent black. That’s 5 percent more than folks with actual degrees. It has 9 percent Hispanic, 1 percent point more than the national average. That’s based on a survey that Venture Beat admits is high.

A survey by the Computer Research Association found that only about 3 percent of computer science majors were black and 5 percent were Hispanic.

The takeaway, however, is pretty clear: white people overwhelmingly go into computer science bachelor programs, whereas blacks and Latinos do not.

How much higher of a workforce percentage is realistic?

How is Amazon or any tech company supposed to hire people who aren’t coming out of colleges with relevant degrees?

You’re supposed to just throw a black guy or a white woman in front of a computer and say, “Code! Code, damn you! code!” It doesn’t work like that.

It would appear Rev. Jesse Jackson should focus his attention on minority and female students and encourage them to go into majors relevant to the tech industry. You think Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and eBay won’t hire black employees or female employees if they’re the best at what they do?

There’s every indication that they would!

Rainbow Push and Jackson are also upset that Amazon “had ‘an all-male management’ and no blacks or Latinos on its board,” according to The New York Times.

This makes sense because if there are few minorities in the industry, well, the natural logical conclusion is there will be even fewer in management.

Now, we should also look at Rainbow Push. What does it staff look like? It wants companies that look like America, where we have about 63 percent white people in this country. In its executive office, it has a total of zero white people, as far as I can tell. Now, I’ve reached out to Rainbow Push to get the breakdown of its workforce diversity – it’s pushing on these tech companies to reveal it – but it doesn’t seem to have it anywhere. I’d love to see the breakdown.

I’m willing to bet it’s not reflective of the nation. It will lean non-white and I bet Rainbow Push thinks it’s doing a good job, even without the workforce that reflects the nation. So why can’t Amazon?