Talk about fiddling with statistics to make an argument:
"The result is sobering: Men make up 62% to 70% of the staffs of Twitter, Google, Facebook, Yahoo and LinkedIn, while whites and Asians comprise 88% to 91%, according to company data released in the past two months. Their dominance is highest in computer programming and other tech jobs that tend to pay the most."
vs
"Of Twitter's U.S. employees, only 3% are Hispanic and 5% black, but those groups along with Asian Americans account for 41% of its U.S. users."
As Christopher Hitchens said, you can get away with anything if you put a "reverend" in front of your name.
I get what you're saying, but my intuition is that the numbers would still be silly-and-wrong if you could omit Asians from the user numbers they're giving. And I say "if you could" because my guess, which may be wrong but given the way these breakdowns usually work I don't think it's a bad one, is that they didn't have Twitter user data available to them in a more granular fashion. So I'm more inclined to let that one go.
My intuition is the same .. I totally agree there are underrepresented groups .. but using numbers like that does not inspire confidence.
More interesting numbers would be the % of engineering applicants (which are likely not available) or representation in undergraduate programs vs in industry employment.
That would help isolate where the problem lies, which my intuition tells me is earlier than in industry.
I'm not a huge supporter of Rev. Jackson, but the lack of Hispanic and African-American groups in tech reflects a paucity of opportunity for historically poverty-stricken communities in America. And race is self-evidently a factor.
A large number of employees from the Indian subcontinent adds to a company's diversity, but doesn't make tech more welcoming to those Americans whose parents were treated as second-class citizens for much of their lives.
Minor point, and I'm sure you didn't mean to imply otherwise, but many Asian-American (broadly defined) communities are historically poverty-stricken, and its members have been treated as second-class citizens for much of their lives. Just wanted to add that in case anyone inferred otherwise from your comment!
"The result is sobering: Men make up 62% to 70% of the staffs of Twitter, Google, Facebook, Yahoo and LinkedIn, while whites and Asians comprise 88% to 91%, according to company data released in the past two months. Their dominance is highest in computer programming and other tech jobs that tend to pay the most."
vs
"Of Twitter's U.S. employees, only 3% are Hispanic and 5% black, but those groups along with Asian Americans account for 41% of its U.S. users."
As Christopher Hitchens said, you can get away with anything if you put a "reverend" in front of your name.