How companies use cognitive diversity as an excuse to keep hiring white men

Get the Full StoryIn her new book, B r A. Williams explores how the tech industry treats Black workers.

Over the years, tech has found another way to pay lip service to diversity while doing little to increase the number of underrepresented minorities, especially Black women, by broadening the definition of diversity so it s not just about representational diversity but cognitive diversity as well. Cognitive diversity is all about the different ways people think or work or learn how they approach a problem or solution. Sometimes it even refers to different personality types. On the surface, there is nothing wrong with the notion or even practice of cognitive diversity but when you elevate it to the same level as racial, ethnic, gender, and socioeconomic diversity, the very concept of diversity is watered down. It also means diversity is reinterpreted to include what Silicon Valley has never had a shortage of: white men with quirky personalities. The problem is there is never enough room for women.

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