In my opinion, anyone who has worked in the Bay Area knows Silicon valley doesn't believe in hiring Black people, women, Hispanics and especially anyone over the age of 35. If they do, it's as token whatever and maybe cannon fodder to be hit on for a date.

The National Black Chamber of Commerce is calling this Jim Crow after the discriminatory segregation laws.

This industry in this location is probably the most segregated and discriminatory place in the United States. The hiring and training by companies like Google, Apple, Yahoo, Oracle, Applied Materials, Hewlett Packard, Cisco and others are acting more like the Ku Klux Klan than a good corporate citizen.

Ya got that one right and especially shocking because this same industry claims they need talent, which anyone with a brain knows comes in a variety of colors, sizes, sexes and ages.

The Mercury News used the Freedom of Information Act to get hiring data as late as 2005 from the US Department of Labor, Office of Federal Contract Compliance (OFCCP), which tracks this under Executive Order 11246. Every two years major corporations are audited for their racial and gender demographics at all levels of hiring. The News tried to get 2008 data but companies like Google, Apple, Yahoo, Oracle and Applied Materials have successfully blocked access to that data in the courts. It is a good reason that they did as the numbers are just un-American.

Of the ten companies investigated here are the results. Collectively, only 2.1 percent of the workforce is Black while only 5.2 percent of the workforce is Hispanic. The News states “Of the 5,907 top managers and officials in the Silicon Valley offices of the 10 large companies in 2005, 296 were Black or Hispanic, a 20 percent decline from 2000, according to U.S. Department of Labor work-force data obtained by the Mercury News through the Freedom of Information request. In 2008, the share of computer workers living in Silicon Valley who are Black or Latino was 1.5 percent and 4.7 percent, respectively – shares that had declined since 2000.

Nationally, Blacks and Latinos were 7.1 percent and 5.3 percent of computer workers, respectively, shares that were up since 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The share of managers and top officials who are female at those 10 big Silicon Valley firms slipped to 26 percent in 2005, from 28 percent in 2000.

Finally, finally someone recognizes the difference between global labor arbitrage and diversity issues. The commentary specifically points to H-1B and other foreign visas:

What these racial culprits are doing should be punished by the U.S. Justice Department. It is blatant discrimination and must be stopped. Now that it is exposed we must put serious pressure on this activity. What they think they can do is import a massive amount of Asians via H-1B visas and count them in their collective minority numbers.

I agree, somehow I don't think entire divisions of Indian males, ages 24-32 inside these companies is what diversity was envisioned as.

It violates law and should prohibit these corporations from doing business with the federal government or any other entity that receives federal funding or benefits from a federal program or regulation.

Do you think anybody cares or can successfully get a class action lawsuit? Nope, the only job out there seems to be hiring more outsourced legal and HR teams to figure out how to skirt the law so they do not have to hire older tech workers, U.S. workers, Black techies, Hispanic techies and women techies.

I especially appreciate the call out on corporate La Raza, Inc. for they especially have sold out U.S. workers repeatedly, pushing for even more guest worker Visas.

It is really outrageous and so incredible to throw away perfectly good talent, highly accomplished Americans over foreign guest workers. This is everyone, so I would include in the institutionalized discrimination of Silicon valley, discrimination by citizenship status. They do seem to despise American workers, especially IBM. Guess what IBM has done in respond to more and more awareness they dump of Americans from their payrolls worse than the Nazis hunting Jews in France. They are stopping any disclosure of headcount. Nice huh. At least the Nazis kept records of their systematic genocide.