It seems that finding the right person for the right job is not about finding the right person but finding the right cultural mix of people for a workplace. This is not a new concept, it is about bringing equality into every walk of life, and by helping socio-economic and cultural groups that are stigmatized by centuries of white history, reach positions that are closed to them generally.
You might think the US is still stuck in the 1950's based on the above sentence, and in a way, you are correct. There is an underlying psychological undercurrent of inequality, that is fostered by both sides of the cultural divide. There is the relentless smug superiority of a white history battling stigmatized complexed culturally diverse society.
While there is a spate of "black" killings by "white police" there was at the same time and Afro-American President, so there is an issue of imbalance, where people still view all blacks as being criminals and suspect, while the white society, as corrupt as it may be, is still considered in a better light. This oxymoron of daily life in the US is what is fueling Bozoma Saint Johns drive in Uber to create a more culturally diverse workplace. This is especially good when considering that the drivers for Uber are made up of every walk of society and culture, ranging from the traditional Christian white male to the newly immigrant Iraqi Muslim, or Venezuelan single mum.
Uber's Chief Brand Officer, Bozoma Saint John said in a recent podcast that "I want white men to look around in their office and say, 'Oh look, there's a lot of white men here. Let's change this."
What Saint John is looking for is equality in the workplace without damaging the integrity of the quality of service. There are a lot of good people in the marketplace and what she wants is for white male employees to look around and reach the same conclusion that she has reached. She supported this stance by saying "Why do I — as the black woman — have to fix that? There's 50 of you; there's one of me. Y'all fixes it. … Everybody else needs to make the noise — I want white men to make the noise."
What makes Saint John angry is the supposition that there are fewer women and culturally diversified people available in the employment market. As Saint John aptly replied to this "That's bulls–."
Saint John was hired after Uber was accused of being culturally lacking in diversity, which is a nice way of saying it was an all-white male society. This was not totally true, but close enough to the mark, so Saint John was recruited to be the person in charge of changing customer relations as well as building a new corporate culture for Uber. This act was followed by taking on Dara Khosrowshahi as CEO so that the head is not a white male, but an Iranian immigrant with a very successful past.
Uber is fighting its white stranglehold on key positions by trying to find more black, Hispanic and Asian managers to lead the company forward. During 2017, Uber's management team consisted of only 3.7% black and 1.2% Hispanic. These numbers do not fall far from the accepted range in Silicon Valley.
Saint John acknowledged this issue and stated that "The number of African Americans in Silicon Valley is dismal. It's not up to one company — it's up to the entire industry to make sure that we are moving the conversation forward. Sometimes those walls of competition need to come down, so we can move the entire industry forward."
Our conclusion is this; there is a lot of cultural bias in the US, it is apparent and obvious, different groups tend to eye each other with suspicion, and there is a lot of latent racism between different groups. It is not a white and black thing anymore, it is a colored, religion and cultural heritage thing that is constantly splitting society. Silicon Valley is no different, but Uber can change, where there are so many successful and capable people in every culture and the diversity is as abundant. You just need to look at how business is successful in every country, and how Uber is found in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and is operated successfully by locals, to realize that the cultural bias that holds back the percentage of coloreds in Uber