Google pledged $2 million to Bay Area groups working to eliminate racial disparities in education, and another $1 million to a national racial-justice group. The promised donations, reported in USA Today, follow $2.35 million given by Google s charity arm last year to Bay Area organizations fighting systemic racism in the criminal justice, prison and education systems.
The latest pledges, made Friday at Google s Mountain View headquarters at a celebration of Black History Month, include $1 million for the My Brother and Sister s Keeper initiative in San Francisco, dedicated to improving life outcomes for African-American students; $750,000 for East Oakland school Roses in Concrete for community responsive teaching, and $250,000 for Beyond12, a San Francisco group striving to increase college graduation rates among lower-income people. The national non-profit Equal Justice Initiative, founded by high-profile lawyer and activist Bryan Stevenson, is to receive $1 million from Google.org for creation of civil-rights landmarks.
What s exciting about what EJI is doing is that at a national level it is really trying to tell the untold history around race in this country and help people develop a deeper understanding for the narrative around race and how we have gotten to where we are, said Justin Steele, a principal with Google.org, according to the newspaper.
Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin attended the event, according to USA Today.
Google has its own issue with black representation in its workforce, with only 2 percent African-American employees, according to the company. To improve that picture, and the African-American presence in tech in general, Google has sent engineers to teach in historically black colleges; holds unconscious bias workshops for employees; promotes computer science clubs for students in grades 4 to 8; and provides resources for black and Hispanic entrepreneurs.
Photo: Google CEO and co-founder Larry Page (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
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