Apple launches new Racial Equity and Justice Initiative projects
apple.com
apple.com
1. A less blood-sucking fee structure in your app store.
2. A chance to install 3rd party software from outside your official channels if an user so decides.
3. Let your workers to unionize without any repercussions
4. You only will manufacture in contractors with a public verifiable record of complying with the labor laws.
5. You will not ban apps for ideological reasons, unless you are required to do it by law.
It’s currently impossible to buy a good performing smartphone that has been ethically manufactured.
Apple has a handful of employees. I suspect they’re more than capable of doing more than one thing at a time
(Pure speculation though... the whole company might still be focused on un-jamming that printer in HR)
That should explain why they didnt verify they were exploiting children in 3rd world countries.
Both can be done, but the things you stated are the minimum, not optional, if they care about humans at all.
Fair and safe working conditions first. Duh.
Then enabling equality in access and participation. Apple is enforcing the social status quo, if they uphold economic entry barriers. Gender and race issues are important, but for the most part they manifest as class issues. Much safer and easier to become an iOS developer, if you're a white dude, than a black woman. If you live paycheck to paycheck, you can't afford a Mac for development or the AppStore license.
So doing both is important, but without tidying up your own yard, it's all just green washing a dirty white collar.
Anyone too slow to ban Parker could face a full court press from all sides, and not merely any one firm. Apple has also banned porn and that is not legally required at all, and somewhat ideological.
I myself came from an underprivileged community (or at least one that was poor and not particularly mobile), and I can think of several friends growing up who were also into tech and programming like I was. None of them could afford college, and last time we talked they had just stopped pursuing tech altogether since it’s pretty hard to do without a degree. When I eventually lucked into working for a FAANG, most of the people I ended up working with came from all the good schools I never really had a chance of getting in either way, or at least largely weren’t white. There was probably still privilege specific to white males that helped along the way, but being lumped in with the billionaires and compared to a another set of large and similarly generalized non-white and/or non-male communities has always felt unjust and frustrating to me. I wish I could have ended up working with my childhood friends, maybe if they had this sort of attention things could have been different.
I thought they ended this in the education system (“affirmative action”) because it was illegal?
> Although HBCUs were originally founded to educate black students, their diversity has increased over time. In 2015, students who were either white, Hispanic, Asian or Pacific Islander, or Native American made up 22% of total enrollment at HBCUs, compared with 15% in 1976.[42]
> Contemporary academic usage of the term "regime" is broader than popular and journalistic usage, meaning "an intermediate stratum between the government (which makes day-to-day decisions and is easy to alter) and the state (which is a complex bureaucracy tasked with a range of coercive functions)."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regime
Our dead and flagged parent probably thinks that there will be some broader paradigm change in the social justice approach between the Trump and the Biden administration and that the latter will be more supportive on affirmative action.
I think that's not particularly controversial.
It is not the case that "they ended this in the education system", and the reality is quite a complex mix of overlapping rules and systems in different circumstances.
I mean surely it can’t be legal to open a coffee shop and refuse service to some racial groups?
And I’m not sure what the problem with my coffee shop example is, are the rules different for shops than for universities, or why is it irrelevant?
Your specific example is simplified to the point of irrelevance. Coffee shops and universities are different places. Denying service to a group based on their characteristics is a different thing from investing in a program targeted at that group. Actions involving underrepresented groups have different impact from the same actions involving majority groups.
It's like pointing out that "you can't shout 'fire' in a crowded theatre so freedom of speech doesn't exist!" when in reality the whole situation is way more complex, and simple examples don't have any relevance.
It would be interesting to know what the legal limit actually is.
When we say "Black Church" in America, we don't mean a church for Blacks only, we mean churches that historically arose because other races would not allow Blacks in their congregation (be it illegal to discriminate or not). There is no connotation that a "Black Church" wants to exclude other races.
So the line is drawn somewhere between those two, I just wonder where.
You seem rather concerned with college admissions, where is your concern for the fact that many if not most elite public American high schools would be out of reach for racial minorities even if their child has has perfect grades since Kindergarden. These kids can't simply 'apply' to whichever high school in the country they please.
In Europe it is illegal to label a wine Champagne if the grape is the wrong color or not grown in a particular bespoke part of France. Yet, you are baffled the line for racial equity in America is somewhat gray, absurd.
I do not for the record think it is strange that only wine made in Champagne can be called Champagne. What could be offensive about that?
I talk about college admission because that's where discrimination seems to be legal.
> out of reach for racial minorities even if their child has has perfect grades since Kindergarden
As we know, when applying to college their race is actually an advantage, so why would they not be admitted, given their perfect grades?
I think there should be systems in place to help all disadvantaged people, regardless of race.
Since there are some black kids with wealthy parents, and many white kids with poor parents, it seems obvious that race is a very unfair basis, why not simply assist people that need assistance without looking at their skin colour?
For some reason the US has it in it's head that we can balance the scales by putting our thumbs on one group and lowering the bar for others. Weirdly they don't see the hypocrisy or outright foolishness behind "fixing" racism with more racism.
Of course, like all things like this it has almost no effect on the ultra rich and truely privileged, and will negatively effect the underprivileged "whites" of all races (weirdly, just like every other race, white people are not just some big homogenous color but makeup diverse individual cultures with distinctive history).
But I guess those privileged trailer trash should use their privilege to buy themselves access to an ivy league education.
Honestly Apple's little PR stunt is the least insulting of this stuff recently. If you want to see really stupid, look at reddits CEO stepping down and saying his job will go to a black person (and it did). That is illegal but it was just ignored. Or the incoming US president who said he VP pick would be a "woman of color". Of course I'm sure someone will defend picking VPs based on their genetics and chromosome amounts by saying "we already pick that way anyway, its why its all white men in politics!". Because clearly you fix something by propagating it.
The world is so upside down now that suggesting we be colorblind is racist.
To steelman Grustaf further, I suppose Grustaf doesn't see an irony that dark skinned grapes aren't even allowed to be called Champagne, because Grustaf would say that grapes are not people, and that sparkling red wine made in Champagne tastes entirely different, but were it to taste the same, then the red Champagne and the white Champagne would almost certainly be given equal shelfspace and cost roughly the same if made by the same winery. Grustaf would on the other hand say that human beings transcend such issues, and certainly any person of any color can be and achieve and have the same intelligence and thoughts as any other so long as they are given equal opportunity. Grustaf believes that what Apple has done here is erode the principle of equal opportunity in attempt to try to provide equal opportunity.
I tend to think Grustaf might still think that if they were an American living in the country, but based on what Grustaf has said, they would be equally shocked at how not universal our basic social services are, even to elites. Grustaf would say "All men are created equal" should be made true in America so much so that racial language need no longer apply.
I just happen to find that either naive, or not pragmatic enough given the state of America in 2020. I can give Grustaf the benefit of the doubt, to a degree, because they admit to not being an American and seem to imply they don't live in America. It is easy to see how they do not have a full picture, and they admitted to as such.
I happen to feel that Apple's move is their best intentioned pragmatism to take a stand for something.
Zacmcloud on the other hand seems to have no such positions as above, and calls people "trailer trash" in jest. If zacmcloud is referring to me as the type of person who thinks any Whites are "trailer trash" let me correct the record. If working class Whites in Appalachia or Detroit were given access to an elite education through social programs, I'd be all for it, and presumably so would Grustaf. We just disagree that racial language in such initiatives kills the intiatives altogether. One reason being is American descendants of slaves aren't given popularized names for their heritage like Appalachia, and such terms typically exclude such people implicitly or explicitly in their definition, and often not by the people who coin the terms, but by the people who apply them. In my view, Grustaf's position is untenable in America at this time in the same way that if MLK's I have a dream speach would have been unintelligible had he not kept the words Black and White in.
"I have a dream that one day little black boys and girls will be holding hands with little white boys and girls." MLK
Someone maybe believe MLK could have said "of all races" and accomplished the same thing. To that position I say, then why wasn't "All men are created equal" sufficient to address slavery, much less racial inequality in America.
Addressing such issues will take time and ideas, and even when race has been transcended, I think it is a fair bet that class will not have been. And by the way, MLK spoke about that increasingly towards his later years, and soon after he was assassinated.
Investing in HBCUs isn't racial discrimination because any student is welcome there. And obviously anyone can go to the Developer Academy in downtown Detroit, but Detroit is obviously an intentional choice.
And choosing to invest in "companies with diverse founders" would seem to be more defensible than what the Northern California VCs typically do. Read it as "invest in Black and brown companies also" as opposed to the prevailing standard of "invest in Black and brown companies rarely."
But then announcing you’ll invest in “black businesses” seems questionable.
But to your last point, there is no “prevailing standard” to “invest rarely” in black businesses. At least I don’t think many VCs have that as an explicit policy.
Again, read it as investing in "Black businesses also". That's what makes it different than mainstream investing, which invests in "Black businesses rarely, if ever." (And controversial! See other comments here.)
> I don’t think many VCs have that as an explicit policy.
Search for VCs explicitly saying they look for entrepreneurs who "pattern match" or "look like Mark Zuckerberg" etc. They are as explicit as possible without breaking the law. Regardless of intent, even accidental disparities create gaps that bring opportunities.
VCs looking for that would most likely be happy to invest in founders of any colour that match his personality.
Track records say otherwise.
And again, there is plenty on the record indicating that what they mean is exactly what it sounds like: they are looking for a close match for Zuckerberg on every axis. Sure, personality, but also traits like age, pedigree, and phenotype. All available in Google if you're curious.
The other basis is expressed in the companies in which they choose to invest.
Do you have any links?
Good luck with your journey.
See wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_reservation
> According to dictionaries, the word is commonly used to describe prejudice and discrimination based on race.
That seems to match what I wrote above.
From the two citations: [48]
Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.
[49] a belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
Apple choosing to invest in educational and entrepreneurial programs for "Black and Brown companies" is in no way antagonism towards other races nor is it an indication that Apple supports a belief that any race is superior.
I agree that it does not indicate "antagonism" or "superiority", but you left out "discrimination", which is right there in the definition in your comment. I believe that apple's program "discriminates" on the basis of race, and therefore is racist.
"Discrimination is the act of making unjustified distinctions between human beings based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they are perceived to belong.[1] People may be discriminated on the basis of race, gender, age or sexual orientation, as well as other categories.[2] Discrimination especially occurs when individuals or groups are unfairly treated in a way which is worse than other people are treated, on the basis of their actual or perceived membership in certain groups or social categories.[2][3] It involves restricting members of one group from opportunities or privileges that are available to members of another group.[4]
Do you think Apple giving 100MM specifically to "Black and Brown companies" is unjustified?
In your quote: "It involves restricting members of one group from opportunities or privileges that are available to members of another group."
Apple is restricting people who are not black or brown from this opportunity.
The first of their five pillars:
"We invest in founders from all backgrounds, genders and walks of life"
It's almost as if investing in communities that have been underserved, could somehow, trickle through the economy as a whole at a disproportionally high rate of return. You know, as opposed to investing it where monetary wealth is already largely concentrated.
Regarding your second point, it is bot really relevant and if the project will “deliver returns” or not. Setting up a program that explicitly only invests in anglo-american harvard grads would probably give good returns too, but it would still be pretty racist.
https://www.eeoc.gov/employers/eeo-1-survey/eeo-1-frequently...
"No. Self-identification is the preferred method of identifying the race and ethnic information necessary for the EEO-1 report. Employers are required to offer employees the opportunity to use self-identification to complete the EEO-1 report. If an employee declines to self-identify, employment records or observer observation may be used."
This will illegal in Europe.
Discrimination is making choices that negatively impact a group based on some criteria.
Racism is discrimination plus systemic power imbalances that enforce this discrimination.
One can be discriminatory towards the powerful group (e.g. white people in the US for instance), but not racist towards them.
I'm happy to drive to why it is not, as you describe, nonsense if you are willing to have a critical and rational discussion.
> One can be discriminatory towards the powerful group (e.g. white people in the US for instance), but not racist towards them.
Just for anyone reading this who isn't familiar: this is a radical theory and isn't at all a generally accepted idea.
And it's also a viewpoint that is more commonly held by the political left. I'll grant that too.
Describing it as 'radical' is something I'd disagree with.
Huh. So, what if we revisit this concept with the actual balance of ethnic power in the United States, as revealed by actual income and status statistics, rather than the WASP bogeyman that may have been true in 1963?
Is it no longer possible to be racist toward Brahmin Indian immigrants, second generation children of Chinese and Korean immigrants, Jewish people, and the broadly English/Nord stock that comprise the vast bulk of the Mormons?
This is great news, because I'm sitting on a pile of real zingers about Guamanians I couldn't use because it used to be racist. Now that it's not, the offensive jokes will flow!
As European (we don't have this racial segregation fetish so please excuse my lack of knowledge on the subject) I'm more interested how they define black and brown companies? What if the company is owned by 3 people, 2 black, 1 white? Will they invest 33% less because the company is partially owned by a person of wrong race? What if it's 50/50? What about muslims? Women? LGBTQ? What if the company is owned by white people, but upper management is fully black? Where do they draw the line?
> if the company is owned by white people, but upper management is fully black
This is an intellectual creation that does not exist in the real world as a company that has received institutional capital.
I don't get how the subjects of clear publicity stunts like these don't get offended that a multi-billion dollar company is piggybacking a legitimate movement investing a buck to get two more later on. The argument "if they are doing something good and getting profit out of it, it's a win-win" just does not sound right on the ideological level. If you want to do good, you can do it for free, especially if you have billions in cash.
Yes. I don't know why this appears to be such a common form of confusion on HN (same principle applies to recent free speech debates too), but you have no right to a private entity's resources. Public resources, those of the government which are backed by force and come from us all, those have strong limits. But private entities are free to invest however they like, or not. Public serving companies do face requirements when it comes to providing general service, and employment to Protected Classes [1]. But when it comes where to actively invest their time or money, the government generally has no role to play except in the civil enforcement sense, though society of course always does.
>I thought they ended this in the education system (“affirmative action”) because it was illegal?
Actually that's still an ongoing debate, but that aside "the education system" almost always means "the public education system", including any institutions that are nominally private but depend significantly on federal grants or loans. Taking money often comes with strings attached, and public institutions are often quasi-government legally. Public universities are bound by the 1st Amendment for example in ways that private ones are not. Apple is in no way a public institution.
Also, again investment and their own speech is not the same as "providing service".
----
1: These are specific things under US federal law, and states are free to have additional requirements for local businesses as well. The federal ones are: Age (40+), Disability status, Familial status, Genetic information, National origin, Pregnancy, Race, Religion, Sex, Sexual orientation & gender identity, and Veteran status. Most of these come directly or indirectly from the Civil Rights Act of 1964, though there have been later laws for some (genetic information being added was sometime in the 2000s).
In how many is it not? Not sarcasm at all, I haven't studied law much outside of the US and I'm genuinely curious where you have in mind that you or I could look at our investment portfolio and go "I think re-weighting to have some more minority managed companies would yield improved gains" and that would be illegal. I doubt it'd actually be a good investment strategy sure, but a crime?
Public accommodations law and protections for employment and so on are all quite common, but in what western democracies are you required by law to donate or invest money with the same restrictions government would face? Not saying they aren't out there or that I can't imagine some reasoning that would lead to such laws, just wondering where and how that's worked out.
In Sweden for example, as far as I know, the only degree of discrimination that is allowed is to prefer one biological/ethnic etc category over another when the candidates are equally good in all other respects.
(Yes, some "black" people don't get the race part either. And yes, some of them are dicks. And yes, Twitter sucks.)
But then you see this comment section and they actually mean it in a sense of biological essentialism. Figure, how much you have to unpack in every damn discussion... I would shoot myself twice, every day.
Da ist der Wurm drin.
The issue with this for me, and probably for many non-Americans, is that explicitly favouring particular races at all is pretty baffling, it wouldn't be allowed here.
Personally I think they should launch programs to help disadvantaged people, regardless of race and sex. Why exclude poor white people, and why include wealthy black people? Racism is not the only reason someone may have a hard time in America, it's a very difficult place to live for anyone that is poor or lacks supportive parents.
EDIT: Changed language with unintended connotations.
Apple can do that, I hope it will help and not fade out.
Have you ever considered that describing your own preconceived ideas as "open minded", and discounting those who disagree with them out of hand, is in fact the opposite of open minded?
The notion of technology initiatives in underserved communities is excellent and badly needed. The way to achieve "racial equity" is to provide better education and job opportunities to help bring under-performing populations up to par, and then their children will grow up in better school districts and have higher standards and expectations as well.
At least, that's the theory. There are no magic wands to cause these kinds of massive socio-economic changes overnight, but this sounds like a good step in the right direction.
If anything, I might question why "only" $100m? A corporation that currently has $191B in cash could presumably afford to part with more than that. But, a small step in the right direction is better than none, and certainly sets a great example of corporate good citizenship.
And only then can they start patting themselves on the back when introducing various social programs that they pay for from their revenue.
> knowingly used child labor. https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-knowingly-used-child-l...
> Using forced muslim labor. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/29/lens-te...
These are like the worst things a corporation can do. These seem a bit more important to address. no? Apple is a multi trillion $$ company, is it really that hard to create "no child labor in our supply chain" policy.
These racial justice initiatives are just a marketing tool to increase their USA sales ? Muslim slave labor doesn't buy iphones so its ok?
That said, they are trying to get rid of whatever slave-labor and child-labor taint exists in the supply chain. Probably it's not totally possible if you're sourcing from China and SE Asia, but yeah, they do have to at least make some effort.
They have complete control over every detail they care about and can demand whatever they want from suppliers. If Apple wanted Foxconn workers to wear polka dot hairnets they would be manufactured and distributed within 48 hours.
Their competitiveness relies completely on suppliers NOT providing Western level working conditions, then their phones would be way too expensive.
Having said all this, it's also important to keep in mind that working conditions in other factories in China are not necessarily better.
What we don’t know, is whether the intention of these ‘good’ initiatives is to detract and distract from other ‘bad’ things (which would cost a ton of money to fix).
E.g. there can be a PR strategy that appears good enough for a political group in power to be the least costly thing to do.
where is the other thing though? I don't see what they are doing about issues I mentioned.
Racial equity is the bogeyman that's meant to save an unpopular capitalistic model. If working class people are arguing over racism, it distracts from the "inequity" of people like Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos having access to lawmakers, schools, healthcare and security that almost none of us have access to.
The integration of New York City neighborhoods in the 1960s-70s led to massive white flight out of the city, lowering the middle class population drastically and destroying stable districts. Was it worth it? Some claim yes, others claim no. I believe the city made a mistake by buying up property and giving it to lower income ethnic minorities to forcibly integrate neighborhoods, rather than encourage organic integration by business investment, tax breaks, opportunity zones, etc.
We've had a few decades of this - it has not really done much and racial wealth inequality is still massive, while informal segregation is at the highest levels it has ever been since Brown v. Board.
Obviously Apple has no vested interested in combatting wealth inequality, but I think that any movement against inequality needs to also recognize how vast and rampant racial wealth inequality is.
At least that's what comes up in the occasional article about these issues. Racism is apparently an obstacle here.
I don't see why a racist opinion would matter, even if the whole group were white as a lily and too poor to live.
> Racism is apparently an obstacle here.
And it probably is, but this approach is not going to help overcome that.
Focusing on other characteristics that tend to correlate to poverty is a more effective means to break the cycle.
Tho, I think class is more than just income. E.g. you don't become upper class as a prostitute or drug dealer, just because you manged to get by well.
Either way, within a class a white man will still have better chances for influence and freedom than a black trans woman. So gender and "race" are not obsolete classifications.
However, I think any sense of identity is the cognitive fallout of experiencing lack of self-efficacy, chronically. Seeing the increase in white men building an identity around being "white" and male, too, indicates a wide decrease in class mobility.
Pitching those identities against each other is indeed class warfare.
Based Tucker Carlson: https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalCompassMemes/comments/fwnw...
It appears just like M1 chips social justice and racial equity are also in service of and limited to Apple's interests.