Race

Subterms

    More stories

    • 188 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      A soccer ball, a T-shirt: teachers scramble to say goodbye to students fleeing under Trump

      by

      A soccer ball covered in signatures from classmates. A handwritten letter telling a child of their worth. A T-shirt bearing a school emblem meant to remind a newcomer how much they were loved in a place they once called home.These are among the items teachers have given their multilingual learners – students who learn in more than one language – whose families fled their school districts rather than risk being detained by immigration agents.“One of my students told me last week that their family had decided to go back to Brazil because they were afraid of deportation,” said Philadelphia teacher Joanna Schwartz. “It was his last day here. I scrounged up a T-shirt with our school’s logo on it and a permanent marker and my student had all of his friends and teachers sign it.”She said she taught the fifth-grader for three years.“It’s nothing big, but it was a treasure to him to have the physical signatures of his dearest friends and teachers to take with him,” she said.Some immigrant students wrestling with the fear of deportation leave school with no warning. Other times, they give their teachers just a few hours’ notice to process the loss of a relationship that might have lasted for years.Such scenes are unfolding throughout the country as the Trump administration ratchets up immigration arrests and removals and opens schools to enforcement actions, striking terror in the hearts of undocumented people and their advocates.Faced with the fallout, teachers who have spent their entire careers advocating for immigrant students – fighting battles even within their own districts to ensure students have a robust education – are left fumbling for the right words to say or gift to give a child under extreme stress.Schwartz, who teaches multilingual learners in Philadelphia, uses her prior training as a therapist to help kids through these toughest of moments.She said she often gives children who are leaving “transitional objects”, something tangible to help them feel connected to their friends in the United States.View image in fullscreenSchwartz wrote her departing student a letter in which she “reminded him of his many strengths and told him how much he will be missed”, she said. She added drawings, stickers and her email address.Areli Rodriguez was devastated when, last winter, during her first year of teaching in Texas, one of her most promising and devoted young students left for another state. The boy’s family had been growing wary of the anti-immigrant policies of the governor, Greg Abbott, and headed to Oklahoma, where they hoped they’d be safer.“He was my first student who left for this reason,” Rodriguez said of the fifth-grader who had arrived in the United States from Mexico less than a year earlier. “It just broke my heart.”The family didn’t know Oklahoma would propose some of the harshest immigration restrictions in the nation, including a plan, just this week rejected by the governor, to require parents to report their own immigration status when enrolling their kids in school.Rodriguez is not sure where the child is today. As a parting gift, she gave him a soccer ball signed by all of his classmates.Moments before he left, the boy, who had been chosen as student of the week when he departed, led the class in a call-and-response chant by Rita F Pierson that the class had previously learned:I am somebody.I was somebody when I came.I’ll be a better somebody when I leave.I am powerful, and I am strong.… I have things to do, people to impress and places to go.The boy left his teacher one of his favorite toys, a Rubik’s Cube.In a diary entry, he wrote to Rodriguez and another beloved teacher: “To say goodbye to all of you, Ms Rodriguez and Ms [S], I want to tell you that you are my favorite teachers, and I’m sorry for any trouble I may have caused. Maybe I wasn’t the best student, but I am proud of myself for learning so much.”“I think about him all the time,” Rodriguez said, adding that he embodies what she loves most about multilingual learners. “For him, school was a gift, an opportunity, a privilege. He just worked so hard … His parents were so supportive – they looked at education as something they wanted to seize.”The Department of Homeland Security is urging undocumented people to leave the country immediately. This isn’t entirely new: Joe Biden deported some 4 million people in a single term, double that of Trump’s first four years in office. But many of those he turned away had been newly arrived at the border. Unlike Trump, Biden shied away from raids.Trump has also signed an executive order aimed at ending federal benefits for undocumented people. It’s unclear how this might affect education: schools receive federal money, particularly to help support children from low-income households, but they also cannot turn away students based on their immigration status, according to the 1982 supreme court decision Plyler v Doe.That landmark ruling, however, is under attack by conservative forces, most recently in Tennessee, where lawmakers this month introduced a bill saying schools can deny enrollment to undocumented students. The sponsors say it’s their intention to challenge Plyler.‘We hugged long and hard’Educators are also preparing more practical gifts meant to help children resume their educations elsewhere.Genoveva Winkler, the regional migrant education program coordinator in Idaho’s Nampa school district, said she’s given more than 100 immigrant families, who may have to suddenly return to their home countries, copies of their students’ transcripts in English and Spanish, along with textbooks supplied by the Mexican consulate to improve their Spanish.Indianapolis teacher Amy Halsall said four children from the same family, ranging in ages from 7 to 12, left her school system right after inauguration day, headed back to Mexico.View image in fullscreen“They didn’t specifically say that it was immigration related, but I would guess it was,” Halsall said. “This is a family that we have had in our school since their sixth-grader was in first grade. The kids were really upset that they had to leave.”The youngest and the eldest had told Halsall they wanted to be ESL (English as a second language) teachers when they grew up, she said. The two middle children hoped to become mechanics and one day open their own shop. Halsall gave them a notebook full of letters written by fellow students and pictures of their classmates.“We hugged long and hard. I told them if they ever came back to Indianapolis that they should call us or visit,” she said. “I told them if I was ever in Mexico, I would call them. I tried hard to keep things positive, but it was hard for all of us. Everyone had tears in their eyes.”The anxiety continues, Halsall said. Just last week, another child, age 8, told her he worried that “la migra” – ICE agents – would take his mother away while he was out.“I told him that he was safe at school and if he got home and no one was there to call me,” she said.Another teacher, in Virginia, said she has had two students leave school so far this academic year. One hailed from Guatemala and the other from Mexico. Both were in their mid-teens and had impeccable attendance, she said.Their teacher did not have a chance to say goodbye in either case. Their departure, she said, left her feeling “completely empty”.“I’ve loved watching them integrate in our school and seeing how they realized they can have this pathway [to further their education] if they choose,” she said. “Watching that choice ripped away by fear is devastating.”

      This story was produced by the 74, a non-profit, independent news organization focused on education in the US More

    • 263 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Do Trump and co want a world reclaimed by straight white men? It’s not certain they’ll get it | Andy Beckett

      by

      For people who believe that the world should be run by straight white men, these are heady times. Probably the most powerful social conservative on the planet occupies the White House again, and seems determined to drive “immoral” and “discriminatory” diversity policies out of American life.Two years ago, the US supreme court banned the use of affirmative action in university admissions. A growing list of American and British companies, from Ford to BT to Goldman Sachs, appear to be reducing their commitment to the once fashionable corporate principles of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Meanwhile, Reform UK promises to “scrap DEI rules that have lowered standards and reduced economic productivity”. In politics, commerce and education, a huge, potentially lasting counterrevolution seems to be under way.“The death of DEI is finally here,” wrote the columnist Michael Deacon in the Telegraph last year, “and it’s a joy to behold … A radical progressive ideology that, in recent years, has held countless western institutions in its miserable grip … is finally loosening.”For many companies, promoting diversity has only been a priority for a few years, since the surge of anti-racist activism set off around the world by Black Lives Matter in 2020. And in some ways the inclusive values of DEI and the winner-takes-all ethos of capitalism have always been an awkward fit. For all but the most ethical businesses, hiring and employing people in a more egalitarian way is less fundamental than maximising profits.In many supposedly diverse companies, progress towards a truly representative workforce, especially in senior positions, has been slow and far from complete. From rightwing and leftwing perspectives, it can be argued that diversity policies have just been a cynical experiment: yet another attempt to polish corporate capitalism’s increasingly tarnished public image. Now that the political climate has changed, the experiment is being unceremoniously abandoned.But is the situation really that clearcut? One of the key features of current rightwing populism is a desire to escape complicated social realities, and so it is with the revolt against diversity. Thanks to globalisation, immigration and trends in birthrates, Britain and the US, like most other rich countries, are much more multicultural than they were in the 1980s – the last time there was a big conservative pushback against diversity policies. Between 1980 and 2019, the minority ethnic proportion of the US population doubled to 40%. In England and Wales, the proportion of people who didn’t describe themselves as white British doubled between 2001 and 2021 alone: from one in eight to one in four. During these decades of flux, there were also profound shifts in how millions of Britons and Americans thought about feminism, gender, sexuality and disability.None of these socially embedded trends is likely to be completely reversed, however much rightwing populists rail against them. In a speech last week, Kemi Badenoch described diversity policies as “poison”, but the Conservatives have their own equal opportunities policy, with her face on the document’s first page. It commits the party to being “a supportive and inclusive environment where … the diversity of people’s backgrounds and circumstances will be positively valued … [and] where the party will also continue to work towards its dedicated goal of encouraging and promoting equality and diversity”. It’s easy to see these commitments as insincere or hypocritical, but they are also a sign of how far DEI ideas have spread.Back in the 1980s, the last transatlantic campaign against diversity policies was led by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Her government caricatured Labour councils that helped minorities as “loony left”, and then took many of their powers away. Meanwhile, in the US, Ronald Reagan aimed to abolish the federal government’s affirmative action programme, which he saw as “bureaucratic” social engineering. He also reduced funding for the agency that enforced equal opportunities employment law, drastically reducing the number of cases it brought against companies.But his counterrevolution got no further. Strong opposition – hard to imagine now – came from relatively liberal senior figures in the Republican party. More relevant to today, further support for diversity policies came from big business. “When Reagan sought to tear down affirmative action,” wrote the American sociologist Frank Dobbin in his 2009 book, Inventing Equal Opportunity, “corporate America stood together to oppose the [president’s] idea.”Businesses argued that diverse workforces made the best use of the country’s range of talent and were more creative and productive, and more able to understand a broad spectrum of customers at home and abroad. Shrewdly, businesses also rebranded affirmative action in more neutral, less political language, as “human resources management”. Reagan’s attempt to abolish affirmative action was quietly abandoned.Might today’s war on diversity fail in a similar way? The forces of white male supremacy have a more relentless rightwing media on their side than in Reagan and Thatcher’s day. Donald Trump and other reactionary populists also seem less likely to compromise in culture wars than their more pragmatic conservative predecessors.Yet with multiculturalism now deeply entrenched, rooting out diversity policies will be harder than Trump’s confident executive orders suggest. Legal opposition is building, and there are already signs that business is hiding its diversity programmes behind euphemisms again. On Tuesday, Apple shareholders voted against ending the company’s diversity programme. “DEI is being rebranded – not disbanded,” complained the rightwing New York Post recently. It pointed out that some companies widely thought to have dropped DEI continued to promote it on their websites in slightly modified language. If diversity policies increase profits – and according to the president of the British Chambers of Commerce, Martha Lane Fox, “Businesses that embed diversity have 25% higher financial results” – then even the most determined anti-DEI campaign is unlikely to totally prevail.Moreover, what the reactionaries want is less clear and coherent than it first seems. Do they want to restore a society utterly dominated by straight white men, which is almost certainly impossible? Or do they accept the existence of a diverse society, as long as it isn’t actually shaped by diversity policies? On these questions, conservatives are divided.Even Trump sometimes acknowledges American diversity’s permanence and importance. In his inauguration speech, he boasted of his “increases in support from … young and old, men and women, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans …” Social conservatives around the world may be feeling triumphant now, but their revolt against diversity has probably come too late.

      Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Apple shareholders vote against ending DEI program amid Trump crackdown

      by

      Apple shareholders voted down an attempt to pressure the technology company into yielding to Donald Trump’s push to scrub corporate programs designed to diversify its workforce.A proposal drafted by the National Center for Public Policy Research – a self-described conservative thinktank – urged Apple to follow a litany of high-profile companies that have retreated from diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives currently in the Trump administration’s crosshairs.After a brief presentation about the anti-DEI proposal, Apple announced shareholders had rejected it without disclosing the vote tally. The preliminary results will be outlined in a regulatory filing later on Tuesday.The outcome vindicated Apple management’s decision to stand behind its diversity commitment even though Trump asked the US Department of Justice to look into whether these types of programs have discriminated against employees whose race or gender are not aligned with the initiatives’ goals.But Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, has maintained a cordial relationship with Trump since his first term in office, an alliance that so far has helped the company skirt tariffs on its iPhones made in China. After Cook and Trump met last week, Apple on Monday announced it would invest $500bn in the US and create 20,000 more jobs during the next five years – a commitment applauded by the president.Tuesday’s shareholder vote came a month after the same group presented a similar proposal during Costco’s annual meeting, only to have it overwhelmingly rejected.That snub did not discourage the National Center for Public Policy Research from confronting Apple about its DEI program in a pre-recorded presentation by Stefan Padfield, executive director of the thinktank’s Free Enterprise Project, who asserted “forced diversity is bad for business”.In the presentation, Padfield attacked Apple’s diversity commitments for being out of line with recent court rulings and said the programs expose the Cupertino, California, company to an onslaught of potential lawsuits for alleged discrimination. He cited the Trump administration as one of Apple’s potential legal adversaries.“The vibe shift is clear: DEI is out and merit is in,” Padfield said in the presentation.The specter of potential legal trouble was magnified last week when the Florida attorney general, James Uthmeier, filed a federal lawsuit against Target for allegedly failing to properly disclose the financial risks of its DEI programs to stakeholders.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut Cook conceded Apple may have to make some adjustments to its diversity program “as the legal landscape changes” while still striving to maintain a culture that has helped elevate the company to its current market value of $3.7tn – greater than any other business in the world.“We will continue to create a culture of belonging,” Cook told shareholders during the meeting.In its last diversity and inclusion report issued in 2022, Apple disclosed that nearly three-fourths of its global workforce consisted of white and Asian employees. Nearly two-thirds of its employees were men.Other major technology companies for years have reported employing mostly white and Asian men, especially in high-paid engineering jobs – a tendency that spurred the industry to pursue largely unsuccessful efforts to diversify. More

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Business leaders must stand up against attacks on diversity and democracy | Letters

      by

      Stefan Stern’s article on CEOs and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives was very timely, and resonated strongly with me (To the CEOs who’ve joined Trump’s fight against diversity, I say this: you’re making a big mistake, 18 February). We live in times where individualism is preferred over community, and connectedness means being connected with our own group, not with the wider world. Those of us in leadership positions have to show some bravery and stand up for what we believe, in the face of the most challenging attacks western democracy has faced since the second world war.While the application of DEI policies should always be critiqued for effectiveness and improvement, it is clear that the current anti-DEI campaign is mainly designed to protect the historic status quo for those in power and to marginalise others. It is based on ideology, not on any serious analysis or research.My support goes to leaders who demonstrate that they are serious about bringing the world together for the benefit of everyone, not just for their own narrow interests. The institutions of democracy and regulated capitalism, while far from perfect, have achieved a huge amount over the last 80 years. They are now being seriously tested, and it is incumbent on all of us, particularly those of us in leadership positions, to show our mettle.Simon BazalgetteKew, London More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      The little-known Gullah Geechee politician who pushed for the 14th amendment

      by

      After Donald Trump issued an executive order to limit birthright citizenship last month, Marilyn Hemingway, the CEO and president of the Gullah Geechee Chamber of Commerce, knew she had to do something. Based in Georgetown, South Carolina, the GGCC helps preserve the history of Gullah Geechee people, the Africans who were enslaved on the Sea Islands along the Atlantic coast, and their descendants. One such person was Joseph Hayne Rainey, a man born in Georgetown and enslaved until his father purchased his freedom when he was 10. Rainey is who Hemingway immediately thought of following Trump’s order.Rainey was the first Black person elected to the United States congress, where he was known for his support of the 14th amendment, which was ratified in 1868 and stated: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” The amendment was necessary to give the roughly 4.5 million Black people in the country citizenship after emancipation, as a previous supreme court case, Dred Scott v Sandford, had denied citizenship to all people of African descent.Rainey’s support for the laws passed during Reconstruction was deeply informed by his life in enslavement. He spent much of his time in Congress fighting to protect Black Americans and to ensure the 14th and 15th amendments – the latter of which prohibited the federal government from denying a citizen the right to vote based on race, color or previous condition of servitude – were enforced.“The 14th amendment was passed and ratified because once those who were enslaved were emancipated, it was like they didn’t have standing,” Hemingway said. “Where were they in this world now? They were no longer enslaved, so they needed to be made citizens … [Rainey] went from an enslaved person to an emancipated person to a citizen. His personal story reflects the American story.”Now, the amendment that has long granted birthright citizenship is being used by the US president to deny citizenship to the children of recent immigrants. “The Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States,” his EO reads. It “has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof’”.Trump’s executive order almost immediately faced several lawsuits from civil rights groups and Democratic attorneys generals, as well as a temporary restraining order from a federal judge. A federal appeals court has denied the administration’s request to reinstate a ban, but the threat still looms, especially as the president has said he expects the supreme court to side with him on the decision.“The first line of the 14th amendment is designed to say that anyone who was born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States is a citizen,” said Jamal Greene, a professor at Columbia Law School. “That doesn’t depend on their race or their ethnicity or anything else about them. The only question is whether they’re subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.”Trump’s administration has harped on the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction of the United States”, which was understood to refer to people who were not subject to US law, Greene said. That would have meant diplomats from other countries, Indigenous people, who are sovereign, and, potentially, an invading army. But now Trump is trying to use that language to apply to a wide group of people, including children whose parents were not lawfully in the US at the time of their birth.Greene said that those who support such an understanding of the law are suggesting that those people would not have an allegiance to the US. “But that interpretation is not consistent with how it would have been originally understood,” he said. “And it’s also not consistent with the language itself, since jurisdiction is not a reference to allegiance. It’s a reference to whether US laws apply to those people.”Some are also concerned about the order’s potential reach to citizens, such as Black Americans. The GGCC, for its part, argues that Trump’s order is an attempt to undo some of Rainey’s work. For Rainey, the 14th amendment was not just for Black Americans – it was for everyone. “To all people born unnaturalized into the United States, [the 14th amendment] is the first time in the history of the United States that it actually covered citizenship, including of formerly enslaved people,” Hemingway said. “They were the impetus for this, but it covered everyone. So we have to be very careful when we come and we start attacking it, because it’s not just going to remove citizenship of immigrants, it’s going to remove citizenship of everyone.”Though the restraining order blocks Trump’s plan, the future of birthright citizenship will be undecided until the supreme court hears the case. In the meantime, Hemingway is continuing to promote Rainey’s life and continue his fight.“This is why we speak out to make sure correct history is told … We still have to have the same fight for civil rights. [Rainey’s] actions inform our actions to this day. His story needs to be told more so that we could hold all of our elected officials accountable to the United States constitution. We are in a constitutional crisis. His life explains why we continue the fight.” More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump administration gives schools deadline to cut DEI or lose federal funds

      by

      The Trump administration is giving the US’s schools and universities two weeks to eliminate diversity initiatives or risk losing federal money, raising the stakes in the president’s fight against “wokeness”.In a memo on Friday, the education department gave an ultimatum to stop using “racial preferences” as a factor in admissions, financial aid, hiring or other areas. Schools are being given 14 days to end any practice that treats students or workers differently because of their race.Educators at colleges nationwide were rushing to evaluate their risk and decide whether to stand up for practices they believe are legal. The sweeping demand threatens to upend all aspects of campus operations, from essays on college applications to classroom lessons and campus clubs.It’s meant to correct what the memo described as rampant discrimination in education, often against white and Asian students.“Schools have been operating on the pretext that selecting students for ‘diversity’ or similar euphemisms is not selecting them based on race,” said Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary for civil rights. “No longer. Students should be assessed according to merit, accomplishment and character.”The guidance drew sharp backlash from civil rights groups and university groups. Some believe its vague language is meant to have a chilling effect, pressuring schools to eliminate anything touching on the topic of race even if it may be defensible in court.“Creating a sense of risk around doing work that might promote diverse and welcoming campuses is much more of the goal than a clear statement of existing law,” said Jonathan Fansmith, senior vice-president of government relations at the American Council on Education, an association of college presidents.The memo is an extension of Donald Trump’s executive order banning diversity, equity and inclusion programs. As legal justification, it cites the 2023 supreme court decision barring race as a factor in college admissions.“Put simply, educational institutions may neither separate or segregate students based on race, nor distribute benefits or burdens based on race,” it said.On Monday the education department announced it also cut $600m in grants for organizations that train teachers. The programs promoted “divisive” concepts such as DEI, critical race theory and social justice activism, the department said.Confusion around the implications of Trump’s anti-DEI order was apparent at last week’s confirmation hearing for education secretary nominee Linda McMahon. Asked whether classes on African American history would run afoul of Trump’s order, McMahon said she wasn’t certain.The California School Boards Association is awaiting legal guidance so it can advise schools on the Trump administration’s deadline, spokesperson Troy Flint said.“At this point there is not enough information for a step-by-step playbook that tells school districts if you were doing A then now you should do B, or perhaps eliminate the whole program entirely,” he said. “I know people want that granular level of detail. But this is a new era, with some novel civil rights theories and there is no definitive reference for what’s happening now.”The new guidance takes aim directly at college admissions, suggesting colleges have sought to work around the supreme court’s decision.College essays, for instance, cannot be used to predict a student’s race, the guidance says. In the supreme court decision, Chief Justice John Roberts said nothing prevents colleges “from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life,” though he warned that colleges couldn’t use essays as an indirect workaround to consider students’ race.The memo also said it’s unlawful for colleges to eliminate standardized testing requirements “to achieve a desired racial balance or to increase racial diversity”. Dozens of colleges across the US have dropped SAT and ACT requirements in recent years, citing concerns the exams favor students from high-income families.Practices that have long been commonplace could become legal liabilities, including recruiting in underrepresented areas or buying lists of potential students with certain academic and demographic information, said Angel B Pérez, the CEO of the National Association for College Admission Counseling.“Colleges and universities are going to find themselves between a rock and a hard place,” Pérez said. “They know that what they’re doing is not illegal, but they are worried that if they do not comply, not having federal funding will decimate them.”Some universities said they expect little change. At Oregon State University, a legal review concluded that its programs “are fully compliant with all state and federal laws”, according to a campus message from Rob Odom, vice-president of university relations and marketing.The department memo appears to take aim at scholarships for students from certain racial backgrounds. There’s been legal debate about whether the supreme court decision extends to financial aid, with some schools and institutions deciding to scrap racial requirements for some scholarships.The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators said there’s no consensus on the question, and the group is trying to understand how the memo could affect student aid.“The last thing students need when making plans about how to pay for college is uncertainty over when or whether they will receive financial aid they’ve been relying on,” the group said in a statement.Trump has called for the elimination of the education department, and Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) has slashed dozens of contracts deemed wasteful.The Doge team won a legal victory on Monday when a federal judge declined to block it from federal student loan records. The judge said the plaintiff, the University of California Student Association, failed to prove it was harmed by Doge’s access to the data. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Google defends scrapping AI pledges and DEI goals in all-staff meeting

      by

      Google’s executives gave details on Wednesday on how the tech giant will sunset its diversity initiatives and defended dropping its pledge against building artificial intelligence for weaponry and surveillance in an all-staff meeting.Melonie Parker, Google’s former head of diversity, said the company was doing away with its diversity and inclusion employee training programs and “updating” broader training programs that have “DEI content”. It was the first time company executives have addressed the whole staff since Google announced it would no longer follow hiring goals for diversity and took down its pledge not to build militarized AI. The chief legal officer, Kent Walker, said a lot had changed since Google first introduced its AI principles in 2018, which explicitly stated Google would not build AI for harmful purposes. He said it would be “good for society” for the company to be part of evolving geopolitical discussions in response to a question about why the company removed prohibitions against building AI for weapons and surveillance.Parker said that, as a federal contractor, the company has been reviewing all of its programs and initiatives in response to Donald Trump’s executive orders that direct federal agencies and contractors to dismantle DEI work. Parker’s role has also been changed from chief diversity officer to the vice-president of Googler Engagement.“What’s not changing is we’ve always hired the best person for the job,” she said, according to a recording of the meeting the Guardian reviewed.Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, said the company had always “deeply cared” about hiring a workforce that represents the diversity of its global users but that the firm had to comply with the rules and regulations of where it operates.“Our values are enduring, but we have to comply with legal directions depending on how they evolve,” Pichai said.Pichai, who was speaking from Paris while attending an international AI summit, and other executives were responding to questions employees posted in an internal forum. Some of these questions were part of a coordinated effort among worker activist groups such as No Tech for Apartheid to force company executives to answer for the tech giant’s drastic move away from its previous core values.Employees had submitted 93 questions about the company’s decision to remove its pledge not to build AI weapons and more than 100 about Google’s announcement that it was rolling back DEI pledges, according to screenshots the Guardian reviewed. The company recently shifted to using AI to summarize similar questions employees had ahead of regularly scheduled staff meetings, which are known as TGIF.Last week, Google joined Meta and Amazon in shifting away from an emphasis on a culture of inclusivity in favor of policies molded in the image of the Trump administration. In addition to removing mentions of its commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) from filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said it would no longer set hiring targets for people from underrepresented backgrounds. The company also removed language from its publicly posted AI principles that stated it wouldn’t build AI for harmful purposes including weaponry and surveillance.“We are increasingly being asked to have a seat at the table in some important conversations, and I think it’s good for society that Google has a role in those conversations in areas where we do specialize – cybersecurity, or some of the work around biology, and many more,” Walker, the chief legal officer, said. “While it may be that some of the strict prohibitions that were in [the first version] of the AI principles don’t jive well with those more nuanced conversations we’re having now, it remains the case that our north star through all of this is that the benefits substantially outweigh the risks.”Google has long attempted to give the impression that it was toeing the line between its stated corporate and cultural values and chasing government and defense contracts. After employee protests in 2018, the company withdrew from the US Defense Department’s Project Maven – which used AI to analyze drone footage – and released its AI principles and values, which promised not to build AI for weapons or surveillance.In the years since, however, the company has started working with the Pentagon again after securing a $9bn Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract along with Microsoft, Amazon and Oracle. Google has also had active contracts to provide AI to the Israel Defense Forces. The tech giant had worked over time to distance the contract, called Project Nimbus, from the military arm of the Israeli government, but the Washington Post revealed documents that showed the company not only worked with the IDF but rushed to fulfill new requests for more AI access after the 7 October attacks. It is unclear how the IDF is using Google’s AI capabilities but, as the Guardian reported, the Israeli military has used AI for a number of military purposes including to help find and identify bombing targets.In a statement a Google spokesperson, Anna Kowalczyk, said the company’s work with the Israeli government was not “directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOrganizers at No Tech for Apartheid said the DEI and AI announcements were deeply related. The “SVP of People Operations Fiona Cicconi communicated internally that the move to dismantle DEI programs was made to insulate government contracts from ‘risk’,” the group wrote in a worker call to action published on Tuesday. “It is important to note that the bulk of government spending on technology services is spent through the military.”For each category of question from employees, Google’s internal AI summarizes all the queries into a single query. The AI distilled the questions about the development of AI weapons to: “We recently removed a section from our AI principles page that pledged to avoid using the technology in potentially harmful applications, such as weapons and surveillance. Why did we remove this section?”While the company does not make all of the questions that were posted visible, the list gives a snapshot of some of them. Questions that employees asked included how the updated AI principles would ensure the company’s tools “are not misused for harmful purposes” and asked executives to “please talk frankly and without corp speak and legalese”.The third-most-popular question employees asked was why the AI summaries were so bad.“The AI summaries of questions on Ask are terrible. Can we go back to answering the questions people actually asked?” it read. More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      The Long Wave: Why Trump’s USAid freeze endangers millions

      by

      Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. I have been following Donald Trump’s suspension of the US Agency for International Development. USAid is the world’s single biggest aid donor, and the decision to halt its work has sent shockwaves around the world. This week, I trace the effects of its potential demise on the Black diaspora. But first, the weekly roundup.Weekly roundupView image in fullscreenFresh calls for DRC ceasefire | A summit of leaders from across Africa, including Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has called for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in DRC. The Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group has seized swathes of territory in eastern DRC, leaving thousands dead or displaced.Altadena seeks justice for LA fire victims | A memorial service at the First African Methodist Episcopal church in Pasadena, led by the Rev Al Sharpton, has highlighted the Eaton wildfire’s disproportionate impact on Altadena’s Black residents in a rally for justice and equality.Liverpool waterfront’s role in slavery | Canning Dock in Liverpool, England, where ships trafficking enslaved Africans to the Caribbean were fitted out and repaired, is opening to the public so lesser-told aspects of its history can be explored. This project, alongside other redevelopment programmes, aims to shed light on the waterfront’s role in the transatlantic slave trade.Overtourism fears for Bo-Kaap | Residents of the picturesque, candy-coloured Bo-Kaap district in Cape Town, South Africa, are grappling with the impacts of tourism. Many have expressed frustration about road traffic, crowds blocking streets for photos and rising gentrification.Black hair animation makes waves | Researchers at Yale University and the University of California, Santa Cruz, have developed algorithms to capture the true form of afro-textured hair in animation and computer graphics. The development marks a huge step for the portrayal of Black characters in animated films, cartoons and video games.In depth: What is USAid and why has it been suspended?View image in fullscreenThe significance and reach of USAid’s operations came very close to home when I realised that even in the war-stricken cities of my birthplace, Sudan, USAid was providing support to soup kitchens crucial to the survival of cut-off civilian populations. The freezing of USAid’s work has severely compromised these life-saving efforts, as well as that of US-funded facilities caring for malnourished babies. In the capital, Khartoum, two-thirds of Sudan’s soup kitchens closed in the first week after the aid suspension.On Donald Trump’s first day in office, he announced a 90-day pause in the organisation’s operations because they were part of a “foreign aid industry and bureaucracy … not aligned with American interests”. USAid was established by John F Kennedy in 1961 as an independent agency of the US government. It grew to have a large remit, providing everything from humanitarian assistance to disaster relief. But it also plays a role in education, promoting democratic participation and governance, and supporting the health ministries of the countries it operates in. The range of its programmes and the number of locations in which it is active is staggering.The USAid budget was more than $40bn in the 2023 fiscal year. The suspension, which looks like a permanent dismantling, is embroiled in legal disputes. A federal judge has blocked the decision to put thousands of USAid workers on administrative leave, on the grounds that the Trump administration does not have the authority to abolish an agency established by congressional legislation. As the process unfolds, the work of the agency has been halted overnight, with severe repercussions.Sub-Saharan AfricaView image in fullscreenCountries in sub-Saharan Africa account for more than a third of US foreign assistance spending. In addition to famine relief and medical and humanitarian support in conflict areas such as Sudan, USAid assists health ministries and, most urgently, a large sexual health and HIV prevention programme. Approximately 40,000 healthcare workers in Kenya partly financed by USAid are likely to lose their jobs. The impacts on treatment available to patients, pregnant women and disease treatment are almost too vast to estimate.What is unfolding in South Africa – where patients have showed up for treatment and medication to find that clinics were closed – offers a small insight into what could happen next to people at the sharpest end of medical emergencies. The country is in the grip of one of the world’s largest HIV/Aids epidemics, constituting a quarter of cases worldwide.Latin AmericaView image in fullscreenUSAid’s work focuses on the challenges most prominent in any given location. In Latin America, support for those displaced by guerrilla violence, integration of migrants and the prevention of sexual exploitation have relied heavily on US foreign assistance. Almost 8 million Venezuelans have left the country in the past decade, fleeing economic crises and settling in neighbouring countries. About 3 million of them are in Colombia, the largest recipient of US foreign aid in South America. Last year, USAid funded the feeding and nutrition of a large number of refugees in Colombia, partnering with the UN World Food Programme and extending almost $50m in relief. Abandoning such vulnerable populations not only deprives them of food, but leaves them prone to exploitation and abuse by the sort of criminal gangs that prey on the displaced and hungry.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe ramifications of the suspension extend to the preservation of precious and fragile ecosystems. In Brazil, USAid forged the Partnership for the Conservation of Amazon Biodiversity, an agreement that supports Indigenous people and rural communities, and in doing so protects the Amazon and helps combat the climate emergency. The loss of that support affects not just these communities and those employed by such foreign assistance programmes, but the environmental health of the planet.The CaribbeanView image in fullscreenIn the Caribbean, USAid projects are diverse and embedded in civil society, environmental protection and future proofing younger generations. In Jamaica, among the programmes that have halted is the Youth Empower Activity, which is targeted at the most at-risk people. It helps them access education, professional training and improve job prospects, with a view to increasing household income and promoting national development. Thousands of Jamaicans are enrolled in the scheme – but now a total of $54m of US funding is under threat in the country, according to government estimates.The suspension could also interrupt a USAid-funded, Caribbean-wide project to bolster food security by increasing fruit and vegetable farming, scholarships for degrees in agriculture and support for small farmers. The shutdown came days after the launch of a programme to reduce the risks to marine and coastal biodiversity – an attempt to ameliorate an environmental crisis affecting the region’s coral reefs and biodiversity. Beyond the impact on individuals, small business owners, and the environment, there is, as with all such stoppages, the loss of livelihoods of people employed by these schemes.Soft power lostView image in fullscreenDespite the large sums deployed, USAid, and US foreign assistance in general, is perceived to also benefit the United States. Although it cannot be quantified in exact numbers, supporters say such assistance contributes to the US’s soft power abroad. That soft power is twofold: the first is in a sort of preventive measure, whereby aid helps to stabilise poorer countries and pre-empt deepening crises that could compromise the US’s global security agenda. The second is that aid is seen as a bulwark to the influence of countries such as Russia and China, both of which are particularly active in Africa, for example. In maintaining a presence on the ground across the world, and strong alliances with governments and civil society organisations, the US promotes a foreign policy that aims to curtail the ability of its adversaries to create their own alliances and political footholds.Aid model under scrutinyView image in fullscreenThe speed of the suspension, and how it has plunged so many around the world into hunger and uncertainty, raises questions about the wisdom of depending so profoundly on a country that has proven to be so unreliable. Ken Opalo, a specialist in development and the author of An Africanist Perspective on Substack, wrote: “The cuts are a painful reminder that aid dependence isn’t a viable development strategy.” If the USAid suspension remains, that viable development strategy, or the stepping in of alternative funders, will not materialise overnight. In the meantime, millions of people wait to learn if their sudden change in circumstances will become permanent, subject to a huge constitutional battle thousands of miles away.

      To receive the complete version of The Long Wave in your inbox every Wednesday, please subscribe here. More