Timnit Gebru: Google and big tech are 'institutionally racist'
&gt; Interviewer: I suppose if you think that, the next obvious question is do you think Google itself is institutionally racist?<p>&gt; Dr. Gebru: Yes, Google itself is institutionally racist.<p>&gt; Interviewer: That&#x27;s quite a thing to say - you were a Google employee until a short while ago.<p>&gt; Dr. Gebru: I feel like most if not all tech companies are institutionally racist. I mean, how can I not say that they are not institutionally racist? The Congressional Black Caucus is the one who&#x27;s forcing them to publish their diversity numbers. It&#x27;s not by accident that black women have one of the lowest retention rates[, in the technology industry]. So for sure Google and all of the other tech companies are institutionally racist.<p>There&#x27;s not really much to discuss or unpack here. There&#x27;s no defining of &#x27;institutionally racist&#x27; in the conversation, so it&#x27;s impossible to say what standards are being using to determine if something is institutionally racist. Dr. Gebru also provides essentially no facts or evidence for her claims.<p>Asking if organizations are racist is a fair question, but the conversation will basically only be productive if terms are clearly defined and accusations are based on concrete evidence.<p>This seems like it was a very casual interview, so I&#x27;m not faulting Dr. Gebru for not providing more evidence here, just saying that this interview is not super helpful in the larger conversation around racism. Because an accusation of racism is a serious accusation to make, I wish in these situations that there was more substantiated evidence provided.