*A new lawsuit filed against Google accuses the company of systemic bias against Black employees.
In a lawsuit filed on Friday, April Curley, the plaintiff, alleges that the tech giant puts Black staffers in low-paying, low-level positions.
According to Reuters, the lawsuit claims Google maintains a “racially biased corporate culture” that favors white men. The complaint is seeking class action-status and notes that Black employees “make up only 4.4 percent of employees and only 3 percent of leadership,” per the report.
Additionally, Curley said “Google subjected Black people to a hostile work environment, often requiring them to show identification or be questioned by security at its Mountain View, California campus,” the outlet writes.
READ MORE: Google Under Investigation Over Treatment Of Black Female Workers
The lawsuit coincides with a probe conducted by the Department of Fair Employment and Housing into Google’s treatment of Black females and the discrimination they were allegedly subjected to at their workplace.
We reported earlier that an insider told Reuters that the state’s civil rights regulator conducted interviews with current and former Black female Google employees who said they weren’t taken seriously by white male colleagues and management, and they were marginalized on projects.
“This institutional racism, it’s not even just limited to Google. It’s most of these institutions in general, and specifically in the tech companies, are institutionally racist,” former Google AI researcher Timnit Gebru told BBC.
Gebru, who is Black, was fired by Google for criticizing the company’s lack of diversity.
Curley said Google hired her in 2014 as a “marketing ploy” Her supervisors are described as the typical anti-Black racists who are most often tapped to lead tech companies. The plaintiff said her bosses labeled her an “angry” Black woman and denied her promotion. She was fired in the fall of 2020 after she and several colleagues created a list of reforms that they suggested the company implement, according to the report.
“While Google claims that they were looking to increase diversity, they were actually undervaluing, underpaying and mistreating their Black employees,” Ben Crump, Curley’s lawyer, said in a statement, according to Reuters.
Google reportedly told employees who complained about racism and sexism to take mental health leave, NBC reported.
We Publish News 24/7. Don’t Miss A Story. Click HERE to SUBSCRIBE to Our Newsletter Now!
