A new lawsuit against Google accuses the company of encouraging a “racially biased corporate culture” that offers black employees lower pay and fewer promotion opportunities than their white counterparts, Reuters reported. The lawsuit, filed Friday in federal court in San Jose, Calif., alleges that the company exposed former recruiter April Kerley and other current and former black employees to a hostile work environment.
In 2014, Curly was hired by Google to develop the company’s black college outreach program. Soon after, she claims to have been subjected to slanderous comments from her managers who allegedly presented her as an “angry” black woman, skipping her for a promotion.
“While Google claims they were looking to increase diversity, in reality they underestimated, underpaid and mistreated their black employees,” Curley’s lawyer told Reuters. The complaint notes that blacks make up only 4.4% of Google employees and approximately 3% of management.
We turned to Google for a comment.
Kerley is not the first to accuse Google of creating a work environment hostile to black employees and other people of color. After Timnit Gebru’s controversial departure from the company, Alex Khanna, a former member of the tech giant’s Ethical AI research team, said she decided to leave Google after growing tired of its structural flaws. “In a word, technology has a problem with whiteness,” Hannah wrote on Medium at the time. “Google is not just a technical organization. Google is a white tech organization.”
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