Guess what? Google’s expanding on its old slogan. Today it announced that it’s moving from “Don’t be evil” to “Let’s fight evil.”
Through its philanthropic organization, Google.org, Alphabet plans to give away $11.5 million to help combat racial inequality and police brutality.
Alphabet’s grant will go to “organizations using data and evidence to reduce racial disparities in the criminal justice system,” according to Justin Steele, principal at Google.org.
In his announcement memo, Steele cites the growth of the U.S. penal population (currently at two million souls) and widespread police bias as the primary drivers behind the decision to make the grants. He says that “better data can be part of the solution.”
To this end, most of the recipients of the $11.5 million are groups that have a big data approach to equality. The Center for Policing Equality will receive the lion’s share of the money, $5 million. That $5 million is set to go towards improving the Center’s National Justice Database, which tracks police behavior — particularly police stops and usage of force — throughout the nation. In addition, the grant will allow the Center to help standardize the collection of data across all of the police departments in the United States.
$1.5 million will go to Measures for Justice, allowing its team to create a platform allowing citizens to view how the criminal justice system in their locality has historically treated people across different categories of race, sex, age and class.
Smaller grants have been pledged to the W. Haywood Burns Institute, Impact Justice, JustLeadershipUSA, Defy Ventures, the Center for Employment Opportunities, #Cut50, Silicon Valley De-Bug and Code for America.
Google.org began distributing grants for racial equality in 2015; past beneficiaries have included Black Lives Matter activist Patrisse Cullors and the Equal Justice Initiative.
Here’s hoping that more tech companies follow Google’s example (I mean, Apple, come on, you’re about to be a trillion dollar company — what’s $11.5 million to you?) and invest in helping to make the United States a more just place.
And maybe, by doing so, these companies can also begin to erode the lack of diversity that plagues tech.
According to Fortune, only one percent of the tech workforce is black, while only 2.4 percent of Google’s workforce is black. By fighting racial inequality at its root, tech companies can destroy the barriers that keep people of color from the higher echelons of science and engineering.
Google.org seems to be making a good start.
