Kenzie Williams, an employee at the all-white tech startup Hack’d, was shocked to discover just how racist the country still was after the 2016 presidential election.
“It’s amazing to me that people could be so ignorant,” Williams states, pouring herself coffee in the all-white break room of the Oakland office. “I just thought we had already moved past this.”
“How can you expect to get anywhere without considering alternate points of view from your own?” Williams questioned while standing in the bullpen of a 100% Caucasian room.
“I’m lucky to live in a really diverse city. I can’t imagine living in an all-white town and not getting to experience and learn from people who are different from you,” Williams reports standing in front of the Employee of the Month board, which is inadvertently full of white people.
When asked about the lack of diversity at Hack’d, Williams paused.
“Nobody here is racist. And I don’t do the hiring so…wait, are you saying they hired me because I’m white?”
CEO Bill Moore, supports Williams’ interest in being “on the right side of history.”
When asked why he has not recruited people of color, Moore responded: “We just hired the most talented people we knew, in our own social circle, who all happened to go to Stanford.”
“I’m astonished that racism was hiding in our country all along,” Williams says.
Entirely white co-workers echoed Williams’s sentiments; stating the “racist furor” of the country was “sudden,” “confusing,” and “unexpected.”
“I mean, who knew?” Williams states. “And where does it come from?”
