Black history is not only relevant, it is how we ensure that our heroes are not forgotten and that we have a viable future in our respective industries. As Carter G. Woodson famously said, “If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated.”

As the US leaders of Afroflare, Cloudflare’s employee resource group (ERG) for employees of African descent, we made a personal commitment this month and beyond to effectively represent, build, and grow at Cloudflare and in the tech industry.

To honor that commitment, we decided to tackle some commonly asked questions about the state of African-Americans in tech.

The latest report on diversity in high tech from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in May 2016, indicated African-Americans made up 7.4% of the high tech workforce, with less than 1% in Manager or Executive roles.

An updated report hasn’t been released, but according to USA Today, Wired, and Fortune, Black workers made up between 1% and 6% of Black of the tech workforce from 2018-2019.

According to the EEOC, some factors driving the lack of diversity in high tech include:

• The "pipeline" problem - traditional recruiting efforts depend heavily on individuals’ personal networks, which in the US, are typically not diverse.

• The inhospitable culture in relevant industries and occupations forcing women and minorities to tolerate the environment or leave the field.

• The reluctance of high tech companies to train new employees.

• The fast-changing nature of the industry.

The future of African-Americans in tech is dependent on the concerted and consistent effort of all high tech employees and departments.

Recruiters can build a more diverse pipeline by building relationships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), attending events like Afrotech, or partnering with organizations whose mission is aligned with increasing diversity in tech. We have highlighted a few notable organizations below.

Black Girls Code, founded in April 2011, focuses on teaching young African-American girls how to code in several programming languages. They hope to “bridge the digital divide” in a society that pits underrepresented, young, aspiring, girls against more privileged individuals. They aim to “provide African-American youth with the skills to occupy some of the 1.4 million computing job openings expected to be available in the U.S. by 2020, and to train 1 million girls by 2040.”

/dev/color is a non-profit foundation led by supporters of inclusion in the tech industry with a mission to “empower Black software engineers to help one another grow into industry leaders.” /dev/color does this by focusing on helping individuals find new jobs, assist with start-ups, and most importantly, ensure that engineers find a sense of purpose in their careers and in tech.

Project Include uses data and advocacy to push diversity and inclusion initiatives in high tech. They work with companies to implement diversity initiatives that focus on three core concepts: inclusion, comprehensiveness, and accountability. Project Include shares a powerful message about what it takes to ‘walk the talk’ when it comes to diversity:

“Change is hard, especially around a multidimensional issue like diversity. It is easy for all of us to become defensive and emotional, to shift the blame to others, and to feel fundamentally unheard or misunderstood. It is so uncomfortable for us to talk about the diversity problem that we have not been able to acknowledge it in full.”

These are a few of the many tech events and organizations working to solve this problem. However, doing this work takes more than just money. It involves having difficult conversations, training employees on ally skills, and supporting ERGs to celebrate and educate tech companies on different experiences, which is what we do here at Cloudflare.

As Cloudflarians, we come to work every day to build a better Internet. As Afroflarians, we want to acknowledge the current industry problems around inclusion and work tirelessly to build a better tech industry that welcomes and supports everyone. Not just during Black History Month, but always.

We urge you to do the same.

Afroflare at Afrotech in Oakland (November 2019)

Afroflare at Afrotech in Oakland (November 2019)

Afroflare at Afrotech in Oakland (November 2019)

Why employee resource groups are important for building a great company culture but they're not enough.

Diversity and inclusion is a process. To achieve diversity and inclusion, it’s not enough to hire diverse candidates. Once hired, we must be welcomed by a safe and belonging culture, and our diverse perspectives must be honored by our coworkers.

Too many times we are approached by well-meaning companies eager to hire diverse candidates, only to look behind the curtain and discover a company culture where we will not feel safe to be ourselves, and where our perspectives will be ignored. Why would we choose to stay in such an environment? These are the companies where diverse employees leave just as quickly as they join.

Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) are an essential part of diversity and inclusion, especially as companies grow larger. Before being heard, or trying to change someone's mind, you need to feel safe.

ERGs serve as a safe haven for those with perspectives and experiences that are "diverse" compared to the company as a whole. They are a place to share stories, particular plights, and are a source of stress relief. A place where we can safely show up fully as ourselves, even if at a particular event (like a movie night) no words about these subjects are ever spoken. Even small groups that give the sense of “you belong here” are very much needed and important for building a strong employee community. Having a sense of “I am safe,” “I belong,” “someone else understands my truth” should be established before any of the other steps. That’s where Afroflare comes in here at Cloudflare.

But ERGs alone are not enough. They do not help us to feel welcome in a team sync when we are the only person of color. They do not help us feel heard when we are the only diverse perspective in a meeting. Our perspectives need to be incorporated in products, culture, and employee processes — a result which we can call integration. Without integration, a company will not be able to retain these perspectives. So how does integration start? I believe, it starts with empathy.

Numerous articles have been written about empathy, diversity, and inclusion. Empathy, by which I mean understanding the struggles of worldly differences, is hard to do in a work setting: understanding the struggle of Jim Crow America, or being a first generation immigrant, or how the person you choose to love outside of work can affect your standing in the job market. Some of these struggles have been ingrained into the culture of a people for generations, as familiar to them as apple pie, and yet those experiences are completely unfamiliar to others of us. So what are we to do?

In Brene Brown’s book Dare to Lead, she talks about empathy in a very nuanced way. When I read this section, it had a profound effect on me. And though I encourage you to read the whole book, here is the key idea:

We see the world through a set of unique lenses that bring together who we are, where we come from, and our vast experiences. ... One of the signature mistakes with empathy is that we believe we can take our lenses off and look through the lenses of someone else. We can’t. Our lenses are soldered to who we are. What we can do, however, is honor people’s perspectives as truth even when they’re different from ours. ¹

Getting a seat at the table and mustering the courage to share a new perspective is challenging. Mustering the courage to share when it’s likely that your truth will not be honored because you are the only voice with that perspective is virtually impossible within today’s pervasive “data-driven” culture. Having more than one voice to “second” a thought, to value it, gives it more weight than the one lone voice that can so easily be written off as an outlier or a fluke. I'm never going to be able to count on having a second black, straight, cisgender woman from Baltimore in every discussion. More numbers are not the solution. Honoring people’s perspectives as truth even when they’re different from ours is hard to do for all of us. But unless we each do so for one another, none of our individuality can contribute to our work.

This doesn't often happen bottom-up. All the employees at a company don't spontaneously decide to honor each other's truths, and only hire those who do the same. It has to come from the top and it has to be a conscious decision.

This leads me back to why Afroflare (Cloudflare's ERG for people of color) and other ERGs like it are so important. They are the first step towards integration, providing that sense of safety and belonging. Combined with leadership that values this specific kind of empathy, we can create a culture where diversity has the safety it needs to speak up, and the ears needed to be heard. We’re not perfect, no company is, but Cloudflare is consistently making efforts to improve and become a more inclusive workplace for all, starting from our founders down. And, Cloudflare is aware of its duty to shed light on our diversity efforts, and speak up about how we’re going to create lasting change in the world by building a better Internet for all.

Empathy is great if you can do it. I urge the readers of this blog to simply honor the diverse perspectives of others as truth equally alongside their own. We’d all really win if we consider differing perspectives equally, regardless of the majority opinion, as we are hiring and creating solutions, products, and features. It is only then that our workplaces will begin to reflect the true diversity of the world we live in.

[1] Brown Brené. Dare to Lead: Brave Work, Tough Conversations, Whole Hearts. Random House, 2018.

The reason why we feel like we can help build a better Internet is simply because we believe in values that instill a nature of freedom, privacy, and empowerment in the tool that helps individuals broaden their intellectual and cultural perspective on the daily.

Knowing all of this, our own great company needs to be able to build itself daily into a better company. And that starts with having those conversations which are always uncomfortable. And let me be clear in saying this, being uncomfortable is a good thing because that makes one grow and not be stagnant. Saying all that, here we go...

The Afrocultural community at Cloudflare should take pride in being diverse and inclusive for all just as we all work together to help build a better Internet for all.

And one of the many ways we can build upon this effort is to do more than just belong in a work place and eventually build off of that, feeling normal over time. When I mean belong, it’s more than the "Impostor Syndrome" that normally hits every new hire at any great company. The "Impostor Syndrome" phenomena can be explained by the fact that even though someone may have all the credentials that make them seem like they fit in that particular space, a human being can feel like they don't belong there because of self-doubt or nervous, initial insecurity. This notion eventually goes away over time because this person proves to not only to his/her team that they belong in that space but also to themselves.

That’s the problem, however. That feeling doesn’t seem like it goes away for cultural groups, especially that of the Afrocultural community.

That's the Black Elephant in the Room and it's about time we talk about this.

Our community came together because we needed each other. We wanted to congratulate each other when one of us surpassed a goal at the end of a quarter. We wanted to have dialogue with not only our team but with other communities in Cloudflare, to empower, encourage, and remind each other every now and then that we are apart of what makes working at Cloudflare so great. From that moment on we knew that we had a sense of community and diversity. Cloudflare is a great place to work, but we knew that we need each other to make this an unforgettable experience. From that first meeting, we knew something special was born, and that is Afroflare.

And so we're able to talk about the issues that matter to us: diversity in the workplace, Afrocultural pride, a new and fresh view of the Black culture at work, or even just saying, "Hey, you're dope." More importantly though, we're done talking among each other. No. We now need to have the talk with our other brethren on this little blue ball in our Solar System called Earth. How can other Afro American employees get to feel welcomed into the tech world? What do young African American men and women need to strengthen their resumes and also empower themselves to be better and smarter individuals? In what ways can Cloudflare help lead this charge?

After all....we're just discussing the Black Elephant in the room.