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Though natural hairstyles are more popular these days, Black women who wear styles like curly afros, twists, or braids are less likely to get job interviews, reports CNN . A study — which has yet to be published — conducted by researchers from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business reports that participants deemed natural hairstyles as unprofessional. Researchers selected hundreds of people from various racial backgrounds to score potential job candidates for competence, professionalism, among other things. As a result, the findings show that Black women with natural hair scored lower for competence and professionalism compared to Black women with straight hair. In addition, Black women donning natural coifs had lower scores than white women with straight hair and curly hair. Despite companies’ recent efforts to “eradicate racism at systemic and structural levels,” researcher Ashleigh Shelby Rosette — a management professor and a senior associate dean — noted that many biases...
Aug 14, 2020
If you have an old device, you might bring it to a thrift store, recycling center, or pass it down to somebody else you know. However, according to new research , those donated devices may still contain your personal information. For the study — published by security firm Rapid7 — researcher Josh Frantz purchased 85 devices for only $650, including computers, removable media like flash drives, hard disks, and cell phones. He ended up finding over 366,300 files of pretty sensitive information that included images and documents. Frantz was able to gain access to emails, social security, credit card numbers, passport information, dates of birth, and more. Essentially, all the data that you really don’t want falling into a random stranger’s hands. This highlights that a lot of centers aren’t properly wiping data before they pass devices on, even if they’re promising to do so. Frantz only found two devices that were erased properly, and only three of them were encrypted. It’s important...
Mar 19, 2019
Tech’s lack of diversity can easily show up in the products companies build and their programming. If you need an example, consider the study of self-driving cars possibly not being able to recognize darker-skin. When you only have one group of people building an app or algorithm, it’s going to have glaring gaps. In an ideal world, tech would be diverse and those problems would go away — right? According to a study conducted by Stellares, the make up of a company’s founders says a lot about how it’ll grow. For their study, Stellares took data from 13,000 companies. One thing they found was that male tech founders rarely hire women. When all the founders of a company are male, fewer than a fifth of leadership (which they define as vice president and above) are female. If the founders are women, then that flips to leadership that’s about 50 percent male. None of that influences racial diversity. In their blog post, Stellares wrote, “When we looked in the data, the proportion of female...
Mar 12, 2019
This story originally published on March 8, 2019 Crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter, Gofundme, and Indiegogo are important tools for entrepreneurs. When you’re looking to launch a new business or project, it can be an excellent way to help offset costs and raise capital. The great thing about crowdfunding is that it’s accessible to anyone, but a new study has revealed how racial bias impacts the support Black people receive on crowdfunding platforms. Black entrepreneurs are less likely to meet their fundraising goals and, if they do make a product, people won’t pay as much for it, according to a series of studies from Northeastern University. The authors of the study — Venkat Kuppuswamy, an assistant professor of entrepreneurship and innovation at Northeastern University, and Peter Younkin, from the University of Oregon — have dedicated a lot of time to understanding the role racial bias plays in crowdfunding. “I began researching crowdfunding platforms in 2011, when they were just...
Mar 9, 2019