I. Affirmative Action
Louis Menard, "Integration by Parts," The New Yorker, January 20, 2020.
" 'Do something' is still one of the meanings of 'affirmative action' today. After 1978,when the Q-word declared racial quotas unconstitutional, affirmation actions avoided any suggestion of the Q-word." "Most colleges accept almost everyone who applies, so when we talk about race-conscious admissions, we are talking about policies that affect relatively small numbers of people."

"Thousands of firms adopted affirmative action programs after 1969,when the Nixon Administration began insisting on diversity benchmarks for government contractors, and in 'little more than a decade,' [Melvin Vorofsky, law professor and author of "The Affirmative Action Puzzle"] says, 'affirmative action became a way of life for many large corporations.' "As late as 1969, less than five per cent of all professors had African or Asian ancestry, and around eighty per cent were male schools like Harvard and Stanford [which] had trouble getting to gender balance."

"To paraphrase George Schultz, Nixon's Secretary of State, 'for hundreds of years,the United States had a racial quota. It was zero. Affirmation action is an attempt to redress an injustice done to black people.' "

"The whole history of affirmation action shows, as Vorofsky somewhat reluctantly admits, that when the programs are shut down, diversity representation drops. Diversity, however we define it, is politically constructed and politically maintained." "Do they [white Americans] really believe that there should be no sacrifice to make or price to pay for the systemic damage done to the lives of millions of American citizens, and the men and women who are their ancestors?"

II. Toxic Tech Companies
Kevin Lozano, "God Mode," The Nation, February 20, 2020.
"While warning about the  collection of data and the way it reaffirms some of the most insidious forms of inequality in our society, she [Anna Wiener, author of "Uncanny Valley"] examines how tech companies were run in a toxic cocktail of misogamy, prejudice, and rampant surveillance." "Quickly,Wiener realized the tools for data collection weren't the only things for sale. For the company's clients, user data, as much as any of the services on offer, was itself a valuable good that could be packaged and sold."

"At  a ride-sharing company, employees would frequently search customers' ride history, tracking the travel patterns of celebrities and politicians. It created a wealth of unchecked power for those companies that ended up with vital information." "If they could predict user preferences and behavior, they could also manipulate the entire economy."

"Wiener was also confronted with the arrogance, classicism,  and misogamy of Silicon Valley's workplaces." "Wiener shows how the casual misogamy and truculence of the  workplace -- and tech businesses in general -- are two of  the reasons that the Internet has become an unwelcome place for women, people of color, and those who are down and out. Having refashioned the Internet in their image, start-up executives have made it a hostile environment for everyone else."  "Breaking up Silicon Valley monopolies, unionizing the workplaces and imposing effective new government regulations, need to happen to begin fixing the Internet (and the world.)"