April Christina Curley black diversity recruiter for Google claims Baltimore accent was disability

A former black diversity recruiter at Google says the company is ‘racist’ in its hiring practices and claims the tech giant fired her for her efforts to improve minority representation.  

April Christina Curley, who is black and queer, started working at Google in 2014 with the specific objective to ‘fundamentally shift the relationship (or lack thereof) that Google had with Historically Black Colleges and Universities,’ claiming that the tech giant has previously ‘NEVER hired an HBCU student into a tech role.’ 

She claims her efforts to promote black and brown job candidates was routinely met with resistance from hiring managers and she was allegedly subjected to demeaning treatment, such as being told that her Baltimore accent was a ‘disability’ she should disclose internally. 

On Monday evening she took to Twitter to explain in a lengthy thread her efforts to recruit candidates, the alleged resistance from Google and the reasons why she believes she was fired.

‘The reason Google never hired an HBCU student straight out of undergrad into one of their key engineering roles is because they didn’t believe talent existed at these institutions – until I showed up,’ she wrote.

Curley tweeted how after she began working at Google she fast became aware of ‘all the racist s**t put in place to keep black and brown students out of their pipeline,’ arguing she ‘routinely called out shady recruitment practices such as ‘screening out’ resumes of students with ‘unfamiliar’ school/university names.’

‘In many instances, Google engineers who were interviewing HBCU candidates would leave demeaning and absolutely insulting feedback about students which would ultimately result in a rejection at the hiring committee stage,’ she alleges.  

‘In several cases, students were questioned IN INTERVIEWS about the quality of the computer science curriculum that they were receiving at their HBCU and criticized for ‘not meeting the bar’ compared to ‘elite’ White institutions.’

Curley suggests that her ‘adamant advocacy of black and brown students to be fairly and justly considered for roles at Google’ resulted in ‘active abuse and retaliation from several managers who harassed me – and many other black women.’

‘My skip-level manager, a White woman, told me VERBATIM that the way I speak (oftentimes with a heavy Baltimore accent) was a disability that I should disclose when meeting with folks internally,’ she wrote. 

‘This white woman also told me that she never felt comfortable supporting my work because she was ‘intimidated’ by me and therefore never considered me for leadership opportunities.’

In addition, Curley went on to allege that another manager ‘had his ego bruised FROM JUMP when I refused to discuss my sexuality with him,’ explaining he once asked her which of her colleagues she would sleep with.  

‘Despite STELLAR performance metrics which can be supported by multiple data points, I was repeatedly denied promotions, had my compensation cut, placed on performance improvement plans, denied leadership opportunities, yelled at, intentionally excluded from meetings, etc.,’ she said. ‘Ultimately my last manager, his manager and HR decided that the best way to shut me up was to fire me.’

Curley was fired by Google in September, but left with her head held high with the knowledge she ‘single handedly increased Google’s black engineering hiring from HBCUs by over 300%.’ 

Curley claims her actions resulted in the hiring of more than 300 black and brown students from HBCUs who were hired into engineering roles.

‘I could write FOR DAYS about alllllll the awfully racist recruitment and hiring practices I saw at Google, WITH RECEIPTS’, she ended. 

‘I’ll stop here for today and summarize my sentiment by saying F*** GOOGLE AND F*** THE WAY GOOGLE TREATS BLACK WOMEN and BLACK PEOPLE. THEY DO NOT WANT BLACK TALENT.’ 

As a result of Curley’s tweets, the founder and CEO of HBCU 20×20, Nicole Tinson, who heads an organization that ‘prepares and connects black college students and graduates for quality jobs and internships,’ announced it is to cancel its partnership with Google immediately.

‘We refuse to partner with a company who continues to oust/disrespect black people. Black people deserve better, and it’s clear Google has not find the need to do better, Tinson wrote. ‘We do not encourage working or interning at Google.’

A spokesperson for Google has not returned a request by DailyMail.com for comment.