Oracle, a tech giant, is hosting scholarship and internship programs for college students in partnership with the United Negro College Fund. To be eligible, students must be related to a “traditionally underrepresented community” - specifically “Black, Indigenous people, LatinX, and women.”
In both the Oracle Developer Scholars Program and Oracle Corporate Scholars Program, the descriptions explicitly exclude White and Asian students, making them ineligible to apply due to their race.
“Our UNCF Scholars Program offers students from underrepresented communities the opportunity to launch their career with a world-class internship experience and scholarship funding,” Oracle said about their partnership with UNCF. “We’ve been proudly partnering with UNCF to increase diversity in technology for more than 25 years.”
We at @Oracle are proudly partnered with @UNCF for 25+ years to host scholars across our business. Want to join our 2024/2025 program? Apply Now! #OracleForAll 👇🚀 https://t.co/mZqLxNwHYo pic.twitter.com/IrTfAmHmQT
— Oracle Diversity (@OracleDiversity) August 10, 2023
The Corporate Scholars Program seeks “aspiring business and technology leaders who are studying fields related to computer science, marketing, HR, business, or maths,” while the Developer Scholars Program is looking for “technical students studying fields related to computer science, computer engineering, or software development.”
The programs’ descriptions list out eligibility requirements such as being a U.S. citizen, coming from an “underrepresented background, including African American, Indigenous people, and Latinx,” and full-time enrollment at a “UNCF Member Institution or any other HBCU, or Hispanic serving institution.” They add that “Underrepresented Black, Indigenous, people of color students from other universities” are also considered for the program.
Once students complete the program, they will be considered for a $10,000 scholarship for the 2024-2025 academic year.
So here's a question: how “diverse” and “inclusive” is it to blatantly exclude certain students from applying based on their race? I could only imagine the outrage if an internship decided to bar Black people, Hispanics, or women from their program after listing that only White and Asian students are eligible. Companies should not be getting away with such discriminatory behavior, but apparently, segregation is making a comeback in more ways than one.
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