Ex-employee says Facebook has a problem with blacks
Amid vows of diversity, staffers tell of hostility
SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook has a problem with black people.
That’s the assessment of Mark Luckie, a former employee who says racial discrimination is real, both on the company’s Silicon Valley campus and on the social media giant’s platform.
A Facebook post he shared with management and employees this month and released publicly on Tuesday exposes racial fault lines that Luckie says should be a matter of grave public alarm, with the lack of representation and agency of black people inside Facebook directly affecting how black people on Facebook are treated.
“I wish I didn’t have to write it. I was determined to stay there and build,” Luckie told USA TODAY in an interview Tuesday. “I had to write what all the black employees are saying and feeling and we don’t feel empowered to speak up about.”
Blacks and Latinos have long been excluded from major tech companies in Silicon Valley, even as recognition grows that the lack of diversity undercuts the ability of companies to build technology that appeals to a broad cross-section of consumers. Tech workers, who historically have been reluctant to publicly criticize their employers, have begun speaking out this year, hoping to rattle the status quo.
In an emailed statement, Facebook spokesman Anthony Harrison said the company is working to increase the range of perspectives of those who build its products.
“The growth in representation of
people from more diverse groups, working in many different functions across the company, is a key driver of our ability to succeed,” Harrison said.
Facebook has struggled for years to reverse hiring patterns that excluded underrepresented minorities and to create a corporate culture that welcomes them. At the same time, the lack of diversity in its workforce has translated into problems with the black community, which has high rates of engagement on Facebook. Complaints have escalated from African-Americans that they are being unfairly targeted and censored for fighting back against racism on the platform after being falsely accused of using hate speech.
That disenfranchisement of black people on Facebook is a direct result of how the few black employees who work there are marginalized inside the company, says Luckie, a digital strategist and former journalist who also has worked at Twitter and Reddit, as well as The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times.
Black staffers at Facebook frequently complain of colleagues or managers calling them aggressive or hostile for how they share their thoughts, he says. A few black employees said they were dissuaded by managers from becoming involved in internal groups for black employees or doing “black stuff.” Black employees also told stories of being “aggressively accosted” by campus security. Luckie says at least two to three times a day, a Facebook employee would clutch their wallet when walking by him.
These details in Luckie’s Facebook post landed as the Silicon Valley company already was facing sharp criticism for its effect on society and politics, including violence and genocide in Myanmar; the spread of fabricated news, hoaxes and conspiracy theories; Russian election interference; and the rise of Cambridge Analytica, a political data firm hired by President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign that gained access to the personal information of millions without their consent.
Most recently, Facebook has taken fire for hiring Definers Public Affairs, a public relations firm in Virginia, to do opposition research on the company’s critics, including billionaire philanthropist George Soros. Facebook stopped working with Definers after The New York Times exposed its tactics.
“I know from being inside Facebook that Facebook doesn’t take any action against the bad things that it has done unless it’s held publicly accountable,” Luckie told USA TODAY. “I don’t want to say I felt a responsibility, but I guess I felt an ability to speak on behalf of all of these black employees.”
After he shared his post internally, black staffers at Facebook offered their own experiences of racism at the company, including disparaging racial comments.
“This truly resonated with me and flooded me with emotions and sadness that I am sure that plenty of us are all too familiar with from experiencing many of the examples you provided,” commented one fellow employee.
One employee, who is new to Facebook, said she had already observed and heard stories of marginalization and mistreatment. “Very disheartening considering how much love Black employees have for this company,” she commented.
Others said they hoped Luckie’s post would get the attention of senior management. Luckie tagged Facebook’s Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg in the Facebook post but he says they never responded.
“It’s a consistent and unfortunate pattern here that the best feedback about the company often comes from people on the way out,” one employee wrote.
Facebook’s Harrison says the company wants to “fully support all employees when there are issues reported and when there may be micro-behaviors that add up.”
“We are going to keep doing all we can to be a truly inclusive company,” he said.
Under pressure to make its workforce more closely resemble its more than 2 billion users, Facebook increased black employees to 4 percent of U.S. employees in 2018 from 2 percent in 2016. Yet just 1 percent of technical roles are held by blacks and 2 percent of leadership roles.
Culturally, there have been issues. At Facebook, which is mostly white and male, sensitivity to the Black Lives Matter movement has not always been evident. In 2016, Facebook employees crossed out “Black Lives Matter” and wrote “All Lives Matter” on the walls of the campus.
“I talked to someone from HR and they said: ‘Do you think that this just happens at Facebook?’ And I said: ‘No, of course not, it happens at many companies. But the thing is: Facebook is touting how inclusive it is,” Luckie told USA TODAY. “It has Black Lives Matters posters all over the walls. ... But black people here are scared of talking about the issues that affect them because they don’t see this as a supportive company.’”
“I know from being inside Facebook that Facebook doesn’t take any action against the bad things that it has done unless it’s held publicly accountable.” Mark Luckie