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.
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Facebook post he shared with management and employees earlier 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 have historically been reluctant to publicly criticize their employers, have begun speaking out more
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's also 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 embattled Silicon Valley company was already 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 an investigation by 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 up 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.
