Facebook Gets Accused of Racist Culture Within Company
Earlier this month, a group of employees in Facebook calling themselves 'FB Blind' published a letter revealing the alleged "racist culture" inside the company. The anonymous letter was said to be coming from a group of Black employees who experienced discriminatory culture running inside the Facebook company.
CNBC reports that Facebook issued an apology on Friday following the blog post about the racist culture inside the company towards the blacks, Hispanics and female Asian Employees. The blog pos, which was published on November 7, comes nearly a year after a former co-worker's letter went viral about how the social media company fails to show race equality, especially to the blacks.
In November 2018, Mark Luckie published a note claiming that Facebook has a black people problem and the employees since then said that things are getting worse inside the social media company.
One of the anonymous employees wrote that racism, discrimination, bias and aggression do not come in big moments but rather it starts from small actions that mount up and build into a culture where they are only meant to be seen as quotas, but never heard, never acknowledged, never recognized and never accepted.
According to Daily Mail, the letter includes 12 moments where blacks and other employees shared their negative experiences involving their Facebook managers, HR business partners, and white colleagues. Several employees also said that their performance were tainted and they were labeled as arrogant and disrespectful for speaking their opinion on different topics.
One employee also shared that they were asked by their two white co-employees to clean up their mess after the whites ate their breakfast. The employees told the HR manager but no actions were taken, instead they were told to dress more professionally.
A discontented employee said that if you are a black, Hispanic or an Asian it would be really hard for you to get promoted. The only way to be promoted is to follow the do what I say, not to speak to others outside the team unless you are given permission, not to post on Workplace not unless it is a project-based update and to be subservient.
It also states the irony of getting the promotion because in contrast their colleagues coming from majority population is promoted, elevated, and celebrated for doing less than the work the Blacks, Hispanics and Asians are tasked to do.
The letter concludes that they cannot afford to be vulnerable externally because Facebook has made them an internal vulnerable target and the only thing that they can do is to hope that their right to speak will enlighten everyone and through their shared experiences there will be no more discrimination anymore in any companies.
In the 2019 Facebook Diversity report, Black employees are composed of not more than 4 percent in the company while the Hispanic employees make up 5.2 percent.
Due to the incident, Facebook Vice President of Corporate Communications Bertie Thomson apologizes and said that they are doing everything they could as a company and what the company stands for. He added that no one in Facebook must have a racist behavior.
Read more: Facebook apologizes after employees complain about racist company culture and 'We are treated like we do not belong here': Black Facebook employees complain of increasingly racist and discriminatory culture at the company in open letter