Facebook has issued a public apology after accusations emerged that the company continues to discriminate against black, Latino and Asian women in its workforce.
This comes just a year after a former employee, Mark Luckie, accused the social media giant of quote, “failing its employees of color”.
Luckie lists incidents experienced by 12 former and current employees while working at Facebook, which recently rebranded to FACEBOOK.
In an anonymous Medium article, a group of black, Latin and female Asian employees allege that not much has changed since the initial accusations.
The article accuses Facebook of empowering racism against its employees of color.
Several incidents are listed in the article, including screenshots of conversations held on Facebook’s internal Blind app. The app allows employees to post anonymously. Several have posted about the abuse endured by Facebook’s employees of color.
In one instance, a Facebook employee alleged that their manager tried to coerce two colleagues into giving them negative feedback on a performance review. The colleagues refused and reported the manager to Facebook’s HR who took no action against them.
In another instance, two white employees asked a program manager to clean up the mess they had made post breakfast.
In a more brazen display of racism, a poster on Facebook’s Blind app alleged that their friend, who had just been promoted to manager, would ensure that a quote “arrogant black man who thinks he’s smarter than everyone gets managed out ASAP.”
The employees explained that they chose to expose their experiences under the veil of anonymity as Facebook has cultivated a hostile culture, where all non-white employees fear for their safety and job security.
They added that should their posts receive any attention, the company would trivialize their experiences by issuing vapid, and non-committal apology statements, and not following through with actual action against racist behavior.
In response to the new allegations, and just as predicted, Facebook released a statement apologising for the toxic work environment.
Facebook’s VP of corporate communications said in the statement, “No one at Facebook, or anywhere, should have to put up with this behavior. We are sorry. It goes against everything that we stand for as a company. We’re listening and working hard to do better.”
