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Facebook Refuses To Share Employee Race and Gender Data
theodp writes "Back in 2007, Representative Maxine Waters asked Google's HR Chief, "How many [of Google's employees] are African-American?" After 7+ years of stonewalling, Google has pledged to finally divulge diversity data on its workforce for the first time. While the U.S. government requires all major employers to file diversity statistics with the EEOC, Google convinced the Dept. of Labor that the race and gender of its work force is a trade secret that should not have to be released to the public. Google now concedes that it has been 'reluctant to divulge that data' and 'quite frankly, we are wrong about that.' Interestingly, Facebook apparently has no such compunctions about refusing to disclose data on the racial and gender makeup of its employees, even as CEO Mark Zuckerberg lobbies Congress for changes to the makeup of the U.S. workforce. Pressed on the matter by the Rev. Jesse Jackson at Facebook's annual shareholder meeting, the WSJ reports that COO and gender equality advocate Sheryl Sandberg rebuffed Jackson's request, saying, 'It's really important to share [the Facebook diversity numbers] internally, and eventually externally.'"
That's all. Sharing demographic and other personal data is something they've been staunchly against since their founding. The government, being entirely unbiased toward people with enough money to buy it off, has appreciated Zuckerberg's principled stance.
Race is an illusion. It's none of my employer's business where my ancestors may have hailed from.
As much as I hate Facebook (and merely strongly dislike Google) why is this an issue? The implicit assumption behind this seems to be that diversity can only happen if you get people who look different in the same room. and that's nonsense.
These are both companies that are chomping at the bit to hire h1b's who are expressly non-white and hail from overseas countries. (The fact that they get to work as indentured servants with lower than average wages is another discussion). It's not as if it's a good-ole boy's club over at the googleplex.
If google and facebook could find qualified black (or American employees in general) employees, wouldn't they do that rather than importing people from India/Pakistan/$wherever? Implying that these companies are racist because they aren't hiring many blacks says less about facebook or google -- and more about our country. (or more accurately about Maxine Waters and Jesse Jackson playing the race card constantly to stay relevant.. )
Because we all know that diversity is the MOST important thing. Better have a black doctor instead of one who performs the best. Make sure that coder is a woman because even if she isn't as talented as the white male, its BETTER!!!! Because basing things off of race is RACIST..err I mean NOT BASING things off race is RACISTS err....wait what was I saying?
Call NSA and ask them, they probably know the numbers.
how many minorities Facebook hired between when the request was made and when they finally complied. Would be interesting to see before and after data.
I don't work for Facebook, but I have been on their MPK campus as a contractor many times. I can tell you from first hand experience that Facebook is a very culturally diverse environment where everyone, regardless of race, sexual orientation or gender, is welcomed. It looks like a mini San Francisco.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
Racial data -> 100% human race.
Not that hard.
On my daughter's birth certificate, I was quite tempted to enter it as "who cares, what year is it, 1814?"
When Milan gets older and asks whether she's white, black, or Mexican, I may tell her "you are Milan, that's all. You're not a group, you are you."
If she presses me, asking where her great-great-grandparents lived, they honest answer is "A lot of places, I don't know them all. Probably some in Jamaica, some either Ireland, Scotland, or both, some in Texas somewhere , but maybe that part of Texas was Mexico at the time."
Maxine Waters and Jessie Jackson are two of the biggest frauds in the US today. They're like the black versions of George Bush and Donald Rumsfield. Lying scum that make money by hurting others. George Bush doesn't care about black people and neither does Jessie Jackson. They care about lining their own pockets and protecting their friends.
GWB may be many things. But a racist, I have a hard time believing. And to say that GWB cares for black people in the same way Jesse Jackson and Maxine Waters do is frankly insulting to GWB.
Wrong. Only whites can be racist. Jesse jacskson al Sharpton said so
You had me until Jesse Jackson got involved. That guy is a crook and an extortionist. Usually he's only interested in how diverse your company is until you donate to his rainbow push coalition. Suddenly it doesn't matter if you're diverse after that.
Judging by your post history, you are the most prolific and also the dumbest person on Slashdot.
When a new company makes a splash, they can expect a visit from the Jesse Jacksons of the world, running their usual shakedown.
The term "African American" is a joke. It refers to a geography not a race. I guess Elon Musk is "African American" because he came from South Africa and immigrated eventually to the U.S.
I would believe that neither company employs a substantial amount of African Americans. Why? Neither company has vast, low wage customer service call centers. Hence the reluctance to release numbers. If you don't have much experience working in customer service call centers, your first instinct is going to be to mod me down (understandably). If you do have a fair amount of experience working in low-wage CS call centers, you completely understand what I am talking about. I myself (unfortunately) do have quite a lot of experience working in customer service call centers, and have often been one of very few white people in a sea of African Americans as well as a lot women. The truth is, most large tech related companies hire some of amount of minorities and women. But when you look at the whole of the company, you quickly realize that minorities are routinely hired into marginalized positions, even when they are highly qualified sometimes even with a college degree. It's exclusive, but if you have seen it, you get what I mean.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
And if I'm reading you right, you're not saying you shouldn't trust a black doctor, just that you shouldn't trust an *unqualified* black doctor. Which, because you can't tell one from the other until after the fact, as a result of affirmative action, translates to "don't trust a black doctor".
People are going to call me a racist for this and I don't care. If someone can't piece this together for themselves and thinks my comments have anything to do with race (rather than the ludicrous, and patently racist, expectation that members of one race be judged on a different scale than members of another race), I can't be bothered to care what they think.
Affirmative action is bullshit!
Yes, you read that right. Affirmative action is bullshit. It only superficially helps black people who think they can't succeed without it; in reality, it only serves to help guilty racist old white guys sleep better at night. It's holding the black community back more than anything else, at this point, specifically for the reason stated at the top of this post.
A black guy and a white guy enter your office, both have the same degree form the same school. You know the white guy got into that school on his own merits, but, because of affirmative action, you don't know whether the black guy deserved to get in, or if he was accepted to fill a quota. That's not to say the black guy couldn't have possibly gotten into that school on his own merits, just that you don't, and can't, know that he did, because you have no way of knowing whether that school needed to fill a seat with a black guy in order to comply with the law. Likewise, when you hire the black guy, your customers have no way of knowing if you hired him because of his qualifications, or to comply with the law. Were you hiring the most qualified candidate, or just filling a quota? Your customers have no way of knowing.
All affirmative action hiring laws do is force people to hire people they don't want to and, therefore, shouldn't hire, regardless of reason.
Put yourself in the shoes of a black man for a moment (black guys, this should be easy for you)... Without affirmative action, would you have a harder time finding a job, as a result of rampant racism? I can't answer definitively, but I'll admit the answer is likely a very loud "yes". But think about it; do you want to work for a racist company? Do you want to work for a company that only hired you because they had to? There are enough companies out there run by people who are not racist that you should be able to find a job without having to settle for working at one that is. By forcing companies to hire you based on race, affirmative action prevents that; you don't know whether the company you're working for is run by racist assholes who hired you to fill a "black seat", or if they truly did hire you based on your qualifications; regardless of your qualifications. As a result of affirmative action, you could be willingly lining the pockets of a group of racist white guys and not even know it.
There are plenty of qualified and capable minority workers in the workforce. The trouble is, for anything that requires a higher level of trust than a cashier or cart retriever, affirmative action makes it impossible to tell, as a customer, whether the minority worker you're dealing with is actually qualified for the position until it's too late (if they're not). That's not to say every white guy who gets hired is qualified. Cronyism is definitely rampant, as well; but the fact is it's easier to fire a white guy who doesn't perform than it is to fire a minority worker for any reason, again due to affirmative action laws.
I don't know what the solution to this problem is, but I do know that it is not affirmative action. Maybe affirmative action is the best we can do and, if that's the case, that's a really sad situation for everyone involved. I know I don't want to be treated by a less-than-qualified doctor, and so I'm forced to avoid anyone who may have been hired to fill a seat; and there's nothing racist about that.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Uh, because you don't care to be around them either? I worked at a site where a major defense company built things. The area population was ~30% black, less than 1% of workers were. Some how few made it through the hiring process. Affirmative action is kind of ignored when you are making things that fly.
that reminds me of a south african (white) who came to the US and wrote his race down as african-american. well, he was born in africa and he relocated to america...
but what a big stir it caused when he listed himself that way.
(this was a few decades ago, fwiw)
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Actually, the ones with the most to complain about in this whole mess are recent asian immigrants who didn't have a damn thing to do with slavery, but are now being quota-ed out of universities because they work hard, and end up over-represented in high test scores.
It's funny how the collateral damage of the victimhood mentality that demonizes whites ends up affecting a racial group that was legally discriminated against all the way up till 1952 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act_of_1952)
Funny how if you're a dark Okinawan with good test scores, you get shafted by some light skinned mulatto because they want to stick it to some lily white guy in a picture from 150 years ago.
You're making a basic fallacy, and I am amazed that though you have given the matter enough thought to come up with your above rant, you have not discovered it.
Affirmative action only matters at admissions, not further. Whether a minority student is accepted to a medical school or law school or whatever to fill a quota, they will come out the other end of that program unless they pass the highly rigorous standards. A medical student cannot be certified in the US without passing all 3 steps of the USMLE, and a residency. So you can trust your doctor or your lawyer, whatever their race. They earned their spot, and quotas didn't matter a damn when they had to sit their exams.
Having those quotas in place is great, because it undoes generations' worth of racism that today manifests itself in socio-economic status. Affirmative action is actively trying to undo all the harm that racism and segregation have done in the past. If you are born African-American or Hispanic, you are likely to be born poorer. The police will treat you differently. Doors will be closed to you that are not to Caucasians. We need programs like Affirmative Action in place to undo all the harm that has been caused and continues to be caused.
And out on the job market? You think race doesn't matter, and that it's all academic. Well there are countless studies that have shown that the same resume will get treated differently if submitted under a different name - a "white-sounding" name will get a lot more calls back than a "black-sounding". Extremely so - sometimes the black names (again, same resumes) will get no calls back for 15 calls back for white names.
Racism is unfortunately well alive. Today it is mostly subconscious but it is still really harmful. From the fact that you gave this matter enough thought to come up with your rant above, and yet not discover the basic logical fallacy in it, though you seem otherwise intelligent, makes me think you have quite a bit of subconscious racism left too. It's okay if you do, many people do, especially if they are of the privileged class and never have to question their assumptions, or have cause to notice how all the doors that were open for them are not open for the unprivileged in their society. But the first step to fixing it is realizing it.