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FB Reveals Woeful Diversity Numbers

Posted by timothy on from the talent-on-hand dept.

theodp writes: There's more work to do," said Facebook's Global Director of Diversity Maxine Williams, who issued a straight-out-of-How-to-Lie-With-Statistics diversity update on Thursday that essentially consisted of a handful of bar charts labeled with only percentages for select measures of the social networking giant's current demographics. In search of real numbers, the Guardian turned to Facebook's most recent Equal Employment Opportunity report filing, which showed that the ranks of black employees swelled by a grand total of seven (7) (1 woman) in the year covered by the filing, during which time Facebook saw an overall headcount increase of 1,231. Comparing Facebook's new bar charts of US tech employees to those issued last year shows the proportion of Hispanic and Black employees remained flat at 3% and 1% respectively, while a decline in the proportion of white employees from 53% to 51% was offset by an increase in the proportion of Asian employees from 41% to 43%.

4 of 256 comments (clear)

  1. Demographics by dreamchaser · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I wonder what the demographic breakdown of people who actually apply for jobs at FB looks like? Comparing the two would be a more valid way of looking at it.

    1. Re:Demographics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      As would be a further breakdown across something like school grades or other performance metric of those applications. Lack of diversity is a problem that is not mostly caused by discrimination but by lack of suitable candidates with a decent education, which is an issue with a nation's educational system. Once education provides equal opportunity you'll see these differences go away rapidly (what will remain are cultural differences about what young people want to become when they're still in school).

    2. Re:Demographics by BlueStrat · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Oh, good. I was wondering how long it would take for someone to say "Black people just don't want technology jobs." I suppose they prefer working in fast food and sports?

      Well, it's not like black youth are inundated with the glorification of "thug life" and "gangsta" culture, or that blacks that *do* do well are often labeled by their peers as "actin' like dey white", "uncle Toms", "house niggas" (all things I've heard blacks say personally, as well), and any that profess anti-entitlement-society, pro-family views are excoriated by both their peers and "news" media.

      I frankly greatly admire minorities in the US that have the courage and determination to run that gauntlet instead of cave to the pressure to "stay on the plantation" and instead go on to use their intelligence, talents, skills, and strong work ethic to do well and become an asset to their communities and to society.

      Strat

      --
      Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
    3. Re: Demographics by mi · · Score: 5, Informative

      They might go to a shitty underfunded public school.

      The very concept of "public school" is fairly recent. Not only did Aristotle grow up without one, neither Benjamin Franklin nor Thomas Jefferson attended one either. Thomas Edison was homeschooled.

      They might get harassed by the police on a regular basis, charged with a felony in a situation where a white kid would get a slap on the wrist, and have their lives effectively ruined by a criminal record.

      Even if true, how is this different from what Jews suffered in Europe for centuries?

      Why are the supposedly "racist cops" (many of them Black, BTW) today only targeting African Americans? If they really were White Supremacists, wouldn't the statistics for Asian Americans be just as gloomy? Immigrant Blacks are doing much better than the native-born ones too.

      A theory contradicting observable facts is wrong. Your explanation is thus without merit. Whether or not there really is "institutional racism" or whatever in America, it simply does not explain the woeful underperformance of African Americans.

      It's definitely not as bad for black people as it was 50 years ago, or even 25 years ago

      Actually, you are wrong again — it is worse than 50 years ago. Despite — or, more likely, because of — decades of various policies advocated by your kind, the Blacks' satisfaction is lower today, than it was in 1964. Although, yeah, it may be better than 20 years ago...

      (Note, that I'm not putting forth my own theories here. I'm just obliterating yours.)

      --
      In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.