Ex-employee: ‘Facebook has a black people problem’

A former Facebook employee claims the social network has a “black people problem” despite its reputation as a haven for liberal politics.

At Facebook’s Menlo Park, Calif., campus, being black meant enduring subtle but shocking displays of racism from other employees, according to Mark Luckie, who left the Silicon Valley juggernaut earlier this month.

“At least two or three times a day, every day, a colleague at MPK [Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park] will look directly at me and tap or hold their wallet or shove their hands down their pocket to clutch it tightly until I pass,” Luckie, who is black, wrote in a memo posted on the social network Tuesday.

Luckie said he also heard stories from other black employees of being “aggressively accosted by campus security beyond what was necessary.”

More broadly, Luckie noted that just 4 percent of Facebook’s 20,000-strong workforce is black, citing company stats.

“Facebook can’t claim that it is connecting communities if those communities aren’t represented proportionally in its staffing,” Luckie wrote.

“In some buildings, there are more ‘Black Lives Matter’ posters than there are actual black people,” Luckie added. “To feel like an oddity at your own place of employment because of the color of your skin while passing posters reminding you to be your authentic self feels in itself inauthentic,” he said.

In response to Luckie’s post, Facebook released a statement saying that it is working to “increase the range of perspectives” at its company.

“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,” Facebook said. “We are going to keep doing all we can to be a truly inclusive company.”