A BLACK WOMAN passed over for a job at Facebook told federal regulators that even though she was exceptionally qualified for the position, she was rushed through interviews with entirely white staffers, told she wouldn’t like the job, and advised that the company wanted a strong “culture fit,” according to a complaint to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission provided to The Intercept.
The woman joins three others who have recently complained to the EEOC about anti-Black racism at Facebook. The agency has begun conducting a “systemic” probe of Facebook, looking into whether the company’s own policies further discrimination, Reuters reported earlier this month.
The complaint comes as evidence piles up that large Silicon Valley companies are not diversifying their predominately white and Asian work forces quickly enough, particularly within high-paying technical and managerial roles. Facebook’s latest diversity report, from July, stated that only 3.9 percent of its U.S. employees were Black and 6.3 percent Hispanic. Google said that in 2020 its U.S. staff was 5.5 percent Black and 6.6 percent Latinx, and, like Facebook, has faced repeated accusations of racist practices, including, just in the last week, that it de-prioritizes applicants from historically Black colleges and universities and that it pushes people who complain about racism to seek mental health care.
