Twitter US: Spot the Black Employee

Among Twitter’s 2,910 employees in the United States, only 49 are African American.  Figures released yesterday from the Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) report show that black employees account for only 1.7% of the US-based company’s workforce despite the fact that black adults are among the greatest users of the social media site.

This follows similar data from last year’s report, after which Twitter pledged to increase the racial diversity of its workforce.  The company’s Vice-President of Diversity and Inclusion, Janet Van Huysse, stated that the company was “committed to making inclusiveness a cornerstone of our culture.”  However, the report released yesterday shows that Twitter has not made the progress it intended.

This lack of diversity can also be found within other Silicon Valley companies. In May 2014, Google released statistics that among its US employees, only 2% were black and only 3% were Hispanic. Similarly, reports in June 2014 revealed that among Facebook’s US employees, only 2% were black.  As an advocate for greater diversity in the tech industry, civil rights leader Rev Jesse Jackson told The Guardian, "Black people are greater users of the product and capable of doing the jobs, but there has not been an adequate commitment to hire, train and maintain [black people].”

Much of this racial imbalance can be attributed to the culture of hiring workers in Silicon Valley.  With a greater emphasis placed on who you know rather than what you know, discrete advantages are given to the graduates of elite universities, who are often from privileged socioeconomic classes.

Many social activist groups in the US have expressed frustration with Twitter’s failure to employ members of black and ethnic minority groups.  And in an industry that provides products and services for people of all backgrounds, it is particularly imperative that its workforce reflects the diversity of its users.

With this damning lack of diversity with leading Tech companies in the US, we can only speculate how diverse they are in the UK and the rest of Europe.

Katie Bergamini