On the heels of Facebook's report here goes
Twitter:
Twitter employs just 49 black people out of a total US workforce of 2,910. The tiny number of African American staff – 35 men and 14 women – represents just 1.7% of Twitter’s US staff.
And what do they do?
The Rev Jesse Jackson, president of the Rainbow/Push Coalition, who has long campaigned for tech companies to be more transparent about their lack of minority employees, told the Guardian that black people are “becoming intolerant” of Facebook and other Silicon Valley companies’ lack of progress in making their offices more diverse.
And just what are black people going to do about it? Go to their own twitter? Oh wait. Right. There's a black search engine. How's that project going? Imagine being upset because someone built something themselves, that you voluntarily use.
and as Twitter actively exploits its large number of minority users to bring in more advertising revenue.
Twitter be like a slave master yo!
Seriously though. Are we to believe that Twitter management is on some "Lets sell these niggas hard on this advertisement auction block!" Are we to believe that Twitter is not interested in leveraging EVERY SINGLE USER that VOLUNTEERS to use it's "service"? I mean really. If black folks being mad about Twitter is like a slave volunteering to stay on a plantation after the Civil War. If you like it so much you don't wanna leave, then don't complain about the beatings.
African Americans account for 13.6% of the US population, according to the 2010 US census, and Pew Center Research shows that black people use Twitter disproportionately more than white people.
Black people do a lot of things disproportionate to their population. Do we really want to have a conversation about that?
Twitter’s vice-president of diversity and inclusion, Janet Van Huysse, said: “We are committed to making inclusiveness a cornerstone of our culture.”
I would think the most important cornerstone of a business would be say...profitability and hiring the most productive employees (while human employees are needed). Lets be totally real here, how exactly does "inclusiveness" (whatever that's supposed to mean when folks can be subject to mob rule if they have the wrong opinions) affect the profitability of Twitter?
And if the results of the VP's work is 49 people, shouldn't this person be dismissed for lack of results?
It showed that 93.8% of employees were white or Asian, with just 180 people out of a total workforce of 2,910 being drawn from other minorities.
Interesting. Tell me what two groups are largely responsible for the invention of the computing hardware and software in use around the world?
Twitter’s lack of minority employees contrasts starkly with the rainbow nature of its users. Data from the Pew Research Center shows that 27% of black adults and 25% of Hispanics use Twitter, compared to just 21% of white people.
Because all companies should have staff that reflects its users. Before you agree with that...you think really really hard...
“I am very disappointed,” Jackson said. “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].
That a certain group represents a "greater user" has squat to do with who should be employed by a company. Secondly the issue has never been
whether there are black people that can "do the jobs" (and we are assuming these are programming jobs). The actual relevant fact is how
many black people there are with the necessary qualifications. We already know that only about 4% of African-American college graduates have a computing degree and that number shrinks dramatically when you move to the level of PhD. Therefore anyone who understands the entire concept of supply and demand as it pertains to skilled labour knows full well that there aren't
that many black high level programmers to go around. And really people. just because you can tweet does not mean you can program. And no, just because you set up a WordPress website does not qualify you to program for Twitter or any other high tech company.
“Some people call it ‘Black Twitter’ because we over-index so much, but they still don’t hire more black people. We are becoming intolerant with these numbers, there’s a big gap between their talk and their implementation.”
Translation: We waste a disproportionate amount of time tweeting so hire us.
Jackson said Twitter “should set a timetable to make their workforce look like the market place, and a commitment to make the board of directors more diverse”
Have a seat Mr. Jackson. How about since black people are 13% of the population, the engineers at Boeing ought to be 13% African-American regardless of qualifications. Think hard on that one.....
He said that at the moment, Twitter is benefitting from black people’s love of its medium – which often leads to black issues trending worldwide – without paying enough back to the community. “They hire people they know, they trust and like,” Jackson said. “We’re not in that the circle.”
Twitter owes pay to black communities? Is this that new reparations? I will agree with the latter part of the statement. There is a lot of hiring of buddies and people in certain circles which leads to exclusion. Absolutely. That can be addressed without the untenable comparisons to population demographics.
“It appears that the tech companies seem to treat it as a public relations issue rather than addressing the actual problem. African Americans use social media more than others, the corporations continue to build and profit from that, so it is especially problematic that they do not have an employee base that in any way reflects its users. They have really failed on this.”
A problem for WHO? Twitter needs to be profitable. That is all. If it isn't, that's the only problem they have that is important to Twitter. Notice that COC hasn't even addressed that. Color of Change could give a hoot about what Twitter needs. And this is the bottom line that none of the critics can bring themselves to even discuss:
If this lack of diversity is so bad for business how the hell did all these companies come to be so successful? It's abundantly clear that the product isn't damaged by the makeup of the employees and management. It's pretty clear that Twitter could be just as successful with 0 non-white employees (and I'm certain at one point it was like that). Furthermore I would make a very large wager that if all the black users of Twitter disappeared tomorrow, it would continue to be successful (I can't say anything about profitability). Why would I make such a statement?
Wiebo
