Black members of Congress push for more diversity in Silicon Valley hires

SAN FRANCISCO—Days after two leading members of the Congressional Black Caucus got Facebook to commit to hiring a black member to its board of directors, they again pressed major tech firms to diversify the hiring of executives and rank-and-file employees.

In brief remarks before dozens of assembled employees at the downtown offices of Hustle, a texting startup, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-California) and Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-North Carolina) said Monday morning that they have been meeting with companies including Uber and Salesforce to improve on a longstanding issue of underrepresented minorities in Silicon Valley.

"To our surprise, all of [the companies], without exception, acknowledged that they had a problem and need our help to fix this problem," Butterfield said, noting that he expected other companies to follow Facebook’s example.

The politicians declined to say, however, which companies had committed to making any meaningful improvement.

According to many tech companies' own published figures, black and Latino employees are underrepresented—particularly in engineering jobs. For example, Uber’s figures, published in March 2017, show that its staff is overwhelmingly white and male. The lack of diversity in Silicon Valley is particularly persistent—nearly two decades ago, Rev. Jesse Jackson raised the issue on a similar tour of Silicon Valley.

"We are willing to work with any company that is willing to work with us," Butterfield added.

Facebook and other social media companies are under recent scrutiny for allowing messages that attempted to stoke racial stereotypes during the 2016 presidential campaign. The same day that COO Sheryl Sandberg met with the Congressional Black Caucus, she also met with a number of activists, including DeRay Mckesson, a Black Lives Matter leader.

"The experience online continues to be heavily segregated," Mckesson told BuzzFeed News last week. "Does Facebook's responsibility include a commitment to inclusion, a place designed for you to be in proximity to people who are different than you and will challenge you? Facebook is still trying to operationalize its commitment to those ideals."

Barbara Lee—whose Congressional district includes nearby Oakland—underscored that, if more companies don't work to improve, wealth disparity in the already gentrifying and stratified Bay Area will be further exacerbated.

"Coding jobs will become the blue collar jobs of the future," Rep. Lee said. "If we fail to act, we expand the wealth divide. We are here to press our nation’s foremost tech companies to move beyond talking about the importance of inclusion and to acting."