Zuckerberg’s foundation: race as a blind spot

Some black employees of the Chen Zuckerberg foundation say race related blind spots and a desire to please both sides will hinder Zuckerberg’s efforts. < / P > < p > in recent months, at a time when Facebook has been criticized for its policies that would hurt black people, Mark Zuckerberg stressed that he is promoting criminal justice reform through the Chen Zuckerberg Foundation (CZI). CZI is a charity co founded by Zuckerberg and his wife to align their 99% stake in Facebook with philanthropy. At present, the fund is worth about $80 billion. A week after George Freud’s death, Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook, which has 116 million fans, “I rarely mentioned our work in this area before. But the Chen Zuckerberg foundation has always been one of the biggest funders, investing nearly $40 million a year in various institutions over the years to overcome racial inequality. ” He added that he and his wife, pediatrician Priscilla Chan, “have been committed to this cause and will continue to strive for racial equality in the future.” However, according to company minutes, employee surveys, emails and interviews with current and former employees, the majority of black employees working in CZI believe that the organization’s internal operations and donation methods are undermining the agency’s desire to promote racial equality. Some black employees say their voices are marginalized and their professionalism is not valued. They also said that the organization’s charitable donations did not take into account black leaders and black communities. The protests triggered by flois’s death, coupled with the Zuckerberg’s statement about the “black life is life” movement, prompted CZI’s black staff resource group to write to prisia Chen, who is in charge of the foundation’s daily operations, in late June. Over the years, CZI’s leaders responded with “resistance and anger” whenever black employees asked the company to treat internal and external work with racial equality, the letter said. < / P > < p > “you, mark and other executives have been telling us that we believe in your commitment to make CZI a more diverse, inclusive and equal organization,” the group wrote in its letter. “You’ve been saying that for years, but you’ve made little progress.” In a statement, josu é Estrada, the foundation’s chief operating officer, responded in a statement on behalf of Zuckerberg and Chen that CZI had invested a total of $2 billion in science, education, immigration, housing and criminal justice, 40% of which was devoted to promoting racial equality. < / P > < p > Estrada wrote: “although most of CZI’s philanthropic efforts so far have been to promote racial platforms, progress has been the same across the various issues we cover and have not always been clearly named or systematically tracked. We also have work to do internally. As a start-up and still growing charity, we need to have systems in place to ensure that we support diversity, equality and inclusiveness within the organization. ” < / P > < p > CZI allows Zuckerberg to spread his worldview beyond the Facebook world. Some black employees said Zuckerberg’s desire to be unbiased also constrained his charitable efforts. Facebook’s critics say being unbiased also hurts the black community in the real world. In recent months, civil rights leaders, independent auditors and Facebook’s own employees have lashed out at what they believe is Zuckerberg’s blind spot on race issues, including his partisan approach to civil rights, his narrow attitude towards censorship of white supremacy, and his unwillingness to discuss anti black issues. < / P > < p > the Zuckerberg couple are the youngest billionaires to sign the “donation pledge.”. The same has been signed by bill and Melinda Gates, Pierre Omidyar and Larry Ellison. The signers promised to donate half of their property. Most donors stay away from corporate affairs or disputes before committing to charity. Bill Gates, for example, resigned as CEO of Microsoft in 2000 and set up his own charitable foundation during an antitrust hearing in the same year. For Mr. and Mrs. Zuckerberg, any politicized charitable donation would hurt Facebook, not to mention that Facebook has become a target of attack with Republicans. Robert Reich, a professor of political science at Stanford University, said Zuckerberg’s philanthropy “cannot live without his reputation on Facebook.”. “It’s not just Zuckerberg who has to take Facebook into account when making all decisions, but also because of Zuckerberg’s work on Facebook, and CZI itself cannot avoid the loss of reputation,” Lacey said “< p > and the Facebook foundation are completely independent. Facebook’s interests – political or otherwise – will not and will never affect CZI’s work or strategic decisions. ” < / P > < p > when the zuckerbergs set up CZI as a limited liability company in 2015, the zuckerbergs said that solving the biggest problems facing the next generation required the courage to take risks and be good at long-term thinking. As a limited liability company, CZI has more freedom to fund the best solution because traditional foundations cannot invest in for-profit companies or fund policy debates, Zuckerberg said. Supporters praised the idea as creative. But critics cautioned that LLC might give Zuckerberg more power to impose his personal beliefs on the public domain. In addition, Zuckerberg said in June that CZI’s strategy is to find a neutral position and “build consensus.”. According to the minutes of the meeting, he said at the staff meeting in CZI, in response to a question raised by employees about the CZI funded police reform: “for many political reasons, I think most other people will be more likely to become external activists.” Also at the staff meeting in June, Chen said she was learning about the campaign to cut police fees. But according to the record, she also stressed: “it is our full responsibility to check our work and make sure that we serve everyone.” Chen said she hopes CZI can adopt a bipartisan approach. According to an employee at the staff meeting, she once described herself to her employees as “from Massachusetts, which represents a Republican in California.”. < / P > < p > executives who joined CZI in the early days and have now left say that from the beginning, Zuckerberg has set ambitious diversification goals for CZI based on his own challenges at Facebook. Like most technology companies, Facebook pushed for racial and gender diversity five years ago, when many companies in Silicon Valley began to disclose their employee demographics. But according to Facebook’s 2020 report, even with a lot of effort, the company still has less than 4% black employees. < / P > < p > data obtained in May showed that the proportion of black employees in CZI was higher, accounting for 7.2% of 450 employees. However, some black employees said that they did not get the same opportunities in CZI, nor did their jobs receive the same recognition. Although 25% of CZI’s top leaders come from historically underrepresented groups, there are still relatively few black vice presidents or directors. Current and former black executives say CZI needs to pay more attention to racial inclusion and equality, but they also emphasize that black employees are not treated fairly because of their ethnicity. < / P > < p > CZI’s black staff resource group, building leadership & knowledge (BLK), has been pushing for some change. In their letter to prisia Chen, they outlined five steps to make CZI more equal, including hiring a diversity director reporting directly to Chen, conducting a pay equity audit, analyzing black employees’ attrition and satisfaction data, and a succession plan to prepare black employees for promotion to senior management. The team’s support for the five steps was widespread, but black employees’ dissatisfaction with management varied, according to BLK members. Some believe that the collaborative approach is working, but others worry that there will be no real change in leadership without sustained pressure. According to the record, Chen has held three meetings with BLK after receiving the letter, and some of the requirements put forward by the latter have also been promoted. At one meeting, Chen told the group that the turnover rate of black employees was “statistically significantly” high, but she said she did not intend to share the reduction data until an improvement plan was developed. Chen also told BLK that the leadership is still considering their succession planning requirements. According to the minutes, she said: “we need to make sure that opportunities are fair, we don’t just have to provide new opportunities for black employees.” In response, a BLK member said that there is a difference between equality and equity. At the company’s general meeting in July, Chen revealed that the new director of diversification will work with two full-time employees to analyze employee problems and external investment, but the person in charge will report to Estrada. (Facebook took a similar step two weeks ago, when chief operating officer Shirley Sandberg announced that she would be briefed by the head of diversity, Maxine Williams, even though there has been pressure for the position to report directly to Zuckerberg.) Chen also shared the 2020 employee satisfaction survey completed in April. The results showed that 59% of black employees thought that CZI was inclusive, compared with 87% of white employees and 86% of Asian and Latino employees. The survey results in 2020 are consistent with those in 2018. In the survey, a focus group of black employees said that CZI leaders needed to improve the way they dealt with racial issues, and that black employees felt that CZI’s philosophy had become “all lives matter.”. < / P > < p > this impression comes from a general meeting in late 2018. At that time, CZI changed its mission statement from “enhancing human potential and promoting equal opportunities” to “creating a better future for everyone”. Wilkins Wilkins, a former diversity, equality and inclusion manager at CZI, said he asked Zuckerberg at the meeting whether CZI would clarify its support for black and marginalized groups. Mr. Wilkins said that Zuckerberg’s answer at the time was based on the work of CZI, which was already obvious. Mr. Wilkins said he believed the Zuckerberg couple really wanted to do good, but they also understood the need for more investment and funding for marginalized groups that lacked resources. < / P > < p > “if you don’t want to explicitly see race as the cause of many of these things, then you’re maintaining the system you want to collapse,” he said. < / P > < p > CZI initially focused on science and education. By 2017, the agency’s focus has expanded to policy and advocacy work, which in turn involves criminal justice through its fair and opportunity Initiative (joi)