Back in June 2020, I was working at Facebook – possibly on the most "impactful" project of my engineering career, responsible for migrating the ads stack for Facebook's attempt at unifying user profiles and pages, internally titled Profile+, externally launched as New Pages Experience. Great work opportunity with some of the best engineers and teammates I've encountered in my life.

George Floyd had just gotten lackadaisically choked to death by a White police officer who couldn't be bothered to check if his restraining of Floyd was causing him to suffocate and was unnecessarily cruel. The same kind of lackadaisical attitude that would then be adopted by those on the extreme Left lambasting anyone who questioned their approach as alternatively a "bigot" or a "fascist". Toss a coin. Heads, you are a fascist. Tails, you are a bigot.

I remember watching the video and weeping my heart out. I don't think I had ever felt as much as I did that day. The lackadaisical cruelty of the police officer with his hands in his pockets while a human being was dying under his knee for what? A supposedly fake $20 note? I wept and wept and felt moved into action. For change within and without.

Within the company Facebook, there was an uptide of voices discussing, debating the misery of the downtrodden black folks. Of all the marginalized colored communities.

Facebook has a performance review system internally where employees are evaluated on their performance twice a year. There's an emphasis on "impact". Impact is better if it is "measurable". One of the axes of Impact is the "People" axis – what have you done to foster community and improve culture within your team, org and company? Intra-company initiatives rank high.

After the uproar following Floyd's murder, a new internal Facebook group (Facebook, the Company, uses a version of Facebook internally called Workplace) called "Anti-Racist Working Group" was formed. Three employees were the admins. They happened to be white-skinned. They started doing all the usual admin work – deciding what posts should be allowed and what posts should be disallowed. What initiatives to drive? What initiatives had a higher success criteria? What initiatives were impactful? Ideally measurably impactful so that it could be included in the biannual self-review.

It was quite trippy to watch all of this unfold in front of my eyes. White folks jumping to gatekeep what qualified as a valid anti–racist initiative and what did not. First to the move, perhaps because they weren't as debilitated by what they saw on screen? Numbed out enough to be ready to move into action? I don't know for sure.

"Who polices the Police?"

I had seen this written out in graffiti somewhere in Brooklyn – or perhaps I had just read this somewhere on activist Internet. That's what I wondered about these admins in the microcosm that was this Anti-Racist Working Group. Who admins the admins? I wrote a post in that group that basically said "who polices the Police?". I can't recall if I directly called out the fact that all the admins of this group were white folks. Memories can get hazy in an activated state. I imagine someone might have called it out at some point. Then the admins might have set up a Committee to discuss how to share power with people of a different ethnic background. A DEI committee. A committee blind enough to its biases that it uplifts those of a different ethnic background who have bent their back sufficiently enough to cater to their entrenched belief systems. Let's have diversity in color, but please no thought diversity! That's too scary! Bring forth the Indians who already speak with an American accent even though they have never stepped foot outside of South Bombay. Bring forth the Nigerians who can rattle off lines from F.R.I.E.N.D.S. Bring forth the Thai who are paid money to fight and lose against American kickboxers retreating in Koh Phangan. But once you start questioning the core assumptions – your speech becomes harmful, you are a bigot and you are a fascist.

Diversity in color as a marketing stategy, in the Marketing Mecca of human society.