Nuked Snap’s vice president of diversity and inclusion apologized this weekend for the distribution of a juneteeth filter that many people found offensive. Oona King said the filter released Friday was a collaboration between black and white employees – and pushed back against criticism that the company had been culturally insensitive.
The filter – snap calls them’lenses’ – asks users to’smile and break the chains’ of slavery. King, who is black, said that’in hindsight, we should have developed a more appropriate lens’.
The filter did n’t go through the usual review process, a snap spokeswoman said. The company is investigating the matter.
Snap has long struggled with the perception that it lacks a diverse team. Unlike most of its peers, the company has refused to release a diversity report about its workforce.
King’s full letter is below. I want to directly address what happened with the juneteenth lens yesterday,’ King said.
I particularly want to apologize to our team members who have been accused both externally and internally of failing to be culturally sensitive. In some instances they have actually been called racist.
The two team members who asked if the smile trigger was appropriate for juneteenth were two white team members. On separate occasions, they specifically questioned if the’smile’ trigger was inappropriate for juneteenth the accusations are completely untrue.
We should not have used smiling as a trigger to break the chains of slavery in the lens, and we understand why that was offensive in the extreme. But for a white person to tell a black person:’smile! You’re no longer slaves’.
