Elitism is a word people rarely discuss when speaking about diversity and inclusion. I'm a professional who discusses what exclusions mean more than talk about inclusion. Some would say that makes me the good trouble of Linkedin. In this London based platform, I discuss how I feel about Linkedin's ability to exclude black professionals voices who rally against anti-racism and how they have become censored and silenced on the platform. 

Linkedin was created about the idea of elitism which piggybacks off of the "American Dream" ideology. That ideal is to be rich to wealthy by working hard and climbing the corporate ladder. The narratives of that success brought about by the use of the platform is the main intent of the platform. I think Linkedin never thought about the people who don't want the American Dream or are living the dream without their Eurocentric vision of it. Variations include living reasonably and not being wealthy or rich.

Linkedin tends to only promote affluent voices above those of marginalized ones. While saying, "Black Lives Matter" they fail to say that they matter enough not to censor them. #BlackLinkedin has been strongly voicing their opinions long before George Floyd or Breonna Taylor but that's when it really took off. At first, we could get 15k views on one post but in the upcoming months, many of us were flagged by Linkedin members who didn't like race conversations or were outright racist themselves. 

We have suffered threats, harassment, and even people who say they will get us fired from our jobs. A lot of attacks started to focus specifically on Diversity and Inclusion professionals along with Black Lives Matter supporters or protestors.

We began reaching out to Linkedin with little to no support. Even prior to this I would publicly complain about being harassed by men on the platform looking to date me and not network. As my voice grew so did many other women and still, we heard nothing from Linkedin. I wasn't surprised when I didn't hear back about the race issues. 

BlackLinkedin was outraged after Linkedin made a public post calling us all liars. Staying the algorithm did not censor antiracism or blacks. That the platform had to consider its new user guidelines as a safety measure for its 706 million users. Basically stating that their stakeholders were more valuable to them than the outcry of black professionals. We know we're being censored and they basically said, "prove it." As if proving their algorithm was bias would be easy. We would need engineers and developers from Linkedin to prove it and let's be honest they aren't going to come forward.

The elitism of social platforms like Linkedin will continue to censor voices.

I could go on and on but I'll let you read what I had to say [ here. ]