Twitter's diversity drive is falling flat

Twitter (TWTR), already stinging from criticism for having too few women and racial minorities among its ranks, has touched off new controversy in announcing this week that its new vice president for diversity and inclusion is ... a white guy.

On Monday, Twitter said it hired Jeffrey Siminoff to take that role, replacing Janet Van Huysse, who spent six years at the microblogging company in the same position.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, many in the Twittersphere scoffed, inferring that the company was tone deaf in its messaging about addressing its diversity problem.

A Twitter spokesman didn't comment beyond the tweets sent by company executives announcing the hire.

Civil-rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson said he was disappointed by Twitter's choice for a new diversity chief, telling USA Today, "Blacks and Latinos over-index on using Twitter, but their board of directors and C-suite leadership remain all white."

Jackson has been among those who have pressed tech companies to hire workers, especially engineers and senior managers, that better mirror the makeup of the U.S. population. In November, he was critical after Twitter cut jobs, saying African Americans and Hispanics were disproportionately affected by the layoffs.

That's seemingly at odds with Twitter's stated goal to boost the number of women underrepresented minorities in 2015 after seeing declining numbers the year before, Engadget reported.

As Quartz noted, black and Hispanic adults make up nearly a third of the company's U.S. users, as former engineer Leslie Miley wrote last year, but less than 5 percent of its management.

Some critics see Siminoff as the wrong choice not just because he's a white man, but because he's a white man who had similar roles at Apple (AAPL) and Morgan Stanley (MS), both of which have struggled with diversity issues.

Beyond the perception that Siminoff is just another white guy in an already overly white, male dominated industry, one user noted an additional perceived failing: Siminoff doesn't seem overly familiar with tweeting, having posted to the social media platform fewer than 900 times in five years.