Facebook will get its first black board member soon—we just don’t know when http://ift.tt/2pRf0C5

Apparently, Facebook will appoint an African-American board member in the “very near future.” We’re not quite sure what to make of that timeline—”very near future” is fairly cryptic—but that was the message conveyed by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg this morning, when she met with the Congressional Black Caucus.

As Representative G.K. Butterfield (D-NC) told Axios:

“We got a commitment today from Ms. Sandberg that an African-American will be appointed to the board of directors in the very near future . . . And once a vacancy is created in the C-suite, there will be African-American representation in the C-suite.”

That’s all well and good, but Facebook hasn’t added a new board member since 2014, when WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum was appointed to the board per the terms of the acquisition. Currently, the board is made up of six men and two women—including Sandberg—and has no black, Latinx, or Asian representation. And as for its C-suite? That’s a better bet, but we’ll see what the “very near future” actually holds.PM