From Bloomberg News:
Amazon to Undergo Racial Audit, Led by Former AG Loretta Lynch
Amazon.com Inc. said it agreed to undergo an independent racial equity audit, joining companies including Citigroup Inc. and Tyson Foods Inc. in performing such reviews.
The audit — an analysis of companies to see whether their businesses cause and perpetuate discrimination — will be led by former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, a partner at law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, Amazon said in a proxy statement filed Thursday.
The review will measure any disparate racial impacts on Amazon’s U.S. hourly employees resulting from policies, programs and practices, the world’s largest online retailer said. The Seattle-based company said it will publish the audit’s results once completed.
New York State Common Retirement Fund filed a shareholder resolution with Amazon in 2021, asking for a racial audit. The request cited alleged discrimination of the company’s Black and Latinx workers, their low wages and exposure to dangerous working conditions, including Covid-19, as well as air pollution from distribution facilities located in minority neighborhoods.
There could be a myriad reasons that there isn’t perfect racial parity all levels of Amazon or any corporation other than straight racist discrimination.
We know, for instance, that people of different races and cultures select different majors. White and Asian students make up higher percentages in finance and STEM. Black l students tend to gravitate towards lower earning majors such as education, social work, and public affairs.
So if you were to audit a tech company or a bank, what do you think the upper ranks would look like given racial representation in college majors and applicant pools?
But the baseline assumption is that any difference is the result of bigotry and nothing else.
The auditors will come up with whatever conclusion they want, because the point here is to shakedown corporations.
Put the people we want in the positions we want or we will declare your company bigoted and destroy your reputation.
It’s the Soviet system using race.
All this will do is deepen racial divisions in society. But I assume that’s also the point.
air pollution from distribution facilities located in minority neighborhoods
Curious phrasing there. Why are they blaming “minority neighborhoods” for air pollution?
My bet is you know what they meant and are intentionally misrepresenting it. They’re not saying the neighborhoods are causing the pollution, they’re claiming they’re being subjected to it. The claim is that industrial facilities that put out pollution are intentionally located in minority neighborhoods because of racism.
It’s “environmental racism,” where supposedly people seek out minority neighborhoods to use for eeeeeevil industrial stuff. Although yes, the wording and lack of punctuation leads to a rather different interpretation.
The assumption made on the left is that anything having a disparate impact upon certain demographics is prima facie evidence of some kind of -ism. They don’t care about causation, only correlation.
They agreed to submit to the ESG struggle session, just like Blackrock just did. It’s all about the $$$, the socio-political oppression is merely a cost of doing business.
If I could hire on blacks to do the same work as whites for less, why would I hire on a white person for any position?
So Amazon management signed up for some bizarre cult rite of self abuse. Other than providing entertainment for people watching the spectacle, why is this a problem?
Because it sets a major precedent that an investor (in this case New York State Common Retirement Fund) can make demands that a business submit to such a thing. If one of the largest companies in the US can be forced into it, others can. Once critical mass is reached, it will become a requirement to do business with the businesses that have submitted.
“We know, for instance, that people of different races and cultures select different majors. White and Asian students make up higher percentages in finance and STEM. Black l students tend to gravitate towards lower earning majors such as education, social work, and public affairs.”
Sounds more like Private Sector vs. Public Sector Jobs.
But the baseline assumption is that any difference is the result of bigotry and nothing else.
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It’s like watching some crazy Leftist version of Scooby Doo, 24/7/365.
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Remember when Scoob and the gang would investigate all the mysteries, and it always turned out to be a normal person wearing a mask and costume? (“Pepperidge Farm remembers.”) I do.
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I also remember that no matter how many seasons or episodes you watch, no matter how many times Velma deduced who the real culprit was and why, no matter how many times the mask was dramatically pulled off, and no matter how many times the villain exclaimed “And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids” as he/she is being led off in handcuffs …
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… the baseline assumption at the outset was always “ghosts”. Every. Single. Time.
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How many times must the baseline assumption be proven wrong before we stop accepting it as the default baseline assumption? How many times must the spooky specter of “-ism” be debunked before the default presumption is that there’s a perfectly reasonable non-bigotry-based explanation for any apparent discrepancies?
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And why does it take an official audit, including a deep dive into a corporation’s books, to come up with that explanation? Why not just ask?
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(That last is rhetorical. As stated above, the point is to intimidate and shake-down corporations. Y’know, because when the economy is struggling and workers can’t find decent-paying jobs, what we really need is to subject large employers to expensive and invasive audits and discourage them from hiring people. Riiiiight.)
Amazon. Run by liberal lefties. Just not liberal lefty enough. I know I should care, but I just can’t seem to.