The death of an unarmed man of colour in police custody in Minneapolis, U.S last week have sparked a row of protests across the country. The alleged killing of George Floyd by four Minneapolis police officers have once again highlighted the racial inequality in the United States and people have now taken to the streets demanding justice for the man and started convestations about the racial inequality globally.
Several big global organizations have now come in support of the protestors condemning the inequality. Tech companies like Intel, Netflix, Google, and IBM have all taken a public stance against Floyd’s death – calling out discrimination against African American citizens. Facebook and Snapchat are the recent companies to join these organizations.
Meanwhile, footwear manufacturing giant Nike flipped its iconic slogan “Just Do It” to “Don’t Do It” to raise awareness about racism. “For Once, Don’t Do It. Don’t pretend there’s not a problem in America. Don’t turn your back on racism,” the company said in a video that has over six million views on Twitter and was shared by celebrities and rival Adidas AG. The U.S. Google and YouTube homepages bore a notice saying they stood in support of racial equality.
Social media platform Twitter started to take down tweets that promote racial inequality or violence, including a tweet by President Donald Trump. Twitter put warning labels to two tweets by Trump and the official White House Twitter account that implied that protesters in Minneapolis could be shot. Twitter even added the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter to its account bio on the site.
The recent development from Twitter can also be seen as an escalation after Trump signed an executive order to limit its legal protections under a statute that shields social media companies from liability for the content posted on their platforms, just a day before the tweet. Twitter had publicly opposed the executive order, calling it “a reactionary and politicized approach to a landmark law.”
However, there was no such action taken on those posts by Facebook. Facebook employees on Monday urged Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg to take stronger action against inflammatory posts by the President about the Minneapolis protests.
While Facebook has maintained it will not take any action, Snapchat said that it would no longer promote President Donald Trump’s content in its Discover section, a move in line with Twitter’s stance.
“We are not currently promoting the president’s content on Snapchat’s Discover platform,” the company said in an official statement. “We will not amplify voices who incite racial violence and injustice by giving them free promotion on Discover. Racial violence and injustice have no place in our society and we stand together with all who seek peace, love, equality, and justice in America.”
“We cannot end systemic racism without simultaneously creating opportunity for all people, regardless of their background,” Snap Chief Executive Officer Evan Spiegel told employees in an email criticizing racism and calling for increased taxes “to create a society that benefits all of us.”
Meanwhile, protestors have also started to point out racial inequality by these tech giants. Companies such as Facebook and Google for years have struggled to quell concerns about discrimination against African-Americans in their own workplaces, and black engineers remain underrepresented in their workforces relative to the U.S. population.
While the challenges are not expected to ease as the novel coronavirus pandemic forces the companies to slow hiring and work remotely for months to come, the companies have taken some measures to ensure this doesn’t continue. Zuckerberg recently said Facebook will commit $10 million to organizations working on racial justice.
On the other hand, Alphabet-owned Google said it would give $37million to various organizations to fight racism. In the wake of protests, CEO Sunder Pichai in an email to his employees on Wednesday, urged them to stand together in silence for 8 minutes and 46 seconds to honour the “memories of Black lives lost.”
Pichai said the company would be giving $12mn in funding to organisations working to address racial inequities and $25mn in Ad Grants to help organisations fighting racial injustice provide critical information.
“Our first grants of $1 million each will go to our long-term partners at the Center for Policing Equity and the Equal Justice Initiative. And we’ll be providing technical support through our Google.org Fellows program. This builds on the $32 million we have donated to racial justice over the past five years,” Pichai said.
“Our Black community is hurting, and many of us are searching for ways to stand up for what we believe, and reach out to people we love to show solidarity.
“Yesterday, I met with a group of our Black leaders to talk about where we go from here and how we can contribute as Google. We discussed many ideas, and we are working through where to put our energy and resources in the weeks and months ahead,” the Indian-origin CEO said in the email.
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