equal justice mr corina said you can tell when something is genuine and something is notan amazon spokeswoman jaci anderson said that the company stood in solidarity with the black community and that it was committed to helping build a country and a world where everyone can live with dignity and free from fear she said employees had been free to take vacation or accrued unpaid time off to attend juneteenth events we respect and encourage their choice to do so she saidthis month the company said it would temporarily stop selling its facial recognition software which researchers have found to misidentify people of color to police departments the oneyear moratorium was striking because amazon had long denied problems and resisted calls to slow its deploymentbut amazons critics including some employees say even that was a halfstep pointing out that the company did not directly acknowledge concerns about the technology nor did it stop selling the tools to federal law enforcement officesthe pause is a great start one employee wrote on an internal website but the goal the person wrote should be broader to ensure the products amazon builds are not directly at odds with promoting inclusion and diversity and perpetuating biases and injustices to black and brown communitiesimagecredithiroko masuikethe new york timesemployees and some shareholders have long groused about the lack of diversity on mr bezoss senior leadership team a group known as the steam that has 22 executives none of whom are blackat a town hall in 2017 after michael brown philando castile and sandra bland had already become household names an employee asked mr bezos about the lack of diversity on his team mr bezos said his top deputies had been by his side for years and he saw the low turnover as an asset any transition on the team he said would happen very incrementally over a long period of timein april before george floyd was killed in police custody in minneapolis a group of midlevel employees wrote to mr bezos and his senior team saying there was a systemic pattern of racial bias that permeates amazon according to emails viewed by the new york times they said they were prompted to write after a leak of meeting notes showed that david zapolsky amazons general counsel had called a black warehouse employee in staten island not smart or articulatemr zapolsky had said his comments were personal and emotional and that he did not know the employee was black but in their email the corporate employees said it was not an isolated incident but rather a symptom of a bigger problemthey said amazon adopted the entrenched racism that plagued america evidenced by the homogeneity of the its leadership compared with the rich racial and ethic diversity amongst our hourly worker populationthe group proposed almost a dozen specific changes including conducting a thirdparty audit of bias releasing detailed figures on race and promotions establishing goals for representation in management and leadership roles and having the head of diversity