Amazon engineers are collaborating on an internal Wiki page that shows how to replace unconsciously racist and gender-biased terms with more inclusive language.
The Wiki page, seen by Business Insider, is titled "Alternative Phrasings to Unconscious Bias in Communication," and has been viewed roughly 30,000 times since its creation earlier this month.
Although it's not an official mandate by the leadership team, managers are encouraging employees to review the page, which is available companywide, according to people familiar with the effort. Amazon's internal Wiki forum is a crowd-sourced platform where employees share company-related information and work together on certain projects.
"Words and phrases that seem completely innocuous to one person trigger strong reactions in others. We encourage you to be mindful about historical impact and context behind these words and phrases," the page said.
The Wiki page lists dozens of words and phrases that may have negative connotations implied by the use of color, or that have a specific history that relates to racial discrimination.
For example, it says "brown bags" should be replaced by "learning session" or "lunch and learn" because the term "Brown Paper Bag Test" was allegedly used in the past as a way to compare one's skin color to a brown paper bag to determine access to certain privileges. It also says "blacklist" has a racial stigma attached to it and should be replaced by "Blocklist" or "approved."
The term "cake walk," which is used to describe something easy, should be banned because it comes from a dance developed on plantations by African American slaves, the page said. And the words "master/slave," commonly used among developers to describe a networking model, should instead be called "primary/secondary" or "active/passive," it said. Other words, such as "Oriental" and "grandfathered," are also discouraged for their racial undertones, it said.
In an email to Business Insider, Amazon's spokesperson confirmed the existence of the Wiki page, saying the company's leadership team is supportive of this movement and have encouraged teams to openly discuss how to tackle this industry-wide problem.
Employee-driven change
The movement is the latest example of employee-driven change at Amazon aimed at fostering a more inclusive work environment.
In the weeks following last month's death of George Floyd, hundreds of employees have called for Amazon to add "inclusion" to its famous leadership principles, while sharing stories of racial and gender discrimination they've experienced at work. Meanwhile, Amazon's climate activist group has been encouraging employees to join racial protests as part of its effort to reduce Amazon's environmental impact in communities of color.
Amazon's leadership team hasn't responded to these individual requests yet, but has been a vocal supporter of the broader Black Lives Matter movement.
CEO Jeff Bezos told Amazon employees to cancel their meetings last Friday to commemorate Juneteenth, a holiday celebrating the end of slavery in the US. He also shared a couple of racially insensitive customer emails to show his support for minorities. Other leaders across the company have also addressed the issue through internal emails.
The initiative to reduce the use of certain unconsciously biased words has been gaining steam across the tech community as well. Google, for example, is starting to ditch words like "blacklist" and "whitelist," according to the news site 9to5Google. GitHub is planning to replace the word "master" on its service with a more neutral word like "main."
In Amazon's case, the Wiki page's creator wrote that the goal isn't to entirely eliminate the use of colors in their language. Instead, it's simply intended to encourage a more inclusive form of communication among employees.
"Our goal is to encourage our colleagues to consider the language we use every day, and how we might make our workplace more inclusive by using less biased language," it said. "When considering language that may reflect unconscious bias, think about whether the term will be perceived by others as having negative associations."
Got a tip? Contact this reporter via email at ekim@jkmperu.com, or send him a secure message through Signal/Telegram at 415-926-2066.
