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Boxes with the Amazon logo are turned upside down after a protest against Amazon in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens in November 2018. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Amazon's Woke Smokescreen

The new inclusion policy put out by Amazon Studios offers entries on "womxn" and "acquired limb difference." Meantime, the company's drivers urinate in bottles.

A few years ago, my friend Dan Ahdoot was auditioning for a sitcom on Fox. And things were looking good; he’d heard from his agent that he made it to the last round. Then, he got a call from one of the creators of the show, a friend of his who was calling to say sorry: Dan wasn’t going to get the part. The reason, he said, was that he wasn’t “diverse.”  

Dan is Iranian. He has photos of his parents in Tehran before the revolution and the eyebrows to prove it. (Don’t worry, I asked Dan if I could objectify him.) But Fox apparently didn’t see Iran as “diverse.” 

Given that Dan is not just Jewish but also Persian and therefore in possession of more than the usual amount of chutzpah, he then thought to ask: What about Afghanistan? Was Iran’s neighbor sufficiently diverse?

The showrunner said he’d find out and give him a call back. 

In the meantime, Dan says he hopped onto his Wikipedia page and inserted a little edit: He was now an “Iranian Afghan Jew,” despite the fact that nobody in Dan’s lineage is from, nor has ever visited, Afghanistan.

The showrunner called back and pronounced that, according to the poobahs over at Fox, Afghanistan was indeed diverse. 

I thought of this story when I read Amazon Studios’ new inclusion policy, vaunted by stenographers in the mainstream media. It announces a goal, by 2024, of having 50% of creative roles in its movies and shows filled by women or people of color. In addition, the studio promises to try to cast actors whose identity — “gender, gender identity, nationality, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, disabilitytext context” — matches that of the characters they play. One wonders how Ariel from “The Little Mermaid” or the sea monster from “The Shape of Water” would be slotted. And God save the intern who has to racially code “Beauty and the Beast.”

By now, this is a familiar story: Amazon is turning the making of TV and film into the same woke numbers game played at every other elite institution. (Exhibit A: Sixty-eight percent of the students admitted to Princeton’s class of 2025 self-identify as “people of colortext context.”)

I decided to read through Amazon Studios’ Inclusion Playbook, designed “to help disrupt the biases that occur across the lifecycle of a series or movie, from the first inkling of a concept to viewers streaming the content on Prime Video..text context” The playbook directed me to a factsheet that promised to help improve my familiarity with all things diverse and inclusive.

There I encountered entries on things like: acquired limb difference (otherwise known as “amputation”). There’s an entry on mean girls, which, I learned, was a “stereotype of girls and young women characterizing them as socially aggressive and unkind” —characterizations that, apparently, not only “enforce the bad behaviortext context” but “fail to address the larger social issues girls and women face like insecurity, lack of confidence, and pressure to fit the “feminine beauty ideal.”text context” Someone please relay that to Tina Fey. 

There were entries on haka (I’ve been a fan for years), unnecessary intersex surgeries (bad), womxn (whatever happened to good old-fashioned womyn?) and the biological clock, which is explained as: “In relation to birthing people, the biological clock refers to the sense of pressure people feel to have children during their “peak” reproductive years.text context” As a 37-year-old womxn/birthing person, I can assure you that those scare quotes around the word ‘peak,’ as though human reproduction is some kind of social construct, are superfluous.

Moving right along, the Inclusion Playbook taught me that the Arabic word jihad means to “strive and struggle for Godtext context,” and is a term that describes “personal bettermenttext context.” Sharia, we are told, literally means “the clear, well-trodden path to watertext context.” 

I also learned about the Yazidis, who are victims of the apparently non-violent jihad waged by the Arab League (also covered in this document!). Do I even need to tell you that there is no mention of Israel or of Jews?  

The playbook explains that “the work of diversity, equity, and inclusion requires all of us to disrupt those biases, and the longstanding customs and practices in the industry, in order to achieve real, lasting change. This work is not easy to do, but don’t worry, we’re in this together.text context” 

Are we, though? I wonder how the Amazon drivers afraid to take a bathroom break in order to keep up with their delivery quotas would feel about that. Or the workers in JFK8, the company’s Staten Island warehouse, who labor under the all-seeing eye of Jeff Bezos. More than 60 percent of the people who work in that warehouse, which is the size of 15 football fields, are black or Hispanic. And, according to a recent New York Times investigation, black workers at JFK8 were almost “50 percent more likely to be firedtext context.”

I would really love for an Amazon executive to explain to me how understanding the difference between Disabled and disabled — Amazon’s Inclusion Playbook told me that Disabled with a capital “D" refers to those who are culturally Disabled, whatever that means — makes an actual difference in the lives of anyone at all.

As Newsweek editor Batya Ungar-Sargon has noted: wokeness is, almost always, a smokescreen. By focusing the attention and energy of the rich and powerful on say, whether using the word Latinx is preferable to Hispanic, we let them off the hook for actually doing something about the fact that Latinos remain more than twice as likely to live below the poverty line as whites and Asians. 

Batya put it to me this way: “‘Doing the work’ means hiring diversity specialists to call their children white supremacists in a prep school class they can put on their transcript to help their chances of getting into Harvard. It has absolutely nothing to do with asking those who could actually make a difference with regard to true inequality to sacrifice anything of themselves.”

It is an amazing thing to behold Amazon executives LARP as gender studies majors.


You won’t read about the strange marriage between wokeness and corporate America in the mainstream press, but it’s an important subject and there are two books coming out over the next few months that take it up.

The first, out in August, is called “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam” by Vivek Ramaswamy. This past weekend, he was the subject of a Wall Street Journal profile. Ramaswamy — a great talker with lots of provocative ideas — told the Journal that the alliance was forged in the years following the 2008 financial collapse:

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The birth of wokeism was a godsend to corporations, Mr. Ramaswamy says. It helped defang the left. “Wokeism lent a lifeline to the people who were in charge of the big banks. They thought, ‘This stuff is easy!’ ” They applauded diversity and inclusion, appointed token female and minority directors, and “mused about the racially disparate impact of climate change.” So, in Mr. Ramaswamy’s narrative, “a bunch of big banks got together with a bunch of millennials, birthed woke capitalism, and then put Occupy Wall Street up for adoption.” Now, in Mr. Ramaswamy’s tart verdict, “big business makes money by critiquing itself.”

It’s worth reading the whole interview here.

The other book, which is being published in October, is by the Newsweek editor I quote above, Batya Ungar-Sargon. It’s called “Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy.” For obvious reasons, I can’t wait to read it.


Last thing:

Apple Daily may be closed, but the repression of its journalists is a developing story. Hours after I published yesterday’s column and podcast came the news that a senior journalist for the paper, Fung Wai-kwong, was arrested at Hong Kong International Airport as he was trying to fly out of the city. In a statement, the police accused him of “conspiring to collude with foreign countries or foreign forces to endanger national securitytext context.”

I am thinking of him, of the young reporter I spoke to, and all of their courageous colleagues.

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BEGIN CONTEXT: .. an’s attack on Pearl Harbor during WWII, the forced relocation and imprisonment of about 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry – including 8,000 American citizens – into concentration camps by the U.S. federal government. (This action is often referred to as “internment,” a term that shouldn’t be used as it ignores the illegality and immorality of what happened.)Jihad/Jihadi: Jihad literally means “ strive and struggle for God ,” which encompasses an internal struggle towards personal betterment. A jihadi is one who strives and struggles for God. Jihad is not an order to murder and doesn’t mean “terrorism.”Karma: In Hinduism and Buddhism, the sum of a person's actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as deciding their fate in future existences. Good intent and good deeds contribute to good karma and happ ..

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BEGIN CONTEXT: .. the work of diversity, equity, and inclusion requires all of us to disrupt those biases, and the longstanding customs and practices in the industry, in order to achieve real, lasting change. This work is not easy to do, but don’t worry, we’re in this together.

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BEGIN CONTEXT: .. on college students, 22% are lower-income students eligible for federal Pell grants and 62% qualify for financial aid. Princeton University has offered admission to 1,498 students for the Class of 2025, including 22% who will be first-generation college students, an increase from 17% last year. Sixty-eight percent of U.S. citizens or permanent residents in the admitted group self-identified as people of color , including biracial and multiracial students. Despite the 15% increase in applications from the previous admission cycle, the University remained committed to a holistic review process. “We were incredibly impressed by the talent displayed in this year’s record pool. As a result, we had to make extremely difficult decisions in the process of admitting a class that will come to Princeton, form a ..

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BEGIN CONTEXT: .. s of any immigration status to report crimes without fear of deportation.School-to-prison pipeline: The tendency for non-white, poor, and disadvantaged youth and young adults to become incarcerated because of harsh disciplinary and over-policing practices within schools.Senior citizen: Synonym for an older person, typically one who is retired or living on a pension.Sharia: Sharia literally means “ the clear, well-trodden path to water .” It’s a code of conduct for all aspects of Muslim life, derived from the Quran and Hadiths (Islamic text about the Prophet Mohammed’s life). Sharia is not a set of laws to infiltrate America.Sheik: An honorific title in the Arabic language. It commonly designates a tribal chief or royal family member, also can often refer to a Muslim religious scholar. Transliterations include shaik, shaikh, sha ..

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BEGIN CONTEXT: .. conspiring to collude with foreign countries or foreign forces to endanger national security

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BEGIN CONTEXT: .. enforce the bad behavior

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BEGIN CONTEXT: .. nt of about 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry – including 8,000 American citizens – into concentration camps by the U.S. federal government. (This action is often referred to as “internment,” a term that shouldn’t be used as it ignores the illegality and immorality of what happened.)Jihad/Jihadi: Jihad literally means “strive and struggle for God,” which encompasses an internal struggle towards personal betterment . A jihadi is one who strives and struggles for God. Jihad is not an order to murder and doesn’t mean “terrorism.”Karma: In Hinduism and Buddhism, the sum of a person's actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as deciding their fate in future existences. Good intent and good deeds contribute to good karma and happier rebirths, while bad intent and bad deeds contribute to bad karma ..

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BEGIN CONTEXT: .. ic efforts to ship only necessary merchandise. “Man, I’m stowing dildos,” another responded. Nearly all the workers in the group were Black, like Mr. Palmer and Mr. Smalls, or Latino. So were more than 60 percent of associates at JFK8, according to internal Amazon records from 2019. Management, the documents show, was more than 70 percent white or Asian. Black associates at JFK8 were almost 50 percent more likely to be fired — whether for productivity, misconduct, or not showing up for work — than their white peers, the records show. (Amazon said it could not confirm the data without knowing more specifics about its source.) Workers of Color Fuel Amazon’s Operations A vast majority of the company’s warehouse workers in the U.S. are included in the first group in the 2018 data below. These employees are largely ..

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BEGIN CONTEXT: .. aim the māhū identity and their cultural understandings of gender. For more.Mean girls: A stereotype of girls and young women characterizing them as socially aggressive and unkind. These characters are usually “popular” or “cool” and resort to behaviors such as bullying or backstabbing, even among other characters they consider friends. These portrayals not only enforce the bad behavior, but they fail to address the larger social issues girls and women face like insecurity, lack of confidence, and pressure to fit the “feminine beauty ideal.” Medical Model vs. Social Model of Disability: The medical model is a belief long fallen out of favor with the disabled community. It’s the idea that disability might reduce quality of life and, therefore, it should be diminished or corrected through medical intervention. The social model holds that society’s attitudes, structure, and organization causes a disability rather than a person’s impairme ..

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BEGIN CONTEXT: .. policy includes specific goals for Amazon Studios-based productions, including: Each film or series with a creative team of three or more people in above-the-line roles (Directors, Writers, Producers) should ideally include a minimum 30% women and 30% members of an underrepresented racial/ethnic group. This aspirational goal will increase to 50% by 2024. Casting actors whose identity ( gender, gender identity, nationality, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability ) aligns with the character they will be playing. Aiming to include one character from each of the following categories in speaking roles, with minimum 50% of these to be women: LGBTQIA+, person with a disability, and three regionally underrepresented race/ethnic/cultural groups. A single character can fulfill one or more of these identities. Seeking at least three bids from vendors or suppliers o ..

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BEGIN CONTEXT: .. including kumkum, sindoor, teep, tikli, and bottu. Around 3000 BC, the rishi-muni (ancient seers of Hinduism) wrote the Vedas, describing the existence of seven main areas of concentrated energy called the chakras. Chakras run along the center of the body, and the sixth one (called the ajna chakra, the “brow chakra” or “third eye chakra”) occurs exactly where the bindi is placed.Biological clock: In relation to birthing people, the biological clock refers to the sense of pressure people feel to have children during their “peak” reproductive years. While it is true that fertility declines after a certain age, it is still possible for many people to get pregnant later in life. When it comes to storytelling, the biological clock is often used as the sole motivator for a woman’s character arc, reducing her only to her desire to have children.Birthright citizenship: The right of any U.S.-born person to U.S. citizenship, as established by the 14 ..

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BEGIN CONTEXT: .. Home Inclusion Policy Inclusion Playbook Voices Contact More Home Inclusion Policy Inclusion Playbook Voices Contact Inclusion Playbook We created this Playbook to help disrupt the biases that occur across the lifecycle of a series or movie, from the first inkling of a concept to viewers streaming the content on Prime Video.. Playbook HomeStorytellingHiring Behind the CameraCastingProductionResourcesReporting & Documentation Playbook Navigation × Playbook Home Storytelling Hiring Behind the Camera Casting Production Resources Reporting & Documentation “Amazon Studios has long prioritized telling innovative and inclusive stories from a diverse r ..

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