American Express is receiving criticism for what some are calling "woke" policies that have led to citizens calling on state treasurers to drop state pension fund investment in American Express.
Eric Laner, a concerned citizen who signed the UnAmerican Express petition to state treasurers, said in an extended interview on May 3:
"The job of a public corporation is to maximize profits for its shareholders, while operating within the limits of the law and acting ethically.” AmEx’ taking extreme racial positions “would ultimately result in the company’s demise and the loss of shareholder equity,” said Eric Laner, a concerned citizen who signed the UnAmerican Express petition.
Laner added that it's “the antithesis of what company leadership should, and is required, to be doing.”
"If senior managers and executives wish to fulfill some woke left-wing ideology, they should start their own business to fund their agenda, not by…using corporate resources—of which they are ‘caretaker’ and ‘steward,’ not ‘owner’—in order to do so. I suspect if they had to build a business from scratch whose goal was ‘wokeness’ they would have few customers, and even fewer profits."
American Express operates an office out of Phoenix, and the campaign’s objective is to have the company stop training based on critical race theory. The campaign is being spearheaded by Color Us United, whose president, Kenny Xu, states that he hopes to end state pension investments against the credit card company to counter their agenda.
The petition for UnAmerican Express seeks to make clear American Express employee training policies while letting state treasurers know that it's counterintuitive to the desires of the majority of citizens.
The petition states: "The explicit racial preferences the company has instituted in everything from their hiring and promotion practices to their consumer credit portfolio is not only deeply concerning to me — it is likely unconstitutional and illegal. I understand you may not be aware of specific investments our state has in Un-American Express, but it’s extremely likely that the taxes paid from people like me are being directed by you and your fellow pension board colleagues to mutual and index funds that include American Express."
According to Fox Business, the Manhattan Institute's Christopher Rufo released a study revealing American Express is “hosting a critical race theory style training program for its employees, teaching them that the United States is fundamentally racist, that capitalism is fundamentally racist and then promoting the idea that all of their white employees have white privilege that they need to atone for." Rufo presented the details on Varney & Co. on March 24.
Rufo has obtained American Express documents that direct employees to "create your own identity map" with directions to identify dynamics such as race, sexual orientation, body type, religion, disability status, age, gender identity and citizenship.
Last August, American Express conducted a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion event that featured Khalil Muhammad with the Nation of Islam called "A Conversation about Race in America: Reflecting on our History and 'the American Dream," according to the UK Daily Mail. Muhammad described capitalism as "racial capitalism" and said that the American Express corporation was "complicit" in being prejudice in its hiring policies.