[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 66 (Thursday, April 28, 2016)]
[House]
[Pages H2104-H2106]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE DISPARATE IMPLEMENTATION OF AMAZON.COM'S PRIME FREE SAME-DAY
DELIVERY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 6, 2015, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Illinois (Mr.
Rush) for 30 minutes.
Mr. RUSH. Mr. Speaker, I rise today because, despite our best
efforts, racial redlining is still alive and well today. I come to this
Chamber because racial redlining has once again reared its ugly, evil
head across our Nation.
Mr. Speaker, on April 21, Bloomberg published an analysis entitled
``Amazon Doesn't Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?''
Bloomberg explains how amazon.com discriminates against mostly
African American communities nationwide by shutting them out, shutting
them off from receiving its Prime free same-day delivery service.
Mr. Speaker, it must be understood that mostly predominantly African
American ZIP Codes in this Nation have been excluded from receiving
Amazon's Prime free same-day delivery service. It must be understood,
Mr. Speaker, that this is absolutely unacceptable.
Amazon's vice president for global communications, Mr. Craig Berman,
feebly attempted to justify this by saying that ``demographics play no
role'' in the determination by which neighborhoods have access to Prime
free same-day service.
{time} 1630
He goes on to state that distance matters and that in terms of
determining factors, close proximity to a warehouse is certainly one of
the factors that they consider.
Well, Mr. Speaker, on the face of it, that seemingly appears to be
both logical and understandable. However, when viewed through a sharper
lens, there are some glaring, flagrant inconsistencies.
In my hometown of Chicago, Illinois, just for example, same-day
service is available to a majority of the city and its surrounding
suburbs. This free, same-day delivery service is not available to my
constituents in predominantly African American ZIP Codes.
Mr. Berman, the article explains, again, feebly blames this on the
distance of these ZIP Codes from a distribution center that is located
in Kenosha, Wisconsin. That would be understandable if not for the fact
that this free, same-day Amazon delivery service is available to
residents in Oak Lawn, Illinois, which is a community that is also in
the district that I represent, but Oak Lawn is even farther south,
farther away from Kenosha, Wisconsin, a greater distance from the
distribution center in Kenosha, Wisconsin, than all these African
American-predominant ZIP Codes.
Mr. Speaker, because I live in a predominantly African American ZIP
Code, I cannot be served by the Amazon Prime free, same-day delivery
service, but my White constituents can be served by Amazon with their
Prime free, same-day delivery service.
Simply put, Mr. Speaker, despite amazon.com's assertions of
impartiality and a strictly numbers-based approach to the availability
of this Prime free, same-day delivery services, Amazon's implementation
of this service has been disparate, disappointing, disgusting, and
apparently discriminatory.
Mr. Speaker, not only does this occur in the city of Chicago, but
also Bloomberg found similar situations existing in five other cities.
Not just Chicago, but Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, New York City, and
Washington, D.C., all across our great Nation.
Mr. Speaker, historically and unfortunately, the situation with
amazon.com is not a unique experience for people of color. Today, in
the year 2016, too many Americans still are denied services and access
to goods based off the color of their skin and where they reside or the
location of their ZIP Code. This is redlining. This practice is known
as redlining. This redlining has been a major, significant obstacle to
communities of color to gain access to the fullness of their American
Dream, to the fullness of their American ideal.
For decades now, despite efforts during the civil rights era of our
Nation, during similar efforts, not only before, but even after the
civil rights era of our Nation, despite many multiple legislative
attempts to stamp redlining out, this very injustice continues to
spread, even among some of my corporate citizens who, on the face of
it, would never accept the fact that they engage in discriminatory
business practices.
But when you look at it from my perspective, look at it from my
vantage point, look at it from the experience of my constituents who
are African American, Amazon fails to meet the acid test. Its Prime
same-day delivery service is far less than prime for too many of my
constituents and too many American citizens.
Mr. Speaker, Members of this body of the U.S. House of
Representatives, we cannot allow businesses in this country to
discriminate against any particular group of Americans. We cannot allow
businesses in this country to discriminate against neighborhoods,
against communities based on their business's race-based perceptions.
Mr. Speaker, this body, this U.S. House of Representatives cannot
allow the Amazons of the world, amazon.com to violate laws of our
Nation, laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Amazon cannot violate
the laws of our Nation with impunity and without accountability.
Mr. Speaker, I must call upon amazon.com and its CEO, Jeff Bezos, to
come and do what is right, to come and
[[Page H2105]]
right this wrong. Make Amazon's Prime same-day delivery service a prime
service that is available to all the citizens of this Nation and not
just to the White citizens of this Nation.
People all across this Nation like amazon.com. I am a customer of
amazon.com, and amazon.com benefits from Black Americans' dollars
because Black Americans' dollars are just as green as any other
Americans' dollars. White Americans' dollars are not more powerful,
aren't colder or hotter. These are Americans' dollars, greenbacks, and
Amazon must respect the buying power, the consumer right of African
American consumers just as it does all other American consumers.
Mr. Bezos, again, I appeal to you, do what is right and right this
wrong.
Mr. Speaker, I must call upon our colleagues in the executive branch
to ensure that the laws of our Nation passed by this U.S. Congress are
faithfully and equally executed so that communities of color get equal
and fair treatment by its corporate citizens all across this country.
Redlining is an evil that has ripped apart the dreams and the
aspirations of African American citizens and other minorities.
{time} 1645
It is high time now. The hour has passed. It is time now to put
redlining and all the vestiges of it aside, buried deep. Take it out of
the consciousness of the corporate decisionmakers in this Nation.
Mr. Speaker, our economy is a service economy. Our economics are
based on service. Our social contract means that all Americans should
have access and a level playing field when it comes to getting service
and being serviced in this service economy.
Now, amazon.com's Prime same-day delivery service stands as a stark
example of how much still needs to be changed in our society. No matter
how much things change, so much remains the same. Let us rise up to the
call. Amazon, do what is right, and right this wrong.
Mr. Speaker, we can do no less than our best for all American
citizens. This is an extraordinary violation of not only the civil
rights laws of our Nation, but it stands as a significant barrier to
greater economic opportunities, to a greater sense of being treated
equally and fairly. There is something called justice in our society,
and any injustice must be courageously confronted. Any injustice.
Amazon.com, your Prime same-day delivery service is not so prime
until all your customers are treated fairly and equitably in your
business model. No excuses.
This is shameful. It must be corrected. Make the Amazon Prime same-
day delivery service available for all Americans because we live in a
society where being prime really should mean something--this America
that we live in.
Mr. Speaker, again, I call upon Mr. Jeff Bezos, Amazon's CEO, to do
what is right and right this less than prime wrong.
Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record the article: ``Amazon Doesn't
Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?''
[From www.bloomberg.com, Apr. 21, 2016]
Amazon Doesn't Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?
(By David Ingold and Spencer Soper)
For residents of minority urban neighborhoods, access to
Amazon.com's vast array of products--from Dawn dish soap and
Huggies diapers to Samsung flatscreen TVs--can be a godsend.
Unlike whiter ZIP codes, these parts of town often lack well-
stocked stores and quality supermarkets. White areas get
organic grocers and designer boutiques. Black ones get
minimarts and dollar stores. People in neighborhoods that
retailers avoid must travel farther and sometimes pay more to
obtain household necessities. ``I don't have a car, so I love
to have stuff delivered,'' says Tamara Rasberry, a human
resources professional in Washington, D.C., who spends about
$2,000 a year on Amazon Prime, the online retailer's premium
service that guarantees two-day delivery of tens of millions
of items (along with digital music, e-books, streaming
movies, and TV shows) for a yearly $99 membership fee.
Rasberry, whose neighborhood of Congress Heights is more than
90 percent black, says shopping on Amazon lets her bypass the
poor selection and high prices of nearby shops.
As Amazon has expanded rapidly to become ``the everything
store,'' it's offered the promise of an egalitarian shopping
experience. On Amazon and other online retailers, a black
customer isn't viewed with suspicion, much less followed
around by store security. Most of Amazon's services are
available to almost every address in the U.S. ``We don't know
what you look like when you come into our store, which is
vastly different than physical retail,'' says Craig Berman,
Amazon's vice president for global communications. ``We are
ridiculously prideful about that. We offer every customer the
same price. It doesn't matter where you live.''
Yet as Amazon rolls out its upgrade to the Prime service,
Prime Free Same-Day Delivery, that promise is proving harder
to deliver on. The ambitious goal of Prime Free Same-Day is
to eliminate one of the last advantages local retailers have
over the e-commerce giant: instant gratification. In cities
where the service is available, Amazon offers Prime members
same-day delivery of more than a million products for no
extra fee on orders over $35. Eleven months after it started,
the service includes 27 metropolitan areas. In most of them,
it provides broad coverage within the city limits. Take
Amazon's home town of Seattle, where every ZIP code within
the city limits is eligible for same-day delivery and
coverage extends well into the surrounding suburbs.
In six major same-day delivery cities, however, the service
area excludes predominantly black ZIP codes to varying
degrees, according to a Bloomberg analysis that compared
Amazon same-day delivery areas with U.S. Census Bureau data.
In Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, and Washington, cities still
struggling to overcome generations of racial segregation and
economic inequality, black citizens are about half as likely
to live in neighborhoods with access to Amazon same-day
delivery as white residents.
The disparity in two other big cities is significant, too.
In New York City, same-day delivery is available throughout
Manhattan, Staten Island, and Brooklyn, but not in the Bronx
and some majority-black neighborhoods in Queens. In some
cities, Amazon same-day delivery extends many miles into the
surrounding suburbs but isn't available in some ZIP codes
within the city limits.
The most striking gap in Amazon's same-day service is in
Boston, where three ZIP codes encompassing the primarily
black neighborhood of Roxbury are excluded from same-day
service, while the neighborhoods that surround it on all
sides are eligible. ``Being singled out like that and not
getting those same services as they do in a 15-minute walk
from here is very frustrating,'' says Roxbury resident JD
Nelson, who's been an Amazon Prime member for three years.
``It's not a good thing, and it definitely doesn't make me
happy.'' Rasberry was excited when Amazon announced Prime
Free Same-Day was coming to Washington. But when she entered
her ZIP code on the retailer's website, she was disappointed
to find her neighborhood was left out. ``I still get two-day
shipping, but none of the superfast, convenient delivery
services come here,'' she says. Rasberry pays the same $99
Prime membership fee as people who live in the city's
majority-white neighborhoods, but she doesn't get the same
benefits. ``If you bring that service to the city,'' she
says, ``you should offer it to the whole city.''
There's no evidence that Amazon makes decisions on where to
deliver based on race. Berman says the ethnic composition of
neighborhoods isn't part of the data Amazon examines when
drawing up its maps. ``When it comes to same-day delivery,
our goal is to serve as many people as we can, which we've
proven in places like Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco,
and Philadelphia.'' Amazon, he says, has a ``radical
sensitivity'' to any suggestion that neighborhoods are being
singled out by race. ``Demographics play no role in it.
Zero.''
Amazon says its plan is to focus its same-day service on
ZIP codes where there's a high concentration of Prime
members, and then expand the offering to fill in the gaps
over time. ``If you ever look at a map of service for Amazon,
it will start out small and end up getting big,'' he says.
This is a logical approach from a cost and efficiency
perspective: Give areas with the most existing paying members
priority access to a new product. Yet in cities where most of
those paying members are concentrated in predominantly white
parts of town, a solely data-driven calculation that looks at
numbers instead of people can reinforce long-entrenched
inequality in access to retail services. For people who live
in black neighborhoods not served by Amazon, the fact that
it's not deliberate doesn't make much practical difference.
``They are offering different services to other people who
don't look like you but live in the same city,'' says
Rasberry.
Amazon cites several reasons a ZIP code within a city may
be excluded: too few Prime members to justify the expense of
sending out trucks and drivers, or the area is too far from
the closest Amazon warehouse. ``Distance matters,'' Berman
says. ``At some point, with the math involved, we can't make
it work--in time or in cost for the carrier. There is a
diminishing return on orders.'' In some cases, Amazon says,
it's difficult to find delivery partners willing to serve the
area. ``We deliver same day up till 9 p.m.'' says Amazon
spokesman Scott Stanzel. ``There are a lot of carrier
partners. A lot of variables.''
Amazon won't reveal specifics about how it decides its
same-day delivery areas--the competition would kill for that
info, says Berman. Broadly speaking, it comes down to cost.
Same-day delivery is expensive to provide, in part because
Amazon can't rely on
[[Page H2106]]
the built-in infrastructure and low negotiated rates of
United Parcel Service and the U.S. Postal Service, which
shoulder the retailer's standard and two-day Prime
deliveries. To get packages out within hours, Amazon uses a
mix of its own drivers, local couriers, and independent
contractors making deliveries in their own vehicles through
an Uberlike service called Amazon Flex.
Cities where Amazon offers broad one-day coverage appear to
have something in common: close proximity to product
warehouses, making it less expensive to reach all areas.
``It's not the only variable. It's certainly one of them,''
says Berman. ``It definitely has an impact if we have a
fulfillment center that's outside a city, or we have a
fulfillment center that happens to be on one side of it''
Amazon declined to reveal the locations of its same-day hubs,
so it's difficult to tell how that works. In same-day cities
Amazon hasn't yet surrounded with warehouses, the company
must decide which neighborhoods are worth the cost of service
and which aren't. That's where things get complicated.
atlanta
Amazon's Prime Free Same-Day Delivery closely mirrors the
city's historical racial divide. The largely white northern
half is covered, while the largely black southern half isn't.
The company extends the service 35 miles north of downtown
but excludes Norcross, a less distant eastern suburb where
blacks and Hispanics outnumber whites, and Redan, with a
black population of 94 percent.
boston
Although Amazon's same-day service is available to most
addresses in Boston and reaches almost to New Hampshire, the
centrally located neighborhood of Roxbury, with a population
that's about 59 percent black and 15 percent white, is
excluded. The residents of the ZIP codes that border Roxbury
on all sides are eligible for the service. Amazon's Berman
calls Roxbury ``an anomaly.''
chicago
Amazon's same-day service area includes about 2.2 million
people in the city but excludes about 472,000 people in
Chicago's predominantly black South Side. Berman says the
South Side ZIP codes are beyond the reach of the company's
distribution center in Kenosha, Wisconsin, about two hours
north of the city. Yet same-day service is available to Prime
members in Oak Lawn, which is eight miles farther south than
the excluded portions of Chicago and has a white population
of about 85 percent. The company does offer the service in
largely black neighborhoods in the city's center, including
Austin.
dallas
Amazon's same-day service area includes suburbs between
Dallas and Fort Worth, but about 590,000 residents of eastern
and southern Dallas, where a majority are black or Hispanic--
such as Oak Cliff--are just outside the delivery area. Amazon
cited distance from the company's warehouses and a low
concentration of Prime members as reasons those areas were
left out.
new york city
Amazon's same-day coverage area extends, unbroken, from New
York City all the way south to Philadelphia, with one notable
exception: The largely black and Hispanic borough of the
Bronx, which is excluded from the service. The Bronx has the
lowest percentage of white residents of the five boroughs at
about 33 percent. Berman says the Bronx is difficult to reach
because the warehouses that serve the area are in New Jersey.
washington, d.c.
One of Amazon's largest same-day service coverage areas
extends from Washington, D.C., north to Baltimore and
encompasses much of the Maryland and Virginia suburbs. Yet
all neighborhoods in the capital's predominantly black
southeast quadrant are excluded, along with several largely
black Maryland suburbs to the southeast--notably Suitland and
Silver Hill, which have average income levels comparable to
those in some ZIP codes between Washington and Baltimore that
do have same-day coverage.
Some excluded ZIP codes correspond with higher crime rates.
Amazon won't say whether concerns about stolen packages or
the safety of drivers figure into its decisions about where
to deliver, saying only ``the safety of our employees is a
top priority.''
Income inequality may also play a part. Many excluded areas
have average household incomes below the national average.
And households with Prime memberships skew wealthier--not
surprising given the $99 membership fee. An April study of
families with teenagers by investment bank Piper Jaffray
estimates 70 percent of such U.S. households with incomes of
$112,000 per year or more now have a Prime membership,
compared with 43 percent for households with incomes of
$21,000 to $41,000. Income differences alone don't explain
the gaps in service, however. In Chicago, New York, Boston,
Atlanta, and other cities, some areas that are excluded have
household incomes as high or higher than ZIP codes Amazon
does cover.
Berman points to cities where some black ZIP codes get
same-day service and some white ones don't. In Los Angeles,
black and Hispanic communities south of downtown have same-
day service, but mostly white Malibu, on the far side of the
traffic-clogged Route 27 and Pacific Coast Highway, doesn't.
In several cities where the same-day service area encompasses
the vast majority of all residents, including Los Angeles,
San Jose, and Tampa, a higher percentage of blacks live in
ZIP codes eligible for same-day delivery than whites.
Overall, though, in cities where same-day service doesn't
extend to most residents, those left out are
disproportionately black. (In the six cities with
disparities, Asians, on average, are as likely as whites to
live in an area with coverage; Hispanics are less likely than
whites to live in same-day ZIP codes, but more likely than
blacks.)
``As soon as you try to represent something as complex as a
neighborhood with a spreadsheet based on a few variables,
you've made some generalizations and assumptions that may not
be true, and they may not affect all people equally,'' says
Sorelle Friedler, a computer science professor at Haverford
College who studies data bias. ``There is so much systemic
bias with respect to race. If you aren't purposefully trying
to identify it and correct it, this bias is likely to creep
into your outcomes.''
Amazon says it's misleading to scrutinize its current
delivery areas so closely, because the service is new and
evolving. Eventually, coverage will extend to every ZIP code
in same-day cities, says Berman. The service is indeed
expanding. Since Bloomberg first contacted Amazon for this
article in February, the company announced 12 new same-day
cities. As it adds locations, however, Amazon has yet to
extend coverage to excluded majority-black ZIP codes in the
existing cities with gaps in service. How long will those
customers have to wait to get the full benefits of their
Prime membership? Berman says there's no set timetable:
``We'll get there.''
Juan Gilbert, chair of the University of Florida's
department of computer and information science & engineering,
says Amazon has an opportunity to use its data resources to
correct its oversight and avert falling into the retail
patterns of the past. ``I think it was a mistake, and it
never crossed their mind,'' he says. ``This is a perfect
example of how Amazon had a blind spot.''
Update, April 21: Corrects the number of New York City
residents who live in ZIP codes eligible for Amazon same-day
delivery; updates the article and final chart to indicate
cities where black residents are more likely than whites to
live in zip codes eligible for same day service.
methodology
Amazon's website allows users to type in ZIP codes to see
where Prime Free Same-Day Delivery is available. Bloomberg
entered every U.S. ZIP code into the tool, and mapped the
results on top of a complete U.S. ZIP code shape file,
provided by ESRI, to produce a coverage map of Amazon's Prime
same-day delivery areas. Coverage maps show Amazon data as of
April 8, 2016.
Population data were compiled using block group figures
from the 2014 American Community Survey 5-Year estimates
tables. Table B03002--Hispanic or Latino Origin by Race--
provides population figures by racial category, including the
following subsets: white alone, black or African-American
alone, Hispanic or Latino, Asian alone, and other races. The
data were released on Dec. 3, 2015 and are the most recent
local population data available from the ACS. All ACS figures
are estimates with a 90% confidence interval and are subject
to a margin of error. City-level figures presented in the
graphics and charts are compilations of individual block
group estimates, and share the same 90% confidence level.
Each population dot represent 100 residents, and are evenly
distributed across each block group. They do not represent
exact addresses, and populations below a 100-person threshold
within an individual block group are not shown.
In some cases, individual block groups straddle multiple
ZIP codes or intersect a city boundary. Often these block
groups feature clear divisions between residential areas, and
nonresidential areas made up of parks, lakes, or empty land.
In these cases, a block group was included in the ZIP code
that included the residential area. When a block group was
not clearly separated in this manner, the population was
proportionally distributed based on the area of overlap.
Mr. RUSH. I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________