[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5308-5311]
[From the U.S. 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?''

[[Page 5309]]

  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 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

[[Page 5310]]

     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 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

[[Page 5311]]

     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 represents 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.

                          ____________________