Our producer Stella Tan on last Friday’s episode:
Our story began shortly after the police killing of George Floyd in May. The calls to examine the role of systemic racism in American law enforcement led to a closer examination of how those same systemic forces had shaped attitudes within families, friendships, the media and the workplace.
As we looked at the racial reckonings happening in the corporate world, Adidas caught our eye. The German sportswear brand built its audience in the United States largely through its connection with Black celebrities, from the Run-D.M.C. song “My Adidas” in the 1980s to collaborations with Kanye West and Beyoncé today. But, as our colleagues Julie Creswell and Kevin Draper reported last year, some Black employees expressed feeling sidelined at Adidas, saying that the scene within the company didn’t match its public image.
When Julie and Kevin did their reporting in June 2019, few employees were willing to go on record. But when they revisited Adidas in June 2020, something had changed. They put us in touch with several of their sources, including Aric Armon, an Adidas footwear designer who recounted being called a racial slur by a colleague, and Aaron Ture, a product manager who took issue with the way a human resources executive had responded to a question about racism at the company. When asked why they were speaking out now, one name kept coming up: Julia Bond.
Our team was intrigued. Julia Bond was an assistant apparel designer who had been working at Adidas for about a year. In June, Julia wrote a letter to the company’s North America leadership and made it public. Two days later, she initiated daily protests outside Adidas’s Portland headquarters. Her actions spurred Aric, Aaron and other colleagues to come forward with their own stories.
We wanted to understand what she wanted, why it was so important to her, and what she was willing to risk to attain it — even when many of her colleagues appeared to be satisfied with Adidas’s response.
Julia told us that she wanted an “acknowledgment and apology” from Adidas. The company had said that it could not remain silent “when the people we should be standing with live in fear of police brutality due to systemic racism,” and that it did not reflect enough “representation within our walls.” But in Julia’s eyes, this wasn’t enough.
She said the company had not acknowledged the specific ways these systemic problems manifested in the everyday experiences of Black employees — ranging, for her, from remarks about her hair and skin to Confederate imagery on a mood board. And she felt Adidas had yet to examine the root of why these things happened.
Julia perceived the situation as leadership failing to understand the experiences of many Black employees at Adidas: “Going into a room, you having experienced one reality, and they do not recognize your reality.” She felt that a common understanding of what the problems actually were would be the starting point for lasting change, and that an acknowledgment and an apology from leadership would be the signal of that newly shared reality.
Not everyone agreed.
One of the first people to disagree was Julia’s mother — who had been so proud when her daughter, a first-generation college student, had landed a dream job at one of the most famous companies in the world. Now she was watching Julia potentially put it all on the line.
After the episode aired, the producers Asthaa Chaturvedi and Clare Toeniskoetter, the editor Lisa Chow and I read the emails and tweets that came in from listeners. I was struck by the way the responses mirrored the spectrum of reactions that Julia described in the interview.
Some listeners felt that leadership had reacted appropriately, and that the incidents she recounted did not comprise an insidious pattern. “Aside from the incident with the Confederate flag,” one person wrote, “Julia did not seem to have any experiences that conveyed true systemic racism at Adidas.”
Others stood firmly with Julia and her fellow protesters, and took issue with our line of questioning around her determination to push for change from outside the organization, rather than from within, while still getting paid. One wrote that Julia had experienced enough, and no more explanation was needed: “Why should she have to settle for ‘it takes time’ and have to ‘convince people’?”
And still others aligned with Julia’s mother. “The whole time I’m listening, I’m thinking that same advice her mom ended up giving her,” one listener responded, sympathizing with the core of Julia’s message, but not her methods.
As the conversation in corporate America about racism continues to evolve, our hope is that hearing Julia’s story opens an opportunity for grappling and dialogue. As always, I’d love to hear your views.
Talk to Stella on Twitter: @stellatan.
A series finale
New York City, one of the most demographically diverse places on the planet, is also home to one of the most segregated school districts in America. And for the last five years, Chana Joffe-Walt, a reporter, investigated the history and lived realities of segregation at one school building in Brooklyn.
In Nice White Parents, a new show from Serial and The Times, Chana turns her attention to one of the most powerful forces shaping public schools: White parents. Chana shows how white parents have influenced the trajectory of a middle school over and over through the decades — even when their children didn’t attend it. But the issues Chana confronts in this school building extend beyond Brooklyn, raising questions about the complicated realities of race, privilege and power across all American schools.
In the wake of the largest protest movement in American history, and with the pandemic prompting an unprecedented reimagination about what schooling is and can be, Nice White Parents asks: Whom are schools serving? And what is needed to make them more equitable?
This week, we released the fifth and final episode of the show. In closing the series, Chana noted, “Nice white parents can’t grab every advantage for our children and maintain our identities as good citizens who believe in equitable schools.” She continued, “We have a choice — we can choose to hoard resources and segregate ourselves and flee the moment things feel uncomfortable. Or we can choose to be the people we say we are.”
On The Daily this week
Monday: Through Operation Warp Speed, the U.S. government is trying to produce a coronavirus vaccine as quickly as possible. Katie Thomas on why this timeline may be creating a whole new set of problems.
Tuesday: At a dinner party in 2018, Mark Landler witnessed a chance encounter between an Emirati ambassador and the prime minister of Israel. Two years later, it’s led to a “really remarkable outcome in the annals of Middle East diplomacy.”
Wednesday: Is President Trump deliberately slowing the mail? We ask Luke Broadwater whether the president’s appointment of a new postmaster general is an attempt to influence the election.
Thursday: Matt Flegenheimer explains why this week’s Democratic National Convention was the culmination of a 30-year journey, and two failed bids for the presidency, for Joe Biden.
Friday: The N.B.A. is trying an unprecedented experiment: Sealing off its players, staff members and journalists in a secure campus at Disney World in Florida. Marc Stein takes us through the last 40 days inside the league’s bubble.
That’s it for The Daily newsletter. See you next week.
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August 22, 2020 at 05:20AM
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