Cognitive Dissonance at Amazon

Employees see themselves as enlightened about diversity but are members of a race-based employee group.

I’m such an oddball that Amazon is incapable of pigeonholing me when it recommends books to buy. Netflix has the same problem when it recommends movies.

Amazon’s logarithms can’t seem to fathom from my extensive book-buying history that I don’t care about an author’s color, ethnicity, nationality, ideology, biological sex, preferred gender, preferred pronouns, sexual preferences, or preferred positions during sex. 

With a preference for nonfiction, I just care that a book is intelligent, enlightening, unbiased, and not marred by partisanship, political agendas, or racial agendas.

So, here’s an email message I recently received from Amazon:

In celebration of Black History Month, we spoke to members of Amazon’s Black Employee Network (BEN) and asked them to share some of the books they think should be on everyone’s must-read list. These books are written by Black authors, and explore the multitudes within the community through the voices of Black protagonists —Stacie Pamon, Program Manager, Diversity Marketing & Communications

Below are two of the books listed by Stacie Pamon, each with a critique by a member of BEN:

Black Buck

by Mateo Askaripour

As a Black cis-gender man working in tech sales for the last 10 years, I truly relate to Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour. Not only because the author says the novel was written just for Black readers about a Black man swept up in startup mania, but also because it’s an insanely fun ride for anyone in and out of sales. I believe other readers will also connect with Black Buck due to the book’s corporate situational humor with the main character—but what I appreciate most about the book is that it functions as a manual, with sales tips given throughout the story. After reading Black Buck, I have implemented the tips described in the book in my day-to-day sales role. —Leo T., Amazon Sales Lead, New York, NY

While We Were Dating

by Jasmine Guillory

As a long-time lover of romance novels, I often find myself scouring book lists in search of diverse, representational stories to devour. When I found The Wedding Date series, which follows a group of friends and family as they live life and explore the rocky road to love, I was instantly hooked. Now, I count down the days until Guillory releases another tale, and While We Were Dating was definitely worth the wait! I love how Guillory was able to focus on serious topics like mental health, working while Black, and body positivity, while still giving us a fun, light, and easy story. It was a welcome escape from the world outside, leaving me with warm fuzzies and a grin from ear to ear. —Stacie P., Program Manager, Seattle, WA

Apparently, Stacie P. is the same person as the Stacie Pamon in the opening indented paragraph. Anyway, I’m glad she has warm fuzzies and body positivity but am unclear how she squares diversity with a separate employee network for blacks.

Maybe Amazon also has separate networks for Jews, Bosnians, Egyptians, Turks, Iranians, Greeks, Italians, Walloons, Mongols, Apache, Comanche, and a hundred other minority groups that are different from the Anglo-Saxon Protestants of northern Europe who founded the country and got a head start on wealth and power.  

In his critique of Black Buck, Amazon Sales Lead Leo T. begins by identifying himself as a “cis-gender man.”  That’s about as relevant as if he had identified himself as right-handed instead of left-handed.

Unfortunately, it is relevant to a growing number of Americans.  It’s a way for Leo T. to signal to the like-minded that he is hip, trendy, and completely sold on today’s identity culture and language. 

Being in a closed feedback loop, he and Stacie probably see themselves as learned, enlightened, and open-minded about race, gender, and other litmus tests du jour. Yet they are proud members of a race-based group at Amazon.

Amazon sells three books that might help them with their intellectual contradictions:

Cognitive Dissonance: Reexamining a Pivotal Theory in Psychology, by Eddie Harmon

 The 2020s: A Decade of Cognitive Dissonance, by David Houle and Bob Leonard

A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, by Leon Festinger

On second thought, shame on me for recommending books to Stacie and Leo without identifying the race of the authors and whether their chosen gender matches or doesn’t match their birth sex.