Whole Foods, the grocery store chain owned by Amazon, developed a heat map tool for determining which of its stores was most likely to unionize. The statement from the heatmap, published by Business Insider after receiving information from “five people with knowledge of the matter and internal documents,” explains: “The [Team Member] Relations Heatmap is designed to identify stores at risk of unionization. This early identification enables resources to be funneled to the highest need locations, with the goal of mitigating risk by addressing challenges early before they become problematic.”[1] Whole Foods, in an attempt to control the fallout of this scandal, sent a statement to Business Insider, which reads: “We agree with the overwhelming majority of our Team Members that a direct relationship with Whole Foods Market and its leadership, where Team Members have open lines of communication and every individual is empowered to share feedback directly with their team leaders, is best.” So according to Whole Foods, most of the employees do not want to unionize, instead preferring to talk out their problems with managers. A blatantly false claim, given that their cashiers make only $14.70 per hour.[2]
While there are several factors on the heat map which contribute to risk of unionization, one which stands out is racial diversity. According to Business Insider, “Store-risk metrics include average store compensation, average total store sales, and a ‘diversity index’ that represents the racial and ethnic diversity of every store. Stores at higher risk of unionizing have lower diversity and lower employee compensation, as well as higher total store sales and higher rates of workers’ compensation claims, according to the documents.”[3]
Put simply, less diversity means stronger unity. This knowledge isn’t new. As Aristotle wrote in Politics, “The very best thing of all would be that the husbandmen should be slaves taken from among men who are not all of the same race and not spirited, for if they have no spirit they will be better suited for their work, and there will be no danger of their making a revolution.”[4]
Aristotle understood that diversity created instability, a lack of group cohesion that would lessen the chances for a revolutionary movement to succeed. “Another cause of revolution is difference of races which do not at once acquire a common spirit; for a state is not the growth of a day, any more than it grows out of a multitude brought together by accident. Hence the reception of strangers in colonies, either at the time of their foundation or afterwards, has generally produced revolution.”[5]
Aristotle describes how friendship among the Greeks is responsible for unity: “For friendship we believe to be the greatest good of states and the preservative of them against revolutions; neither is there anything which Socrates so greatly lauds as the unity of the state which he and all the world declare to be created by friendship.”[6] Plato wrote through Socrates how “the Hellenic race is all united together by ties of blood and friendship, and alien and strange to the barbarians.”[7]
In the year 2000, the liberal sociologist Robert Putnam conducted a study into the effects of diversity on what he terms “social capital”, which he defines as “social networks and the associated norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness.”[8]
So distraught was he over his findings, according to The Boston Globe, “He gathered the initial raw data in 2000 and issued a press release the following year outlining the results. He then spent several years testing other possible explanations.”[9] He discovered that “In the short run…immigration and ethnic diversity tend to reduce social solidarity and social capital. New evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods residents of all races tend to ‘hunker down’. Trust (even of one’s own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer.”[10]
He attempted to soften the conclusions by hoping that anecdotes of solidarity amidst diversity could be used as a hope that one day diversity would eventually become a strength, and social trust could be just as strong as less diverse communities. Due to his liberal mindset which he cannot stray from, he writes: “In the long run, however, successful immigrant societies have overcome such fragmentation by creating new, cross-cutting forms of social solidarity and more encompassing identities. Illustrations of becoming comfortable with diversity are drawn from the US military, religious institutions, and earlier waves of American immigration.”[11]
One example he provided to support his baseless hope was a WWII poll given to US soldiers, showing that “white soldiers who had been assigned to units with black soldiers were much more relaxed about the idea of racial integration.”[12] He also provides studies which “have shown that the average American soldier has many closer inter-racial friendships than the average American civilian of the same age and social class.”[13] But since outside of the military diversity is worsening social trust, should we require that every citizen join the military if our goal is to foster interethnic love?
Other liberal academics also took notice of the perils of diversity. Two more that come to mind are Samuel P. Huntington and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Huntington once remarked in his book Who Are We?, “Cultural America is under siege. And as the Soviet experience illustrates, ideology is a weak glue to hold together people otherwise lacking racial, ethnic, and cultural sources of community.”[14] Schlesinger, in an article published in Time Magazine, wrote:
pressed too far, the cult of ethnicity has unhealthy consequences. It gives rise, for example, to the conception of the U.S. as a nation composed not of individuals making their own choices but of inviolable ethnic and racial groups. It rejects the historic American goals of assimilation and integration. And, in an excess of zeal, well-intentioned people seek to transform our system of education from a means of creating “one people” into a means of promoting, celebrating and perpetuating separate ethnic origins and identities. The balance is shifting from unum to pluribus.[15]
The liberals of old held similar perspectives as their modern counterparts.
John Stuart Mill, the utilitarian who labeled the Republican party the “stupid party,” had this to say about diversity: “Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities. Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of representative government, cannot exist.”[16]
David Hume, the Enlightenment skeptic glorified by modern liberals, wrote in an early edition of his essay Of National Characters:
“Where any accident, as a difference in language or religion, keeps two nations, inhabiting the same country, from mixing with each other, they will preserve, during several centuries, a distinct and even opposite set of manners.”
He had a particular racial animosity towards Africans:
“I am apt to suspect the negroes to be naturally inferior to the whites. There scarcely ever was a civilized nation of that complexion, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures amongst them, no arts, no sciences.”[17]
Although few liberals (or anyone in general) would agree with the latter quotation of Hume today, the former opinion of “opposite set of manners” among different groups has, until very recently, been publicly expounded by liberal political theorists.
Other companies have followed the example of Whole Foods. Chevron, for example,
expects to reduce the dominance of white males in company management during cost-cutting this year, upping the share of senior level jobs held by women and ethnic minorities to 44% from 38% last year, the company said in a statement.
Like most of its peers in an industry struggling with the collapse of oil prices this year, Chevron is cutting spending, consolidating business units, and has asked some managers to reapply for their jobs.[18]
Unfortunately for Whole Foods, they have taken insufficient measures to completely eliminate the opportunity for protests.
Posted on the front page of their website is a comment of how “Racism and discrimination of any kind have no place at Whole Foods Market. We support the Black community and meaningful change in the world.”[19] Jeff Bezos, the owner of Whole Foods’ parent company Amazon, has stated that “I support this movement we see happening all around us, and my stance won’t change,”[20] and Amazon has donated $10 million to organizations like the NAACP and ACLU Foundation.[21]
However, employees who worked at Whole Foods stores in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Seattle, Washington, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, were dismissed because they did not remove the Black Lives Matter face masks they wore.[22]
Then began protests at these locations. One of the protestors, Suverino Frith, said:
Especially with Whole Foods’ statement on their website that racism has no place here and their donations to the Black Lives Matter Foundation, we felt that it was only right that we were allowed to support the movement too.
It seems to me that when a company is only willing to outwardly show their support on their website and through donations it just seems like a marketing technique when they’re not willing to embody that support in their employees and their front line.[23]
Instead of allowing workers to unionize, Whole Foods hoped that donating to the Black Lives Matter Foundation would be sufficient to keep their workers content. Now the employee protestors have sued Whole Foods with a federal class-action lawsuit (Frith, et al. v. Whole Foods Market, Inc.).
If too many employees got together to join in the Black Lives Matter movement, this would defeat the purpose of Whole Foods’ attempts for a higher diversity index to prevent unionizing. More benefits for Black employees would be demanded, something the company is averse to. Instead, they chose to withhold pay of the employees sent home, and when one of the lead organizers of the protests, Savannah Kinzer, notified Whole Foods of the lawsuit that was being brought forth, she was fired.[24]
Aristotle wrote that “men of ruined fortunes are sure to stir up revolutions,”[25] and “[t]he equalization of property is one of the things that tend to prevent the citizens from quarrelling.”[26] Whole Foods has not managed their employees well. As Aristotle further said, “the treatment or management of slaves is a troublesome affair; for, if not kept in hand, they are insolent, and think that they are as good as their masters, and, if harshly treated, they hate and conspire against them.”[27] And now the employees are conspiring against their employers.
Diversity will continue to be promoted as the gold standard within every business organization, the ultimate goal to achieve if one wishes to prove they are moral. No substantial data will be provided for any theoretical benefits of diverse work environments. Nevertheless, since the oligarchs who promote diversity control the narrative, opposition will not be tolerated, and dissidents, no matter how well-argued, will be expelled from public discourse and branded as unfortunate troglodyte vestiges of a pre-Civil Rights intolerant era.
[2] https://www.mashed.com/173042/heres-how-much-aldi-workers-really-make/
[4] Aristotle, Politics, 7.10.
[5] Ibid, 5.3.
[6] Ibid, 2.4.
[7] Plate, The Republic, 5.
[8] Robert Putnam, “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture,” Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 30 – No. 2, (2007): 137.
[9] http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/
[10] Putnam, 137.
[11] Putnam, 137.
[12] Putnam, 141.
[13] Putnam, 161.
[14] Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 12.
[15] http://personal.tcu.edu/pwitt/Schlesinger.pdf
[16] John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government, XVI.
[17] David Hume, Of National Characters, https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/hume-essays-moral-political-literary-lf-ed
[19] https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/
[22] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/black-lives-matter-whole-foods-workers-protest-masks/
[23] https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/whole-foods-protests-worker-discrimination-lawsuit
[24] https://d12v9rtnomnebu.cloudfront.net/diveimages/whole_foods.pdf
[25] Politics, 2.7.
[26] Ibid, 2.7.
[27] Ibid, 2.9.
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