Click here to view this email in your browser. 

June 12, 2020

Welcome to this edition of The Reader, your weekly roundup of Fortune stories and insights you need to know.

In an overdue reckoning, companies are exposing and addressing racism within their organizations. White female founders of Refinery29, Reformation, and The Wing are under fire are under fire after facing accusations that they mistreated black employees. Facebook and Google are being criticized for their minimal black leadership.

Changes are happening. Alexis Ohanian stepped down from Reddit's board to make way for a black replacement. Twitter and Square, among others, have named Juneteenth a company holiday. And Microsoft has followed IBM and Amazon in barring police from using its facial-recognition technology.

Read on for more stories. I hope you have a safe and healthy weekend.

Clifton Leaf

Editor-in-chief, Fortune

P.S. Please consider becoming a Premium subscriber of Fortune. You’ll not only get to read all of our award-winning reporting and enjoy other subscriber benefits, but you’ll also be supporting independent, authoritative journalism during an era when we need it most.

MUST READ

White female founders face a reckoning over racism

The common thread among these upheavals—reminiscent in their speed and quantity of the early days of the #MeToo movement—is not just the allegations of racism but outrage over a sense of hypocrisy felt by former employees. Most of these founders have engaged with the language and online discourse of feminism.

BY EMMA HINCHLIFFE

JUNE 8, 2020

MUST WATCH

Here’s what it means to ‘defund the police’

The idea has been gaining momentum since the killing of George Floyd.

JUNE 9, 2020

Here's a peek at Fortune Analytics, our exclusive newsletter for Premium subscribers that brings you weekly business insights based on timely data analysis by our editorial team and exclusive polling. 

This week, we polled 2,045 U.S. adults to see if they thought businesses should be protected from Covid-19 lawsuits.

The big takeaway:

• Enough Americans support providing pandemic legal protections to companies that the idea probably won't receive huge blowback. We found only around 1 in 5 of the public opposes legal protections for businesses. And political leaders like Mitch McConnell don't need huge public backing to pass legal immunity for businesses in the next stimulus bill. Instead, he simply needs the opposition to be small. 

To get the full briefing, consider becoming a Fortune Premium subscriber. You'll also get access to all of our stories on the web and in print.

Your support makes our journalism possible. Thank you.

More essential reads

• ‘Not an easy decision.’ How Alexis Ohanian justified his departure from the Reddit board by Lydia Belanger
• Netflix adds Black Lives Matter collection as platforms grapple with outdated racist content by Radhika Marya
• What U.S. police spending looks like in three charts by Brian O'Keefe and Nicolas Rapp
• The 2.5 million jobs the economy gained in May went to almost everyone except black women by Emma Hinchliffe
  

From the archives

“'Bottom line, when inclusion works, you don’t see it. But when you feel excluded, it’s all you feel.' The problem is that experiences of inclusion and exclusion often happen many times during the course of a workday. For women and people of color, that sense of feeling emotionally whipsawed becomes exhausting.”

—The subtle ways people of color feel excluded at work by Ellen McGirt, October 2016

. 

This email was sent to newsletter@newslettercollector.com

Unsubscribe  | Edit your newsletter subscriptions

Did someone share this with you? Subscribe here.

Fortune Media (USA) Corporation

40 Fulton Street New York, NY. 10038