In a recent open in the Wall Street Journal, In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, Apple CEO Tim Cook has boasted about his social justice initiative.
In a recent publication published in the Wall Street Journal, Apple CEO Tim Cook reflects on the last year and the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, which he says was a year in which ‘critical discussions on equity and systemic injustice’s a new urgency and a well-deserved central role in our reached national dialogue. ‘
Cook further discusses how the virus has affected the world and how ‘structural discrimination’ has led some people to be negatively affected by others. Cook writes:
In a simple theory, a disease should affect us all equally. But in reality the opposite is true. We have all seen in real time how structural discrimination and barriers to opportunity do their job in a crisis. In our communities, every burden, from infection and care outcomes to economic adversity, to the challenges of virtual learning when schools close, falls most heavily on those for whom true equity has always been the furthest. As someone who grew up during the civil rights movement, it was frustrating to see how much work still needs to be done, but to see to what extent people of goodness will be comforted by the status quo of marching and demanding something better.
Cook said Apple’s approach to times of crisis asks how can we help? which has led to investments in social justice and racial equality initiatives. Cook says:
And this led to us having to make big new investments through our racial equity initiative. These projects include the Propel Center in Atlanta, which helps us build partnerships with the nation’s historic black colleges and universities to support the next generation of color leaders in areas ranging from machine learning to app development, entrepreneurship to design; and our first Apple Developer Academy in the US, downtown Detroit, with more than 50,000 black-owned businesses, and there are no good ideas for the app economy.
Despite Cook’s commitment to social justice and racial equality, it seems that this commitment does not extend beyond America. It was reported last year that iPhone makers in China were using forced labor on Uyghur Muslims detained in Chinese concentration camps. Breitbart News reported at the time:
The Tech Transparency Project (TTP) is a non-profit watchdog group that disputes the claims of Western technology companies like Apple that their supply chains are completely free from forced labor. On Tuesday, TTP submitted documents to the Washington Post which showed that thousands of Uyghurs were sent to Lens Technology, one of the oldest suppliers of Apple, Inc.
Apple has consistently claimed that it has “no tolerance for forced labor” and is conducting vigorous revisions to ensure that no Uighur labor is used in its products, and has repeated the denial in response to the Washington Post report, but TTP said its documents prove that there are indeed thousands of Uyghurs working at Lens Technology plants.
“Our research shows that Apple’s use of forced labor in its supply chain goes far beyond what the company has acknowledged,” Katie Paul, director of TTP, told the Washington Post.
“Apple claims to have taken extraordinary measures to monitor its supply chain for such issues, but the evidence we found was publicly available on the Internet,” she added.
Read more here at Breitbart News and read Cook’s full report in the Washington Post here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News who discusses issues of freedom of speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at [email protected]