Jeff Bezos says Amazon is happy to lose customers who object to Black Lives Matter stance after sharing abusive email

Amazon has said it stands in "solidarity with the black community" and put a banner on its website

Jeff Bezos made more money in the first quarter of 2020 than Honduras made in the whole of 2019. (AFP via Getty Images)

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos posted an email from an irate customer following the company’s statement on the Black Lives Matter protests.

The company has recently said that that it “stand[s] in solidarity with the black community – our employees, customers, and partners – in the fight against systemic racism and injustice”.

In the email, the customer wrote that Mr Bezos is “a perfect ass hole” and uses racial slurs to describe the protestors.

“I was placing an order with your company when I discovered your statement of support for Black Lives Matter,” Dave, whose last name Mr Bezos obscured, said. “I canceled my order and I know for a fact I won't be the only one.”

“Maintain your stance and we will watch your profits decline and laugh about it. My business relationship with you is over," Dave continued, before using a barrage of abusive swear words.

Posting a screenshot of the email on his Instagram account, which at time of writing has gathered nearly 170,000 likes, Mr Bezos wrote: "There have been a number of sickening but not surprising responses in my inbox since my last post. This sort of hate shouldn’t be allowed to hide in the shadows. It’s important to make it visible. This is just one example of the problem."

“And, Dave, you’re the kind of customer I’m happy to lose.”

This isn’t the first instance where the Amazon CEO has posted emails he has received. Last week, Mr Bezos shared an email from an angry customer about the company’s Black Lives Matter banner, that was visible on Amazon’s homepage.

However, the company’s actions have been criticised by supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement as well, which has recently been protesting the death of George Floyd.

Moreover, Amazon continues to manufacture and pitch its facial recognition software to law enforcement, even though such technologies disproportionately misidentify black faces, and although only 15 percent of its workforce is black, those people make up 85 percent of its warehouse staff.

This is not an issue unique to Amazon. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey partnered with Beyonce to donate £4.9 million to “communities of colour” during the coronavirus pandemic, yet has been repeatedly called on to make Twitter take stronger action against racism or to remove prominent accounts that promote racist content.