Uber has placed its Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer, Bo Young Lee, on leave after employees criticized a panel discussion she organized called, Dont Call Me Karen."
The event was intended to dive into the spectrum of the American white womans experience. The event was part of Ubers Moving Forward event series, which launched in 2020 following the Black Lives Matter protests.
The April event promised an open and honest conversation about race with a panel discussion featuring white women at the manager and C-suite level at Uber and Uber Eats. Lee, an Asian woman, moderated the conversation. Karen is a disparaging term on social media for entitled white women who get into disputes with minorities, typically ending up in videos that go viral.
The event reportedly upset many of Ubers non-white employees. To address concerns from the Dont Call Me Karen event, Uber scheduled a one-hour all-hands meeting on May 17 that it advertised as a dialogue session.
However, Lee dodged questions about how the company would prevent tone-deaf, offensive, and triggering conversations in the future. Screenshots of Ubers internal Slack channels showed one worker calling the meeting more of a lecture than an all-hands. I felt like I was being scolded for the entirety of that meeting, one worker wrote.
The following day, on May 18, Ubers Chief People Officer, Nikki Krishnamurthy, shared in an email that Lee was asked to step back and take a leave of absence while we determine next steps. While it was meant to be a dialogue, its obvious that those who attended did not feel heard, Krishnamurthy added of the May 17 session.
Uber confirmed that Lee was still on her leave of absence as of Monday, though it was unclear how long she will remain on leave before a decision will be made regarding next steps.
You deserve a pay raise and/or time off for all of this unpaid emotional labor, one worker wrote to the Black at Uber members, who reportedly escalated their concerns to leadership.
Another worker in a Slack channel designated for Hispanic Uber workers slammed Lee for creating an event with programming that had anything to do with the K-name and shared a screenshot of a tweet denoting Karen as a racial slur thats used to dismiss and degrade white women.
I think when people are called Karens, its implied that this is someone that has little empathy to others or is bothered by minorities others that dont look like them. Like why cant bad behavior not be called out? another wrote.
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