Cisco Fires Workers for Racial Comments During Diversity Forum
- Video staff meetings sparked backlash to Black Lives Matter
- Tech companies rocked by internal clash over racial inequality
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
During a series of Cisco Systems Inc. online all-hands meetings on race in early June, some workers posted comments in message channels that other staff and company management said were demeaning to Black people, exposing racial divisions at the Silicon Valley tech giant and leading to the dismissal of a number of people.
During the first videoconference on June 1, following the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, Chief Executive Officer Chuck Robbins spoke with Ford Foundation President Darren Walker, who is Black, and Bryan Stevenson, a Black lawyer and author who founded the Equal Justice Initiative, in front of 30,000 employees. The conversations about race continued in subsequent online global staff meetings.