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Business has a responsibility to eradicate racism, former American Express CEO, Ken Chenault, said in an impassioned appeal at the start of a Barron’s Group event on Wednesday.
“ ‘Incidence of violence and inhumanity against blacks in this country must stop. We must not stand by and stay silent.’ ”
The 69-year -old Wall Street veteran, who was the CEO of AmEx from 2001 until 2018, and only the third African-American to run a Fortune 500 company, said that the “business community must recognize” its responsibility to eradicate “racism and inequality.”
Chenault told Barron’s that as the CEO of the travel and financial leviathan that he also faced discrimination and said that he could not “avoid the stings of racism.”
The executive was speaking during an ‘Investing in Tech,’ event on Wednesday afternoon, the first part of a series of webcast interviews with investors, executives and entrepreneurs hosted by Barron’s that will run through July 15.
Chenault’s comments come after the killing of George Floyd, under the custody of Minneapolis police on May 25, which sparked a wave of protests and newfound focus on racial inequality in America as well as systemic racism in the police force.
“I call on each of us in the business community to bring about real change,” Chenault said. “We have to close the racial gap, everyone must play a role. We have to seize the moment and bring about real change,” the executive, who is now the chairman and a managing director of the venture-capital firm, General Catalyst, urged.
Chenault recently stepped down from the board of Facebook Inc. FB, -0.81% to join the board of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. BRK.A, -2.23% BRK.B, -2.35% back in March. Comments made by the executive on Wednesday during the Barron’s event echo those made by him and his General Catalyst colleagues on a blog post earlier this month.
“George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery did not know each other,” Chenault and his associates wrote on June 1, referring to other black Americans that were killed at the hands of police in recent weeks. “They were Americans going about their lives in very normal ways. But they had two things in common. They were all Black Americans victimized because of their race,” General Catalyst executives wrote.
‘Incidence of violence and inhumanity against blacks in this country must stop’ Chenault said. ‘We must not stand by and stay silent’.
