CEOs unveil plans against racial inequality after George Floyd death

Corporate America has joined protesters in condemning the death of George Floyd at the hands of police and calling for action to confront racial injustices and racial inequalities in the United States.

“There are in fact barriers that are faced by African Americans even though we don’t have laws that separate people on the basis of race anymore. We still have customs. We still have beliefs. We still have policies. We have practices that lead to inequity,” Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Data collected through surveys show how far companies need to come to be representative of the makeup of society at large, and before salaries are comparable across categories like race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation.

As a black man leading one of the nation’s biggest companies, Frazier said on June 1, “Businesses have to use every instrument at their disposal to reduce these barriers that existed.”

The shocking video of Floyd laying on the ground during a Memorial Day arrest with a white Minneapolis police officer’s knee on his neck for nearly nine minutes sparked police-reform and anti-racism demonstrations across the nation.

“What the African American community sees in that videotape is that this African American man, who could be me or any other African American man, is being treated as less than human,” Frazier said.

Citigroup Vice Chairman Ray McGuire on “Squawk Box” on June 3 echoed Frazier’s experiences. He said his 7-year-old son asked his wife about the video, saying, “‘Mommy, is he going to do that to me? And Mommy, will he do that to you? Will he do that to Papa?'” 

McGuire, who is black and is chairman of Citigroup’s banking, capital markets and advisory business, said Floyd is now part of the “innocent dead, from Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin to Ahmaud Arbery to Breonna Taylor to Eric Garner.”

McGuire said corporate America needs to have courage in the months and years ahead. He said charitable giving and statements alone “do not begin to get to the systemic racism.”

“We need to have the conviction to change the mindset,” he said.

As companies look to be part of the solution, former Xerox CEO Ursula Burns said business leaders can look internally to create change by diversifying their boards and being “affirmative” in their hiring practices.

Burns, the first black female CEO of a Fortune 500 company and now an Uber board member, told CNBC’s “Closing Bell” on June 3: “Businesses leaders have to start to lead. What has happened in the past, they’ve trailed.”

Here are specific plans that U.S. business leaders offered in recent days to address racial inequality in the country.

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan told CNBC the company was “doubling down” on its work to address racial inequality with a $1 billion commitment over four years to help communities, particularly those that also have