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In June 2020, founders of the ride-request app Lyft announced that they had launched \\u201callyship dialogues\\u201c and were committed to fighting \\u201csystemic racism\\u201d which they said is \\u201cdeeply rooted in our society.\\u201d The same month, an Uber marketing campaign proudly recommended to \\u201cracists\\u201d that they should \\u201cdelete Uber,\\u201d as they were unwelcome customers. At the same time, the food delivery service app DoorDash announced a series of initiatives to \\u201csupport Black-owned restaurants.\\u201d

Everywhere we turned, as popular uprisings against police violence and white supremacy filled the streets, Silicon Valley gig app companies that rely on and profit from the labor of predominantly Black and brown workers, insisted they too were committed to fighting racial injustice.

But something curious was unfolding at the same time these multi-billion dollar companies paid lip service and made token donations to bail funds and civil rights groups: they were simultaneously pumping tens of millions more on pushing support for Proposition 22 \\u2013\\u2013 a ballot initiative in California \\u2014 that would exempt app-based transportation and delivery companies from a state law that required them to classify drivers as employees, permitting those companies to not provide essential benefits like healthcare, paid time off, and unemployment insurance.

With 78% of ride-hail app drivers in San Francisco being people of color and 55% of Uber drivers in California identifying as such, the law would overwhelmingly impact nonwhite, disproportionately immigrant communities.

Knowing this, and compelled by the broader corporate efforts to exploit the George Floyd uprisings as a branding opportunity, companies like DoorDash, Uber, Lyft and other app-based employers rushed to present the diminishment of worker protections not as manifestly anti-Black and anti-brown anti-labor laws, but actually empowering to drivers of colors.

Spending millions on advertising, a patchwork of large donations to community groups planting op-eds in Black and Hispanic press, and focus-grouped language about employee \\u201cfreedom,\\u201d \\u201cindependence,\\u201d \\u201cbeing your own boss,\\u201d \\u201cflexibility\\u201d and general rise-and-grind framing, Super PACs alongside Bay Area and LA-based marketing firms aggressively targeted minority communities to back Prop 22, despite all independent analysis and labor organizations insisting it would be bad for workers of color.

On this Season 5 Premiere of Citations Needed, we detail how this plan played out \\u2013\\u2013 and ultimately won, how corporations buy off organizations and adapt nonprofit speak to harm communities of color, and how the idea of \\u201cthird worker categories\\u201d \\u2013\\u2013 like the ones pushed by Uber and Lyft are suspiciously similar to Jim Crow-era efforts to strip black and immigrant workers of the rights white workers were winning under the then-New Deal.

Our guest is Veena Dubal, Professor of Law at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law.