The corporations now signaling support for Black people are part of the problem
For many people in power, especially corporations, their biggest fear is not whether protesters on the street will break through a line of police. It’s whether the conversation about racism will break through on issues beyond policing and draw attention to issues such as corporations’ role in mass incarceration, the abuse Black workers face, and the racism in our healthcare system that routinely kills Black people.
We must win real structural change in our criminal justice system. But not just because its impact is so destructive and its takeover of Black communities is so unjust. We need to win on criminal justice because it will lay the foundation for what activism looks like, and set the standards for what justice looks like, which we can then apply to fighting the corporate takeover of our lives.
Every time I see an act of violence against Black people hit the news, or see issues of race come up in public debate, my first reaction is to shake my head, hold my heart and push myself to find a way to fight ever harder and smarter for racial justice. And then I always wonder: after all this time, is it even possible for America to actually learn anything? Black people are doing so much teaching, but is anybody learning?
The conversation on race rarely picks up where it last left off. It always seems to revert to the conversation we were having 30 years before. And it usually includes white conservatives quoting Dr Martin Luther King Jr back to us.
As millions of people rise up to fight racism in America right now, however, I am getting a very different feeling. It feels like America is actually learning something about race. Not necessarily about what we need to do to end racism, or even the full extent of its harm. But at least the truth of Black experiences: the attacks on freedom and wellbeing that Black people face every day in this country at the hands of police and prosecutors, and also at the hands of bankers, doctors, employers and so many others. The truth of systemic racism.
But that question leads to another, even more important, one: after falling in love with the dream of change, will America fall for false solutions? That’s where corporations come in. They run the factories that manufacture false solutions en masse. They want us to take “we care for you” for an answer. They want us to take body cameras for an answer. Corporations are one of the biggest threats to the protests taking place, though they are not on the street trying to stop them.
We’re seeing a lot of hypocrisy right now. George W Bush said that it “remains shocking” that Black people are “harassed and threatened in their own country” even though he himself, and his father, had appalling records on race and racism, and on Black lives. In a similar manner, corporations are now jumping over one another to message their support for Black people. A cottage industry of advisers provide guidance for how they should best do so, even as the cries of hypocrisy ring loud and ring true.
For people who want change, this is exactly what we must figure out how to counteract. It’s time to convert protests against police in the streets to fights against prosecutors, including at the ballot box. It’s also time to convert diversity and inclusion programs within corporations into antiracist taskforces with the authority to make change. It’s also time that we end the abuse and silencing of Black workers by corporations like Amazon, as well as force them to reckon with their role in racist policing.
One thing we know: in order to do that, we have to take control of the story. Both corporations speaking out, and the incredible pushback they’ve received, are happening for a reason. It’s because we built the infrastructure to influence and organize the conversation on race. We’ve given people language to talk about racism and privilege. We’ve given people ideas for thinking about ending policing as we know it, rather than slightly reforming but mostly accepting the status quo of policing. We’ve given people history lessons, connecting the attacks we’re seeing today to the history of attacks on Black communities, from the Red Summer to the Tulsa Massacre: both took place a hundred years ago and both are instances of police serving the agenda of white supremacy rather than protecting people against it.
All of these groundbreaking analyses and solutions originated in Black communities. But much like the police themselves, these conversations could easily get out of control and be used against us. That will require calling out corporations for their injustices, and rallying as many people to fight their abuses as the millions we’ve seen rally around George Floyd. It will require more petitions and marches, and more donations and acts of defying complicity at work and among friends – from everyone, of every identity.
This is the moment for racism in America that’s very similar to the recent shift in the fight against climate change: many defenders of the status quo have now conceded climate change is real, but they still fight every move to actually do something real about it. It’s an opportunity but also a challenge. Our biggest mistake would be to be so focused on fighting the denial we have been fighting for decades that we forget to ensure that politicians and corporate executives actually make good on the recognition they’re now so readily offer. We must recognize the protests we see today as just the beginning.
Rashad Robinson is the president of Color Of Change and a Guardian US columnist
Both corporations speaking out, and the incredible pushback they've received, are happening for a reason