By Ash Arumugam
Black Lives Matter is not a novel crusade. It is the continuing fight for racial equality in the United States. This past summer was a turning point in the minds of many Americans, when Black death after Black death was publicized and politicized. Indeed, the Black Lives Matter
movement experienced its biggest surge in support since its conception in response to the shooting of seventeen-year old Trayvon Martin. These past few months have been permeated with the shootings of unarmed Black Americans like George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor and anti-racist demonstrations followings these tragic events. While death rates amongst unarmed Black people have not changed significantly over the years, the sudden surge in protests and anti-racist statements alludes to a social shift. Not only are more individuals backing the movement, but corporations have been quick to endorse Black Lives Matter and the broader social issue of institutional racism. With this change in corporate support, the question arises as to “why now?”: why is it only now that businesses have decided to actively release anti-racist statements? What changed?
Understanding the nuances between companies’ public statements and their actions requires acknowledgement of corporate cost-benefit analysis, the power of public opinion, and the internal racialized mechanisms within businesses. It is enough for executives to publish diversity and inclusion principles and post Black squares if it appears to appease the public eye. Due to this past summer’s stark racial climate and increasing polarization, corporations are capitalizing off the surge in social justice by curating aesthetic marketing campaigns. While trying to align themselves with the shifting culture, they have slyly avoided confronting the lack of pragmatic change in their own policies and practices.
Companies continuously grapple with the burden of social responsibility. They engage with social responsibility practices to give back to their communities and demonstrate objectives beyond monetary gain. This is an active change from Milton Friedman’s profit-centric theory of social responsibility popularized throughout the 20th century. In stark contrast, today’s companies often revise their company statements to include affirmations of racial equity. Nike is a prime example. The sportswear company famously incorporated NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick into an ad scheme in 2018.
Despite all the verbal and written commitments to diversity training and racial literacy programs, there is doubt that pragmatic change will occur within the walls of corporate America. Although companies are now using the words “black” and “race” instead of the uncontroversial term of “diversity,” and many companies are simply engaging in performative activism: activism that is illusory and enacted to further one’s social capital and avoid criticism.
Amazon is notorious for this kind of behavior. Jeff Bezos made the executive decision to put a “Black Lives Matter” banner across Amazon’s home page this summer but continues to sell police departments surveillance technology. Indeed, racial anxieties surrounding people of color, specifically Black and Brown people, are exacerbated by Amazon’s actions. Rekognition is a facial recognition software that is used in cities across America by countless police branches. The software has been proven faulty - it incorrectly matches people to photos and
disproportionately misidentifies people of color. The ACLU conducted an experiment in 2018 using Rekognition and found that the software incorrectly identified 28 members of Congress as criminals, with a disproportionate effect on people with darker skin tones. While people of color only make up 20% of Congress, they made up 40% of the incorrect matches. Due to the increasing push for police accountability, Amazon announced this past June that they would enact a one-year moratorium on sales of Rekognition to police forces. In other words, Amazon is suspending Rekognition sales until the software becomes more profitable. Even with this suspension, Amazon continues to partner with police departments at all levels of government in other ways, which contradicts their public statements about police brutality and racialization of the law.
Rekognition is part of an extremely successful branch of Amazon products called Amazon Web Services. Forbes reports that AWS has supplied Amazon with 73% of its profits in the last quarter. Beyond that, the growth rate of AWS is exponential. Although Rekognition is a small portion of AWS revenue, the company is nonetheless profiting off technology that puts people of color in potentially fatal situations. Amazon also continues to sell its Ring doorbells, which are used by hundreds of police departments to surveil Black and brown neighborhoods. Videos from these doorbells are also posted on Amazon’s Neighbors app, which is often used to profile and identify Black people in primarily white neighborhoods. Amazon acquired the app last year in a $1 billion deal. By continuing to sell its surveillance technology to over 1300 law enforcement agencies, Amazon furthers the targeting and stereotyping of Black Americans. Law-enforcement agencies are able to request footage from Ring owners and users with no probable cause, oversight, or judicial review. This footage can be utilized to identify, monitor, and target protestors. This is just another example of the internalized and hidden hypocrisy of Amazon: on one hand they are heralding #BlackLivesMatter and creating martyrs of the Black activists who are putting their lives on the line while also sneakily selling warrantless surveillance technology which could be used to arrest those same activists.
Corporations should examine how they actively perpetuate inequalities in hiring practices, pay gaps, and firm culture. While companies may draw attention to their hiring quotas, they do not reconcile that while the employment of Black people has increased, so has the racial pay gap. Differences in how Black people are paid in comparison to Asian people and white people further contributes to the systemic issues of the racial wealth gap which permeates every aspect of American life. This is also contributed to by the gatekeeping that occurs in higher-paying industries, like tech and finance. Even if Black people do gain access into these companies, promotion rates are dismal. Looking at Amazon’s workforce data, where 26.5% of employees are Black (including warehouse workers and drivers), only 8.3% of warehouse managers are black. When compared to the demographic details regarding Asian and white employees, the racial gap stands out. Only 15.4% of Amazon employees identify as Asian as compared to 20.8% of managers. These differences are exacerbated even more when examining the white employee breakdown: 34.7% of employees are white while 59.3% of all Amazon managers are white. Hiring Black employees is one step, but corporations also need to prioritize equal pay and promotion opportunities.
Despite the contradictions of corporate America, it is a small step in the right direction for them to address the issues of systemic racism through their amended mission statements, curated
social media posts, and diversity dialogue. What is needed next is for companies to combat the internal problems that they have jurisdiction over to make their spaces less anti-black. Companies should divest their funds away from painting murals and instead funnel it into Black neighborhoods and communities; this would be a form of pragmatic change that would genuinely be a form of anti-racism. While there is a long road ahead of us before reaching parity in racial equality, hope should not be lost. Companies and corporate leaders should continually be pressured by Americans to change their policies, practices, and business models in order to further support Black Americans in White Corporatism.