Our 2020 Revolution: The big brands that promote inequality

Limitations to free-speech, the introduction of the national guard against peaceful protestors and the protection of problematic police officers…

The American riots epitomise the failure of a self-proclaimed first world state and its attempt to uphold civility and humanity for its people. A number of articles and journals have already been published in the shadow of George Floyd’s death and the countless other who have died at the behest of opportunistic and deliberately targeted police violence. Innocent people have died because of ill-education, racial discrimination and floundering attempts to maintain a white nationalistic hegemony in a society becoming ever-more liberalised. The Police and the systematic violence they exhibit is, without a doubt, a reaction to this; a challenge to the modernity that forward-thinking ideals of 21^st century society have fostered and attempts to marginalise the hateful rhetoric of the far right.

Ultimately, the polarisation of American politics between the old staunch Conservative guard and the increasingly influential liberal reformers such as Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez will characterise the Trump Presidency in the years to come.

As such, there has been increasingly pertinent questions on how society should react not only to Floyd’s death but also to the corrupt and unequal basis on which our lives, social values and economies have been built. The increasing prominence of the Black Lives Matter movement has been key to the spread of useful and educational sources on police brutality in the west, giving subscribers to their social media accounts vital information to drive the fight and arguments against bias and social inequality. Their call for ‘sustainable transformation’ as mentioned in their social media posts, is one that needs to be acknowledged and acted on by everyone, not just those who seek social change. We need to recognise that this is a fight for every man woman and child, a fight for a future undivided by social biases that would bring us closer together as a people and a society at large. If you protest for climate change, you should be protesting against systematic racism. The same sources perpetuate the same problems. While polluting the environment, these corporations pay no tax meaning the financial burden of taxation rests solely on a significant portion of the African American community. This forms part of what Richard Rothstein argues is a tax system that is ‘unlawful’ and ‘racial disparate’[1]. For greater clarity and information on this, Rothstein’s article on taxation in America is an interesting read here.

An example of this comes with Starbucks paying less than 0% federal tax and also being blamed as one of the main sources of plastic pollution in America in 2018, according to WaterAid. The same can be said for Levi’s, which also paid 0% tax and as the climate action group Stand.Earth claims, produces an equivalent pollution per annuum of 1.1 million cars[2].
These corperations, among others such as Netflix, Avis car rental, and Nvidia[3] support the inequality and unfair treatment their brands try desperately hard to distance themselves from. Whether you support them or use their products is up to you, but I certainly won’t be buying Levi’s jeans or having a coffee from Starbucks for the foreseeable future.

If you support the LGBTQ+ movements and charities that help so many people come to terms with their identity and sexuality, you should also be supporting those seeking equality and identity for themselves. When researching this article, I found an excess of resources from authors such as Kimberlé Crenshaw and W. E. B. Du Bois on the intersectionality of race, sexuality and the duality of discrimination between them. Detailing their theories and the interesting historiography behind them deserves an article of itself but for now, I will link their works in the historiography below[4]. Needless to say, the role of race and sexuality is interlinked by the shared discrimination both groups faced and in places, still continue to face in 2020.

What these minor examples illustrate is that this isn’t simply about the death of another innocent black man at the hands of social injustice and the role of the American police as the last official vestige of United States’ historic ties to the slave trade[5]. It shows this is a problem we as a group of people, regardless of our colour creed, political or religious beliefs, need to address for our brothers and sisters dealing a totalitarian ruler and oppressive government controls. As Mahatma Gandhi once powerfully argued, ‘Silence is standing with the enemy’.

To donate to the Black Lives Matter Global Network, click here.

---

[1] https://www.epi.org/blog/race-tax-harms-african-americans/

[2] https://www.stand.earth/latest/markets-vs-climate/fashions-coal-pollution/levi%E2%80%99s-deadly-climate-impact-detailed-new-report#:~:text=Levi’s%20climate%20pollution%20can%20be,pollution%20hot%20spots%20in%20China.

[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/16/these-91-fortune-500-companies-didnt-pay-federal-taxes-in-2018.html

[4] LGBTQ+ Sources of Interest:
– Balsam, Kimberly F., Yamile Molina, Blair Beadnell, Jane Simoni, and Karina Walters. ‘Measuring Multiple Minority Stress: The LGBT People of Color Microaggressions Scale’. Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology 17, no. 2 (April 2011): 163–74.
– Bois, W. E. B. Du. Black Reconstruction in America: Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880. Transaction Publishers, 2013.
– Carbado, Devon. Black Men on Race, Gender, and Sexuality: A Critical Reader. NYU Press, 1999.
– Crenshaw, Kimberle. ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color’. Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1241–99.

– Dunning, Stefanie K. Queer in Black and White: Interraciality, Same Sex Desire, and Contemporary African American Culture. Indiana University Press, 2009.

– Loue, Sana. Assessing Race, Ethnicity and Gender in Health. Springer Science & Business Media, 2006.

– Yamada, Ann-Marie, Hazel R. Atuel, and Eugenia L. Weiss. Handbook of Multicultural Mental Health: Chapter 20. Military Culture and Multicultural Diversity among Military Service Members: Implications for Mental Health Providers. Elsevier Inc. Chapters, 2013.

[5] Hadden, Sally E. Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas. Harvard University Press, 2003.