In 2020, we learned lessons without ever entering a classroom.
Knowledge has always been power, but this year it was put in our hands and tested over and over again. Experience stood up to be our teacher, and united human voices wrote new chapters to study. Whether you asked for it or not, each of our actions now whisper effects for social justice, and the volume to which they’re heard is rooted in how willingly we employ this new knowledge.
Our school bags are now ready with the textbooks and resources. It’s empowering to know you can do the right thing, and even more uplifting to realize how much power was in our hands all along.
So instead of cramming in a bunch of information and getting overwhelmed with life’s exam, let’s break it down. Beyond the historic and political layers, the real issue of racism spans across the board. By dissecting the significance of Black Lives Matter within each industry, we can connect the dots back to present day. Here we’ll visit the initiatives taken (and not taken) by different companies, hidden trends in the media, and opportunities for long term action.
The 3 industry categories have been broken down to:
- Fashion + Beauty
- Health + Food
- Sports + Entertainment + Culture
1. Fashion + Beauty: In fashion and beauty, the conversation of equality surrounds token representation, image distortion, and deficient business support.
Black tokenism enables corporations to get away with limited inclusion; concealing natural hair, showcasing explicit body types, and actively fetishizing black features just brushes the surface of Black image distortion across the media. As a result, with the additional shortcoming of Black centric beauty products, businesses/inclusive brands hoping to disrupt the industry are widely unacknowledged by investors and lacking in funding.
After visiting the ongoing backstory, let’s take a step back now and assess what brands plan to do moving forward, in the long term internally and externally (beyond the initial donation or social media post):
- Examples of fashion/beauty brands taking long-term positive action –
- Toms Shoes – created emotional support counselors chat line with Crisis Text Line for Black mental health; partnered directly with Community Justice Action Fund to advance community infrastructure against gun violence; dedicated $100K in donations towards organizations advocating against police brutality over next 3 months
- Levi’s – establishing 50% of interviews for open positions to now be racially diverse candidates (interviewed by panel with racially diverse leaders); launching Retail/Distribution Center to Corporate career path program in 2021; training 100% of company leaders on anti-racism and racial equity by the end of 2020; publicly publishing wage equity audits every other year starting 2020
- Tarte Cosmetics – pledging increase of Black representation on corporate and leadership level; instituting internship & mentorship programs; collaborating directly with more Black artists/creators; dedicating yearly donations to Black empowerment programs; committing company donation + employee donation matching to NAACP
- Glossier – dedicating $500K in grants towards black-owned beauty businesses, and $500K in donations towards BLM, NAACP, The Equal Justice Initiative, Marsha P. Johnson Institute, and We The Protestors
- Sephora – first to sign Aurora Jane’s pledge dedicating minimum 15% shelf space to Black-owned companies; restructuring their in-house female founders support project Accelerate to focus on women of color
- Examples of fashion/beauty brands to still question:
- L’Oreal – called out for 2017 scandal with Munroe Berdorf, who was not only their first Black and transgender model hired as a token figure, but fired shortly after because her initiatives to speak out against racism. (After the backlash revived this past June, L’Oreal president Delphine Velguier agreed to launch the UK Diversity & Inclusion Board with Berdorf included.)
- Anthropologie – employees speaking out about the use of code name “Nick/Niki” when referring to Black customers in stores, instructed to watch them more closely; drastically underpaying Black influencers and creative promoters
- Reformation – founder Yael Affalo exposed for actively ignoring and not acknowledging Black employees, wide pay disparity by race, and active internal discrimination; Affalo later confirmed the accusations true
- Walmart/CVS/Walgreens – called out for intentionally locking up Black beauty products behind glass cases in stores; although the three companies agreed to remove the glass cases as a result of June 2020 backlash, Walmart still remains one of the world’s largest gun retailers and a former advisor ALEC
Long term calls to action: intentionally researching the companies you consume from, demanding concrete plans for inclusivity from large corporations, and diversifying your sources of fashion and beauty inspiration beyond the predetermined algorithm.
2. Health + Food:
Whether it be on television food channels or for Instagram fitness figures, when a black voice raises the intent to be healthy, a hidden backlash ignites. On TV, food channel producers only permit black guests to showcase dishes deemed unhealthful; often coined as “soul food” or “Southern cooking.” While many of us may be familiar with the pre-existing stereotypes surrounding images of fried chicken and barbecue, these false associations are exacerbated to feed such misconceptions.
The same pattern persists amongst social media figures. Although social platforms are presumed more autonomous, the underlying motives and exclusivity of brand partnerships target the black community. In the space of health and food, a black influencer won’t be supported or reached out to if they do not emulate the unhealthy “soul food” mentioned earlier. Visit Instagram and count the number of black influential health/fitness/food figures in comparison to white counterparts; it’s not that they don’t exist, but that they don’t receive the same promotion or opportunity to build larger followings and feed presence.
Offline, this trend is traced back to dominantly black and low income communities as well. The promotional health food stands we find at local grocery stores in white neighborhoods, the simple accessibility to a Trader Joe’s, are privileges that don’t make their way to every citizen.
What does this mean? Painting an unhealthy image for the black community feeds the health crisis domino effect that follows: black unhealthful stereotypes, limited access to positive figures, and anti-targeting of nutrition education/product marketing. You can’t disrupt the health/food industry by making a black centric food brand the way you can for makeup, because it’s not such a simple fix.
Long term calls to action: enabling proper role models and accessible resources in communities of clear need, gaining awareness of skewed representations of race around health, understanding the barriers to business entry and long term effects on other lifestyle trends (housing, employment, mental stability, etc.).
3. Sports + Entertainment / Music: Although the depth of this category can be dissected into many more layers, the overarching significance of Black Lives Matter here really addresses issues in modern day culture.
In sports today, the increased presence of Black stars and athletic figures often blinds us from the underlying racism still influential in the industry. Former Los Angeles Lakers basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar dubs this disguised oppression as the “appeal to patriotism,” remnant throughout all forms of American sports and competition. “They use the flag the way a magician uses a cape: to misdirect the audience from the manipulation. Poof! No racism here, folks.”
This trend is reflected over and over again, whether that be with the backlash towards Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem back in 2016, NASCAR’s ongoing Confederate flag controversy, or when Tommie Smith and John Carlos rose their fists at the 1968 Mexico Olympics. Black individuals in sports and entertainment are constantly threatened and ridiculed to uphold the “American spirit” and embrace racist conditions attached to it.
Aretha Franklin faced the same response when singing the national anthem at the Democratic National Convention in 1968, where her voice was coined too “soulful” for such an occasion. Black presence in music instills oppression in more obscure ways; music genre charts are fiercely segregated with white musicians dominating country, rock, and pop, and black artists restricted to R&B and hip-hop. When Lil Nas X was taken off from Billboard’s country charts just last year for not being “country” enough, it sparked a heated debate about how Black artists are punished for entering “white spaces.” In contrast, white artists who have pursued R&B, hip-hop, or “Blue-eyed Soul” music (ie. Post Malone, Adele, etc.) have enjoyed widespread success.
Ethical compensation of Black artists kindles a whole separate conversation, but in summary, the massive success of Black music performers today still primarily feeds the pockets of their larger white executives.
Long term calls to action: understanding that although Black figures have built names in the space of entertainment, their presence is still burdened; erasing biases towards Black individuals in assumedly white spaces.
A lot can be learned from reflecting on the current state of racism in America, and again, it’s empowering to be able to. When we learn about historical injustices and propaganda in history class, it’s easy to assume “I would never fall for that” or “it would never happen today.” And the truth is, it doesn’t have to. Unlike any generation before, we do have access to knowledge and resources, and can decide what to believe and reconsider opposed to what’s pictured in the media.
So I leave you here with more questions to ask and actions to carry with you. While we may not have voluntarily signed up for life’s difficult class, it’s teaching us more and building more character with it than any course before.
Sources:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-13/brands-on-black-lives-matter/12344476
https://komonews.com/news/local/empty-words-companies-touting-black-lives-matter-accused-of
https://www.allure.com/story/sephora-15-percent-pledge
https://www.eonline.com/news/1160289/anthropologie-responds-after-being-accused-of-racial-profiling
https://www.cnet.com/how-to/companies-donating-black-lives-matter/
https://www.ccn.com/7-companies-you-should-renounce-if-you-support-black-lives-matter/
https://www.history.com/news/1968-mexico-city-olympics-black-power-protest-backlash
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/music-industry-racism-1010001/
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/apr/02/lil-nas-song-removed-from-billboard-not-country-enough
https://www.britannica.com/art/blue-eyed-soul
https://blackamericaweb.com/2014/05/08/little-known-black-history-fact-racism-in-sports/
https://pagesix.com/2020/06/11/joan-smalls-calls-being-black-in-fashion-a-constant-battle/
https://blog.shearshare.com/ted-gibson-on-being-black-in-the-beauty-industry
https://hellogiggles.com/news/fetishization-black-women/
https://www.rd.com/article/my-white-friends-want-to-help-heres-what-i-tell-them/