Online retail giant Amazon recently started displaying a post entitled “Black lives matter” on its homepage and pledged to stand in full solidarity with the African-American community. While in plain sight it seems to be a positive move, when scratched beyond the surface, it is apparent that Amazon simply does not walk the talk. This is because an AP analysis found that more than 60 percent of Amazon warehouse and delivery workers in most cities are people of colour but their own 2019 workforce data show that only about 8 percent of its managers in the United States are Black, compared to nearly 60 percent of the managers who are White. Unfortunately, it is not only Amazon that sticks to such shallow tactics. There are multiple multinational corporations ranging from Microsoft to Morgan Stanley which do the very same. The facts show clear astonishing racial inequality in employment and this very factor makes one fact very apparent, they’re trying to make money by tricking one’s mind into thinking they care while in reality they simply do not.
The practice of capitalising on social-justice movements is not a new one. In fact, according to Guobin Yang’s essay, “The Commercialization and Digitization of Social Movement Society” for the University of Pennsylvania, it began in the 1990s. Ironically enough, an example of this is that the identity of Angela Davis, a Black Power icon from the 1960s and ’70s who is also an extremely vocal Marxist, was used merely for merchandising products. This portrays the outlook of many corporations when it comes to social movements. Often, they simply intend to align themselves with the Gen Z and millennial demographics to establish brand loyalty, thus, capitalising on social issues and movements. A question that often intrigues many at this point is, why corporations try so hard to align themselves if they don’t mean it? The answer lies in the fact that consumers are increasingly taking into account, the moral right to brand choice, thus, engaging in ethical consumption. In fact, a 2015 Nielsen Global Corporate Sustainability Report showed that 81% of millennials expect their favourite companies to make public declarations of corporate citizenship and 90% say they would buy products with a social or environmental benefit.
Finally, it always ends up at the question as to whether or not, corporations taking a stand helps? Famous Australian academic Waleed Aly answered this on his program on 'The Project.' He said, although companies are often just protecting their commercial base, “That’s still significant.” According to him, it’s easy to dismiss stances that corporations as low-cost tokenism but his research and that of others suggest that there’s a rapidly increasing necessity for what business academics call “political corporate social responsibility” (or PCSR); which in its very basic essence is businesses being politically responsible in their actions. The aspect of PCSR, as noted by these researchers is important for many reasons. The primary one is to eliminate racial and gender-based pay gaps.
Now that it has been established that “wokeness” on the part of corporations is often nothing more than marketing tactics, yet is something that simply cannot be forgone, considering how companies can truly “walk the talk” because most companies fail to truly align with their statements, owing to internal inconsistencies. The easiest way for companies to approach social problems would be to start by looking into their organisations and fixing their internal discrepancies first. An example of this is Adidas, which responded to Floyd’s death and the protests that followed by displaying the word “RACISM” with a red line through it on it's Instagram account. It also acknowledged its shortcomings by stating, via CEO Kasper Rorsted, “We have had to look inward to ourselves as individuals and our organization and reflect on systems that disadvantage and silence black individuals and communities”, after a growing group of employees called out the company for its lack of diversity. Furthermore, Adidas also pledged to fill at least 30 percent of all new US positions at Adidas and Reebok with people of Black and Latino ethnicities. In conclusion, it can be noted that a staunchly politically and socially responsible corporate world is well within our reach and should be a goal to be hurried towards.
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