Cohabitation is not enough. Blacks want a full commitment from corporate America.
Well, well, well, corporate America. You’ve made a lot of promises to the Black community over the years. Promises to be more sensitive. To listen more. To stand in solidarity with us. You’ve even carved out a little space in your busy calendars to mark the anniversary of our emancipation. But it still doesn’t seem like your heart is in it.
Black America is still waiting, not just for the ring, but for a firm date when we will no longer have to wonder if you’re completely committed to us. It’s becoming clear that you’ve put that ring on lay-away, and those final payments are still in negotiations.
When you started courting us, you asked for our loyalty, even before you gained our respect and trust. Maybe we were so flattered that you were finally noticing us, we forgot to teach you how to treat us, and you’ve taken advantage of that. But we’re not fools. Black America demands your respect, and we think it’s time you start delivering on your promises. Here’s how:
We Need Accountability
Along with corporate responsibility comes corporate accountability. Think of it as the action behind the words. Anyone can say they know their responsibilities. It’s when they do something about it that matters. American corporations have spent billions telling us that they know they have a responsibility to the Black community. But what have they done about it? For the most part it’s been symbolic and performative and less transformative.
Of course, just shacking up when it’s convenient for PR is easier than making a long-term connection on a deeper level. But, in reality, the price is higher. Neither party can have expectations when they are just shacking up, which means your investments in diversity are built on shaky ground. The Black community needs to be able to rely on you when there’s no one looking, even when it’s not good for your image. When we can’t, we become more suspicious of your motives, and that makes it harder for you to pull off the same trick in a few months or years. It also makes it harder for you to rely on us for brand loyalty. There are a lot of places we can shop, and we’ve got $1.4 trillion in spending power. Why would we spend it with you when you have shown us you’re not on our side?
The ability to trust also diminishes with each broken commitment to diversity in hiring. Over the last few years, the Black community’s ability to trust has been nearly shattered. Corporate America has painted pretty pictures of what diversity and inclusion looks like within their four walls, but Blacks are still not included in the conversations that matter. There are rooms in your buildings we rarely see. And while you may have given us more power over select (urban) departments,—like you’re clearing a drawer for our toothbrushes and what-nots—we’re still not allowed to share our culture and beliefs without someone whitewashing over them. True inclusion means allowing us to bring our ideas to the big table and see you act on them. Anything short of that is just empty words.
We Won’t Sign a Prenup
Widespread corporate co-habitation has undermined the Black community’s faith and our ability to invest emotionally in anemic corporate pledges. This ultimately casts clouds over the possibility of a more long-term, committed relationship. Investments in meaningful partnerships have declined in the wake of Black Lives Matters protests, which, given the vast numbers of ads claiming solidarity, is a breach of contract.
The widespread unwillingness of brands to commit to Black consumers and Black-owned businesses in the long-term has made us wary of signing anything. Now it’s your turn to invest in us without any assurance that we will be faithful to your brands. Given how fickle corporate America has been—on our side one minute but pulling a disappearing act the next—we aren’t willing to make silent agreements by signing on to any more projects that need a Black presence for the optics. And we aren’t buying any more products just because you added a bi-racial couple to your commercial.
Institution Versus Restitution
Black America wants you to put a ring on it, because we have been hurt so many times before. Corporate America promises that they respect our culture and ideas and that they don’t see us any differently than anyone else, and yet, a lot of us still don’t have a house with a two-car garage and a white picket fence. Why is that? In a nation that has more jobs than people to fill them, why are Blacks still struggling to join and remain in the middle class? And why do Black executives that join corporate America always leave feeling like their hopes and dreams have been shoplifted.
In politics, there is a lot of talk about restitution for slavery and for the laws and policies that kept Blacks from building generational wealth. Equally important to that restitution is the institution of Blacks in the mainstream corporate culture. When Black-led companies have an equal chance of securing contracts with large corporations as white-led companies, that is institution. When we can wear our natural hair to work without raising eyebrows, that is institution.
We’re Raising Our Standards
After decades of being treated like a one-night stand while you promise us a commitment, Black America is tired of the lies, and we will no longer be swept off our feet by corporate America’s hidden agenda and unspoken truths just to be in a relationship that has cracks in the foundation from the beginning. We will no longer enable you to make us feel irrelevant, devalued, and dismissed, while accepting crumbs of your attention during Black History Month or on Juneteenth. For too long we’ve allowed you to rob us of who we really are to the point that we now barely recognize ourselves. We won’t continue to look for a way to make something work by undermining our whole existence and pretending to be something that we’re not.
This mutual lie has gone on for so long in the Black community we’ve become septic, and only a transfusion of truth can help revive and restore us back to wholeness that no corporation can take away. It’s not about you anymore, it’s about breaking the lie we’ve helped you to create. We’ve been just as good at practicing self-deceit as you were and the price that we have paid for it has bankrupted our souls.
When you say I do, we don’t believe you! Corporate America is really good at making vows they cannot live up to, and when the road gets bumpy, they bail and leave us waiting at the altar. You declare that you love us and promise to be there in sickness and in health.
From now on we only want to be in relationships with global brands that respect and honor us and our culture; brands that are faithful because it’s a part of their corporate value system and not because it makes them feel better about themselves.
If you want to make your commitment to Black America official, corporate America, you can’t expect us to put on a full face of make-up before you get out of bed. The institution of marriage is a come-as-you-are situation. Sometimes that means we will be angry, sloppy, tired, and even selfish. At the end of the day, we hope you see our value beyond that. More than anything, we hope we see yours.
Blacks want this partnership with corporate America to happen, but it’s time to see the ring. And it better be a real diamond.
