America is proving that it’s recent Black makeover response to the Black Lives Matter protest is a shield to cover up its protection of historical lies and contradictions.
The Black Lives Matter movement’s response to the killing of George Floyd has become recognized worldwide for putting the world on notice of the U.S. systematic racist practices. To witness the protest first in Minnesota to now having a global effect brought out the political pander troops. New York Mayor De Blasio painted a Black Lives Matter mural in front of Trump Tower despite massive budget cuts in the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development summer programs that include arts, sports, education, and job training for public housing. Sen. Chuck Schumer, Rep. Steny Hoyer, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who led this forced comedic and sad march to accept the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) invitation to wear African kente cloth that served no purpose instead to create a borderline mockery of white people taking a knee. These force jesters have no value without an actual law passed to prevent the killings of black life in America. The Emmett Till Antilynching Act that would make lynching a federal hate crime couldn’t get passed because Senator Rand Paul blocked it despite the Equal Justice Initiative report that there are 4,075 documented lynching’s from 1877 to 1950 and an added 800 to date. Whatever the intention, the wearing of the kente cloth sends a message that politicians again, are trying to keep their job rather than help create actual beneficial change.
Billion-dollar companies have lately made sure to place the Black Lives Matter logo on their websites as a shield in hopes that the protest outcry doesn’t disrupt their financial gain. The Nielsen company reported in 2018 that African Americans spend 1.2 trillion dollars annually, which means that no billion-dollar business wants to lose the black dollar, despite having little to no black representation on the executive board level. As of February 2020, there are only four Black Fortune 500 CEOs. Amazon has one board of directors who is black. At the same time, former Redditt CEO Alexis Ohanian stepped down to be replaced by someone who is Black, which, on the surface, sounds like a sympathetic idea if it didn’t take death and riots for that conclusion to be met. The NFL has 70% black players, three black coaches, and zero black owners, all while having commissioner Roger Goodell perform a late insincere apology that contradicts the ban on former QB Colin Kaepernick. Players are forced by the league to play in the upcoming 2020 NFL season despite Black communities being hit the hardest by the effects of COVID-19. Mega companies such as the NFL contradictions only prove that Black Lives Matter when it’s for profit.
White America is late to the protest party because they neglected glaring social issues of systematic racism since the first slave ship arrived. The protests are built-up emotional explosions beyond the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arberry, Breonna Taylor, and countless other Black deaths that have yet to receive justice. To be Black in America is to be one who is cattle and cast aside in death fashion when we no longer serve a commercial purpose. The concern of Black life for humanitarian reasons is nonexistent. Black Lives only matter in the United States when there is a disruption within the political profit system or business. America sees no value in the Black living being yet, for greed purposes uses every part of the Black existence. Black bodies used for labor that built and continue to strive for this country, Black culture is used for entertainment that profits this country, and the Black image is used as a shield to protect this country from its hypocrites.
j hall is a Detroit bred Howard Bison multimedia culture critic. An abstract thinker who believes “You ain’t wrong when you’re right,” and that his mother’s cupcakes are legendary. Check out his slight worldwide view here.
