Hollow gestures of corporate solidarity are meant to appease everyone apart from the people living with the every day stigma of police profiling, who couldn’t care less. Nobody asked to remove old episodes of the Golden Girls over mud masks or for white actors to give up their work voicing black characters. But the companies know that if the media and politicians will use a a private citizen in Central Park’s confrontation with a bird watcher as a symbol of systemic racism to distract from their disastrous decades of policies, then they will surely come after a corporate brand of rice or syrup.
We’re not witnessing a movement to reform police departments in urban communities to prevent more black deaths. We’re witnessing the gentrification of revolt by a mob of upper-class white progressives. It’s no longer about black lives. It’s also about biped trans vegan Palestinian lives and that bitch JK Rowling. These aren’t the Black Lives Matter riots. There are several examples of actual BLM protestors protecting property from being looted and expelling Antifa recruits from attacking their communities. These are the Lululemon Riots. The most selfish generation isn’t doing this for Black Lives. They are doing it for Instagram.
It’s easier to post up a black square online than it is to push for school choice in black communities. It’s easier to hashtag #BreonnaTaylor than it is to mount a public pressure campaign.
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