nonsite | Black Lives Matter sentiment is essentially a militant expression of
racial liberalism. Such expressions are not a threat but rather a
bulwark to the neoliberal project that has obliterated the social wage,
gutted public sector employment and worker pensions, undermined
collective bargaining and union power, and rolled out an expansive
carceral apparatus, all developments that have adversely affected black
workers and communities. Sure, some activists are calling for defunding
police departments and de-carceration, but as a popular slogan, Black
Lives Matter is a cry for full recognition within the established terms
of liberal democratic capitalism. And the ruling class agrees.
During the so-called Black Out Tuesday social media event, corporate
giants like Walmart and Amazon widely condemned the killing of George
Floyd and other policing excesses. Gestural anti-racism was already
evident at Amazon, which flew the red, black and green black liberation
flag over its Seattle headquarters this past February. The world’s
wealthiest man, Jeff Bezos even took the time to respond personally to
customer upset that Amazon expressed sympathy with the George Floyd
protestors. “‘Black lives matter’ doesn’t mean other lives don’t
matter,” the Amazon CEO wrote, “I have a 20-year-old son, and I simply
don’t worry that he might be choked to death while being detained one
day. It’s not something I worry about. Black parents can’t say the
same.” Bezos also pledged $10 million in support of “social justice
organizations,” i.e., the ACLU Foundation, the Brennan Center for
Justice, the Equal Justice Initiative, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil
Rights Under Law, the NAACP, the National Bar Association, the National
Museum of African American History and Culture, the National Urban
League, the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, the United Negro College
Fund, and Year Up. The leadership of Warner, Sony Music and Walmart each
committed $100 million to similar organizations. The protests have
provided a public relations windfall for Bezos and his ilk. Only weeks
before George Floyd’s killing, Amazon, Instacart, GrubHub and other
delivery-based firms, which became crucial for commodity circulation
during the national shelter-in-place, faced mounting pressure from labor
activists over their inadequate protections, low wages, lack of health
benefits and other working conditions. Corporate anti-racism is the
perfect egress from these labor conflicts. Black lives matter to the
front office, as long as they don’t demand a living wage, personal
protective equipment and quality health care.
Perhaps the most important point in Reed’s 2016 essay is his
insistence that Black Lives Matter, and cognate notions like the New Jim
Crow are empirically and analytically wrong and advance an equally
wrong-headed set of solutions. He does not deny the fact of racial
disparity in criminal justice but points us towards a deeper causation
and the need for more fulsome political interventions.
Racism alone
cannot fully explain the expansive carceral power in our midst, which,
as Reed notes, is “the product of an approach to policing that emerges
from an imperative to contain and suppress the pockets of economically
marginal and sub-employed working-class populations produced by
revanchist capitalism.” Most Americans have now rejected the worst
instances of police abuse, but not the institution of policing, nor the
consumer society it services. As we should know too well by now, white
guilt and black outrage have limited political currency, and neither has
ever been a sustainable basis for building the kind of popular and
legislative majorities needed to actually contest entrenched power in
any meaningful way.
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