[ Instead of transformative changes, we get Black History
Month-themed Apple Watches and Black sitcom collections on Netflix]
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A CORPORATE, COMMODIFIED BLACK HISTORY MONTH IS TAKING HOLD. WE CAN'T
LET IT  
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Malaika Jabali
February 23, 2021
The Guardian
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_ Instead of transformative changes, we get Black History
Month-themed Apple Watches and Black sitcom collections on Netflix _

‘Members of the Toronto Raptors sit on a sign honoring Black
History Month before a game.’, Photograph: Mary Holt/USA Today
Sports

 

Black History Month, the annual commemoration of Black history in the
United States that originated
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G. Woodson’s Negro History Week, is winding down. I have to admit,
this year’s celebration is among the worst yet. Instead of providing
a platform to explore the rich history of Black people in America,
this month has been a billboard for commodified representations of
Blackness. Commercializing holidays and co-opting Black culture are
both standard practices in America. Like the pat Black Lives Matter
virtue signalling last June, branded co-optation of Black history has
been rampant. For some, this visibility may indicate that Black people
have advanced.

But what I see is an admission: powerful elected officials and
corporations in the US resort to symbolism and token opportunities,
because they’d rather not offer anything else. In a system that
relies on exploiting labor and directing resources to an elite
minority, actually advancing the health and prosperity of the masses
of Black people undermines the exploitation that capitalism relies on.

Rightwingers crystallized this point in the early months of the
pandemic: we can’t let the stock market tank, so we have to get
people back into stores and warehouses to service us. To put a finer
point on it, conservatives on both sides of the aisle assume that if
these workers – who are disproportionately Black and brown
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are given any sort of government aid or regular stimulus checks, they
may not want to slave away in low-wage jobs. God forbid people can
protect their wellbeing and not stuff some corporate manager’s
pockets!

So instead of transformative policy, a select few Black Americans are
given hypervisibility. Instead of living wages, universal healthcare,
student debt cancellation, free public college or anything that can
minimize the massive Black-white wealth gap, we get Black History
Month-themed Apple Watches 
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Black sitcom collections on Netflix. Instead of reparations to address
the centuries of harm that contributed to Black Americans facing some
of the highest Covid-related fatalities
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we get kente cloth prayers and Snapchat slave-chain filters
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Instead of commitments to defund police departments or good faith
debates around abolition amid perhaps the largest protest movement in
history
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we get the author of the crime bill for president who made some
unbinding commitments to include a few Black people in his
administration. What we don’t get, however, is progress.

After decades of a political realignment that saw Democrats focus
policy on business interests and pivot marketing to Black Americans,
the Black incarceration rate has grown, Black unemployment has grown,
the Black-white wealth gap has grown
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and the Black homeownership rate has been virtually unchanged since
the 1970s
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The percentage of Black men without a job in deindustrialized towns
has been obscene, reaching up to 53%
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Black men in their prime working years in a city like Milwaukee, while
Black women and Latinas experienced the largest job losses
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any other demographic by 2020’s end.

Adequate depictions of Black people in media and politics are
important. Not seeing the complexity of Black people in media or in
literature is alienating. And if those depictions traffic in racist
stereotypes, when we do see Black people in mass media at all, studies
indicate it can harm the psyche
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children. When the movement for civil rights transitioned into more
discrete calls for Black political power in the late 1960s and 70s –
with even radical Black groups like the Panthers organizing around
electoral politics – Black people were practically invisible among
the country’s mayoralties. But after 50 years of Black Americans
ticking off firsts in myriad categories, what good does it serve if
the communities that elected them are in the same condition they were
in the 1960s? What good is it to have dozens of commercials depicting
Black families and business owners on screen if most Black families in
our real lives can’t enjoy the security of homeownership 
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struggle to retain employment
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Representation means something. It means someone works on behalf of
someone other than themself. The mere existence of a Black person in
entertainment, a boardroom, or in much-needed political positions is
not representation. That is one half of the equation. Individual
achievements are not representation. Hypervisibility is not
representation.

When the 1970s saw the first round of Black mayors in cities like
Atlanta, Detroit and Los Angeles, these historical firsts were a proxy
for communal uplift. I was a beneficiary of that movement, with my
family moving to Georgia right as Atlanta’s first Black mayor served
another term. As a child, I witnessed Black people lead in every level
of government, countering the myths of white supremacy that, for
generations, insisted we barely even had human rights.

But in 2021, with the financial security of many Black people
bottoming out, historical firsts are not enough, and parading Black
people on screen is not progress. Token leaders with token gains, as
Malcolm X stated
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are not sufficient. There’s a particular cruelty, especially now, in
pretending that they are.

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_Malaika Jabali is a Guardian US columnist_

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