Cohabitation is not enough. Blacks want a full commitment from corporate America.
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 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 for a firm date when we will no longer have to wonder if you’re really committed to us. But it seems like you’ve put our ring on layaway.
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 finally noticed us, we forgot to teach you how to treat us. You’ve taken advantage of that. But we’re not fools. Black America demands your respect, and it’s time you start delivering on your promises.
Here’s how.
We need accountability. Along with corporate responsibility comes corporate accountability—the action behind the words. Anyone can say they know their responsibilities. It’s what they do about it that matters. American corporations spend billions telling us they know their 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, shacking up when it’s convenient for PR is easier than making a long-term, deep connection. 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.
Black trust diminishes with each broken commitment to diversity in hiring. Corporate America has painted pretty pictures of what diversity and inclusion looks like within their four walls, but Blacks are still not included in 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 clearing a drawer for our toothbrushes and what-nots—we’re still not allowed to share our culture without someone whitewashing it. True inclusion means allowing us to bring our ideas to the big table and see you act on them. Anything short of that is empty words.
We won’t sign a prenup. Corporate co-habitation has undermined the Black community’s faith and our ability to invest emotionally in anemic corporate pledges. This clouds the possibility of a 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.
Corporate America is fickle—on our side one minute, pulling a disappearing act the next—and we aren’t willing to make silent agreements or sign on to projects that need a Black presence for the optics.
Institution versus restitution. Black America wants you to put a ring on it because we’ve been hurt too many times. Despite your promises, a lot of us still don’t have a house with a two-car garage and a white picket fence. Why? 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’s a lot of talk about restitution for slavery and the policies that keep Blacks from building generational wealth. But what we need more is institutionalized equality that ensures Blacks can rise through the ranks along with everyone else, and that Black-led companies have as much chance of securing contracts with large corporations as White-led companies.
We’re raising our standards. After decades of being treated like a one-night stand, we’re tired of the lies, and we will no longer be swept off our feet by corporate America’s hidden agenda. We won’t be made to 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. Now we barely recognize ourselves. We won’t keep trying to make it work by pretending to be something 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 we’ve paid has bankrupted our souls.
Blacks want this partnership with corporate America to happen, but it’s time to see the ring. And it better be a real diamond.
