Race in the Marketplace (RIM) stands in firm solidarity with the Black Lives Matter Movement and localized grassroot organizations working to end anti-Black and police violence in the United States and beyond. RIM is an international transdisciplinary research network dedicated to advancing knowledge, innovation, and social justice at the intersection of race and marketplace practices. As a network, we focus on the role of race, racism and intersecting forms of oppression in the marketplace.

Along with disparate impacts of the novel coronavirus, the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade and Ahmaud Arbery in the United States, underscore the pervasiveness of structural anti-Black racism and violence. While COVID-19 is inherently indiscriminate with who it infects, structural racism and racialized marketplace practices, from slave patrols and Jim Crow laws to modern-day retail redlining and profiling, have fostered “underlying conditions” that put historically-oppressed populations at greater risk of infection and mortality (more at Crockett and Grier 2020). Now recent murders of Black Americans by police are drawing widespread media and righteous protest in the United States and abroad.

Indeed, we have been here before. According to the Washington Post’s Fatal Force database, at least 81 other Black people have been fatally shot by law enforcement in the United States since 2020 began, which is very much on pace with previous years. Black people have accounted for 24% of fatal police shootings in the United States since 2015 while only comprising about 13% of the population. The precious lives taken this year join a painfully long list of other Black individuals whose humanity was repudiated by police and vigilantes, among them Sandra Bland, Mya Hall, Freddie Gray, Meagan Hockaday, Eric Garner, Alexia Christian, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Jessica Williams, Philando Castile, Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Tanisha Anderson, Jamar Clark, and on and on.

Many cannot be named. And while Black, predominately male cisgender lives are lifted up, assaults and murders of Black cis women and transfolx remain underreported in the media. Others survive racial profiling but may live with considerable trauma. Such is the case for Central Park birder, Christian Cooper and the other innumerable black people that have had the pervasive antiblackness of law enforcement weaponized against them simply for existing.

So, while social distancing has allowed us to slow the spread of COVID-19, it has done nothing to curtail systemic Black death. International solidarity with protests in the United States attest to this being a global reality.

Race and racism in the marketplace matter here, from racialized surveillance in gated neighborhoods, to pervasive racial profiling in retail spaces, to policing itself as a marketplace. In an unprecedented turn, a growing list of prominent brands are expressing solidarity with movements. YouTube, Amazon, Netflix, Twitter, Google, Apple, Facebook and a host of other corporate entities have released statements explicitly calling out structural racism and voicing support for police reform. Many universities and colleges have dispatched similar statements. Though unprecedented, we recognize that these gestures of moral responsibility by corporations and other institutions are occurring at a moment when taking up such charges is fashionable and convenient.

We therefore call on these organizations and institutions to acknowledge how they have perpetuated structural racism and take up the long-needed work of addressing their roles in dismantling it. There are substantial opportunities for material support of grassroots organizers and organizations in order to add concrete and structural action plans to move beyond general rhetorical and representational strategies. 

RIM and its global network of researchers, activists, and practitioners will continue to hold these and other marketplace entities accountable through our work. Through our collective efforts we will guard against this latest mobilization for Black lives and racial justice becoming coopted, branded, and commoditized. Following RIM’s mission, we will continue to reimagine the marketplace with community partners and activists who have long been addressing the root causes of injustice and marketplace discrimination worldwide.

RIM is committed to solidarity work. During the pandemic, we have also witnessed a rise in overt anti-Asian racism and assault, along with on-going detainment and expulsion of immigrant populations in the United States. We understand that global white supremacy can only be addressed by connecting the dots between anti-Black racism, anti-Asian racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and racist/xenophobic immigration practices targeted notably at Latinx communities. We need more relational COVID-19 research that focuses on the disproportionate deaths of Black, indigenous/First Nations, and other people of color, as well as an expansion of global research that addresses how structural racism and white supremacy “show up” within and across nation-state boundaries in diverse marketplaces.

Onward in the work,
RIM

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Further Readings:
Our reading suggestions address anti-Black racism, collective organizing, and the racial and racist dynamics of various marketplace contexts and practices. These are some suggestions. We also invite you to visit the RIM Blog for other writings/readings/materials during this time.
 
Bierria, Alisa, Shim, Hyejin, Kaba, Mariame and Stacy Suh (eds.) (2017), #SurvivedAndPunished: Survivor defence as abolitionist praxis – a collaborative toolkit created by Love and Protect / Survived and Punished [PDF].
 
Crockett, David and Sonya A. Grier (2020), Race in the marketplace and Covid-19. On the RIM Blog. Available at: http://www.rimnetwork.net/race-in-the-marketplace-and-covid-19

D’Rozario, Denver, and Jerome D. Williams (2005), Retail redlining: Definition, theory, typology, and measurement." Journal of Macromarketing 25, no. 2: 175-186. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.483.9697&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Emejuju, Akwugo (June 2, 2020), George Floyd: why the sight of these brave, exhausted protesters gives me hope. The Conversation. Available at: https://theconversation.com/george-floyd-why-the-sight-of-these-brave-exhausted-protesters-gives-me-hope-139804

Esper, Terry L. (June 1, 2020). Let’s talk about the danger faced by Black delivery drivers, In Supply Chain Quarterly. Available at: https://www.supplychainquarterly.com/articles/3505-lets-talk-about-race-and-the-danger-faced-by-black-delivery-drivers

European Network Against Racism (ERIF). Quotes of Resistance. https://quotesofresistance.wordpress.com/

Henderson, Geraldine Rosa Henderson, Hakstian, Anne Marie, and Jerome Williams (2016),  Consumer Equality: Race and the American Marketplace. ABC-CLIO.

Johnson, Guillaume D., Kevin D. Thomas, and Sonya A. Grier (2017), When the burger becomes halal: a critical discourse analysis of privilege and marketplace inclusion, Consumption Markets & Culture, 20 (6), 497-522. https://edspace.american.edu/griers/wp-content/uploads/sites/371/2017/11/When-the-Burger-Becomes-Halal.pdf

Johnson, Guillaume D, Kevin D Thomas, Anthony Kwame Harrison, and Sonya A Grier, editors (2019), Race in the Marketplace: Crossing Critical Boundaries. Palgrave-MacMillan.

Jones, Naya (2019), Dying to eat? Black food geographies of slow violence and resilience.  ACME: International Journal for Critical Geographies. 18(5), 1076-1099.

Kaba, Mariame and Project NIA NYC (2017), Why protest? [zine PDF]

Mohdin, Aamna and Vikram Dodd (June 1, 2020). UK protestors accuse police of targeting Black people during lockdown. In The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/01/uk-police-accused-of-targeting-black-people-during-lockdown

Owusu, Melz. (2020). Black trans people are disrespected in life and barely acknowledged in death. The Independent. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/george-floyd-black-lives-matter-racism-tony-mcdade-transgender-a9544131.html

Ray, Victor (November 19, 2019) Why so many organizations stay white. In Harvard Business Review. Available at: https://hbr.org/2019/11/why-so-many-organizations-stay-white

Sobande, Francesca (2019), Woke-washing: “intersectional” femvertising and branding “woke” bravery. European Journal of Marketing, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print.

Thompson, Brandi Summers (2020), Ahmaud Arbery, race, and the quarantined city. In The New York Times.