Following the events of Ferguson two years ago, there was a call for black people throughout the country to boycott Black Friday, which is one of the largest shopping days of the country. The movement was created on Twitter, called “#BlackoutBlackFriday” by the organization called Blackout For Human Rights. Ryan Coogler, the director of the 2013 film “Fruitvale Station” which was about the events that led up to the unjust killing of Oscar Grant by a police officer in California, started the organization.
The point of the economic protest is for black people to withdraw from participating in the lining of big corporations’ pockets. African Americans as a collective make up about $1.2 trillion in buying power in the United States. Their power alone makes them the 15th largest economy in the world by GDP (Gross Domestic Product). By boycotting one of the most lucrative days for corporations, it will cause a huge cut in profits for these big retailers. The idea is to hurt the establishment through their pockets. The only way to communicate discontent is to do it in a language this country will understand: money.
This was no different from the Montgomery Bus Boycott that took place from December 5, 1955 to December 20, 1956. The result of the boycott was the U.S. Supreme Court ordering the city of Montgomery to integrate its bus system. By blacks in the city withdrawing their funds from the municipal bus system, they utilized their economic power to make a difference. Money talks and it is the only way to truly affect change. Everything that is done always has a monetary component to it.
Considering how this country over 50 years later still has problems in terms of the civil rights of minorities being violated, I think that we as people should still protest this mistreatment by withdrawing from Black Friday this year. While the powers that control public policy and government have unlimited resources to further their agendas, we should not forget that we have considerable wealth too. We shouldn’t just buy thousands of dollars of products and act like everything is fine. No matter how much we buy, the problem won’t go away. While protests are great, we need to mobilize in a different way. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was one of the most successful protests in history. It demonstrated that black people aren’t invisible. All the issues in the black community are ignored and not discussed because we are seen as people who don’t really matter. But even if our person isn’t respected, our money is. We make up a huge part of the wealth collectively in this country. We can exploit that to further our demands. We hold the power in our pockets.
I understand that this is not what some people want to hear right now. It’s too startling; it disrupts the illusion that everything is fine. It makes people uncomfortable, but imagine how uncomfortable it must be to always fear for your life when you walk down the street? Imagine how uncomfortable it must be to worry about whether the clothes you are wearing, or if anything else on your person can be perceived as a threat enough to kill? That is why I think that for this Black Friday coming, we should boycott big corporations. If we do want to buy, we should support local, black-owned businesses. The money would be going into our communities which are where the real changes should be happening. It does us a disservice to keep funneling money to places that do not seek to reinvest it into us. But that’s a conversation for another article. For now, let’s just show that by holding back our dollars, we do in fact matter, and we will not be accepting the treatment that we have been getting in this country. Money speaks volumes, and we are screaming out to be heard and heeded.
