By Kathy Kyle, Co-Founder

Every Friday, we share curated content that resonates with us. My Amplia Group Co-Founder and partner Darren sends me the content and between us, we curate our weekly Friday Top Five. This week we’ve got a Top Ten.

Over the course of this week in particular, we have had many conversations with each other and with our Amplia Group network of clients, partners, Senior Associates, colleagues, and friends - about race, privilege, silence, power, democracy, and hope.

We hope these articles resonate with you as they have with us. Here’s a snapshot this week’s offering:

Protests: America as a failed social experiment or an emblem of hope?
How people of colour are disproportionately represented in prison
Mullen’s Statement: American cities are not battlefields
Mattis’s Statement: President is a threat to the Constitution
Is this the biggest crisis in the U.S. since 1968?
Lit Review of race and racism in the U.S.
Ben and Jerry’s #BLM response
Tech Companies: What is Black Power Washing and why it matters
Brands and their empty promises
Will #BLM matter next week? Only time will tell

As always, let us know what you think in the comments, sign up to receive our Friday Top Five in your inbox, or drop us a line to let us know what you think at hello@ampliagroup.com.

Here we go:

Are the U.S. BLM protests evidence of America as a failed social experiment, or emblems of hope?

It is well documented that African Americans have less access to health insurance, their median income is a third lower than their white peers, their children are 10 times more likely to suffer from asthma, and African American women are the likeliest demographic to age alone. However there are some experts who believe that the protests are a ray of light and hope for the future.

Read the full article.

There are 2.2 million people in American prisons and jails, a 500 percent increase over the last 40 years. Changes in law and policy, not changes in crime rates, explain most of this increase. What’s the outcome? Overcrowded prisons and fiscal burden on states. And no positive impact on public safety.
Read how people of colour are disproportionately represented in prison.

Calls for leadership in the United States

Mike Mullen is a retired admiral from the U.S. Navy and served as the 17th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

From his statement that cities are not “battlefields”:

We must ensure that African Americans—indeed, all Americans—are given the same rights under the Constitution, the same justice under the law, and the same consideration we give to members of our own family. Our fellow citizens are not the enemy, and must never become so.

U.S. Marine General and Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis went further to call the President a threat to the Constitution. In his condemnation of the President, Mattis supports the protest and denounces the President’s divisive, inciteful rhetoric. He states:

“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us,” Mattis writes. “We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.”

Read his full statement here.

Is this the biggest crisis in the U.S. since the civil rights movement in ‘68?

The similarities between America in 1968 and today are striking, however there are some key differences:

We are living in the midst of a pandemic.
We are capturing events and sharing them in real time.
Protest violence is being treated as domestic terrorism.
Journalists - already targeted as ‘fake news’ - are being heavily targeted and prosecuted.

What brands can learn from BLM

Your audience will remember not only what you say, but what you do. Unlike Ben and Jerry’s - whose unabashedly fierce anti-white supremacy message has twitter troll tongues wagging, many brands are simply “black power washing” their messaging. Others follow safe messaging because they fear they will ruffle feathers because they believe both Conservatives and Liberals buy their products and they are afraid to offend either group of buyers.

(Pausing to let that one settle in.)

According to Amanda Mull (The Atlantic):

But it has never been clearer than right now that brands aren’t your friend, when social media is awash in videos of riots and humans being assaulted, in the middle of a global pandemic, all while the president of the United States threatens to unleash the country’s military on its own populace. American brands have rushed to show where they stand, but it’s still uncertain what they intend to offer—what they can offer—beyond greater awareness of their existence and a vague sense of virtue.

Read the full article here.

This is one of those moments where companies across all sectors must consider more than “vague virtues” and decide where they stand. Or to join the fight and take a knee.

What do you think? According to David Woode, only time will tell.

What’s next?

As a Vietnamese American woman, I do not personally feel “conflicted between being black and being people” - as was so eloquently stated in a poem by Playon Patrick, an Obama Foundation MBK Alliance youth leader in Columbus, Ohio. I don’t fear for my childrens’ lives the way my American friends who have black or mixed race children do - or for my own life. Nor do I experience the same sort of diminished opportunities or institutionalised racism that they do. I am not white, but it is a form of privilege.

What I can do - what we can do - is to be allies. And we continue to work on being allies. I am not sure that work will ever be done. But we can try:

Volunteer. I provide pro bono advisory services to Uprising UK, a national leadership nonprofit that helps 18–25 year olds in the UK from underrepresented ethnic groups. In the midst of delivering ongoing programmes and BLM response across multiple channels, members of their team took the time today to personally thank me with hand written notes as this week is also #volunteersweek in the UK. They are a class act. You can donate to them here if you like: https://www.uprising.org.uk/.

Vote. The one action every American can take is this. Vote in all elections, at all levels of government.

USA: https://www.usa.gov/register-to-vote
Overseas: https://uk.usembassy.gov/u-s-citizen-services/voting/

Collaborate. These are just a few ideas - hire, support, promote, mentor, volunteer, share (with credit) the work of, increase representation for, listen to - black people. It is incumbent upon all of us to not just ask how we can help as allies, but to take the initiative. For in the words of Lou Hamer: nobody’s free until everybody’s free.

Thanks for reading

As always, let us know what you think in the comments, sign up to receive our Friday Top Five in your inbox, or drop us a line to let us know what you think at hello@ampliagroup.com. Stay safe, stay in touch.

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