Friday Five: Now what?
Photo Credit: Tim Mossholder
By Kathy Kyle, Co-Founder of Ampliagroup
My partner and Amplia Group Co-Founder, Darren Katz, sends me content every week for our Friday Five. This week, our round up focuses on talking about racism in different sectors in the US: fashion, food, and more.
For four years we have collaborated on communications projects across sustainability, public sector, health care, education, and non-profits. Prior to lauching Amplia Group, Darren led k-global, an award-winning global PR firm, and before that, he was Founder and President of Edison Consulting. He’s an award-winning and recognised thought leader in the industry, honoured by the Public Affairs Council, the Public Relations Society of America, PR Week, the American Advertising Foundation, and the Harvard Alumni Association for his work in strategic communications. During his career, Darren has represented over a dozen foreign governments, over 75 Fortune 500 corporations, and over 60 global NGOs. He’s crafted a dialogue here in our Friday Five based upon events happening in the US.
1 )) 538 Blog: Confederate Statues Were Never Really About Preserving History From the article by Ryan Best:
In recent weeks President Trump has railed against tearing down statues across the country — and has been particularly dogged in his defense of Confederate monuments. But his argument that they are benign symbols of America’s past is misleading. An overwhelming majority of Confederate memorials weren’t erected in the years directly following the Civil War. Instead, most were put up decades later. Nor were they built just to commemorate fallen generals and soldiers; they were installed as symbols of white supremacy during periods of U.S. history when Black Americans’ civil rights were aggressively under attack. In total, at least 830 such monuments were constructed across the U.S, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which maintains a comprehensive database of Confederate monuments and symbols.
2 )) From the Atlantic: Fashion’s Racism and Classism Are Finally Out of Style. It’s time for the luxury industry to grapple with its history and entrenched hierarchies.
From the article:
That tight control of fashion’s most powerful and influential brands makes it difficult for people outside the well-pedigreed white elite to enter the industry at all, let alone influence how it conceives of luxury. “Fashion is an industry that has a ton of gatekeepers, and there’s a lot of barriers to entry that are pretty subtle,” says Aurora James, the founder and designer of the accessories brand Brother Vellies. Brands and media companies might commit to working with models from more diverse backgrounds or to including more Black celebrities in their ad campaigns or style coverage. But internally, little changes. “When you have just Black models or Black musicians as the only Black women in your sphere, it’s really objectifying,” James told me. “It doesn’t really allow us a space to be intellectuals or businesspeople.”
3 )) From Eater: A take on the Restaurant Industry’s Racism
4 )) From Slate Politics: The Confederate memorial carving at Georgia’s Stone Mountain is etched with more than a century of racist history. But tearing it down won’t be so easy.
5 )) From the NYT: Everyone’s an Antiracist. Now What? Recognizing that Black people deserve dignity isn’t progress. From the article:
Recognizing that Black people matter as much as all other Americans is only acknowledging what’s always been true. Embracing Blackness as a something of value and dignity is a baseline for progress, not progress; it is moving into position at the starting line, but it is not the race.
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