IF ONLY I HAD KNOWN!
I've come to realize how complicit I am in the racial and economic discrimination still prevailing around me, simply by being an unwitting enabler.
A particular incident from my college days still lingers uncomfortably with me several decades later. The incident provided one of those life’s lessons that isn’t learned in a classroom, lecture hall or campus library.
It was a late spring weekend and my dormmate had already completed his final exams. Able to relax, he invited some of our friends from down the hall to chill out in our shared common area watching college football on TV.
I still had to prepare for exams the week ahead. To avoid distraction, I fled into self-exile at the library to study. When I returned late in the evening, I was confronted with a typical sight for a men’s dorm. Beverage cans, pizza boxes and empty chips bags, along with bits of their spilled contents, covered every surface. A sweet pungent beer-hall aroma hung heavily in the air.
By noon the next day, in violation of our unwritten but well-understood dorm-life protocol, my roommate had still not taken steps to clean up the mess from the previous night’s debauchery. So, when we all gathered for dinner later that day, I decided it was time to point out to my dormmate his lapse of responsibility. To needle him a bit, I ended with, “Remember, you’re in college. Your mother’s not here to clean up after you anymore!”
He bowed his head in silence. The others looked away.
Later I would learn from one of our mutual friends just how poorly chosen and ill-timed were those words. “He lost his mom a few weeks before after a struggle with cancer,” I was told.
If only I had known ...
I promptly apologized to my dormmate and shared my sympathies. He generously forgave me, and all was soon patched up between us. But I have never patched it up with myself. “What was I thinking?” I’ve said internally to myself multiple times in the years since then. Why didn’t I consider the possibilities before I spoke so thoughtlessly?
I expect I’m not alone in regretting something said or done that unintentionally hurt someone else. We are all prone to such carelessness. And so often it never would have happened had we known what we didn’t know.
Acting – or not acting - out of ignorance becomes particularly important if we are to avoid being complicit enablers of racism that still exists around us today. Our enabling behavior is most likely when we don’t make the effort to explore and understand how our lives are built not just on our own efforts but also in no small degree on racial injustices suffered, often in silence, by others.
Consuming and investing are two activities where I have come to discover I can start learning what I don’t know about the racial impact of my actions. That’s because my relationships with minorities are perhaps most frequent and substantial, though often subtle and indirect, in what I buy and where I put my savings.
Consuming – “No animals were hurt in making this movie.” “No child labor was involved in manufacturing this shirt.” “No rainforests were damaged to cultivate the chocolate in this candy bar.” These product label disclaimers are familiar to me as a consumer. Less frequent, if they appear at all, are labels declaring that no discriminatory labor practices were involved in making or marketing a product I purchase.
I’m vaguely aware that some companies engage in discriminatory hiring and wage practices, often and extensively. Labor unions and investigatory journalists regularly call out some company for these and other forms of racial discrimination. Celebrity actors and athletes, lest they damage their public images, cautiously avoid endorsing products manufactured under sweatshop working conditions or with processes that despoil the environment! Their agents conduct the due diligence to assure such discriminatory practices are not going on before they will appear in a firm’s advertisements. I now recognize that I also need to investigate the business practices that I endorse – and enable – through my purchases as a consumer.
There’s good reason I should, and can, be equally cautious about the product brands I purchase. A wealth of information exists to alert us about products or services of companies that engage in racially discriminatory hiring practices, wage policies and working conditions. With a bit of study, I can act to avoid being a complicit enabler by not purchasing products of companies that infringe on minority workers’ rights.
To act, however, I need to put a bit of effort into learning what I need to know by reading up on companies behind the products and services I consume. Then I can direct my purchasing power to firms that I know have demonstrated and often certified responsible practices in their manufacturing. A growing number of firms are signing on to “fair trade” standards developed by independent watchdog groups that track human rights and environmental stewardship policies and practices. I can also seek out and patronize socially responsible minority-owned firms for many of the products and services I need. All that information is available to me online if I put a bit of time into looking it up.
Investing – The same concept of selecting socially and environmentally responsible firms to patronize applies to the firms in which I invest my money. The savings I place in my retirement accounts, for example, purchase stocks in companies I hope will work for me while I’m still working for a living. In addition to market performance, I should also seek to learn about the ethical performance of the companies in which I invest my retirement savings.
As an investor, I would like the companies I own treat their employees fairly and the environment responsibly. I say “the companies I own” because that’s exactly who I am when I purchase a company’s stocks. So as a company owner, no matter how few my shares of stock, I’m in a position to advocate through my proxy voting to assure that the company management does not follow practices that suppress their workers’ wages or despoil the surrounding environment.
Fortunately, there also are independent groups today which investigate and rate the levels of the corporate responsibility of most major publicly traded firms. Big investment houses and large institutional investors purchase those investigative reports and ratings and use them to assess social, governance and environmental (ESG) performance scores of hundreds of publicly traded companies. Those ESG scores are themselves composites of dozens measurable factors that include among others, for example, the degree of pay equity across genders and racial groups, openness to collective bargaining, relative safety of working conditions, responsible handling of waste products and air quality around communities where they operate.
If I care, I can now learn what I didn’t know about these firms by subscribing to the publications of those independent watch-dog organizations that track the ESG performance of the firms I own or in which I am considering investing. I then know what I need to know to direct my stock purchases toward those firms in which I feel more comfortable being a shareholder. I can then be more confident that I am not a complicit enabler of racially discriminating business practices.
There are and will continue to be many things I know that I don’t know and can’t hope to know. My eyes glaze over when I look at even basic texts on nuclear physics or molecular science, for example. In these areas, I defer to the specialists who have built their careers around exploring these areas of science.
But there is a realm of knowledge about which I recognize I can and should be more aware and that is in the social, economic and political relationships I have with others, particularly racial minorities. In that realm I can still advance in my knowledge and understanding, and then act. An enormous volume of information is now out there to help me avoid being a complicit enabler of racism in what I buy and how I invest.
To be sure, there are success stories that can inspire and motivate me. The most visible success story of the last generation occurred on the international scene with the abolishment of apartheid in South Africa. The collective international movement of governments, businesses and religious organizations – called the BDS movement for boycotting, divestiture and sanctions – applied enough sustained pressure on the political power structure in South Africa that it finally consented to share its political and economic power. The lesson: the powerful will never relinquish control voluntarily. The powerless must find ways to press firmly and relentlessly for their rights and to partner widely to mount a force that is resolute and overwhelming.
So, can the victims of ongoing racism today count on me as a responsible partner in their struggle for justice and equality? At the very least I can avoid being a part of the problem by working to know what I don’t know so that I am no longer a clueless complicit enabler. I can also become a positive enabler of social justice if I end my indifference to the embedded racism and endemic poverty in the institutions around me. And I can start with those institutions and businesses where I can have a positive effect, by consciously deciding what I consume and how I invest.
With the rich reservoir of research and data available to inform me, I have no excuse for not knowing. That means a bit of work in sifting through that research and identifying situations where I might make a difference in fostering greater racial justice and upward economic mobility. It means getting to know what I don’t know about the impact on minorities and the vulnerable of what I buy and how I invest, and then making some changes that won’t hurt me much but sure can help others, to the benefit of us all.
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