To What Extent Are Racial Equity Campaigns Inexorably Tied with Self-Promotion and Corporate Greed? — How Performative Slacktivism Squelches Personal and Professional Brands

My paper investigates the reception of viral movements intended to advocate for racial equality, particularly Black Lives Matter messages, by examining the synchronicity between public figures’ and organization’s previous engagement with racial relations and their messages. My objective is to assess why brands like Ben and Jerry’s and celebrities like Ariana Grande were successful in BLM messaging while corporations such as Amazon and influencers such as Jake Paul were called out for performative and inauthentic statements. In my thesis, I question to what extent do authorship and authenticity forge whether the targetted audience perceives social justice message as powerful versus performative?

During the George Floyd protests, Instagram was flooded with black squares and corporate statements in solidarity with African Americans. Historically, when discussing racism in a public setting, the conversation has been subdued to one of “social inequalities” and “biases.” However, come summer of 2020 corporations directly referred to “dismantling white supremacy” and “condemning the actions of police in America.” This is an important topic to examine because for the first time organizations faced public scrutiny both for not speaking out, and addressing the subject in an erroneous manner.

I want to delve deeper into which messages the public chose to accept, and why. I found it particularly thought-provoking that during the protests, we saw both black and white authors fail to reach audiences. #Blackouttuesday where millions of users posted a black square, was a viral sensation initiated by black creators, yet it received massive backlash for overwhelmingly crowding out protest photos and information. Ultimately, I want my project to be cognizant that people make mistakes regardless of their intentionality. However, I am curious to see if it would be possible to determine which organizers and influencers seemingly wrote messages just to save face without authenticity behind their words.