Identity politics can double as an excellent extortion method, just ask General Motors
OPINION | EDITORIAL
The great thing about woke identity politics is that it never outlives its usefulness. Suppose a group of activists is still scrambling to complete their short-list of the next book to burn. In that case, the progressive PR department can always pick up the slack by bullying CEOs of major companies to spend more advertising dollars on worthy publications or else.
This is precisely what is happening to General Motors CEO Mary Barra. On Wednesday, owners of several black-owned media companies paid for a full-page advertisement in The Wall Street Journal demanding Barra attend a one-hour Zoom meeting with them and spend more money on advertising in their pages. In addition to Barra’s presence, the media outlets’ CEOs demand that “several of your key board members” attend as well.
You can bet this Zoom meeting will be recorded, and clips of the scolding lecture that will be sure to contain quotes from the inestimable Ibram X. Kendi will be released. You better hope that board looks diverse enough, too. Too many old white men may draw ire that causes further pressure for stockholders to divest — unless, of course, they pay even more in advertising, maybe even through a couple million for Robin De’Angelo to scold them and all their employees.
Barra, of course, brought this on herself. Once you capitulate to the game of identity politics, you are in for life — a short-lived professional life is a hallmark of the player. In 2020, Barra interjected Chevy into the George Floyd spotlight by joining other companies that sold their souls to the Black Lives Matter movement at the time. On Wednesday, GM celebrated “Trans Day of Visibility.” They should know by now that identity politics has become more like the show “Whose Line is it Anyway”: the rules are made up, and the points don’t matter.
This is displayed in the letter from the CEOs: “To be clear, [we are talking about] Black Owned Media and not minority owned media, because minority includes white women (keep that mind in the future) and large corporations like General Motors can hide behind and tout their minority records while continuing not to do business with Black Owned Media companies.”
Unfortunately for the media CEOs, newspaper advertising both in print and digital is in decline. Social media companies like Facebook and Twitter are the ones eating their lunch, not GM. They seem to miss this point in their own letter. The authors write that “African Americans make up approximately 14% of the population.” One could easily imagine that only a fraction of that population reads their newspapers, which would explain a lesser investment. Nevertheless, they call the money they do get from GM to be too little and, therefore, a sign of “systemic racism.”
They end their letter with the death knell for any CEO: “Mary, we and others firmly believe that if you hold the position that Black Owned Media doesn’t deserve meaningful economic inclusion and we are not worth meeting with, then you should resign effective immediately.” Translation: Give us money and be publicly flogged or else we’ll unleash the woke hounds of Twitter. Of course, once you find yourself in this position as a CEO, it is already too late. Barra will apologize — always a mistake — and the floodgates will open. This is why it is best for companies to stay out of these matters in the first place. No one asked Chevy to weigh in on police tactics or gender theory.
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