I Can't Breathe
blog.citigroup.com
I Can't Breathe
1–10 of 64 posts
Re: I Can't Breathe
#2Pretty bold of Citi to publish something like this. I wish more companies had the balls to do something like this... Not just some "Yay equality!!" Tweet, but a real and specific stance. Kudos.
Re: I Can't Breathe
#3Pretty bold of Citi to publish something like this. I wish more companies had the balls to do something like this... Not just some "Yay equality!!" Tweet, but a real and specific stance. Kudos.
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Re: I Can't Breathe
#4Some information on the pressures driving statements like these, beyond the writer's personal impetus: https://www.corp-research.org/citigroup
Re: I Can't Breathe
#5Pretty bold of Citi to publish something like this. I wish more companies had the balls to do something like this... Not just some "Yay equality!!" Tweet, but a real and specific stance. Kudos.
My cynical brain is working overtime finding a flaw in this statement, or the angle from which it is selfish, and it's failing. One of the things I like about it is that its personal, not a company statement. Its a risk for them, though, and I am also, reluctantly, impressed.
Re: I Can't Breathe
#6When it comes to speaking for racial justice and equality for LGBTQ, private corporations have been much more on the side of the angels than the government.
The same government that wants to shut down Twitter.
Re: I Can't Breathe
#7I wish he'd gone a little further in condemning the rioting. It would have been the courageous thing to do.
The rioting is a mistake. It will not change hearts and minds. It will not undo the problems endemic to police forces. In fact, it may very well exacerbate them.
The problematic archetype is the bigoted cop who's drunk with power and behaves more like an animal operating on instinct than a thinking human. These people, in the collective, are irrational, aggressive, and reactionary. They also hide behind authority and a convenient veneer in the "rule of law". We also are now seeing that there may be many of more of them (and many more enablers of them still) than we thought.
And it is exactly these people who will feel vindicated and emboldened in the face of the rioting currently underway. If we're not careful, it may also give them a pretext to resort to even more horrible tactics in the future. Increased surveillance of political organizers and low-income neighborhoods, more military weaponry at their disposal, laxer guidelines around 'use of force'.
The current trajectory is not the way. We need to use the system of governance we have at our disposal to try and fix this. It's the harder but also only truly effective means of recourse society has at its disposal.
Re: I Can't Breathe
#8Pretty bold of Citi to publish something like this. I wish more companies had the balls to do something like this... Not just some "Yay equality!!" Tweet, but a real and specific stance. Kudos.
I'd love to see it more. Ibram Kendi makes the point that in the US, there's not really a thing like "neutral" or "non-racist". One either supports the status quo, loudly or quietly. Or one is an anti-racist. Being "apolitical", which is what most companies pretend to be, is just a fancy way of saying, "Things are fine as they are."
As press critic Jay Rosen suggests, we are all political, especially in times like these. The trick is to be political, to advocate for our own values, without politicizing things: https://pressthink.org/2020/05/you-cannot-keep-from-getting-...
Re: I Can't Breathe
#9How many people did they foreclose upon during the mortgage crisis? How many people have they extracted usurious amounts of interest from? How many people have they lured into debt and deceitful loans?
This is a large corporation with as much a hand in perpetuating systemic inequality as any other large corporation. Moreso because it exists in the financial sector. Calling out inequality and donating funds generated from parasitic practices is not enough. Let's talk about debt forgiveness, defunding the carceral state and dismantling other structures of oppression.
Re: I Can't Breathe
#10I wish he'd gone a little further in condemning the rioting. It would have been the courageous thing to do. The rioting is a mistake. It will not change hearts and minds. It will not undo the problems endemic to police forces. In fact, it may very well exacerbate them. The problematic archetype is the bigoted cop who's drunk with power and behaves more like an animal operating on instinct than a thinking human. These…
Maybe with only a finite amount of attention at his disposal, he opted to focus on the cause of the rioting?
I know there's a whole bunch of galaxy-brain takes on this about how counterproductive the rioting is, but it's not like cops have needed any pretext to resort to "more horrible tactics" already.