Amid the Republican Party’s ongoing assault on Black people, Democrats are borrowing a tactic from 20th-century civil rights activists and putting corporate America on notice.
On Tuesday, the Congressional Black Caucus said it sent a letter to more than 200 companies and business organizations, urging them to oppose the GOP’s push to eliminate majority-Black districts after the Supreme Court’s Callais v. Louisiana decision, which effectively permitted racist gerrymandering.
In 2021, the companies sent a letter to Congress in support of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, saying the legislation was needed to guard against racial discrimination and voter suppression. Signees on that letter included Apple, Dell and Google, whose executives have since aligned themselves with President Donald Trump’s regime.
“Many corporations spoke clearly during that moment about the importance of protecting democratic participation, defending civil rights, and advancing racial equity,” the CBC’s letter reads. “Today, those commitments are being tested.”
The letter presses the companies to issue statements condemning the GOP’s push to dilute Black voters’ power, as well as information on corporate political spending. The pressure campaign follows the CBC’s public call for student-athletes to boycott public universities in states where Republicans have taken action against majority-Black voting districts.
Meanwhile, 16 Democratic state attorneys general sent a letter last week to three donor-advised funds urging them to lift restrictions on donations to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an anti-racist organization known for helping law enforcement officials take down white supremacist extremist groups. The charity-based arms of Fidelity and Vanguard, as well as a company called Donor Advised Charitable Giving, imposed the restrictions after the Trump administration’s baseless indictment of the SPLC. I recently wrote about how Trump allies have used these charges to downplay and outright deny the existence of racist extremism, as well as spread lies about liberals being responsible for groups like the Ku Klux Klan.
This scrutiny of corporate America and its acquiescence to the MAGA movement has me thinking of a conversation I had with the Rev. Al Sharpton and the “Morning Joe” crew last week. During our chat, Sharpton warned that companies that align themselves with Trump’s war on diversity do so at their own risk, because Democrats could take steps in the future to hold these companies to account.
These letters show a strong interest among Democrats in pressuring companies that appear to be propping up, or placating, the rise of what many people see as Jim Crow 2.0.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.