Woke Corporations Should Tread Lightly
One day before Rob Manfred moved the All-Star Game from Georgia to “demonstrate our values as a sport," MLB inked a deal to expand MLB access to nations that per American discourse are undeniably systemically racist. This includes Myanmar, Brunei, Malaysia, the Maldives, Pakistan and China. Coke also serves all of these nations, and Delta most.
Buddhist-majority Myanmar is currently being investigated by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity related to the ethnic cleaning of its Muslim Rohingya population.
In Brunei, Malays are citizens, but this is rarely so for the 15% of the population that are Bruneian-born Chinese. They are stateless, receive substandard education and health care, and they are forbidden from owning property or businesses. In Malaysia, Chinese- and Indian-Malaysians, about 30% of the population, are similarly second class citizens. These non-Malays should be beseeching America’s woke companies to help level the playing field.
In the Maldives discrimination is legally institutionalized against anyone not Sunni Muslim. Only Muslims can be citizens and freely practice religion. Only Sunnis can run for office. Woke Delta should halt flights to the Maldives immediately.
Slavery in Pakistan was legally abolished in 1992, but it persists from one generation to the next. Pakistan is 97% Muslim. Most slaves are Hindu Dalits. They number about 3 million. How can America’s woke corporations not get involved in these extraordinary issues of social injustice?
When it comes to racism, it’s hard to beat China. About 1 million Uighur Muslims live in conditions described as state-sponsored slavery, and Tibet and Hong Kong compete for the title of the world’s largest open-air prison. As card carrying antiracist leaders, Coke, Delta and MLB cannot simply condone this. Can woke Coke in good conscience be a sponsor of the “Genocide Olympics” of 2022?
The MLB should also evaluate if it can still maintain its facilities in the Dominican Republic. Mulattoes and blacks are an overwhelming majority, but blacks face severe discrimination. In 2015, thousands of blacks were stripped of their citizenship.
Coke and Delta serve even more genuinely systemically racist nations. Nearly 200 million in number, Muslims in India face discrimination and it can be severe, affecting where they live and work, their education, and if they can vote. In 2019 a citizenship law looks to deny citizenship to tens of millions of multi-generational Muslims. Aren’t Coke and Delta obligated to get involved to get this remedied? Muslims from India should demand as much.
Coke serves every country in Africa and Delta serves a handful. Slaves are still being sold from the Sudan and Mauritania. In 2018, Nigeria began abolishing the Igbo slave cast, but other slave casts persist in other African nations. Surely, Americas woke multinational companies should be expected to use their heft to intervene.
Both Delta and MLB have strong operations in Latin America. In Ecuador, the targeting of blacks by police is a formal part of their jobs. The police “conceive of their mission as protecting citizens from the ‘danger’ of blacks. These blacks are not viewed as citizens but rather as violent intruders that invade the cities.” Blacks are a majority in Brazil. In the last three Brazilian presidential administrations, there has been a total of one black cabinet member. Blacks in both of these countries should be demanding that Coke and Delta intervene to help them.
If America’s woke multinationals don’t get involved isn’t this the epitome of woke hypocrisy?
Doesn’t that make them racists.
The CEOs of these three companies and many more presenting themselves as woke leaders need to increase their knowledge of racism here and in the world before they do serious harm to their companies. Right now, ill will is being generated in America, but social media can expand that globally in a heartbeat. Black Lives Matter traveled around the world at light speed. This time these CEOs were hoodwinked by race hustlers like Biden, Obama, Abrams, Warnock, and Ossoff joining perennial hustlers Jackson and Sharpton. Next time, there will be others. Race hustlers are everywhere, and they care naught about the people CEOs are fully accountable to -- their shareholders.