U.S. corporations are 'virtue signaling' like crazy on race. But actions speak louder than words.
Sitting on my friends front porch the other day, I was surprised to see Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, peering at me from my phone as he took a knee. The photo, now circulated widely, shows the gray-haired honcho alongside a rainbow platoon of rank-and-file workers at one of his companys bank branches, kneeling in what appears to be a gesture of racial solidarity.
Days earlier, I had noticed a viral tweet from Adidas announcing, Together is how we move forward. Together is how we make change. Not to be outdone, Reebok Instagrammed its own timely message, We are not asking you to buy our shoes. We are asking you to walk in someone elses. Nike, Citigroup, Disney and many other commercial behemoths have all sent their own messages challenging racism.
We are seeing, in other words, an epidemic of virtue signaling, a term coined in 2015 by James Bartholomew, a British financial journalist. He used the phrase to describe public acts intended to align the signaler, at very little personal cost, with the righteous side of a timely cause.
Companies analyze risks versus benefits when deciding to make political statements, so maybe it is encouraging to find so many of them believe the tide is in favor of publicly speaking out on race. On the other hand, the schmaltzy signals theyre sending telegraph only vague sentiments. Should we really have to applaud the fact that Disney stands against racism or that CBS condemns racism, discrimination and senseless acts of violence? Shouldnt those companies have made their positions apparent, before a spate of killings by police and impassioned protests across 75 towns and cities?
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-06-14/corporations-race-virtue-signaling