"Black Lives Matter Co-Founder Challenge to Companies: Address Racism"

Racial equity and social justice took center stage at the 2016 Net Impact conference in Philadelphia last week. The event closed with Michael Smith of My Brother’s Keeper, President Barack Obama’s initiative to address opportunity gaps faced by young men of color. Two days earlier, it opened with Alicia Garza, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement.

...As future corporate leaders, Net Impact’s members have a responsibility to be proactive about issues of racial inequality. (In case you missed it, you can watch her remarks here.)... “This movement is not just a movement for black people,” Garza insisted... And despite media reports, Garza insisted police violence is only a small part of what the movement hopes to address...[including\ the gender pay gap that’s still far wider for women of color, to environmental injustices spanning from New Orleans to Standing Rock. ...Garza insisted.

“There’s this thing that people do when they say, ‘All lives matter,'” Garza continued. “It’s actually bizarre. Of course all lives matter … Black people, indigenous people have been saying that for a really long time. But we don’t live in a world where all lives matter..."

“One of the things [Garza] said was talk about it, have a conversation. I know, from a corporate perspective, that’s something we really struggle with,” said Cecily Joseph, VP of corporate responsibility and chief diversity office for Symantec. “Companies are scared to talk about race … [They] don’t want to come out and talk about anything where they feel they will be judged negatively or face backlash on something where they haven’t made a lot of progress.”  Thankfully, this is beginning to change... Ben & Jerry’s [part of Unilever]...[recently] made a multi-year commitment to support voting rights and racial equality.