scholarly journals Black Power in the Boardroom: Corporate America, the Sullivan Principles, and the Anti-Apartheid Struggle

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 170-209
Author(s):  
JESSICA ANN LEVY
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Black Power ◽  
Code Of Conduct ◽  
General Motors ◽  
American Business ◽  
Corporate America ◽  
Corporate Code ◽  
History Of ◽  
Corporate Social

This article traces the history of General Motors’ first black director, Leon Sullivan, and his involvement with the Sullivan Principles, a corporate code of conduct for U.S. companies doing business in Apartheid South Africa. Building on and furthering the postwar civil rights and anti-colonial struggles, the international anti-apartheid movement brought together students, union workers, and religious leaders in an effort to draw attention to the horrors of Apartheid in South Africa. Whereas many left-leaning activists advocated sanctions and divestment, others, Sullivan among them, helped lead the way in drafting an alternative strategy for American business, one focused on corporate-sponsored black empowerment. Moving beyond both narrow criticisms of Sullivan as a “sellout” and corporate propaganda touting the benefits of the Sullivan Principles, this work draws on corporate and “movement” records to reveal the complex negotiations between white and black executives as they worked to situate themselves in relation to anti-racist movements in the Unites States and South Africa. In doing so, it furthermore reveals the links between modern corporate social responsibility and the fight for Black Power within the corporation.

Gambling with the Future

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Dauvergne
Keyword(s):  
Multinational Corporations ◽  
Business Strategy ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Corporate Sustainability ◽  
General Motors ◽  
Environmental Rhetoric ◽  
Air Conditioners ◽  
History Of ◽  
Precautionary Measures ◽  
Corporate Social

This chapter brings to light the risks – and at times grave costs – for human health and ecosystems of companies introducing new technologies and products to compete for profits and markets. New technologies and products can cast dark ecological shadows onto distant ecosystems, poor communities, and future generations. Sometimes these shadows arise from genuine ignorance, as with chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) drifting skyward from refrigerators, hairsprays, and air conditioners to deplete the ozone layer. But other times these shadows arise from arrogance and intentional risk-taking, as in the 1920s when Thomas Midgley, Jr., working for General Motors and DuPont, put tetraethyl lead into gasoline. As this chapter shows, corporations have a long history of deploying anti-environmental rhetoric to subvert calls for precautionary measures. Since the mid-2000s, however, the executives of multinational corporations have been avoiding straightforward greenwash, preferring a rhetoric of corporate sustainability and corporate social responsibility. To some extent this eco-business strategy is improving efficiency and reducing waste (on a per product basis), but it is not translating into a stronger precautionary approach for the introduction of new technologies and products.

scholarly journals British Black Power: The anti-imperialism of political blackness and the problem of nativist socialism

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (5) ◽  
pp. 945-967 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Narayan
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Black Power ◽  
British History ◽  
Black Power Movement ◽  
Black Activism ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S

The history of the US Black Power movement and its constituent groups such as the Black Panther Party has recently gone through a process of historical reappraisal, which challenges the characterization of Black Power as the violent, misogynist and negative counterpart to the Civil Rights movement. Indeed, scholars have furthered interest in the global aspects of the movement, highlighting how Black Power was adopted in contexts as diverse as India, Israel and Polynesia. This article highlights that Britain also possessed its own distinctive form of Black Power movement, which whilst inspired and informed by its US counterpart, was also rooted in anti-colonial politics, New Commonwealth immigration and the onset of decolonization. Existing sociological narratives usually locate the prominence and visibility of British Black Power and its activism, which lasted through the 1960s to the early 1970s, within the broad history of UK race relations and the movement from anti-racism to multiculturalism. However, this characterization neglects how such Black activism conjoined explanations of domestic racism with issues of imperialism and global inequality. Through recovering this history, the article seeks to bring to the fore a forgotten part of British history and also examines how the history of British Black Power offers valuable lessons about how the politics of anti-racism and anti-imperialism should be united in the 21st century.

“Despite the contradictions”

2020 ◽  
pp. 185-194
Author(s):  
Christine Jeske
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Racial Inequalities ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Social Narrative

This chapter offers closing thoughts that reiterate and summarizes the main points of the book. The chapter explores the ways people make a careful survey of their situation and work out a method to yield growth despite life's contradictions and pressures. If their lives look at times like wind-torn shrubs, that does not mean that they are poorly adapted or lethargic. Instead, it offers evidence of the hard work it takes to thrive in a world where the good life is hard to find. It shows that a dominant myth blaming inequality on laziness has guided, upheld, and justified racial inequalities in South Africa and the world since the earliest mercantile and colonial encounters between Europeans and Africans, and this narrative was never eradicated, despite antislavery, civil rights, and anti-apartheid movements that achieved important legal and structural changes. The struggle to change this social narrative is an unglorified resistance with no clear ending point, but it is essential to the pursuit of the good life. It also shows evidence that in order to generate employment while aiming for the higher goal of seeking good, South Africa must address the history of antiblack disrespect that perpetuates dysfunctional employment structures. The people described in this book refuse to conform to narratives of inevitable happy endings or easy hope, but neither do their stories end only in despair.

Prison Power

Prison Power ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 21-52
Author(s):  
Lisa M. Corrigan
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Black Power ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
The State ◽  
State Repression ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Black Liberation Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Phase

This chapter traces rhetorical and political history of imprisonment before and after the birth of Black Power, focusing on major moments of activist imprisonment as well as movement discourses written from prison. In charting the role of prison in the movement, the chapter also discusses the emergence and legitimacy of Black Power as a slogan, as a theoretical device, and as a series of rhetorical strategies designed to be a particularly historical intervention into the stagnating discourses of “civil rights” and “law and order.” This chapter contends that incarceration became a major strategy used by both black activists and white conservatives during the Black Power era; consequently, the period following 1966 marked a new phase of Jim Crow as Black Power became a rallying cry against state repression. This chapter suggests that the legitimacy of Black Power as a term of art, as a series of vernacular signs, and as an organizing principle in a new phase of the black liberation movement, hinged upon whether the state or the activists controlled the frame and how closely it became associated with violence. Because the Black Power slogan and ideology were articulated by activists with extensive rap sheets as the state circumscribed their activism, Black Power ideology took up the relationship between state repression and incarceration as a place to excavate new arenas for the black liberation struggle, particularly in the memoirs of movement activists.

Prison Power

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa M. Corrigan
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Black Power ◽  
Black People ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Organizational Strategies ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Political Inquiry ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Site

Prison Power centers imprisonment in the history of black liberation as a rhetorical, theoretical, physical, and media resource as activists developed movement tactics and ideology to counter white supremacy. In highlighting imprisonment as a site for both political and personal transformation, Prison Power underscores how imprisonment shaped movement leaders by influencing their political analysis and organizational strategies. The book suggests that prison became the critical space for the transformation from civil rights to Black Power, especially as southern civil rights activists faced setbacks in achieving equality. In centering the prison as a locus of political inquiry, Black Power activists produced autobiographical writings, essays, and letters about and from prison beginning with the early sit-in movement. Prison Power introduces the critical optic of the “Black Power vernacular” to describe how Black Power activists deployed rhetorical forms in their writings that invented new forms of black identification and encouraged support for black liberation from prison. In using Black Power vernacular forms, imprisoned activists improved their visibility while simultaneously documenting the racist abuses of the judicial system. This new vernacular emerged to force various publics to acknowledge and end the massive brutality perpetrated against black people in prison and in the streets in the name of law and order thereby helping to shore up support for Black Power organizations and initiatives.

Black Power in Philadelphia: Selective Patronage and the Effectiveness of Direct Action Protest

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 373-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Gammage
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Black Power ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
African American Community ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Local Networks ◽  
The Core ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S

Black Power during the 1960s is a shift in direct action protest with its aim at procuring power (economic, political, educational, etc.). The manifestation of Black Power in Philadelphia in the late 1960s provides us an elaborate model of direct action protest that included central components of the African American community. Moreover, the selective patronage movement successfully maintained organization and momentum without the prototypical one leader model that was prominent in the civil rights movement that preceded it. Much like the Black Lives Matter movement, the selective patronage movement in Philadelphia drew on the national outcry for racial justice but largely built the core of its strength on local networks. This article explores the history of the selective patronage movement in Philadelphia during the early 1960s. Next, it assesses the strengths and weakness of the movement. Lastly, it provides recommendations for future movements aimed at economic development.

The Contest on Corporate Purpose: Why Lynn Stout was Right and Milton Friedman was Wrong

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Clarke
Keyword(s):  
General Motors ◽  
American Business ◽  
Business And Society ◽  
Financial Measures ◽  
Milton Friedman ◽  
Passenger Safety ◽  
The Social ◽  
Governance Strategies ◽  
Transparency And Disclosure ◽  
Corporate Social

AbstractIt is now 50 years since Milton Friedman set out his doctrine that “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits.” This paper seeks to add fresh and compelling new evidence of why Lynn Stout was correct in her resolute critique of the thesis of shareholder primacy at the heart of the Friedman doctrine, and how this doctrine remains profoundly damaging to the corporations that continue to uphold this belief. It is argued that the Friedman doctrine has had a catastrophic impact upon American business and society beginning with General Motors failure to respond to investor calls for increased concern for safety and pollution at the time of Friedman’s intervention in 1970, stretching all the way to the recent fatal errors of Boeing in placing a higher priority in getting the new Boeing 737 MAX into the market than ensuring the soundness of software controls on the flight deck which led to two horrific plane crashes in 2018 and 2019 with the loss of 346 lives. These tragic errors in corporate judgement are ultimately related to the constricted sense of corporate purpose imposed by Milton Friedman and taken up with enthusiasm by agency theorists focused upon maximising shareholder value. This reckless single-mindedness has privileged the pursuit of the narrowest of financial measures of performance above fundamentals including passenger safety and environmental emissions controls. As a result, innocent lives have been lost, brands have been tarnished, and ultimately the strategic future of significant corporations endangered, and the ecology of the planet imperilled. There is now emerging a new sense of the purpose of the corporation that defines a rationale for corporate social and environmental responsibility in a way similar to Lynn Stout’s more inclusive stakeholder approach. The question remains open whether this will lead to the development of fiduciary duties, governance, strategies, targets, measures, transparency and disclosure that might deliver the sustainable corporation.

scholarly journals Taking Stock of the Benefit Corporation

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-124
Author(s):  
Ronald J. Colombo
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Corporate Law ◽  
American Business ◽  
Minimal Impact ◽  
New Era ◽  
Benefit Corporation ◽  
Benefit Corporations ◽  
History Of ◽  
Standards Of Conduct ◽  
Corporate Social

Almost a decade ago, the “benefit corporation” first appeared on American soil. Its supporters proclaimed that this would usher in a new era of corporate social responsibility. Its detractors complained that the benefit corporation would facilitate managerial abuses that corporate law had worked so hard to curb. After nearly ten years of experience with the benefit corporation, who was the more accurate prognosticator? Moreover, has the benefit corporation given rise to developments, whether beneficial or negative, that were not expected or foreseen? This Article traces the history of the benefit corporation, with a focus on the promise that its early supporters identified with it. It also examines the criticisms that this new form of business organization provoked. The Article concludes that, contrary to the predictions of both camps, the benefit corporation has not, apparently, resulted in much change at all. In its final Section, the Article explores the reasons why the benefit corporation has had, thus far at least, such minimal impact on the course of American business and corporate law. The conclusion reached is that, for good or for ill, benefit corporation statutes do not materially change the rules of corporate governance. Rather, they simply explicitly permit benefit corporations to conduct themselves according to standards of conduct that traditional corporate law statutes already implicitly permit. Although the promoters of benefit corporation legislation have argued that even this minor change would have an impact on businesses by effecting a normative shift in corporate decision-making, contemporary market forces appear to have had the same result on a far broader scale. Lastly, this Article considers some of the unexpected repercussions of the benefit corporation, whether manifested or growing in potential.

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