—Thurgood Marshall, First African American to be seated on the US Supreme Court
For the second time this year, we are witnessing a global response to a crisis of humanity. But where the pandemic was unexpected, unprecedented, and appeared, without warning, spreading global indiscriminate devastation, this protest is different. Starting in America, it has now reached much of the world and demands that we conclude this very long chapter in humanity’s collective story. It calls for an end to racism, a deliberate and targeted practice that has determined our global narratives, given the west financial and soft power, enslaved, exploited, and oppressed black people for centuries and, having created the primary economic system of the world, continues to dominate.
Racism, though multilayered and complex, always requires two components: prejudice, and the power to oppress a person or group, on account of that prejudice. Many racialised groups live under systems of oppression and we oppose racism against all. The current global protest that started in America has spread worldwide and thus, like its focus, this letter is on anti-black racism. We believe that this specific protest has gone global because anti-blackness is a racist phenomenon that is practised consistently worldwide. It manifests in the west primarily as an economic practice. Focusing on economics may seem like we are detracting from the very human story, from the murder of George Floyd, from the pain of the people that fuels the protest. We are not. We seek to draw attention to the reasons why racism has been able to continue, without a real challenge, to why the corporations rushing forward to proclaim their belief that black lives matter as they practice anti-blackness in their business models, their pricing, their hiring and their usual marketing, should be watched with careful consideration and not immediate relief.
Exploitation is central to many economic practices, especially within a capitalistic system. And exploitation is a very human story. To exploit is to take advantage of another person, to make someone else suffer, so that you can gain. To exploit is frequently to impoverish, to use, to diminish. When we started Archibald, a luxury brand that most people can afford, it was to present an alternative within the sector of luxury. The economics of the luxury industry, the middleman culture of retailers and obscene mark-ups, of opaque supply chains, and factory fires, is centred on exploitation alongside exclusion. Quality is kept from those who are not obscenely rich, products, especially in fashion, are made by those desperately poor and the profits are kept by the middlemen. The people who are poor, work exceptionally hard to create the luxury products the wealthiest enjoy. They are paid for their toil with more poverty, more exploitation, and in many cases, death.
Archibald is opposed to this. We believe that through our ethos and our production practices (made by craftsmen and women, who we pay well for their hard work) we should uphold notions of equality, fairness and decency. We believe we price our products fairly, taking a low profit to ensure more people have access to it, and we sell directly to the consumer to avoid exploitative middlemen and supply chains altogether. We believe in being as transparent as possible and so we detail the breakdown of our costs and prices under every single product on our website. We believe exploitation to be the most inhumane practice and we know that racism through its pillaging and oppressing, from economics to culture, epitomises exploitation and dehumanisation at its core.
It would not have been hard to point out and promote how our ethos and our practices perfectly align with the global protest against racism and specifically anti-blackness. But we know that this is neither a new problem, nor a new protest. And we will not capitalise on the death of George Floyd, on the deep pain that fuels the voices in this movement, by promoting our alignment, or promising as various corporations do that a portion of their profits will go to support anti-black racism. Because where do the rest of their profits go? To maintain their status as beneficiaries of the economic system that starves, plunders and decimates those very same black lives. And how are these profits made? Through the very economic system that… you see the point.
Any serious long-term commitment, by a business, to opposing anti-blackness starts with their refusal to partake in any system of economic exploitation. Aside from dismantling their exploitative business models, and committing to prohibiting racist exclusion and oppression, they must practice total transparency and return the millions and billions they made on the backs of human pain.
So as many brands promise donations for the moment, whilst the protest holds the world’s attention, we will not. For if our response to this global protest is to seek a better world than this, before we set about creating it we need to understand how we arrived here. We need to scrutinise the powerful because they are part of the problem. We need more than transient moments, we need more than empathy, guilt and pain. We need commitment, consistency and a community of others, who share the same. That requires knowledge and resources.
Here are two suggestions of our own:
Ibram X Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
Jason Hickel, The Divide
Black Lives Matter.
It was and is and will always be true.
Whether or not the truth of their suffering is on social media or on the news.
Yours,
Archibald.
