generalspeaking

Conflicted America

"In normal times, businesses would probably take it in their stride."
"But coming off the back of the pandemic, it's devastating."
Neil Saunders, retail analyst, Global Data Retail

"Since we opened our doors, Target has operated with love and opportunity for all."
"And in that spirit, we commit to contributing to a city and community that will turn the pain we're all experiencing into better days for everyone."
Brian Cornell, chief executive, Target, Minneapolis

"We are as a group, by and large, not people of colour [but are prepared to commit to diversity and inclusion goals]."
"Another black man in America died senselessly on Monday, and it happened only miles from where many of us live."
Best Buy, senior leadership team

"You're not protesting anything running out with brown liquor in your hands and breaking windows in this city."
"So when you burn down this city, you're burning down our community."
Mayor Keisha Lance, Atlanta

"Every single rebellion and uprising has included it [looting, vandalism]."
"I was shocked there wasn't more looting. We're dealing with an economic crisis."
UCLA historian Robin Kelley

"Many of these protests, at least those motivated by the killing of George Floyd, should be understood as black people's refusal to stand by while their brothers and sisters are murdered by the state."
"If the history of this country is any guide, protests like these are often necessary to bring about positive, transformative social change."
Stanford sociology professor Matthew Clair

Businesses in American cities, devastated by the lockdown that accompanied the rushing swoop of infections caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, breathed a tentative sigh of relief, hoping for the best, that consumer confidence would return and so would their business and they would be able to sidestep the forced choices circumstances of lost sales performance, financial incentives and collapsed plans taking them entirely out of contention into bankruptcy.

Lockdown finally lifted. Mere days later, the catastrophe that is COVID-19 became the backdrop to a national uprising in rage at the death of yet another black man at the hands of a municipal police force. There are no acts now so obscure that they cannot be caught by a passerby in a world where everyone is armed with an iPhone the better to document anything and everything that occurs, public and private and combinations thereof.


This time it was the private agony of a man whose life-force was being squeezed out of him through the very public physical pressure of a police officer's knee squeezing the man's neck, ending in a violent agony of asphyxiation, and suddenly, George Floyd's name has a ring of familiarity all over the world. The raging refusal to allow the death of another black man to go unnoticed began with silent protests and signage declaring no excuses for sudden death too often visited on black Americans.

From Minneapolis to states all over the U.S.A. protests erupted, beginning their peaceful, law-abiding journeys toward raging violence and chaotic destruction, and finally looting, orchestrated by those forces for whom anarchic defiance of law and order and hatred of government is paramount and purposeful. The looting is the reward offered for those who assent to departing from civility and embracing sociopathy.

Brick-and-mortar businesses, the retail, very visible service industry and all small business owners hoping to pay their way through the American lifestyle, seriously wounded by COVID-19's shutdown, has taken a direct hit by 'protesters'-cum social deviants who see no reason to avoid opportunities to wreak wreckage and disorder, victimizing those who don't resemble them nor echo their opportunistic rampage.

COVID took J.C.Penney and Neiman Marcus out of business, now 'protests' over George Floyd's killing have closed in on both small business and big business across the U.S. Pleading with those marching in their sanctimonious rage over inequity and injustice as a tool to further their ideological scaffolding, the anger of those impacted by inequity and injustice hijacked, business America quails.

Atlanta's mayor tried to shame the rioters and looters emphasizing that over half of the city's business owners, like anywhere else in America represent minority groups. Vandalism and destruction of property is not the work of the demonstrators, those protesting the death of a man that rogue police felt justified in viciously beating for an alleged crime of passing a counterfeit $20 bill.

Looting T-shirts, computers and food, destroying plate-glass, fire-bombing buildings, unmercifully beating small business owners in their futile attempts to beg the marauding thugs to bypass their small business is not the work of mourners of lives lost, but that of conscienceless opportunists using any tools at their disposal to score their goal of upending society and the rule of law.

National, state and municipal lawmakers reflecting their responsibility to those they represent through the ballot box, plead for common sense and a stop to outrage expressing itself as mob violence. Academics who profess to study the  history of a nation built on slavery still struggling to overcome its original human rights abuses, analyze the situation through the lens of 'progressive' studies in righting ancient wrongs.

In a country deeply divided on the avenues to take advantage of in advancing those sometimes elusive rights, content to view themselves as contrite white imperialists, urging everyone to acknowledge their inherited status of white privilege for which no amount of contrition and efforts for rights-restitution will ever be sufficient unto the day.

Downtown Atlanta   Photo: Jenni Girtman/ALYSSA.POINTER@AJC.COM