By Najaah Cooper {@luvnaj}
In wake of the recent racist Gucci and Burberry incidents, and racist politicians getting caught wearing blackface, I wonder: Is Black Outrage the New Marketing Strategy? When the internet “cancels” someone or a brand, the automatic next response is to go to the persons’ social media page and flood their mentions with negative and antagonizing comments.
With the new metrics of social media, this person or brand is now viral and is every third to fifth post you see on your feed. Usually, when a brand makes such an egregious mistake, a martyr is chosen to either patronize or pacify the masses and then all should be forgiven.
But what if we changed our reaction to racism by corporations? What if we just went silent? When a company is found promoting and or selling something racist, sexist, or homophobic, what if we immediately blocked them and reported their pages or ads? Our dollar holds tremendous power and it would be extraordinary if we could use our collective influence to really make a statement to a brand when they blatantly disrespect us.
This is not an issue of “there aren’t any black people in higher positions,” because with all of the progressive white people that voted for Obama, there must be someone behind the scenes who is a bit more aware? This is truly an issue of disrespect and someone in their marketing or press release distribution department saying “let’s see how far we can go, we need to be daring and make people talk. We want to go VIRAL”. 
What do you think? Are brands like Moncler, Burberry, and Prada insensitive, or are they purposefully trying to push racial buttons for attention?
#burberry #gucci #prada #moncler
