Sandy MaloneWashington, DC – Black Lives Matter announced it wanted supporters to boycott “white companies” through the holiday season in an effort “to end white-supremacist-capitalism.”
“It’s officially #BlackXmas!” Black Lives Matter posted on its Instagram account on Nov. 26.
“Time to: #BuildBlack – Support Black-led-Black-serving organizations. #BuyBlack – Skip the Black Friday sales and buy exclusively from Black-owned businesses. #BankBlack – Move your money out of white-corporate banks that finance our oppression and open accounts with Black-owned banks,” the post continued.
“White-supremacist-capitalism uses policing to protect profits and steal Black life…including the lives of #JohnCrawford, #StevenTaylor, #RedelJones, #YuvetteHenderson, #AlbertRamonDorsey, #DennisToddRogers & #SkyYoung,” the post read. “Let’s use every tool in our toolbox…including our dollars…to end white-supremacist-capitalism. For resources, go to blackxmas.org.”
The “BlackXmas” website referred to in the post provided even more specific information about how to properly boycott white businesses.
“We’re dreaming of a #Blackxmas,” the homepage read. “That means no spending with white companies from 11/26/2021 – 01/01/2022.”
The page posted a blog by Black Lives Matter Los Angeles organizer Jan Williams on Nov. 24 that said “Capitalism doesn’t love Black people.”
“In fact, white-supremacist-capitalism invented policing, initially as chattel-slavery-era ‘paddy rollers,’ in order to protect its interests and put targets on the backs of Black people,” Williams wrote.
National BLM organization: dreaming of a Black Christmas (no, I am not making that up):
"Black Lives Matter has been challenging people to “dream of a #BlackXmas,” to intentionally use our economic resources to disrupt white-supremacist-capitalism and build Black community[.]" pic.twitter.com/SgicMdZjht
— Jeryl Bier (@JerylBier) November 29, 2021
“Under modern-day policing, those targets have been affixed to the backs of Black people like, #JohnCrawford and #StevenTaylor, who were murdered by police inside Walmart stores; like #YuvetteHenderson and #RedelJones, Black mothers who were accused of petty thefts before their lives were stolen by police; and like #AlbertRamonDorsey and #DennisToddRogers, who were gunned down when 24-Hour-Fitness locations called in police on Black male patrons…twice,” the blog continued.
The website said the first BlackXmas took place in 2014 and was launched in response to the murder of John Crawford in Beavercreek, Ohio.
“#BlackXmas challenges us to shake off the chains of consumerism and step fully into our own collective power, to build new traditions, and run an offense as well as a defense,” the website read. “Let’s harness our economic power to disrupt white-supremacist-capitalism and build Black community. #BlackXmas is about being self-determined and dismantling existing structures by building new, and more viable, beneficial ones…in the names of our mightiest and most righteous warrior Ancestors, in the names of all those stolen by police violence, in honor of our community, and as a commitment to the generations to come.”
Black Lives Matter Los Angeles co-founder Melina Abdullah quoted Malcolm X’s theory that you cannot have capitalism without racism to Yes! magazine in a November interview promoting BlackXmas.
Black Lives Matter’s plan to promote or boycott businesses based on race is inherently racist.
“Under capitalism, we are trained to compete rather than cooperate, to hoard rather than share, and to hate rather than love. Capitalism breeds a course, cold, and cruel world,” Abdullah read during the interview from something she wrote in 2013.
She said Black Lives Matter had, since its inception, highlighted the harm brought on black communities by capitalism “as we recognize policing as really the descendants – police is the descendants – of slave catchers. We also have to think of them protectors of capital. Protectors of the ownership class. And how that steals black life.”
Abdullah said they launched BlackXmas to get people to think about where they are putting their resources based on the three tenets of build black, buy black, and bank black, and challenged shoppers to put their dollars behind businesses that value black shoppers.
EVERY WEDS @ 4PM, 1313 W. 8th St. – Stay in the streets to #EndPoliceAssociations! This week’s theme uplifts the anniversary of Rosa Park’s refusing to give up her seat on the bus to a white man. Our #BlackXmas campaign follows the Black radical tradition of boycott & resistance. pic.twitter.com/HqtqKpCoz7
— #BlackLivesMatter-LA (@BLMLA) December 1, 2021
The website also offered a link to “BlackXmas Actions” that went to a list of upcoming rallies and “justice carols” that can be sung at them.
The song titled “Someday at Christmas” began with the following lyrics:
“Someday at Christmas police won’t be boys
Playing with Black lives like kids play with toys”
Holly Matkin
