AndrewBlakeLos Angeles, CA – Black Lives Matter (BLM) is calling for holiday shoppers to stay away from white businesses, and instead spend their money on black-owned businesses only, in a push for “Black Christmas.”
BLM organizer Melina Abdullah used her social media following to spread the word that BLM doesn’t want money spent on white businesses.
Abdullah is professor and chair of Pan-African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles, and responded on Twitter to the Newsweek headline, “Black Lives Matter Wants To Bring Down White Capitalism With ‘Black Christmas.’”
“We say ‘white capitalism’ because it’s important that we understand that the economic system and the racial structures are connected,” said Abdullah during her weekly radio show, according to Newsweek. “We have to not only disrupt the systems of policing that literally kill our people, but we have to disrupt the white supremacist, capitalistic, patriarchal, heteronormative system that is really the root cause of these police killings.”
Anthony Ratcliff, another BLM organizer and CSU-LA professor, also chimed in on the radio show to explain the purpose of “Black Christmas,” according to Newsweek.
“Black Lives Matter and other organizations build a strong critique and understanding of racism and white supremacy and sexism and homophobia, transphobia, but we have to have as much hatred or vitriol against capitalism,” said Ratcliff. “Until we start to see capitalism [is] just as nefarious as white supremacy, we will always be struggling.”
Black Lives Matter organized “Black Christmas” last year, too, according to Newsweek. BLM called on consumers to shop at black-owned businesses as a way to protest President Donald Trump.