Reclaim Black Friday—Buy From Black-Owned Businesses
By: Matt Charnock
Tags: Cyber Monday, San Francisco, Shopping, Black Friday, BlackLivesMatter

Reclaim Black Friday—Buy From Black-Owned Businesses

Photo: @reclaimcollaborative via Instagram

Happy Black Friday — a holiday centered around our love for consumerism, in which we get sucked into sales (usually at big-box stores) and start racking up gifts for the holidays. Black Friday — called so because it’s the day retailers traditionally get out of yearlong deficits—has become an odd consumer-driven holiday, especially now amid the coronavirus… when Cyber Monday’s digital shopping landscape has far more appeal.

But let’s be clear: The desire to spend money on things at the intersection of affordability, convenience, and speed all have very human and environmental costs. The whole idea of consumerism is inherently racist and predatory.

The cheapest clothes leverage disenfranchised communities to work for pennies on the dollar; goods available at your local supermarket that would otherwise be found halfway across the world are trialed with sizable carbon footprints; fast shipping — like Amazon Prime’s one- and two-day options— takes a serious toll on the mental and physical health of fulfillment center employees.

Black Friday is usually all about mindless consumerism, but this year, many are calling for consumers to “reclaim” the day by their money where their mouths are and using it to elevate marginalized voices.

“One of the main side effects of modern-day capitalism is exploitation,” writes Manpreet Kaur Kalra, founder of the Art of Citizenry, a Seattle-based marking company that uses storytelling as a conduit for changing the narratives around colonization and consumption.

“This overconsumption causes harm to the environment, and of course, by the nature of things this environmental crisis that we are experiencing is then most felt by Black and Brown communities globally,” she adds in an email to The Bold Italic.

Kalra also has a hand in this year's call-to-action campaign, Reclaim Black Friday, organized in tandem with the Reclaim Collaborative. The campaign—designed as an antithesis to the traditional Black Friday tropes—highlights the work of Black and Indigenous content creators, brands, and organizations from Friday, November 27, until the end of the month.

Rather than offering markdowns or sales (which inadvertently widen the disparity gaps between consumers and underpaid workers), the collective is encouraging customers to support businesses driven by communities who have historically been disenfranchised by consumerism.

Rachel Faller, the founder of Tonlé, a sustainable fashion brand in San Francisco, has also joined the collective.

And given how this year’s climate-change-driven wildfires fueled “racial inequality,” Faller knew she needed to help shift the paradigm of the day to one of philanthropy rather than outright profit.

“I think that the fires in California are tied to the racial inequality that is happening,” Faller tells in the Chronicle. “So all of these things are really interwoven and they’re intertwined. You need to look to those who have had that relationship with the land […] what better time to do that than around this holiday?”

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All brands participating (and signed) members of the Reclaim Black Friday Redistribution Pledge, which include other SF companies like the clog boutique manufacturer Bryr Studio, are also required to redistribute a percentage of total sales from Black Friday weekend to Black- and Indigenous-owned environmental organizations — a philanthropic nicety absent from most large-scale enterprises.

Indeed, big brands and monopolies often exert their power in the form of exploitation. The very notion around “good business” over the past century has been maximizing profits and safekeeping shareholders above all costs. Black Friday represents the dystopian peak of all these capitalistic woes — nowadays delivered to your inbox with a bold-lettered newsletter containing lofty savings — at all costs.