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And if those depictions traffic in racist stereotypes, when we do see Black people in mass media at all, studies indicate it can harm the psyche of young Black children. Not seeing the complexity of Black people in media or in literature is alienating. In 2021, with the financial security of many Black people bottoming out, historical firsts are not enough, and parading Black people on screen is not progressДЄdequate depictions of Black people in media and politics are important. The percentage of Black men without a job in deindustrialized towns has been obscene, reaching up to 53% for Black men in their prime working years in a city like Milwaukee, while Black women and Latinas experienced the largest job losses of any other demographic by 2020вЂ™s end. What we donвЂ™t get, however, is progress.ДЄfter decades of a political realignment that saw Democrats focus policy on business interests and pivot marketing to Black Americans, the Black incarceration rate has grown, Black unemployment has grown, the Black-white wealth gap has grown, and the Black homeownership rate has been virtually unchanged since the 1970s. Instead of commitments to defund police departments or good faith debates around abolition amid perhaps the largest protest movement in history, we get the author of the crime bill for president who made some unbinding commitments to include a few Black people in his administration. Instead of reparations to address the centuries of harm that contributed to Black Americans facing some of the highest Covid-related fatalities, we get kente cloth prayers and Snapchat slave-chain filters.

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Instead of living wages, universal healthcare, student debt cancellation, free public college or anything that can minimize the massive Black-white wealth gap, we get Black History Month-themed Apple Watches and Black sitcom collections on Netflix. So instead of transformative policy, a select few Black Americans are given hypervisibility. God forbid people can protect their wellbeing and not stuff some corporate managerвЂ™s pockets! To put a finer point on it, conservatives on both sides of the aisle assume that if these workers вЂ“ who are disproportionately Black and brown вЂ“ are given any sort of government aid or regular stimulus checks, they may not want to slave away in low-wage jobs. Rightwingers crystallized this point in the early months of the pandemic: we canвЂ™t let the stock market tank, so we have to get people back into stores and warehouses to service us.

Individual achievements are not representation. In a system that relies on exploiting labor and directing resources to an elite minority, actually advancing the health and prosperity of the masses of Black people undermines the exploitation that capitalism relies on. For some, this visibility may indicate that Black people have advanced.Д«ut what I see is an admission: powerful elected officials and corporations in the US resort to symbolism and token opportunities, because theyвЂ™d rather not offer anything else. Like the pat Black Lives Matter virtue signalling last June, branded co-optation of Black history has been rampant. Commercializing holidays and co-opting Black culture are both standard practices in America. Instead of providing a platform to explore the rich history of Black people in America, this month has been a billboard for commodified representations of Blackness. I have to admit, this yearвЂ™s celebration is among the worst yet. B lack History Month, the annual commemoration of Black history in the United States that originated with Carter G WoodsonвЂ™s Negro History Week, is winding down.

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