As the wonderful month of February draws to a close, I must come clean about something that has been plaguing me all month. I work in a Walmart store and have walked past the merchandise every weekend for the past month. At the beginning of February, I noticed Walmart displayed some black history month themed t-shirts and reusable bottles.
In the current political climate we’re in could this have been a show of power by Walmart? Black people have been very vocal about other races profiting off of the African-American struggle, yet this is exactly what Walmart is attempting to do. Walmart works its employees very hard, with very little reward or free time, and a large portion of these workers are African Americans. Despite being several dollars over minimum wage, having a Walmart job is still a low wage job; these types of jobs statistically do not allow people to get sick or maintain families. Why didn’t Walmart just give their employees bonuses during black history month? Instead, they chose to try and profit. Walmart is not a good corporation: they underpay their workers for all of the strenuous work they do, which is disproportionate to the amount of money that the shareholders are receiving. Walmart is owned by the Walton family, which is a notoriously wealthy family; 1% of the 1% as Shaun King coined. Their combined worth is worth more than 79% of African American families in the United States combined. Of course, they are entirely white and they own 51% of the Walmart corporation, making them the wealthiest family in the United States.
Also, Walmart was connected to ALEC years ago, and we cannot be entirely sure all ties are cut now. ALEC is a group of businesses and lawmakers that come together to create legislation that will further the profits of big businesses at the expense of the citizens. They have openly supported the stand your ground law and voter suppression; many gun laws and opposition to gun control issues have come from ALEC and the NRA. These are all problems that are damaging the African-American community currently.
As of 2017, relevant enough, Walmart has nearly 15 million employees, 21 percent of their officers are people of color, 31% of managers are people of color, and 43% percent of their associates are people of color. There are disproportionate amounts of associates to corporate positions. These numbers should be higher because there are less of these positions, however, they are not.
Walmart’s wealth is long-standing American wealth and unfortunately is reflective of American history. Walmart is slowly changing along with the world to be more inclusive, despite immensely profiting off the backs of marginalized minorities. So here is Walmart’s next lesson in Black people 101: Don’t make black history merchandise, there are enough black people making it.
– HCXO