In June 2020, companies took to social media to express their support for Black Lives Matter after witnessing the traumatic death of George Floyd. Public displays of support ranged from tweeting pledges to listen and learn to posting black squares on Instagram and donating to Black Lives Matter and protest bail funds.
In what came as little surprise to Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities, many of these companies did not walk the talk and have since been identified as optical allies — a term coined by Latham Thomas to describe “allyship that only serves at the surface level to platform the ‘ally.’”
