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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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Google, the most influential and powerful search engine in America, which most Americans use when searching for product information, released a propaganda music video advising everyone to only buy from black people. Buy what, only from black people? Everything. During a specific day as a kind of protest? No, every single day of the year. This follows Google’s decision to artificially boost black-owned businesses on their Maps app, giving these businesses a special eye-catching symbol.

Buying All Black - Ludacris feat. Flo Milli (A Google #BlackOwnedFriday Anthem)

“It’s time to buy black. All day, every day. Choose black 24/7, 365.

The music video goes on to tell the audience to “buy black” thirty times, while the Google-funded music video showcases individuals searching for black-owned businesses of every variety, from restaurants to salons.

I for one, am less than enthusiastic about the hegemonic consumer search engine producing propaganda advising consumers to never shop at a white-owned business. I’m less concerned with the music video, which received 15 million impressions on YouTube alone (a Google product), than with the underlying sentiment that clearly permeates through the business. I’m afraid of what Google is doing behind the scenes in terms of showing services, and whether they are going to artificially reduce exposure to a business owned by the ancestor of an Irish slave, in favor of a wealthy and privileged Nigerian immigrant whose ancestors owned many slaves.

2.4% of US businesses are black owned, even accounting for significant fibbing on those surveys by businesses trying to claim to be black owned.

This just doesn't matter. It isn't going to hurt anyone, it probably won't really help anyone either. It is not at all comparable to a boycott of white owned businesses, let alone a boycott of Jewish owned businesses.

let alone a boycott of Jewish owned businesses.

Why? They're only 2% of the population, according to your logic it just wouldn't matter either.

Majority boycotting a minority is very different from a minority boycotting a majority.

Your claim was that this doesn't matter, because only a small portion of the population would be affected. This would still be the case if a majority boycotts a minority. It sounds like the original reason you gave for this being ok is not the actual reason you find it ok.

Also this ad did not encourage a minority to only buy at black owned business, it encouraged everyone to do so.

No, my original claim was that the number of black owned businesses is small. Try all you want, you can't shop at only black owned businesses. Making it irrelevant, and not a constructive boycott of other businesses. Let's not pretend we live in a different world than the one we live in.

It probably won't amount to a full "boycott of other businesses", but you can absolutely make the argument that it redirects business that would've otherwise gone to white/Asian/etc businesses towards black-owned businesses. To claim that this is not going to hurt anyone (like you claimed in your initial comment) and is irrelevant (like you claimed in this one) because people will still shop at businesses owned by people of other races is frankly missing the point to an impressive degree, just because it is impractical to do a full boycott doesn't mean it isn't essentially encouraging people to discriminate and doesn't mean it won't have real world effects.

It's probably intended to redirect business from Korean or Indian owned businesses to African-American owned businesses, if it's intended to have an effect and not just virtue signal.

Okay, but I'm wondering on what basis you believe that this specifically is the intent. Do you have data on, say, any unique overlaps between the markets served by Korean/Indian owned businesses and black-owned businesses?