“Woke-Washing” Your Company Won’t Cut It

While many companies are speaking out because they know the costs of silence are high, they’re discovering that the costs of “woke washing” — appropriating the language of social activism into marketing materials, for instance — can be high, too. Organizations such as Whole Foods, Pinterest, and Adidas have all seen public complaints from current and former employees that corporate statements of solidarity glossed over internal inequities. For many workers, such statements from executive leadership underscore how the same leaders who rally for Black lives have fallen short when it comes to addressing these problems. Empty company statements can seem to say that Black lives only matter to big business when there’s profit to be made. Read more at Harvard Business Review.