The US Chamber Rolls Out Some Truly Contemptible Wokewashing
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Take the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It has orchestrated arguably the most grandiose display of lip service in corporate America, offering a textbook case of what many antiracist advocates criticize as “performative allyship.” The chamber last month hosted a national town hall on inequality, featuring African-American celebrities Gayle King and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, as well as Howard University President Wayne Frederick. Chamber President Suzanne Clark also wrote a July 9 op-ed in Fortune stating that, as the nation’s leading lobbyist, her organization bore the responsibility “to drive sustained action to eliminate systemic disadvantages. “We have committed to put the collective muscle of American business behind an urgent nationwide push for equality of opportunity,” she claimed.
The day before the town hall, the chamber released a report titled “America’s Opportunity Gaps” with data on “six key areas” where there are racial disparities: education, employment, entrepreneurship, criminal justice, health, and wealth. The “Health” section of the report reads: “Health outcomes are driven by an array of elements, including underlying genetics, health behaviors, social and environmental factors, and healthcare. Health behaviors, such as smoking, diet, and exercise, and social and economic factors, are the primary drivers of health outcomes.” Nowhere to be found was the concept of systemic industrial pollution. (In contrast, in the Obama administration’s Healthy People 2020 program, “environmental health” included the quality of outdoor air, soil, and groundwater and exposure to toxic substances.) Two weeks after the townhall, the chamber released an initial “Equality of Opportunity Agenda.” Suddenly there were only four areas of racial disparity: education, employment, entrepreneurship, and criminal justice. Health and wealth were gone.
It doesn’t take long to realize why. In the last decade, the chamber has by far been at its most active fighting on behalf of industry against President Obama’s efforts on health reform, climate change, and toxics. During the previous presidency, the chamber recorded its four highest years of spending, much of it in an effort to defeat Obamacare and Environmental Protection Agency rules to curb greenhouse gases and poisonous emissions. Though the chamber is legally allowed to be highly secretive about its funding, a 2017 Public Citizen analysis of voluntary disclosures placed Dow as the group’s top funder. (Hartford Financial Services was second, and Chevron was third.) The dark money watchdog group Issue One reported that from 2010 to 2016, Dow gave $13 million to the chamber, more than twice what the second-ranked donor Issue One identified offered up.
While its funding is mysterious, there is no secret about the chamber’s mission. Its CEO, Thomas Donohue, baldly said a decade ago that companies come to him with cash in hand to lobby on issues that are public relations nightmares — to “give them all the deniability they need.” The New York Times reported that Dow Chemical, for example, gave the chamber $1.7 million in 2009 to fight tighter regulations at petrochemical plants The same year, health insurers secretly funneled $86 million to the chamber to squash Obamacare, while publicly going through the motions of working with the new president and Democrats on health care reform.
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https://grist.org/politics/the-chamber-of-commerce-says-its-woke-its-actions-say-black-lives-really-dont-matter/
