Racism as a Human Rights Risk: Reconsidering the Corporate 'Responsibility to Respect' Rights

Authors

Erika George, Boston University School of LawFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-2021

ISSN

2057-0198

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Language

en-US

Abstract

Darnella Frazer, a teenage witness to a fatal police encounter, used social media to share her cell phone video footage capturing a white police officer casually kneeling on the neck of a handcuffed Black man named George Floyd for nearly nine minutes. Her video rapidly went viral, sparking civil unrest across the United States (US) and protests around the world.¹ Independent experts of the Special Procedures of the United Nations Human Rights Council came together to issue a joint statement condemning 'systemic racism' and 'state sponsored racial violence' in the US.² George Floyd was not the first unarmed Black person to die in police custody under questionable circumstances,³ but his murder motivated many to confront the reality of racism in American society. A broad section of the business community reacted to the civil unrest in the immediate aftermath of the murder of George Floyd with solidarity statements denouncing racism and pledges to promote racial equality.⁴ Brands rushed to embrace the previously untouchable #BlackLivesMatter movement in marketing campaigns. Business leaders expressed interested in evaluating how particular policies and practices operate in ways that serve to promote racial discrimination or perpetuate racial inequality.⁵

Now, a year later, protests have subsided and the officer who killed George Floyd has been tried, convicted, and sentenced for the crime. As the United Nations Working Group on Business and Human Rights launches the UNGPs+10 initiative to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) this year to chart a course of action for implementing them more broadly, it is especially timely to reconsider what the business responsibility to respect human rights entails in the context of racialized capitalism and to reflect on how businesses could respond more effectively to calls for racial justice. There are lessons to be learned from the way businesses have engaged with #BlackLivesMatter activists and the broader racial justice movement.

Recommended Citation

Erika George, Racism as a Human Rights Risk: Reconsidering the Corporate 'Responsibility to Respect' Rights , in 6 Business and Human Rights Journal 576 (2021).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/3835