Black Workers Need Public Employment, Not Black Capitalism
Public unionized employment is the backbone of the black middle class. Racial justice advocates should direct resources to fighting Elon Musk’s attacks on good union jobs — not toward protecting DEI initiatives focused on black entrepreneurship.
President Everett Kelley of the American Federation of Government Employees speaks at a protest against firings of federal employees during a rally to defend federal workers in Washington, DC, on February 11, 2025. (Nathan Posner / Anadolu via Getty Images)
In late January, civil rights activist Al Sharpton led one hundred members of his National Action Network in a “buy-in” at a Costco store. Their aim was to demonstrate support for the corporation’s continuation of its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies, which had come under broad attack by the incoming Trump administration.
It was jarring to see shopping at a major corporation portrayed as a progressive political act. Even worse, Costco was in a live contract dispute with the Teamsters union.
Since then, DEI has emerged as a focal point of anti-Trump mobilization in black political and activist circles. Calls to boycott major companies that have reneged on their DEI policies have circulated rapidly on social media and text chains. The push led to the “economic blackout” on February 28, which called on consumers to boycott major companies. While the National Action Network didn’t endorse this specific day of action, they announced plans for a DEI-related boycott to begin in April.
The efficacy of this strategy is debatable. Boycotts tend to work better when the target is more narrow and when they’re sustained long enough to inflict real economic pain. In the case of the action on February 28, there was no real way to track how many people participated or what financial impact they had.
But however valid the critiques of the strategy, the impulse toward collective action is a good one that should be encouraged. The deeper issue is the ideology motivating this activity. With all the threats facing black communities in this moment, especially the attacks on the public sector workforce, an emphasis on defending DEI is a misdirection of energy.
Part of what makes this conversation difficult is the varying conceptions of what DEI even is. It has come to mean anything from anti-bias training to teaching black history. But a major focus of the current mobilizations is supporting black entrepreneurship and small businesses. This conception of racial justice subscribes to a deeply flawed trickle-down economics model and erases the deep class divides that exist among black people.
In reality, many more black Americans are impacted by the loss of federal jobs than by the attacks on the specific diversity practices at large corporations, especially those focused on promoting black business owners. If we care about racial justice, we need to defend those good union jobs from disappearing.
Trickle-Down Black Activism
In January, Target ended a program that aimed to spend $2 billion on black-owned businesses and feature their products in its stores. In response, Reverend Jamal Bryant from New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Georgia has called for a forty-day boycott to coincide with Lent. Black customers are also being asked to sell any Target stock they own.
On the campaign’s website, a “Black Wall Street Ticker” supposedly shows in real time the amount of “community spending” that has been redirected. In addition to restoring the $2 billion pledge to black businesses, other demands on Target include depositing $250 million in black banks and creating “pipeline community centers at ten Historically Black Colleges and Universities to teach retail business at every level.”
While this effort is likely well-intentioned, its fundamental pillars break down upon analysis. I’m sure many supporters of this effort would avowedly disagree with the trickle-down theory of economics made popular by former president Ronald Reagan, which posited that if more wealth went to the top, it would eventually sprinkle to everyone else. But the ethos of the Target campaign differs very little.
The project of rallying black communities to support black businesses rests on the idea that if these business owners make money, black people as a whole will share in the economic benefits. But especially in the case of small businesses with small profit margins, it’s very unlikely profits are meaningfully reinvested toward “community” ends. And what if a black business owner lives in a predominantly white community? Problems like these are rarely discussed, let alone adequately addressed.
Further, this line of thinking serves to flatten the very real class differentiation that exists among the black population. The overwhelming majority of black people (as with people of any race) are working-class and will never be entrepreneurs or small business owners. In fact, the class divide among blacks is even larger than that of whites. When a black autoworker loses their job, there is no reservoir of collective black wealth they can tap into for help, no matter how well the black-owned business on their street is doing.
The idea of “black buying power” is another layer to this kind of activism. Again, this concept imagines the black population as a monolithic bloc with unified interests. Political engagement is reduced to the ability to choose one business enterprise over another. The endgame poses no real threat to socioeconomic inequality. Indeed, it’s so harmless that Richard Nixon himself embraced the idea of “black capitalism” instead of economic redistribution.
The Backbone of the Black Middle Class
Meanwhile, another struggle is taking place that has a far bigger impact on black workers and their communities: the attack on federal workers and their agencies. We should be all in on this fight to save our country from an oligarchic coup — for many reasons, one of which is that the outcome will have profound implications for racial justice.
With over three million employees, the US federal government is the largest employer in the country. Twenty percent of federal workers are black, making them overrepresented in federal employment. With roughly 33 percent union density, jobs in the public sector are far more likely to have higher wages, good benefits, and strong job security. Black workers in the public sector make almost 25 percent more in wages than their counterparts in the private sector, and have higher rates of home ownership.
Black federal employment is closely tied to civil rights history. Antidiscrimination law has always been easier to enforce in the public sector, and this was heightened by Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which addressed discrimination in federal contracts. Black workers gained a foothold just as federal employment was vastly expanding in the 1960s and ’70s.
But now all of this is at risk. Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has launched a relentless attack aimed at demoralizing federal workers and gutting vital agencies that serve working people. The attempted firing of thousands of probationary employees was just the first step; the endgame is to see even more dramatic reductions of the federal workforce and as much privatization as possible.
If Musk’s vision became a full-blown reality, it would be an absolute economic catastrophe for black workers. Public unionized employment has long been the backbone of the black middle class, not entrepreneurship. And it’s not just about the workers; black communities are beneficiaries of life-sustaining programs like Social Security, Medicaid, and the Veterans Administration.
Defending these good jobs should be a priority for anyone who cares about racial inequality. Black workers have a special stake in this fight, but the dangers are profound and wide-reaching enough that they should unite us all.
It’s tempting to ask, “Why can’t we do both?” Many will argue that we can focus on supporting black business development and fighting DOGE’s cuts at the same time. But Musk and his wealthy allies have far more wealth and resources and are deploying them at rapid speed. The task before us of uniting the broadest possible coalition as a counterforce to the superrich is immense.
Meetings, rallies, phone banks, and town halls take more time and effort than consumer activism or social media posting. But there’s no other shortcut if we want to advance the cause of racial justice.