White spaces: how marketing actors (re)produce marketplace inequities for Black consumers

ABSTRACT

This paper interrogates how racially discriminatory practices by real estate agents, lenders, and retailers produce and reproduce marketplace inequities for Black consumers. Drawing on Critical Race Theory (CRT) and interdisciplinary research, the paper reveals the normalisation and permanence of racism in practices and policies aimed at protecting White spaces. Marketing actors racially discriminatory approaches have morphed from overt to more covert strategies, but they persist in spite of regulatory changes. Impacts on Black consumers have created profound marketplace inequities including constricted and restricted choices, devalued housing assets, housing segregation, retail discrimination, restricted and expensive access to credit, wealth gaps, and retail desertification. When viewed through a CRT lens, we conclude that in the American context, the invisible hand of the market is not invisible. Rather, it is White. The study draws implications for practice, and urgently calls for more research to unmask racism in marketing – because Black Lives Matter!

KEYWORDS:

• Race and sub-culture
• racial segregation
• critical marketing
• marketplace discrimination
• Critical Race Theory
• shopping while Black
• Black Lives Matter

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of our manuscript and their many insightful, detailed, helpful and encouraging comments and suggestions. We also wish to thank our ancestors who survived the brutality of the Middle Passage, hundreds of years of slavery and systemic racism, to deliver us to this day.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-walmart-mississippi-flag-idUSKBN23V04Y.

2. https://abcnews.go.com/US/nordstrom-rack-president-apologises-black-youths-wrongly-accused/story?id = 55,011,518 .

3. https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/02/us/starbucks-arrest-agreements/index.html.

4. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/05/sephora-beauty-store-fashion-diversity-training.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

June N. P. Francis

June N. P. Francis (LLB, MBA, PhD) is the Co-Founder of The Co-Laboratorio Project and Director of the Institute for Diaspora Research and Engagement at Simon Fraser University, where she is an Associate Professor in the Beedie School of Business. She is also Chair of The Hogan's Alley Society’s Board of Directors, an organization whose mission is to advance the social, political, economic and cultural well-being of people of African Descent. Her research and practice focus on diversity, inter-culturality, leadership, non-traditional intellectual property law and participatory engagement approaches with vulnerable and excluded groups. An award-winning professor, she has been recognized for her service to the community by The City of Vancouver, the Beedie School of Business, The National Congress of Black Women and was named to Chatelaine magazine 2020 list of Black Women Trailblazer for her contributions to addressing systemic racism.

Joshua Tecumseh F. Robertson

Joshua Tecumseh F. Robertson (BA) is a candidate for the Masters of Arts degree in Global Studies at Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany, and was a founding board member of the Hogan’s Alley Society, an organization that works to redress the displacement of people of African Descent and to advance their social, political, economic and cultural well-being. Joshua’s research, advocacy and consultancy focus on the centering of racialized communities in city planning, alternative economic models of inclusion, social enterprise development and redress based urban design principals. A creative and musician, Joshua’s cultural community organizing work has evolved around daylighting the issues of Black artists and Black art accessibility. Joshua is most passionate around issues at the intersection of race and space.