The impact of business on our environment [KTS]

Josh Myers is a member of the Kwame Ture Society (KTS), a student organization founded to further the development, dissemination of knowledge, and the advancement of the Africana studies discipline. Members of KTS will be regularly contributing to The Liberator.

Message to the ELC: Global Awareness on the Impact of Business on our Environment (by Josh Myers)

The Executive Leadership Council is an organization of African-American business executives. This is an entry to their 2008 Essay Contest (which I was forced to participate in). Their focus was on “going green.” I thought I’d use the space to go a step further and voice a greater concern.

Howard University has historically produced leaders in every imaginable field. From Wall Street to Accra the impact of individuals trained at the Mecca continues to be felt. In creating this institution, the Freedmen’s Bureau and many other benefactors sought the effective education of the newly freed bondsmen, and believed their acculturation into mainstream America would foster a more equitable existence. As African-American teachers and intellectuals descended on the campus in the early 20th century, the emphasis arguably shifted from individualist aspiration to a worldview that linked success to the amelioration of oppressive conditions on the community at large. In the post-civil rights era, the Great Society, and the era of Reaganomics, middle class African-Americans have been able to infiltrate systems and institutions that were historically marked whites only. Their entrance into these institutions undoubtedly injured and continues to impede their ability and/or desire to create collective spaces for the larger majority of their brothers and sisters. In order to effectively address the issue of “the impact of business on our environment”, it is endemic that we as African-American intellectual community focus not only the ecosystem in which we live but our environment. It shaping the policy of corporations, African American institutions such as the Executive Leadership Council must include in its focus the conditions of the communities with which they are inherently linked. Therefore, this essay will not only focus on the corporate responsibility to the physical environment, it will discuss the societal impact on the African community at home and abroad. In addressing an institution that is both culturally and physically linked to welfare of this community it is imperative to include this analysis going forward, as it too will professionally and personally be my focus in this time and space. In reinstituting a focus towards our inherent communality and re-inscribing our heritage as African peoples, the African-American business leaders of the future will no doubt be able to work toward the reclamation of the humanity of Africans everywhere.

As we move forward, this essay will focus on two questions posed by the Executive Leadership Council:

o What do you consider the best ways for corporations to maximize their impact towards helping improve our environment?

o As a future business leader, how will you provide leadership on environmental issues in your professional and personal life?

In addressing these questions I will apply the necessary framework of taking the viewpoint of both the social and physical impact on the environment by corporate actors and its specific effects as it relates to larger questions in society. Let us examine the first question.

In examining the majority of global corporations we can easily conclude that their control is exacted by individuals of European descent. Encoded in their European background are certain ideals with which the majority of African-American leaders in the business world have too adopted. Of these cultural ideals let us examine the idea of profit. Profit is the essence of business, in fact it is the reason business and corporations exist, in this system. The ideology that has come to characterize the Western hegemonic stance is that business cannot and will not survive without profit. It is rooted in a socio-historical idea of scarcity, which gave rise to the capitalist economic system. As Europeans sought to expand their empire, they brought about a shift from cultural systems in the spaces they expanded to and instituted a hegemonic system that the world has yet to shake. The imperialist nature of European and later American governments and corporations are driven by nothing more than the pursuit of profit. This pursuit of profit historically and continues to have pre-eminence over any other ideal, namely the cultural systems and expressions of those who do not share this pursuit. So in looking at best ways for corporations to maximize their impact towards helping improve the environment, one can easily be perplexed. For corporations to care about the environment, they must employ methods that increase their variable and fixed costs. This, for the larger majority of corporations is not an option. Thus, corporations continue and will continue to create situations where the physical environment will continue to degenerate. As long as corporations practice a hegemonic, rogue, capitalist approach, the physical environment will continue to deteriorate. As the new age of leaders enter into the executive office it will become necessary, however difficult this may be, to shift the idealism from profit to the preservation of the space in which we live. In realizing the current positions of corporations one could conclude that these two positions are possibly diametrically opposed or mutually exclusive. However, corporate executives must realize that their corporation’s profits mean nothing juxtaposed to a world that can no longer sustain its population. This necessary shift will be seamlessly instituted the sooner the individuals in power inscribe social ideals that are not entrenched in the idea of profit. The Eurocentric view of “survival of the fittest” should not include the ecosystem, for we know that it will survive and its population will devolve first. “By any means necessary” is a ludicrous position if by pursuing them it will prove world incapable of sustaining these “means”. Adam Smith’s invisible hand concept is inherently flawed juxtaposed to the global environment. For corporations to address the problems in the physical environment it is not only important, it is absolutely imperative that they denounce these hegemonic Eurocentric worldviews and adopt an ideology that is consistent with the greater global population. As African-American leaders, we are obligated to remain in the forefront of these issues and we must continue to resist indoctrination into cultural and ideological systems that only represent one-tenth of the world.

In analyzing the aforementioned Eurocentric ideals that underpin the large majority of global corporations, again we must look at the societal impact and how African-American leaders can address a needed change. Many African-American business leaders are trained in sound business principles, but miseducated in a wide variety of social issues that affect the larger polity. For years the education of blacks in the US has been geared towards this end. As business leaders, the first step is the familiarity of the social landscape in which their community lives and achieving this viewpoint from a source that actually works toward that goal. Of dire importance for all African-American leaders is a socio-political analysis unfettered by power bases but directed by internal actors. For instance, in football it is a counter-intuitive practice to learn how to play offense by studying with the defense. As African business leaders, there must be a working knowledge of the effects of their corporations on their communities and secondly a desire to pressure the corporate power bases to needed change. The pre-occupation of making a profit (European ideals) necessarily creates a void in the mind of corporate people, of the need to transform their community spaces. As corporate executives create the pressure on corporate to change, they must work to create spaces in the community where the change can ferment. Already possessing the academic knowledge in whatever field, the focus on applying it to amelioration of conditions in the community (African ideals) is what I believe is the necessary role of every African-American individual in corporate America as well as in academic institutions. Turning a blind eye or attributing false causation to these problems only further elongate the situation. Unbeknownst, to many corporate people, who follow the line of thinking that African-Americans are responsible for their own conditions or other bootstrap theories, is the clear fact that their success is ultimately still linked to a realization of an equitable African-American community. Community service, while is helpful is not an end. For corporations to participate in community service projects on Saturday, and undermine the community Monday-Friday, it will still work to suppress solutions to the problem. Global corporations will not change their ideals or viewpoints without necessary intervention and pressure from both the African-American executives as well as its employees.

In answering the question of how corporations can best maximize their impact on the environment, the clear answer is through a non-rhetoric change instituted by individuals in the African-American community who have that power. The social and physical environments are doomed to failure if corporations continue to persist in these efforts.

Leadership on environmental issues is something everyone who is endowed with the knowledge and skills that are applicable are obliged to give. For African-American leaders, this obligation is more critical. The necessity lies in the fact that our environmental and social condition is linked to the ideals that are instituted by players who are intrinsically opposed to the ideals that we hold sacred. Therefore, it is our challenge to face this opposition and proffer needed changes based on our worldview. This is not to simply posit that African-American or African culture and worldview encode the changes that are needed in the global physical environment; however the distinction between this and what the world practices now is obvious.

As a future business leader, my job will be to implement reforms geared towards changing the ideology and values of a hegemonic, rogue, capitalist system. The question then becomes how do we, as a community, and how do I, as a leader work towards this end. There are necessary steps in the building of a community response to abject conditions. The first step is the raising of consciousness. It will be my goal as a professional to raise the consciousness of whoever I influence or even come in contact with. Without a true consciousness of a situation, a solution cannot be reached. We must build spaces of consciousness, formal or informal, in the places we occupy, professional or personal. A space of consciousness is simply a discussion group or a lunch outing where issues are raised that affect that we are as people. I am currently working towards that end here at Howard University. I am apart of both formal and informal spaces of consciousness and am seeing the usefulness of these spaces. Another necessary tool that is not being used by our African-American business leaders is the formation of collective institutions to combat these issues. These institutions must be funded by the internal community and the trajectory of these spaces must be towards communitarian goals as opposed to corporate goals. Collective institutions such as think tanks, community centers, schools, and businesses need to be formed within the African-American community on an African-centered basis. If the black corporate executives create these necessary collective institutions based on upon the determination of the African-American community we will not only see change in the environmental situation but the social situation of blacks will be uplifted towards a greater humanity. This greater humanity will foster global inclusion in the decisions and ideas of the true population of the world. Again, we are inextricably linked to the conditions of people who share our culture and physical appearance. My personal life will continue to be devoted to the creating of these spaces of consciousness and the building of these collective institutions. Professionally, pressure needs to be placed on corporations and the education of the viability of new approaches need to be instituted. It is the duty of intellectually proficient African-American individuals to explore these new approaches in these collective spaces of struggle. As a future business leader, it will be my duty to help build the consciousness of the not only the community but the business intellectuals in our community as we work towards the uplift our people. It is through these types of initiatives that I will exert my leadership potential. As a leader, it is also my duty to resist becoming subject to the pitfalls that have characterized other leaders. These pitfalls include assimilation instead of integration, apathy, as well as a commitment to abstract ideals such as time and money.

Global awareness of the impact of business entails looking at the environmental from a more critical standpoint. As we, African American business leaders, assess the physical environment; let us not overlook Firestone in Liberia, Anglo-American in South Africa, the factory conditions in the Americas, and the labor conditions in Brazil. This is our duty. The fight for a humane society for Africans and the Diaspora must be fought for by individuals with a voice at the table, the black business leaders. As we fight we must remember what Harold Cruse stated in his most famous work The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual,

“The farther Negro gets from his historical antecedents in time, the more tenuous become his conceptual ties, the emptier his social conceptions, the more superficial his visions.”1

A reconnection with the past will serve to create the courage and ideals to amend problems in the present.

Related Posts: