Anyone surprised that protests include looting of luxury stores in Soho & elsewhere doesn't know the 1st thing about racial capitalism & luxury consumption. Racial exploitation is at the root of consumer capitalism built on the commodification of black bodies through slavery (1)
Throughout the world, consumer capitalism, shopping, & inequality are intertwined at the production & consumption ends-- from exploitative sweatshop jobs to precarious minimum wage retail jobs without benefits. Advertising is one of the whitest industries in corporate America (2)
Finally across the globe protests against neoliberal capitalism have involved looting of major symbols of consumption, most recently in Chile where it was symbols of global capitalism such as Starbuck stores and banks that were most looted (3)
Oh, and Soho shopping district is NOT New York. NYC is more than the privatized urban landscape it has become, which is another place where see the inks between racial capitalism and consumption in the form of gentrification and displacement (4)
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