7 ms·

I Can't Breathe

127 points by radmuzom 6y ago

dahfizz 6y ago
Pretty bold of Citi to publish something like this. I wish more companies had the balls to do something like this... Not just some "Yay equality!!" Tweet, but a real and specific stance. Kudos.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- javajosh 6y ago
  My cynical brain is working overtime finding a flaw in this statement, or the angle from which it is selfish, and it's failing. One of the things I like about it is that its personal, not a company statement. Its a risk for them, though, and I am also, reluctantly, impressed.
  - hckr_news 6y ago
    Don’t forget Citi Bank was involved one of the most racist economic foreign policy to ever exist instituted by France and the US against Haiti. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_debt_of_Haiti https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_debt_of_Haiti
- wpietri 6y ago
  I'd love to see it more. Ibram Kendi makes the point that in the US, there's not really a thing like "neutral" or "non-racist". One either supports the status quo, loudly or quietly. Or one is an anti-racist. Being "apolitical", which is what most companies pretend to be, is just a fancy way of saying, "Things are fine as they are." As press critic Jay Rosen suggests, we are all political, especially in times like these. The trick is to be political, to advocate for our own values, without politicizing things: https://pressthink.org/2020/05/you-cannot-keep-from-getting-swept-up-in-trumps-agenda-without-a-firm-grasp-on-your-own/ https://pressthink.org/2020/05/you-cannot-keep-from-getting-...
- brodouevencode 6y ago
  IDK, I’m a little more skeptical of this post. It seems more posturing than actually effecting change. CFOs have other means of doing that, in better ways than a simple blog post. This is no different than the celebrity cause du jour tweet except that it’s coming from a business leader rather than some actor/actress/pop star. Let’s see this CFO use their connections and influence to make things better in real ways.
  - rubyfan 6y ago
    what do you suggest?
    - brodouevencode 6y ago
      I would hope and can safely assume that they (Citi) have relatively decent community and governmental connections. Leverage those.
      - scarface74 6y ago
        I’m sure that the current administration will be willing participants in a forum about police conduct with respect to minorities.
      - dahfizz 6y ago
        Leverage them how? What are specific actions you think a bank can reasonably take to effect large scale social change?
  - uncletaco 6y ago
    > CFOs have other means of doing that, in better ways than a simple blog post. I believe this CFO agrees with you. Most of the "celebrity cause du jour" tweets are just that, tweets. At least at the end of this post he listed groups that he's donating to [1] NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund [2] Advancement Project [3] Color of Change This may not mean much to you, but at least he's claiming to put his money where his mouth is. [1] https://www.naacpldf.org/ https://www.naacpldf.org/ [2] https://advancementproject.org/ https://advancementproject.org/ [3] https://colorofchange.org/ https://colorofchange.org/
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
  It is. And it is hard to overstate given that in any large institution that kind of post has to go through multiple layers of bureaucracy. Doubly so in a bank. While I can't shake off the feeling that there is a cynical calculation there for some good PR, I believe it is still a good move.
  - ken 6y ago
    A C-level exec needs to pass "multiple layers of bureaucracy" to post a personal note on the company blog? That seems excessive, even for a large corporation. If you can't trust your executive management team to represent the company, what are they good for?
    - hckr_news 6y ago
      Do you have any idea how PR is managed..
      - asjfj9 6y ago
        Coming from a University research background for the last 5 years after obtaining my PhD, no I don't. Could you elaborate on this? What process would this CFO need to go through to share this possibly "contentious" post on one of the world's largest and globally recognised banks' websites?
        SSLy 6y ago
        I think this is entirely depended on the way the C*O management culture (for lack of better expression). But at least I would expect he's let know legal, CEO, and the PR officer before.
        dahfizz 6y ago
        At a minimum it has been reviewed by the PR / marketing manager, legal team, and more than likely the CEO. There was also a lengthy editing process. A large company doesn't release anything without a review like this, no matter how mundane. You can bet they will double down when discussing sensitive social issues.
- stOneskull 6y ago
  it seems like PR for usury to me. there's been quite a bit of 'bankers are nice guys' propaganda since the coronu.
  - hckr_news 6y ago
    Perhaps scared of the mass uprisings, people are angry, and frustrated and this situation could explode in the next few weeks. Interesting that you used the word usury. You never really see that word used to refer to predatory loans except in an Islamic context.
    - stOneskull 6y ago
      many have seen the power of usury through time. most declare it hurts people and is very destructive so should not be practiced, some saw the power and decided to use it. 'lend unto other nations, and you shall rule over those nations'
eli_gottlieb 6y ago
Some information on the pressures driving statements like these, beyond the writer's personal impetus: https://www.corp-research.org/citigroup https://www.corp-research.org/citigroup
scarface74 6y ago
When it comes to speaking for racial justice and equality for LGBTQ, private corporations have been much more on the side of the angels than the government. The same government that wants to shut down Twitter.
- rjkennedy98 6y ago
  You mean the same corporations that got bailed out by the us tax payer, had billions of dollars of fines, and should have executives in prison for misconduct. Yeah they are the ones we should look up to /s
  - scarface74 6y ago
    You’ll have to excuse me if I’m a lot less concerned about white collar crime than I am about a government that systematically targets people who look like me. But speaking of which, the government is also run by a President who actually quoted a segregationist governor about how to deal with protestors. As far as crimes, he also was fined for both running a fake charity and a fake “university” and members of Congress basically got away with insider trading pre-Covid. But your statement kind of demonstrates the problem. Unarmed Black people are getting killed by police and it getting covered up by corrupt government. When I have to worry about my son who has grown up all of his life in the burbs being seen as a threat because he is a big Black guy living in a predominantly White city, I really don’t give a damn about a corrupt CEO compared to a corrupt justice system.
- eli_gottlieb 6y ago
  Those private corporations are the ones buying that government.
realtalk_sp 6y ago
I wish he'd gone a little further in condemning the rioting. It would have been the courageous thing to do. The rioting is a mistake. It will not change hearts and minds. It will not undo the problems endemic to police forces. In fact, it may very well exacerbate them. The problematic archetype is the bigoted cop who's drunk with power and behaves more like an animal operating on instinct than a thinking human. These people, in the collective, are irrational, aggressive, and reactionary. They also hide behind authority and a convenient veneer in the "rule of law". We also are now seeing that there may be many of more of them (and many more enablers of them still) than we thought. And it is exactly these people who will feel vindicated and emboldened in the face of the rioting currently underway. If we're not careful, it may also give them a pretext to resort to even more horrible tactics in the future. Increased surveillance of political organizers and low-income neighborhoods, more military weaponry at their disposal, laxer guidelines around 'use of force'. The current trajectory is not the way. We need to use the system of governance we have at our disposal to try and fix this. It's the harder but also only truly effective means of recourse society has at its disposal.
- glangdale 6y ago
  Maybe with only a finite amount of attention at his disposal, he opted to focus on the cause of the rioting? I know there's a whole bunch of galaxy-brain takes on this about how counterproductive the rioting is, but it's not like cops have needed any pretext to resort to "more horrible tactics" already.
  - realtalk_sp 6y ago
    Virtue signaling the obvious is a poor "return on attention", to borrow your way of looking at it. My point at the top was that it's the easy thing to do.
    - glangdale 6y ago
      Perhaps; it's not clear to me that making a statement of "the obvious" is necessarily an "easy" thing to do from the heights of corporate America. Incidentally, the overuse of "virtue signalling" to describe other people taking positions that they presumably sincerely believe in and wish to share with each other is incredibly snide, and if you don't want to come off like an asshole, you should stop. It's become one of those phrases that seems more like a pointless tribal "tic" (like "political correctness").
kpmcc 6y ago
How many people did they foreclose upon during the mortgage crisis? How many people have they extracted usurious amounts of interest from? How many people have they lured into debt and deceitful loans? This is a large corporation with as much a hand in perpetuating systemic inequality as any other large corporation. Moreso because it exists in the financial sector. Calling out inequality and donating funds generated from parasitic practices is not enough. Let's talk about debt forgiveness, defunding the carceral state and dismantling other structures of oppression.
- gumby 6y ago
  That was 12 years ago. Perhaps they have learned from it? (I don't believe they have learned anything, but this tiny chink in the armor suggests that at least I'll give them the benefit of the doubt on this blog post.)
dingo_bat 6y ago
Lol imagine this guy saying something when a white person was killed in the same way in 2016: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/investigations/2019/07/31/you-re-gonna-kill-me-dallas-police-body-cam-footage-reveals-the-final-minutes-of-tony-timpa-s-life/ https://www.dallasnews.com/news/investigations/2019/07/31/yo... The fact that he didn't shows that he is the one who is racist.
BLKNSLVR 6y ago
"Despite the progress the United States has made, Black Americans are too often denied basic privileges that others take for granted. I am not talking about the privileges of wealth, education or job opportunities. I'm talking about fundamental human and civil rights and the dignity and respect that comes with them. I'm talking about something as mundane as going for a jog." What progress? This song was written in 1966. It could have been written this morning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFNkacckLBU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFNkacckLBU We have made technological progress, which has brought it's own benefits, but that may be more in the form of keeping us busy / distracted; pointing our genetically evolved anger and biases towards the Internet rather than the real world. But progress within humanity itself? There can't be progress if there are no consequences, or if the consequences are escaped too frequently, or if the blame is laid upon the symptoms and not the cause: Rioting and looting is anti-social and illegal, yes, but property destruction isn't the same ball park as murder. Focus on the cause, and the symptoms disappear. But then it's impossible to provide any absolute answer. There's overwhelming beauty in humanity. The good ones are forgiving, and the bad ones will take advantage, and this takes us into game theory. The only way the game changes is if the rules are changed to have more / worse consequences for the bad actors; better systems to ensure the enforcement of these consequences. Bad elements of humanity will persist despite all this; we'll be colonising Mars in parallel with children being brought up to hate anything unfamiliar, female circumcision will still be law in some countries, and there will still governments that censor and censure even minor dissent, flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, holocaust deniers. I don't know if the US is making progress in race relations. That song from 1966 says a resounding no. I don't know if the political will exists within those with the political power to change things. US politics (only because that's the current example) is like my parents' fashion sense: stuck in their favourite era and showing no signs of even the consideration of modernising. I don't know the answer, and it's maddening and depressing. But it's ignorable, for me, and therein lies the cause of the lack of political will: the symptoms aren't bad enough warrant the cost of seeing the doctor. School shootings once a month aren't bad enough to change gun laws; one dead black man doesn't have anywhere near the political capital of a dozen dead children. For there to be change, the symptoms have to be more extreme, and they have to persist. History says so. Technologically, this is 2020. Sociologically this might as well be 1966.
29athrowaway 6y ago
This investigation will likely end in nothing. This will be delayed until news coverage stop, then everyone can continue their life business as usual. The cops that choked Eric Gardner to death are all free right now.
- masonic 6y ago
  The cops that choked Eric Gardner to death are all free right now. Despite Loretta Lynch hand-picking the DOJ investigating agents, she declined to pursue civil rights charges. (Remember, that was the mechanism used by GHW Bush's DOJ to successfully prosecute Powell and Koon in the Rodney King beating after the Simi Valley jury acquittal.)
alex_s93 6y ago
>I'm talking about something as mundane as going for a jog. This needs to stop. Arbery wasn't a model citizen working on his fitness. He was a habitual criminal caught in the act, who desperately tried to murder a concerned local rather than face justice. And, if he had succeeded, we wouldn't be hearing anything about this incident - the McMichaels would be just a couple more statistics. In some subcultures, I fear the "jogger" meme has become their reality.
wrngthnk 6y ago
According to NYTimes, preliminary results from an autopsy "revealed no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation." https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/us/derek-chauvin-criminal-complaint.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/us/derek-chauvin-criminal...
loopz 6y ago
Police stood by and watch someone presumably getting murdered. Aside from also heart condition present, society can't tolerate bullying any longer. Grow some spine, even if they break you.
davidg109 6y ago
I admit, I was cringing when I saw the Citi logo at first thinking they would somehow pivot this into some marketing ploy. Good on Citi for taking a firm stand and calling on some organizations people can donate to, which I personally hadn’t heard of until I read the post.

127 points by radmuzom 6y ago

Pretty bold of Citi to publish something like this. I wish more companies had the balls to do something like this... Not just some "Yay equality!!" Tweet, but a real and specific stance. Kudos.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
javajosh 6y ago
My cynical brain is working overtime finding a flaw in this statement, or the angle from which it is selfish, and it's failing. One of the things I like about it is that its personal, not a company statement. Its a risk for them, though, and I am also, reluctantly, impressed.
- hckr_news 6y ago
  Don’t forget Citi Bank was involved one of the most racist economic foreign policy to ever exist instituted by France and the US against Haiti. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_debt_of_Haiti https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_debt_of_Haiti
wpietri 6y ago
I'd love to see it more. Ibram Kendi makes the point that in the US, there's not really a thing like "neutral" or "non-racist". One either supports the status quo, loudly or quietly. Or one is an anti-racist. Being "apolitical", which is what most companies pretend to be, is just a fancy way of saying, "Things are fine as they are." As press critic Jay Rosen suggests, we are all political, especially in times like these. The trick is to be political, to advocate for our own values, without politicizing things: https://pressthink.org/2020/05/you-cannot-keep-from-getting-swept-up-in-trumps-agenda-without-a-firm-grasp-on-your-own/ https://pressthink.org/2020/05/you-cannot-keep-from-getting-...
brodouevencode 6y ago
IDK, I’m a little more skeptical of this post. It seems more posturing than actually effecting change. CFOs have other means of doing that, in better ways than a simple blog post. This is no different than the celebrity cause du jour tweet except that it’s coming from a business leader rather than some actor/actress/pop star. Let’s see this CFO use their connections and influence to make things better in real ways.
- rubyfan 6y ago
  what do you suggest?
  - brodouevencode 6y ago
    I would hope and can safely assume that they (Citi) have relatively decent community and governmental connections. Leverage those.
    - scarface74 6y ago
      I’m sure that the current administration will be willing participants in a forum about police conduct with respect to minorities.
    - dahfizz 6y ago
      Leverage them how? What are specific actions you think a bank can reasonably take to effect large scale social change?
- uncletaco 6y ago
  > CFOs have other means of doing that, in better ways than a simple blog post. I believe this CFO agrees with you. Most of the "celebrity cause du jour" tweets are just that, tweets. At least at the end of this post he listed groups that he's donating to [1] NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund [2] Advancement Project [3] Color of Change This may not mean much to you, but at least he's claiming to put his money where his mouth is. [1] https://www.naacpldf.org/ https://www.naacpldf.org/ [2] https://advancementproject.org/ https://advancementproject.org/ [3] https://colorofchange.org/ https://colorofchange.org/
A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
It is. And it is hard to overstate given that in any large institution that kind of post has to go through multiple layers of bureaucracy. Doubly so in a bank. While I can't shake off the feeling that there is a cynical calculation there for some good PR, I believe it is still a good move.
- ken 6y ago
  A C-level exec needs to pass "multiple layers of bureaucracy" to post a personal note on the company blog? That seems excessive, even for a large corporation. If you can't trust your executive management team to represent the company, what are they good for?
  - hckr_news 6y ago
    Do you have any idea how PR is managed..
    - asjfj9 6y ago
      Coming from a University research background for the last 5 years after obtaining my PhD, no I don't. Could you elaborate on this? What process would this CFO need to go through to share this possibly "contentious" post on one of the world's largest and globally recognised banks' websites?
      - SSLy 6y ago
        I think this is entirely depended on the way the C*O management culture (for lack of better expression). But at least I would expect he's let know legal, CEO, and the PR officer before.
      - dahfizz 6y ago
        At a minimum it has been reviewed by the PR / marketing manager, legal team, and more than likely the CEO. There was also a lengthy editing process. A large company doesn't release anything without a review like this, no matter how mundane. You can bet they will double down when discussing sensitive social issues.
stOneskull 6y ago
it seems like PR for usury to me. there's been quite a bit of 'bankers are nice guys' propaganda since the coronu.
- hckr_news 6y ago
  Perhaps scared of the mass uprisings, people are angry, and frustrated and this situation could explode in the next few weeks. Interesting that you used the word usury. You never really see that word used to refer to predatory loans except in an Islamic context.
  - stOneskull 6y ago
    many have seen the power of usury through time. most declare it hurts people and is very destructive so should not be practiced, some saw the power and decided to use it. 'lend unto other nations, and you shall rule over those nations'

eli_gottlieb 6y ago

Some information on the pressures driving statements like these, beyond the writer's personal impetus: https://www.corp-research.org/citigroup https://www.corp-research.org/citigroup

scarface74 6y ago

When it comes to speaking for racial justice and equality for LGBTQ, private corporations have been much more on the side of the angels than the government. The same government that wants to shut down Twitter.

rjkennedy98 6y ago
You mean the same corporations that got bailed out by the us tax payer, had billions of dollars of fines, and should have executives in prison for misconduct. Yeah they are the ones we should look up to /s
- scarface74 6y ago
  You’ll have to excuse me if I’m a lot less concerned about white collar crime than I am about a government that systematically targets people who look like me. But speaking of which, the government is also run by a President who actually quoted a segregationist governor about how to deal with protestors. As far as crimes, he also was fined for both running a fake charity and a fake “university” and members of Congress basically got away with insider trading pre-Covid. But your statement kind of demonstrates the problem. Unarmed Black people are getting killed by police and it getting covered up by corrupt government. When I have to worry about my son who has grown up all of his life in the burbs being seen as a threat because he is a big Black guy living in a predominantly White city, I really don’t give a damn about a corrupt CEO compared to a corrupt justice system.
eli_gottlieb 6y ago
Those private corporations are the ones buying that government.

realtalk_sp 6y ago

I wish he'd gone a little further in condemning the rioting. It would have been the courageous thing to do. The rioting is a mistake. It will not change hearts and minds. It will not undo the problems endemic to police forces. In fact, it may very well exacerbate them. The problematic archetype is the bigoted cop who's drunk with power and behaves more like an animal operating on instinct than a thinking human. These people, in the collective, are irrational, aggressive, and reactionary. They also hide behind authority and a convenient veneer in the "rule of law". We also are now seeing that there may be many of more of them (and many more enablers of them still) than we thought. And it is exactly these people who will feel vindicated and emboldened in the face of the rioting currently underway. If we're not careful, it may also give them a pretext to resort to even more horrible tactics in the future. Increased surveillance of political organizers and low-income neighborhoods, more military weaponry at their disposal, laxer guidelines around 'use of force'. The current trajectory is not the way. We need to use the system of governance we have at our disposal to try and fix this. It's the harder but also only truly effective means of recourse society has at its disposal.

glangdale 6y ago
Maybe with only a finite amount of attention at his disposal, he opted to focus on the cause of the rioting? I know there's a whole bunch of galaxy-brain takes on this about how counterproductive the rioting is, but it's not like cops have needed any pretext to resort to "more horrible tactics" already.
- realtalk_sp 6y ago
  Virtue signaling the obvious is a poor "return on attention", to borrow your way of looking at it. My point at the top was that it's the easy thing to do.
  - glangdale 6y ago
    Perhaps; it's not clear to me that making a statement of "the obvious" is necessarily an "easy" thing to do from the heights of corporate America. Incidentally, the overuse of "virtue signalling" to describe other people taking positions that they presumably sincerely believe in and wish to share with each other is incredibly snide, and if you don't want to come off like an asshole, you should stop. It's become one of those phrases that seems more like a pointless tribal "tic" (like "political correctness").

kpmcc 6y ago

How many people did they foreclose upon during the mortgage crisis? How many people have they extracted usurious amounts of interest from? How many people have they lured into debt and deceitful loans? This is a large corporation with as much a hand in perpetuating systemic inequality as any other large corporation. Moreso because it exists in the financial sector. Calling out inequality and donating funds generated from parasitic practices is not enough. Let's talk about debt forgiveness, defunding the carceral state and dismantling other structures of oppression.

gumby 6y ago
That was 12 years ago. Perhaps they have learned from it? (I don't believe they have learned anything, but this tiny chink in the armor suggests that at least I'll give them the benefit of the doubt on this blog post.)

dingo_bat 6y ago

Lol imagine this guy saying something when a white person was killed in the same way in 2016: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/investigations/2019/07/31/you-re-gonna-kill-me-dallas-police-body-cam-footage-reveals-the-final-minutes-of-tony-timpa-s-life/ https://www.dallasnews.com/news/investigations/2019/07/31/yo... The fact that he didn't shows that he is the one who is racist.

BLKNSLVR 6y ago

"Despite the progress the United States has made, Black Americans are too often denied basic privileges that others take for granted. I am not talking about the privileges of wealth, education or job opportunities. I'm talking about fundamental human and civil rights and the dignity and respect that comes with them. I'm talking about something as mundane as going for a jog." What progress? This song was written in 1966. It could have been written this morning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFNkacckLBU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFNkacckLBU We have made technological progress, which has brought it's own benefits, but that may be more in the form of keeping us busy / distracted; pointing our genetically evolved anger and biases towards the Internet rather than the real world. But progress within humanity itself? There can't be progress if there are no consequences, or if the consequences are escaped too frequently, or if the blame is laid upon the symptoms and not the cause: Rioting and looting is anti-social and illegal, yes, but property destruction isn't the same ball park as murder. Focus on the cause, and the symptoms disappear. But then it's impossible to provide any absolute answer. There's overwhelming beauty in humanity. The good ones are forgiving, and the bad ones will take advantage, and this takes us into game theory. The only way the game changes is if the rules are changed to have more / worse consequences for the bad actors; better systems to ensure the enforcement of these consequences. Bad elements of humanity will persist despite all this; we'll be colonising Mars in parallel with children being brought up to hate anything unfamiliar, female circumcision will still be law in some countries, and there will still governments that censor and censure even minor dissent, flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, holocaust deniers. I don't know if the US is making progress in race relations. That song from 1966 says a resounding no. I don't know if the political will exists within those with the political power to change things. US politics (only because that's the current example) is like my parents' fashion sense: stuck in their favourite era and showing no signs of even the consideration of modernising. I don't know the answer, and it's maddening and depressing. But it's ignorable, for me, and therein lies the cause of the lack of political will: the symptoms aren't bad enough warrant the cost of seeing the doctor. School shootings once a month aren't bad enough to change gun laws; one dead black man doesn't have anywhere near the political capital of a dozen dead children. For there to be change, the symptoms have to be more extreme, and they have to persist. History says so. Technologically, this is 2020. Sociologically this might as well be 1966.

29athrowaway 6y ago

This investigation will likely end in nothing. This will be delayed until news coverage stop, then everyone can continue their life business as usual. The cops that choked Eric Gardner to death are all free right now.

masonic 6y ago
The cops that choked Eric Gardner to death are all free right now. Despite Loretta Lynch hand-picking the DOJ investigating agents, she declined to pursue civil rights charges. (Remember, that was the mechanism used by GHW Bush's DOJ to successfully prosecute Powell and Koon in the Rodney King beating after the Simi Valley jury acquittal.)

alex_s93 6y ago

>I'm talking about something as mundane as going for a jog. This needs to stop. Arbery wasn't a model citizen working on his fitness. He was a habitual criminal caught in the act, who desperately tried to murder a concerned local rather than face justice. And, if he had succeeded, we wouldn't be hearing anything about this incident - the McMichaels would be just a couple more statistics. In some subcultures, I fear the "jogger" meme has become their reality.

wrngthnk 6y ago

According to NYTimes, preliminary results from an autopsy "revealed no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation." https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/us/derek-chauvin-criminal-complaint.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/us/derek-chauvin-criminal...

loopz 6y ago

Police stood by and watch someone presumably getting murdered. Aside from also heart condition present, society can't tolerate bullying any longer. Grow some spine, even if they break you.

davidg109 6y ago

I admit, I was cringing when I saw the Citi logo at first thinking they would somehow pivot this into some marketing ploy. Good on Citi for taking a firm stand and calling on some organizations people can donate to, which I personally hadn’t heard of until I read the post.