Big brands should stand for the rights of all threatened communities, including the LGBTQIA+

There was a time, over 30 years ago, when some customers of retail and other businesses, including restaurants, would have threatened to stop supporting such businesses if they served black/dark-skinned humans.

A lot of campaigning, marches, policy changes, economic, political, and social sanction, all over the world - at least in much of it - have since been carried out and participated in by human rights supporters of all backgrounds to push back against such attitudes.

Then, and over hundreds of years before, it had become normalised – even written in countless pieces of apparently well-researched history, biology, and sociology literature by seemingly smart people – to consider black or dark-skinned humans as somewhat less human than their Caucasian counterparts, specifically. Slavery and apartheid practices were underpinned by and justified using such ingrained beliefs.

Discrimination hurts everyone

There is no need to use this space to go through the endless details, even anecdotal, of all the horrible things black/dark-skinned humans have had to endure, from slavery, colonialism, and apartheid years, to finally achieve relatively globalised recognition as humans.

Sadly, despite the many gains, the battle for equality continues in stubborn pockets of the world where black/dark-skinned people in sports, academia, and other areas of human endeavour continue to face all forms of discrimination and insults while they try to simply co-exist with fellow humans who do not look like them. It is even more unhelpful to see the almost complete absence of respect of black/dark skinned humans by leaders who look like them, in many black/dark-skinned-led countries around the world, especially in Africa. Some describe this phenomenon as acquired self-hatred.

But black/dark skinned humans are not the only ones to face all forms of discrimination at the hands of others who, it remains hard to fathom, consider themselves superior to them based on their looks, judgements made before the content and character of the judged are observed. Many such beliefs were cultivated and entrenched through a combination of deliberate and inadvertent socialisation practices based on religious and cultural teachings too many still inexplicably hold on to.?

Jews, Asians, Kurds, Palestinians, and many others have their arsenals of accounts of discrimination they have suffered in the hands of others over time.

Influential brands have a responsibility

In contemporary times, people who are collectively referred to as the (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, Asexual and more (LGBTQIA+) find themselves at the bitter receiving end of discrimination, harsh treatment and often violence by others as the result of their gender identity or sexual orientation.

Many people treat members of this community as if they carried transmittable diseases that could engulf the whole world, transform humans regarded as cisgender or heterosexual - especially innocent children - to become LGBTIQIA+ and, in short, leave nobody around to make new babies and ultimately collapse the very fibre of society.

This kind of ignorance drives some to believe that the existence of LGBTQIA+ people is a bigger threat to human existence on earth than is, for example, climate change. But being LGBTQIA+ is not transmittable (and it is certainly no disease). It will not lead to the reduction of human populations in the world. It is not "un-African". It is not hailing any kind of impending disaster. Nor are any number of other myths true.

Through awareness campaigns like 'Be an Ally', brands like Woolworths, Adidas, and others are doing the right thing by stepping up to express their solidarity, to educate and to demonstrate support for these threatened communities in a world that seems to be disintegrating into archaic religious, cultural, racial, and ethnic laagers that are often fuelled by opportunistic politics in many parts of Africa, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere in the world.

They’re correct to remind – even indirectly – all those communities whose forebears suffered tremendously and, in many cases, got thrown into inhumane prisons and concentration camps and lost limbs and lives because of inexplicable discrimination by others, that the response to historic pain can never be the imposition of similar pain to others.

Feeding the beast of man’s inhumanity over others should not be the right way to go. What the world needs are higher levels of civic education and empathy.????

Great brands do not just follow the trends. They chart pathways and lead. They set the trends. Armed with good plans, as Woolworths seems to be, they do not retreat into their holes when they get met with irrational resistance and threats by often ignorant and intolerant customers.

The fear of losing some business for a short while after the launch of a daring campaign can be crippling for brands that do not do so while armed with a robust communication plan.

On the other hand, armed with the certainty that those who stage an initial pushback against their daring campaign do not have facts on their side, especially when considering their ill-informed, emotion-laden arguments, brave brands but set out to inform and to educate.

Governments are failing – businesses must take a stand

As things stand, and looking at Africa alone, most countries on the continent have either already enacted discriminatory legislation to suppress the fundamental human rights of LGBTQIA+ communities or they are discussing the prospects of doing so.

They justify this based on some archaic African mores passed down from time immemorial through word-of-mouth and for which there should be no space in modern society, even modern African society.

The pains of Africa are many. There is no single challenge facing contemporary African societies whose solutions will be found in the suppression of the fundamental human rights of LGBTQIA+ and other communities.

Such campaigns, often driven by despots in place for many decades, such as the president of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, and others who stir emotions and fear to make themselves seem like uncompromising guardians of true African identity while they steal from their increasingly impoverished people, should have no place in modern society.

Those who have suffered inhumane discrimination based on their identity in the past – irrespective of where they find themselves - should be the first to 'Be an Ally', at individual and group levels, of contemporary threatened communities, instead of relying on unfounded, emotion-driven fear to fuel irrational discrimination against others.??