The Connected Capitalism of the DWL: Let's Have a Coke Party

Tea Party is so 1770s.

Coke Party will be the new vogue in the coming years.

Coca-Cola: The Official Soft-Drink of BRA

While reading Inside Coca-Cola: A CEO's Life Story of Building the World's Most Popular Brand by former Coke CEO Neville Isdell, a story from the chapter “Connected Capitalism” stood out and slapped me clear across the face.

It tells the story of a biracial gathering of Atlanta’s civic and religious leaders to honor Martin Luther King’s receiving of the Nobel Peace Prize. To be held in late January 1965, Coke patriarch Robert Woodruff “politely persuaded” Atlanta’s white business community to attend the event, for the event would have represented a “worldwide embarrassment for Coca-Cola and for Atlanta” had they no-showed:

The night of the dinner, King delivered to a standing-room only, integrated audience what would become one of his most famous quotes: “If people of good will of the white South fail to act now, history will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the vitriolic words and then the violent actions of the bad people but the appalling silence of and indifference of the good people.”


All segments of Atlanta society were there: churches and synagogues, government, private universities and business, all working together, as [Sam] Massell (Atlanta’s last white mayor) recalled, for their “mutual interest.” That is Connected Capitalism. (p. 213-215)

Connected Capitalism.

A perfect term for the actions of the Managerial Elite (Disingenuous White Liberals in perfectly tailored suits) who preside over Black-Run America, who no longer have any allegiance to a nation-state (any) that they have so busily deconstructed.

No Mr. King, history will not judge those “people of good will” you excoriated to get on their knees so as to allow Black people to jump on their backs, pocketing the loose change that falls from this noble gesture in the process.

After all, isn’t that what Connected Capitalism is?

We saw what Connected Capitalism was capable of in 1981, when the then stewards of Coca-Cola capitulated to Jesse Jackson (one of MLK’s right-hand men) over a threatened boycott. The late Lewis Grizzard, a columnist for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, wrote these words on the surrender:

When the Rev. Jesse Jackson of Operation PUSH took on Coca-Cola, I figured he had written a check his admittedly considerable power as a black leader couldn’t cash.

You might take on 7Up, but Coke is the big dog in the soft drink market. I fully expected Coke to flip Jesse Jackson off its back with one sweep of its powerful tail.


Either I underestimated Jackson or I overestimated Coca-Cola. The word came the other day that Coke had made a $30 million deal with Jackson to do more business with blacks.

Coke denied that Jackson’s threat to lead a black boycott of its products had anything to do with the deal. “We were going to do this all the time; we’re just no getting to around to it,” said a cokesperson.

Sure.

What Jesse Jackson did was as simple as a liquor-store heist: He blackmailed a huge American company into giving him what he wanted. Meet my demands, or I’ll snap my fingers and my loyal subjects won’t even say the words “Coca-Cola” until I tell them to.

What Jackson did to Coke was essentially the same: Come across, or else.

Coca-Cola kept paying Mr. Jackson tribute and sought his advice during the 1999-2000 racial discrimination suit against the company. The New York Times reported on November 17, 2000:

In the largest settlement ever in a racial discrimination case, the Coca-Cola Company agreed yesterday to pay more than $156 million to resolve a federal lawsuit brought by black employees.

The settlement also mandates that the company make sweeping changes, costing an additional $36 million, and grants broad monitoring powers to a panel of outsiders -- an unusual concession in employment discrimination cases.


The lawsuit, filed in April 1999, accused Coke of erecting a corporate hierarchy in which black employees were clustered at the bottom of the pay scale, averaging $26,000 a year less than white workers. As redress, the settlement provides as many as 2,000 current and former black salaried employees with an average of $40,000 in cash, while the four plaintiffs whose names are on the lawsuit will receive up to $300,000 apiece.


''It sets a new standard for corporate settlements,'' said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, referring to Coke's agreement to tie executives' salaries to how well the company meets its diversity goals. ''The internal cultures of companies have been built on patterns of exclusion based on gender and race. This is a step in the right direction.''
Despite the short-term costs, a negligible amount for a company with about $20 billion in sales last year, Coke officials and plaintiffs' lawyers characterized the settlement as a ''business necessity,'' particularly because minorities in the United States drink a disproportionate share of its sodas.

''This company had a credibility gap between the image that it cultivated with the African-American community on the outside and how African-Americans were treated on the inside,'' said Cyrus Mehri, a plaintiffs' lawyer who negotiated a $140 million cash settlement in a discrimination suit against Texaco in 1996.

While efforts by disgruntled Coke employees in Atlanta to start a boycott never crimped the company's bottom line, the lawsuit has troubled Coke for 18 months and, company officials acknowledge, tarnished the image of one of the world's best-known brands.

History will judge that the greatest tragedy of that period of social transition that Mr. King bemoaned was the capitulation of Connected Capitalism to BRA. Coca-Cola fell in line behind the pied-piper who touted a society where “content of character” mattered above all else; but a society based firmly on the promotion of Blackness was erected in its place.

Well, that, and the promotion of whites to the Managerial Elite who bow in delirious obsequiousness to this objective.

David Greising wrote about these types of white people in his biography of former Coke CEO Roberto Goizueta, in the book I'd Like the World to Buy a Coke: The Life and Leadership of Roberto Goizueta.

The wasted capital that could have gone to building infrastructure, research and development, cure diseases, and further space exploration instead was diverted to uplift a segment of the American population who remade Detroit into their image.

And Birmingham. And Memphis. And Baltimore. And Cleveland. And New Orleans.

Atlanta, the City too Busy to Hate, represents a gaping Black Hole that continually sucks in more and more resources and misplaced capital that is diverted from projects that could see an actual Return on Investment (ROI). In fact, a sales tax referendum on July 31 will see if a 10-year plan to collect taxes from 10-counties passes, which would result only in marginally reducing the worst traffic in America; all due to white people trying to escape Black people.

The ecological impact to the continued need to build new suburbs (and infrastructure to support this in terms of roads, sewage facilities, etc.) to escape the ever-widening reach of the Black Hole that is Atlanta is incalculable. The misplaced capital and investments (and opportunity costs) involved in this process fall in the same category.

No Dr. King, it is the appalling silence of and indifference of the good people now to the totality of the failure of BRA and the horrible consequences of those “people of good will of the white South” who did act on your behalf that history will record as the great tragedy.

We could have been on Mars, but instead, we have Detroit, circa 2012, and hundreds of other US cities well on their way to being Detroit-ed.

They represent the Sunk Cost of BRA; the ruins of Detroit represent actual manifestation of the good will of the white South fail to act now.

This is the real legacy of the Civil Rights movement.

This is the shame of “people of good will of the white South” whose legacy is the complete collapse of Birmingham and the turning of Atlanta into a Black Mecca that has been completely subsidized by white tax-dollars.

Freedom Failed.

Tea Party is so 1770s.

Coke Party will be the new vogue in the coming years.