Black business matters

THE DEATH of George Floyd has ignited a movement that has seized all of America. His legacy is the rich promise of social reform. But a cycle of inequality needs to be broken, and decades of damage remedied. That requires soul-searching for the business world, which is waking up to the fact that it, too, has a part to play and not just in America. The place where people mix most is at work. However, just four Fortune 500 firms have black chief executives and only 3% of senior American managers are black. No wonder anxious bosses have been queuing up to pledge that they will do better. Firms have an incentive to change. Research suggests that racial diversity is linked to higher profit margins and that the effect is growing. It has also become clear that a vocal share of employees and customers will shun companies that do not deal with racism.

Protests have also erupted all over the world. In some countries, such as Mexico and South Africa, the target is mainly police violence. In Brazil, where three-quarters of the 6,220 people killed by police in 2018 were black, race is a factor, too. Australians are talking about the treatment of aboriginals. Some Europeans, including Britons, used to condemning America over race, are realising that they have a problem closer to home. Several countries are agonising over public monuments. And America’s troubles are a bonus for autocratic regimes with much worse records, which have sought to make propaganda hay out of them.

Since the turn of the century big cities have shrugged off a dotcom crash, a financial crisis, terrorist attacks and political populism caused partly by resentment at their prosperity and arrogance. Could their magical run possibly be coming to an end? There are reasons to worry. Covid-19 struck the most exciting, global cities hardest, and none more so than New York. With 3% of America’s population, it has suffered 19% of deaths attributed to the disease. Yet nowhere better represented the 20th century’s love affair with the idea of the city . Hope for New York lies in the recognition that in previous reversals such cities have bounced back remarkably quickly. Their people have been drawn together more than they have been pulled asunder.

As many countries dare to contemplate life after the pandemic, some, in Latin America, for example, are still awaiting the worst. And some, in the Middle East, are already fighting a worrying resurgence of cases. Infections and deaths have jumped in Iran, where authorities thought they had tamed one of the world’s worst outbreaks. Schools have become a vector for infection in Israel. In Saudi Arabia, where the first wave never broke, doctors report an unexpected surge in hospitalisations and deaths. However, governments are reluctant to shut down again just as their economies are sputtering back to life. Stopping a second wave may be harder than was dealing with the first.

As the pandemic reduces global emissions of carbon, Brazil is a glaring exception. Its emissions will rise by 10-20% this year compared with 2018. Blame deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, which absorbs 3% of global carbon emissions. In the first four months of 2020 an estimated 1,202 square km (464 square miles) were cleared in the Brazilian Amazon, 55% more than during the same period in 2019. Nearly all deforestation in Brazil today is illegal. But it is not known which firms use suppliers that operate on illegally cleared land. Fortunately, plausible deniability is becoming harder to sustain. A forthcoming report finds that the bulk of soyabean exports from one state ravaged by illegal deforestation ends up in the hands of a few big companies.