| It's often said that the highest form of disagreement is to take on someone's best arguments, not their worst ones. When Victor Luckerson set out, roughly a year after George Floyd's murder, to evaluate the pledges of money and support for Black America that tech companies scrambled to make in the summer of 2020, he decided to examine one of the most serious commitments: the one made by Netflix. The result is a moving, even exciting, account of how the stars aligned for a huge company to do the right thing. In committing to invest 2 percent of its cash reserves in financial institutions and organizations that directly support Black communities, Netflix said yes to an inspired proposal from a mid-level executive who had been doing exhaustive research on Black history and finance in his spare time. Luckerson's story is also a stirring portrait of the ground-level systems—the neighborhoods, the banks, the financial structures—that Netflix is trying to lift up with a share of its wealth. But finally, it's a clear-eyed look at the limits of any system that places too much faith in voluntary corporate good works. The piece ultimately leaves you with a sense of the fragility of these commitments and their minuscule scale in comparison with the wealth of a company like Netflix. And also with a sense that, at the very least, the other giants—which committed even less, in proportion to their assets—should follow the streaming giant's lead. John Gravois | Senior Editor, WIRED |
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