Nike Inc. is one of the multinational corporations in American engaged in manufacturing, development design, and marketing of apparel, footwear, and accessories among other items (Knight, & Greenberg, 2002, 563). They used Colin Kaepernick as a celebrity to advertise their products making them sell handsomely. Due to the police racial injustices in the USA such as shooting African Americans, Colin protested against the inhuman act by being the first player of National Football League to kneel during the national anthem (Chaney, Sanchez, &Maimon, 2019, 136). This made Nike Corporation to oust him as there were boycotts of Nike products in the state (Carrington and BoykoffIs, 2018, 1). The action taken by the company depicted the use of institutional racism, social construction and stereotyping negative labelisim theories. The paper provides a detailed description by the use of theories and evidence to show that the actions of Nike depicted corporate greed, exploitation, and opportunistic nature.
The act of Colin Kaepernick of kneeling during the national anthem to fight for the rights of African American’s racial injustices by the police led to a lot of discrepancies in states. Most of the American citizens saw the act assumed by Colin as being disrespectful to the national flag and anthem (Haerens, M., 2018, 254). Therefore the citizens protested over the act and opted to boycott the products of Nike Corporation. Experiencing the difficulties in the market, Nike thus employed the theory of social construction to act on Colin Kaepernick’s action. The management of the Corporation listened to the majority voice that is the people’s concerns by terminating their contract with Colin Kaepernick. After that, they removed the icons relating to Kaepernick from their products to assure the public that indeed they had cut their relations with Colin. The company tried to show that the public’s joint action to the protest continually done by Colin was right, hence to maintain their share in the market they hard to do so. Colin’s contract termination done by the company was not indeed their genuine action but acting in disguise to the public to keep their trust in the company. In that case, they were trying to maintain the company’s picture hence showing the Corporates greed, exploitation, and great opportunists.
The corporation’s act to terminate Colin Kaepernick contract with them also employed the theory of institutional racism (Arthur, P, 2008, 73). Colin’s protest was explicitly to fight for equality and elimination of the police racial injustices on the African Americans. He had nothing to do with tainting Nike’s business image (Bryant, H., 2018, 127) Therefore, the company could have convinced him to stop the kneeling protest to maintain him or give a lighter punishment rather than termination. From the Corporation’s activities, it is, therefore, apparent that they are practicing institutional racism by siding with the white Americans who boycotted their products. They gave a deaf ear to the African Americans who were being mistreated while they were in a good position to help them. Therefore, their move shows the company’s greed and exploitative nature to gain and not to fight for equality.
Nike Corporation also assumed to stereotyping negative labelisim theory to reach its decision to act harshly on Colin Kaepernick’s ad and protest. They believed so much on the white Americans social group’s influence than the African Americans (Platt, L., 2011, 195). It is by the use of this theory that they decided to listen more to the voice of the protestors, instead of becoming rational enough to validate the reasons why Colin was fighting for the African Americans. They negatively labeled African Americans while positively labeling white Americans. The stereotypy showed the essence of their greed and exploitative nature to gain from the majority group.
In conclusion, the action of Nike Corporation depicts them as great opportunist, greedy and exploitative. All their decisions on Colin Kaepernick’s protest were purely made on the theories of social contraction, stereotyping negative labelisim and institutional racism. Colin’s act was never meant to soil the Corporations picture but to fight against social injustices by the police on the African Americans. The Corporations decision of terminating Colin Kaepernick’s contract with them, therefore, shows the Corporations greed, exploitative and opportunistic nature.
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