We can't, in general, rely on companies to be on the forefront of activist work or to push the boundaries, for exactly the reasons that you outlined, but I think the role they play in rounding up the stragglers is also very important.
To pick a specific example, you're completely correct when you call out that a lot of companies only started visibly supporting LGBT causes quite recently, when the social momentum was obviously moving that direction, and there was a direct profit incentive to pridewashing things. I know many members of the LGBT community who are against corporate involvement in pride events for precisely that reason, and I know many LGBT people who find it very disingenuous that companies might be profiting off rainbow marketing while not (or only recently) having non-discrimination policies, or offering equal coverage for health insurance to their LGBT employees.
On the other hand, I would contend that the pride washing and corporate push into LGBT rights is a large reason why they haven't backslid as quickly during the last 4 years as they might otherwise have done, and why there's still broad public support for marriage equality even in the face of a possible reversal of Obgerfell after the inevitable SCOTUS appointment. The activists did the work, but a few years of corporate pridewashing, seeing rainbows on every t-shirt, cereal box, soda can, and brand of tennis shoe normalized things for a group of people who wouldn't have ever listened to the activists who are pushing on things. There's real social value in signaling "Supporting LGBT rights is the cheap, easy thing that we're obviously going to do because everyone agrees it's the right thing". It won't change the mind of the active bigot, but there are a whole lot of people who will just go along with the majority opinion on social issues, and corporate signaling is perhaps the defacto way to signal the majority opinion on social issues.
Thanks very much - you've helped me crystalize my thoughts and have expressed things in a way much better than I did (even to myself). This is exactly the type of value I like to get from HN.
Corporations that do this look at their customer demographics and if their demographics support BLM then so do they. They will reflect their customer base.
They're not effecting any change in this way. The change has already been done. They're just riding on its coat tails.
To pick a specific example, you're completely correct when you call out that a lot of companies only started visibly supporting LGBT causes quite recently, when the social momentum was obviously moving that direction, and there was a direct profit incentive to pridewashing things. I know many members of the LGBT community who are against corporate involvement in pride events for precisely that reason, and I know many LGBT people who find it very disingenuous that companies might be profiting off rainbow marketing while not (or only recently) having non-discrimination policies, or offering equal coverage for health insurance to their LGBT employees.
On the other hand, I would contend that the pride washing and corporate push into LGBT rights is a large reason why they haven't backslid as quickly during the last 4 years as they might otherwise have done, and why there's still broad public support for marriage equality even in the face of a possible reversal of Obgerfell after the inevitable SCOTUS appointment. The activists did the work, but a few years of corporate pridewashing, seeing rainbows on every t-shirt, cereal box, soda can, and brand of tennis shoe normalized things for a group of people who wouldn't have ever listened to the activists who are pushing on things. There's real social value in signaling "Supporting LGBT rights is the cheap, easy thing that we're obviously going to do because everyone agrees it's the right thing". It won't change the mind of the active bigot, but there are a whole lot of people who will just go along with the majority opinion on social issues, and corporate signaling is perhaps the defacto way to signal the majority opinion on social issues.