Black media executives charged General Motors CEO for ”systematic racism”

According to the company, General Motors CEO Mary Barra will reverse course and meet with seven Black executives at Black-owned media outlets.

The move follows the group’s publishing of full-page newspaper ads in the Detroit Free Press and the Wall Street Journal that blasted GM for alleged ”systemic racism.”

They criticized Barra for not spending more on Black-owned media and slammed them for delegation their repeated requests for a direct meeting to her head of marketing.

GM company spokesperson Pat Morrissey said, ”The group met earlier this week with the automaker’s Chief Marketing Officer Deborah Wahl. We are disappointed that Mr Allen and his fellow signatories resorted to additional paid media advertising to advance a narrative of factual inaccuracies and character assault against our CEO, Mary Barra.”

Morrissey said GM spends ”significantly” more than 5 per cent with Black-owned media.

Since becoming GM CEO in January 2015, Barra has declared a goal of creating ”the most inclusive company in the world. Last week the company appointed two new members to its board of directors: former Hewlett Packard CEO Meg Whitman and Mark Tatum, the deputy commissioner and COO of the National Basketball Association.

”You stand on stage, after the death of George Floyd, saying, ‘Black Lives Matter,’ when you have refused to acknowledge us,” the ad says of Barra. ”The very definition of systematic racism is when you are ignored, excluded and you don’t have true economic inclusion.”