Companies scale back pride campaigns, giving way to corporate silence
Ed.: The essays, analyses and opinions presented as Community Voices express the perspectives of their authors on topics of interest and importance to the community and are not intended to reflect perspectives on behalf of Salish Current.
Every June, supporters of the LGBTQ+ community don their rainbows and head to pride events. Corporate America followed suit, changing social media profile pictures and selling brightly colored merchandise — until recently.
Rainbow capitalism is a widely criticized phenomenon throughout the queer community. This term is used to describe companies who use queer symbolism to make a profit, rather than actually supporting LGBTQ+ rights. Businesses do this to sell products and garner positive attention during pride month.
Big corporations plastering their branding with pride coloring defers attention from what pride originated from — protesting for LGBTQ+ rights — and turns it into another opportunity to exploit the messaging from marginalized groups for profit.
The early 2020s sparked debate on rainbow capitalism, pointing out valid concerns of whether companies use rainbow coloring to gloss over discussion of systematic inequalities that the queer community faces.
Karen Tongson, an author and professor of gender and sexuality studies at the University of Southern California, explained in a 2021 PBS News Hour video that “We must understand that it’s a gesture of support, but gestures of support, nice words, visible images of solidarity aren’t always enough. They’re often never enough, actually.”
Just as fast as rainbow capitalism became an issue, it disappeared.
Target used to have obnoxiously large pride displays, spanning across multiple shelves with countless flags representing each letter of the acronym. Now, a singular, double-sided display houses a few t-shirts of pop artists.
Is it better to be decked out with LGBTQ+ symbolism, lacking key points of where it came from, for a profit, or to disregard it completely?
A recent NPR article noted that recent rollbacks of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives have attributed to less engagement with pride month from companies. Because of this, pride events that receive sponsorships from large corporations are receiving less funding. Pittsburgh Pride organizers said to NPR that they expect to receive 30 to 40% less in sponsorship this year.
With scrutiny on rainbow capitalism from the LGBTQ+ community, and through governmental DEI rollbacks, there doesn’t seem to be much push from companies to argue with either group.
Pride events function as a space for many members of the LGBTQ+ community to see themselves accepted and represented for the first time. Although celebrating pride has shifted meaning over time, these large, corporate-sponsored events that are popular now function as the most accessible spaces to celebrate queer identity. Visibility for the community will continue to disappear as festivities to celebrate them shrink from lack of funding.
“I think this is not just a matter of budget cuts, right?” E. Ciszek, a researcher in advertising and public relations at The University of Texas at Austin, said to NPR. “It’s important to take a step back and see this more as a moment of risk, a moment of political pressure, and looking really at the limits of corporate allyship, particularly when LGBTQ visibility has become really politically costly.”
No matter how ugly those rainbow overalls at Target are, at least they at least they signaled that someone in a corporate boardroom thought LGBTQ+ customers were worth acknowledging.
—By Allie Van Parys
Allie Van Parys is a Western Washington University journalism graduate. In their free time, you can find them playing the drums, making collages and hanging out at the beach.