The Brands Responding To Sharon Chuter’s Pull Up Or Shut Up Challenge

On June 5th Sharon Chuter spoke out on the hypocrisy of the brands sharing posts in solidarity with the black lives matter movement and demanded influencers and consumers to hold these same brands accountable asking them to share the number of black employees they had across the board and in executive positions. This was echoed by Beauty Youtuber and influencer Jackie Aina. When the message went viral, brands could not ignore and were forced to provide full transparency and raw figures.

As unfortunately expected, many of the numbers were appalling and some so appalling the companies did not reveal the numbers but could only state that they will do better. A pattern that seems to be coming up when looking through these brands figures is people of colour is often a significantly higher percentage than that of black employees. Something we have to recognise is the difference in oppression faced by people of colour and black people. While certainly diversity across all cultures and POC is necessary, increasing black employment is imperative in order for change to occur for black lives. For black people to be heard in companies, for brands to understand black issues, to reduce the racial wealth gap and so many other reasons, so while its great to see a higher percentage of people of colour it’s not good enough we need black employment to rise. After years of seeing and hearing the same thing, we seem to finally be seeing a change, with brands promising to hire a certain percentage of black people as well as donating large sums of money to black causes. Could this be the start of real lasting change within the fashion and beauty industry?

Here are some of the brands that pulled up