On September 3, Conservative Clergy of Color sent a letter to Nike President John Donahoe demanding that his company drop its support for Black Lives Matter and condemning the company’s silence in the face of China’s oppression of Uighurs. Conservative Clergy of Color was founded in June 2020 by Aubrey Shines, Derek McCoy, M.J. Reid, and Francisco Vega, and had about 500 members in August. The letter to Nike stated, “We the leaders of Conservative Clergy of Color have watched with sadness and frustration as the country we love has been torn apart by violence and looting. This civil terror, perpetrated and lead by the Black Lives Matter movement, has turned American against American and possibly set race relations back decades. Black Lives Matter, a movement run by anti-Christian, self-proclaimed Marxists, hijacked legitimate calls for police reform and turned it to their own ends. This is not a group interested in constructive change; through their vicious campaign to defund police and silence anyone who disagrees with them, they have destroyed livelihoods and gotten innocent children killed. It is antithetical to the nonviolence that Dr. King and the Civil Rights movement stood for. Nike has willfully ignored real suffering and oppression abroad. At this very moment, millions of ethnic Uighurs are languishing in ‘reeducation’ camps in western China. They are rounded up for being a minority and forbidden from practicing their faith while being forced to work as slaves in factories. These factories make products for your company that are worn and promoted by dozens of players in various athletic leagues. Yet while this atrocity plays out at the hands of the Communist Chinese government, you have been silent. You have been happy to play into the hands of anarchists at home and ignore slavery abroad. We ask you take a hard look at real injustice in the world and to remember that change comes through forgiveness and compassion, not violence.”
(Friday Church News Notes, September 18, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)