PropertyValue
?:author
?:datePublished
  • 2016-09-26 (xsd:date)
?:headline
  • Ford Motors Funds Black Lives Matter (en)
?:inLanguage
?:itemReviewed
?:mentions
?:reviewBody
  • August 2016 saw the circulation of rumors holding that the Ford Motor Company had donated a large sum of money (typically between one and 100 million dollars) directly to the Black Lives Matter movement: A (since removed) blog post published by Allen B. West's blog on 11 August 2016 called for a boycott of the automaker over the issue: The origins of the rumor lay with a 19 July 2016 announcement from the Ford Foundation titled Why black lives matter to philanthropy explaining why that foundation had made six-year investments in the organizations and networks that compose the Movement for Black Lives: However, the flaw in claiming that the Ford Motor Company donated millions of dollars to the Black Lives Matter movement is two-fold. First, although the philanthropic Ford Foundation is so named because it was created and originally funded by automobile icon Henry Ford (along with his son Edsel) and because the foundation was a large holder of Ford stock, those associations ended many years ago. No member of the Ford family or Ford Motor Company management sits on the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees, and the Ford Foundation began selling off its Ford Motor Company stock in the mid-1950's (a process that was completed in 1974). The completely separate Ford Motor Company Fund and Community Services is the current philanthropic arm of the Ford Motor Company. Second, although they may have common goals, the Black Lives Matter movement and the Movement for Black Lives are not the same thing. The latter is not a single group or movement, but rather a coalition of over 50 black-led organizations: Some of the blog posts responsible for the spread of the rumor that the Ford Motor Company had given millions of dollars to Black Lives Matter were later edited to note that the Ford Foundation and Ford Motor Company had long since parted ways, but by then the claim had already been loosed into the wilds of social media, and the important distinction between the two entities was lost as the rumor traveled from blog to blog. (en)
?:reviewRating
rdf:type
?:url