Arabs, From Black Lives to Black Friday!
As Americans are celebrating their Thanksgiving holiday, which marks the start of the shopping season, with many stores opening on Thanksgiving night for sales and deals, people are camping in front of Macy’s, Target, and the Mall of America to be the first to grab the Black Friday specials.
Black Friday, the next major shopping event on the calendar, exemplifies American consumerism, which has been evolving into a commercial cultural landmark. Driven by major discounts and an orgy of promotional campaigns, it sparks a buying frenzy that serves as a key indicator of the nation’s economic health and self-confidence. In 2024, U.S. retail revenue exceeded $20 billion, and $10 billion online. Although Black Friday was first introduced in the US in the 1940s, the Arab world only adopted the event in 2014, when Arab e-commerce portals launched Black Friday day specials and promotions. Later, it was changed to “White” Friday. The change of name in the Arab world was due to religious and traditional sensitivity, as Friday is the religious sabbath for Muslims. Black Friday has been painted white to keep with the religious spirit while maintaining the commercial spirit. “We wanted to own an event that was not really tied to Thanksgiving as much but more tied to our Friday, our White, which is kind of positive and happy,” says Mouchawar, speaking to Newsweek from his Dubai office; however, Arabs are considered African/Asian blacks/“brown”! Arab countries adopted the American consumer tradition of Black Friday and started building shopping malls and skyscrapers instead of cultural centers, schools, and local community libraries. McDonald’s and Starbucks replaced local restaurants and coffee shops. In the Arab world, everyone now wants to be a Singapore. Before Arabs embraced Black Friday fever, Arabs showed strong political solidarity with other black events, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, drawing parallels between their experiences with systemic oppression, state violence, and racial injustice to blacks. This connection is evident in shared protest tactics, public support, and a shared struggle against political and cultural issues such as occupations, settler colonialism, and police brutality. Palestinians in particular have shown significant support and solidarity with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, viewing it as a shared struggle against systemic racism and settler oppression. “Black-Palestinian solidarity has been a notable component of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement that emerged in 2014. “The intersection of Black and Palestinian activism is not a new phenomenon, of course, but rather a reemergence of a historic alliance rooted in the global fight against racism and imperialism.” Reported by the Middle East Eye
In June 2020, following the murder of George Floyd, a mural of his face was painted on a wall in Gaza City. Another mural was painted on the separation wall in the West Bank, with an artist noting the parallel between Floyd being unable to breathe and the experience of living under apartheid Israeli occupation conditions. Syrian artist Aziz Asmar painted a large mural of Floyd on a bombed-out building in Binnish in rebel-controlled Idlib. Syrians in Idlib, who have their own history of protesting oppression and state violence since the 2011 uprising, held signs with slogans like “I can’t breathe,” echoing Floyd’s last words and connecting to their fight for dignity and freedom. Asmar tells TIME via an interpreter from Binnish in northwest Syria, ‘In those hospitals, the victims were crying and asking to breathe.’ He added, “I saw George Floyd pleading with the officer to let him breathe, and it reminded me of how they were killed.” These actions send a strong message of global solidarity, emphasizing shared experiences of systemic injustice and universal longing for freedom and human dignity around the world. Nowadays, however, in a globalizing world where commerce travels faster than culture, Black Friday flourishes in the Arab World, depleting people’s political energy. In Egypt, as reported in Ahram Online, Black Friday has significantly fueled consumerism, becoming an annual and highly anticipated shopping phenomenon since its introduction around 2014. The event has gained remarkable popularity and has evolved into a major sales season, and “Okazions”–deep discounts. Last November I was in a visit to Egypt, on A Friday evening as I was walking through Tahrir Square to the downtown commercial district of Emad el-Deen street, found thousands of people crowding the narrow streets, storefronts filled with merchandise, and holiday promotions, big sign of Black Friday sales written in English everywhere you look, how did Black Friday American commercial icon made it to Egypt and to the rest of the Arab world. While in the Arab Spring, every Friday, millions of Egyptians marched from Mosques all over Egypt to Tahrir Square, demanding the toppling of Mubarak’s corrupt regime, chanting “Bread, Freedom and Social Justice”. They are now on Black Friday, marching to shopping malls demanding their cultural icons, Calvin Klein, Nike, and Victoria’s Secret. On Friday 17th of December 2011, A widely circulated video and photographs showed the woman, who was wearing a black abaya (a traditional over-garment), the iconic photograph of her being beaten by anti-riot security forces at Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, with her blue bra visible as she was dragged by two soldiers and stomped on by another. For lots of Egyptians, that was hard to bear; thousands of women marched to Tahrir Square to protest the treatment of women, where some burned their bras. Now, shopfronts in Egypt are filled with bras of all colors on display in Black Friday, where Egyptian women are marching for their shopping freedom.
Ahmed Tharwat
Host/Producer of Arab American TV show BelAhdan
Blog at Notes From America
Lives in Minnetonka, MN 55345
612-250-6567
