the cost of discounts

by Lindsey Ehrlich, Editor

Current Events

   When we think of Black Friday, we picture hoards of shoppers rushing into local chain stores like Best Buy or Target. We picture anxious customers, itching to get the best deals, standing in long lines that stretch for several blocks in every direction. In our own Black Friday frenzy to grab any slightly appealing item that still fits in our overstuffed carts, it is easy to overlook the billions of pounds of waste that Black Friday contributes to our already declining environment.

   Most people take advantage of Black Friday as a chance to jumpstart their holiday shopping with low prices. Yet many remain unaware of the original story behind it.

One of the earliest uses of the term “Black Friday” was in an economic journal back in 1951. Rather than describing the shopping panic we see today, the journal was referring to the difficult task of motivating factory workers to come in the day after Thanksgiving. If workers got Thursday off, they wanted to take Friday off as well.

A more familiar usage of “Black Friday” comes from the 1966 Philadelphia Police Department, who used the term to describe the chaotic shopping day after Thanksgiving. Traditionally, the city held a big Army-Navy football game on the Saturday after Thanksgiving and the Philly police force dreaded the car traffic, foot traffic, and other headaches that inevitably followed the huge rush of shoppers.

Though historians have successfully established a rough timeline for the use of the term despite the scarcity of tangible evidence, unfortunate myths still persist into current times. Some online sources make the argument that Black Friday originated from the slave era in American history, claiming that the concept of half-price slaves sold the day after Thanksgiving leaked into the modern retail industry. Fortunately, this myth is untrue.

Although Black Friday has historically had a negative connotation, retailers were able to put a positive spin on the term and turn it into  the profitable holiday we know today. Capitalist America uses this holiday to rake in billions of dollars each year, but in doing so, these greedy corporations only exacerbate the harmful consumerist mentality. According to Good On You, Black Friday “promotes overconsumption, pushing consumerism to its extremes by telling us we need more unnecessary, unwanted, cheap goods made from poor-quality, unsustainable materials” (“Stop Before You Shop”).

Deaths are commonplace in crowds of shoppers. People are stampeded, stabbed, and beaten to death; a website online, simply called “Black Friday Death Count,” has recorded reported incidents since 2006.

The pitfalls of the holiday do not stop there. Black Friday sits on the shoulders of minimum wage workers trapped in an “inhumane cycle of poverty” (“Stop Before You Shop”). Workers experience poor working conditions and unjust compensation for the labor-intensive ordeals they go through every day. The whole concept of Black Friday favors large corporations, pushing local businesses to the economic margins.

There are many reasons to hate Black Friday, but arguably the worst outcome of this annual tradition is the billions of pounds of waste it produces every year. Before items reach the shelves of your local Best Buy, they must be manufactured, packaged, and shipped, processes that each produce significant amounts of pollution. The relatively recent introduction of Cyber Monday only exacerbates the problem. Cyber Monday features the same low prices as Black Friday, but online. Instead of grabbing items from traditional brick-and-mortar stores, consumers enjoy delivery directly to their doorsteps. Transportation is already one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, and Cyber Monday is certainly no remedy.

Even more alarming is waste that follows these holidays. Americans collectively throw out over 80% of purchased items (“Stop Before You Shop”). The breakdown of this waste releases harmful gases, polluting the air. The combined pollution from manufacturing, packaging, shipping, and wasting products is expediting our trajectory toward a complete climate disaster.

With the recent election, it is increasingly clear that Earth is in a climate crisis. Roughly half of registered voters say that “climate change is either ‘very important’ or ‘one of the most important issues’” (Joselow) in their votes for Congress. Climate change has always been one of the most controversial issues in politics, yet it still casts a dark shadow on the future of our planet. In his widely read essay “The Uninhabitable Earth” published in the New York Times, David Wallace-Wells “paints a frightening picture of the coming environmental apocalypse. Whole parts of the globe will become too hot for human habitation and those left behind will die of heat. Diseases will increase and mutate. Food shortages will become chronic as we fail to move agriculture from one climate to another. Whole countries like Bangladesh and parts of other countries like Miami will be underwater… The oceans will die, the air will get dirtier” (Kamarck).

This year, as America’s biggest sales weekend quickly approaches, consider spending your Friday with friends and family eating Thanksgiving leftovers rather than anxiously waiting in lines that stretch around buildings for miles. Consider gifting a loved one something meaningful rather than scrambling for the lowest price on the hottest new Samsung TV. Let’s keep Wallace-Wells’ prediction from becoming a reality.

DISCLAIMER: The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed by the various authors in this paper do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints of Kamiak High School or The Gauntlet. 

Sources

Joselow, M., & Montalbano, V. (2022, October 10). Half of voters say climate change is important in midterms, poll finds. The Washington Post. Retrieved November 5, 2022, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/10/half-voters-say-climate-change-is-important-midterms-poll-finds/

Kamarck, E. (2019, September 23). The challenging politics of climate change. Brookings. Retrieved November 5, 2022, from https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-challenging-politics-of-climate-change/

Pruitt, S. (2021, November 19). What's the Real History of Black Friday? History.com. Retrieved November 5, 2022, from https://www.history.com/news/black-friday-thanksgiving-origins-history

Reiter, D. (2011, November 25). Black Friday's Dark Origins. ABC News. Retrieved November 5, 2022, from https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2011/11/black-fridays-dark-origins

Riva, E. (n.d.). Download Black Friday Discounts Free Photo. needpix.com. Retrieved November 7, 2022, from https://www.needpix.com/photo/1186832/

“Stop before you shop: The issues with Black Friday and cyber Monday.” Good On You. (2021, November 22). Retrieved November 7, 2022, from https://goodonyou.eco/issues-with-black-friday/