Earlier this month, it was announced that Rihanna is now a billionaire. As any Gen-Z Black woman, who loves to see other women of color breaking the barriers of white supremacy, I instantly saw this as a huge win. When the news broke, I immediately reposted it on social media and commented on how inspirational it was. Little girls of color everywhere will finally have a self-made billionaire to see themselves in. However, after sitting with the news for a while, and following the “Rihanna’s a Billionaire” discourse on twitter, my outlook on the situation quickly shifted. It’s no secret that the capitalistic society we live in thrives off of hoarding wealth, and flaunting it’s inaccessiblity to the public. While they keep people wanting what they can’t have, there will always be a market of supply and demand that benefits larger corporations. The issue is that the large profit obtained, usually comes at the expense of the employees that work for these corporations, and from the exploitation of the people and resources in vulnerable countries. So how does this connect to our girl Rihanna? Well, no billionaire can obtain their status without part-taking in said exploitation in some way, shape, or form. In order to become a billionaire in a capitalistic society, you have to get your hands dirty; or at least exploit some people to get theirs dirty for you. A large part of Rihanna’s billionaire status can be attributed to her well-known Fenty clothing and makeup company. One key ingredient that is included in many of her makeup products is Mica: a mineral mined from the eastern hemisphere of the world. Most of the Mica in makeup products is unethically sourced and is obtained through child labor mines in places like Jharkhand, India. Many people– including myself at one point– can argue that Rihanna is not more harmful than the centuries of white billionaire men that came before her, and that if there are going to be billionaires in the world, she might as well be one of them. The issue with this argument is that it supports the idea that it doesn’t matter what people of color do, just as long as they’re the first ones to do it. Rihanna being the first Black female billionaire in the makeup industry doesn’t take away from the fact that she obtained that title in some unethical way. The children who are forced into labor for the ingredients in those makeup products will not suffer any less just because she is a woman of color. It’s very easy to romanticize billionaires when you don’t have to directly suffer as a result of their existence. If we don’t start placing a microscope over these people now, then the question becomes: when is the right time to hold billionaires accountable?

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