You're constructing a strawman. Nobody has said they don't care about black people. The absence of protest attendance or action does not mean people don't care – it may mean they've judged that their talents are best suited to another cause, or that their potential to do good in a different arena is greater.

It is a sad cynical state of affairs when people attempting to do good for one cause are berated for not participating in every other cause under the sun. People have finite resources and differing abilities.

What have you done to combat heroin addiction? What have you done to reduce environmental destruction? What have you done for Jewish causes? What have you done to improve oversight at the FDA? One could play this game forever.

I mean, yea, it would be great if tech CEOs started showing up at a Black Lives Matter marches. America's institutional racism is certainly an issue no less deserving of attention and work towards alleviating it.

But the reason for the differential in responses is pretty clear to me: American racism didn't just get instituted with the stroke of a pen last week, nor could it be reversed as easily (or struck down in court). It sucks, but it's a kind of cruelty we're accustomed to (victims, active perpetrators and passive perpetrators alike), and have been living with for centuries. The immigration order, on the other hand, is a newly instituted policy of cruelty, which can potentially be defeated directly with sufficiently urgent action.

> Maybe they aren't purely marketing moves, but I just have a hard time with it.

You have a hard time with companies supporting worthy causes because they don't support enough of them to the extent that you demand them to? That's what's generally known as cutting off your nose to spite your face.

The difference isn't entirely rational, it's that one is a sudden shock and one is (a horrifying) normal.

When something is new and shocking, immediate extensive resistance can blunt the impact of new policies. That would work in the case of horrifying normal situations too, but there's no universal focal point, and focal points around which people can gather matter a lot. Given the existence of a focal point, it becomes rational to protest since others will join you.

One of those is the direct result of an executive order. There is a clear path to fighting it.

They both are causes people care about.

Because the temporary restriction on new people entering the US affects his company's ability to get lots of cheap labor.

Top tech companies are paying lots of money for world-class talent. It is absolutely not "cheap labor".