Let's Talk Boycotts
A Back-to-School Post
To paraphrase Lyle Lovett, I’m not good, but I have good intentions. Which is why even though I mean well, I am an abject failure at boycotts. Take February 28, Buy Nothing Day. I fully intended to take part this year and did all my planning and shopping in advance (which is no small feat here in Europe; our tiny refrigerators and shoebox-size freezers force us to play Tetris every time we stock up). That afternoon I assembled the ingredients for dinner and discovered that I had forgotten the mint. D’ohhh! (I always forget the mint.) There was no help for it; the mint was crucial to the dish. Off to the store I went.
I could go on. As a Bernie Sanders–style pro-labor Democrat, I oppose the treatment of workers at Amazon, whose warehouse jobs are so strenuous that the company supplies free painkillers, and whose delivery drivers pee in bottles because they don’t have time to go to the bathroom. For these and other reasons, many people boycott Amazon. But in spite of my good intentions, I haven’t joined them. I love reading, and while I get all my German mysteries from Little Free Libraries, the only way to get a wide selection of books in English over here is to download them to my Kindle.
One more: After Paramount Plus cancelled Stephen Colbert’s show, my social media feed was filled with demands that we boycott them. Not only did my husband and I not boycott Paramount Plus, but we actually signed up—not because we have anything against Stephen Colbert (we don’t), but because we wanted to see whether Nathan Fielder’s The Curse was a show we’d enjoy (it wasn’t).
So maybe this post is just me being defensive. But I do think a case can be made that when it comes to outraged online clamoring for boycotts, perhaps a bit of restraint might not go amiss.
Boycott Nation
Wherever we sit on the political spectrum, if we want to express our displeasure by boycotting something or other, we are spoiled for choice. In addition to the boycotts discussed above, there are literally hundreds more going on right now, including against the following companies:
Budweiser (for using the trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney in Bud Light ads),
Burger King (for giving food to Israeli soldiers),
Cracker Barrel (for changing its logo),
Disney (for firing the conservative actor Gina Carano from The Mandalorian),
Get Your Guide (for “exploiting animals”),
Kellogg’s (for “greenwashing”),
Minnesota Vikings (for employing male cheerleaders),
Nestlé (for, among many other reasons, depleting the groundwater in developing countries),
Nike (for using Colin Kaepernick in ads),
Nintendo (for the high price of the Switch 2),
Starbucks (for “its relationship to Nestlé”),
Tesla (because Elon Musk), and
Wendy’s (for refusing to join the Fair Food program).1
Sheesh. What’s left?
My intention here is not to argue about the merits (or lack thereof) of any of these issues, but rather to discuss tactics. Boycotts as they are practiced nowadays tend to peter out. People get angry, get on social media, and get after their friends and family to quit buying items from the offending company. Participants in these social-media-fueled boycotts usually forget about them when the hype dies down, or they sheepishly return to their regular shopping habits, whether because they have lost their ardor for the cause or because the boycott was too difficult or expensive. And the companies continue with business as usual.
What Makes a Boycott Effective?
The word “boycott” comes from an actual guy, Charles Boycott, an Anglo-Irish agent for an English absentee landlord. Boycott evicted several impoverished Irish families after a season of poor harvests. As the linked Wikipedia article informs us, there was a successful mass effort to boycott Boycott:
Boycott soon found himself isolated—his workers stopped work in the fields and stables, as well as in his house. Local businessmen stopped trading with him, and the local postman refused to deliver mail.
The concerted action taken against him meant that Boycott was unable to hire anyone to harvest his crops in his charge.
Current boycotts that have achieved their goals resemble this eponymous boycott—and differ significantly from online-outrage boycotts. For example, in 2021, after a ten-year effort, PETA persuaded Fortnum and Mason to stop selling foie gras.2 “The campaign involved thousands of letters, adverts on the London Underground, and colourful protests.” Similarly, in 2021 the International Campaign for the Rohingya persuaded Swatch to stop sourcing gemstones from Burma. “Activists posing as customers made appointments at the company’s stores requesting to see jewellery containing rubies, before explaining that they would never shop there as long as it bought gems that funded the Myanmar military.”3
Arguably the most important and effective boycott in recent history was the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955–56, in which 90 percent of Montgomery’s Black residents took part. Planning for the boycott began in 1946. The boycott required enormous effort, including repeated talks with city officials, meetings with the community, networks of volunteers to run carpools, appeals to the press, and a lawsuit.
What do these effective boycotts have in common? They tackle an issue that is truly and obviously unjust, which makes it easier to recruit others to the cause. They avoid sweeping attacks and focus instead on a particular issue the protestors want changed. Effective boycotts are difficult; they require mass participation, patience, hard work, creativity, and the courage to engage with people on the other side.
Do We Have the Right Target?
Then again, not every successful boycott strikes a blow for justice. Target has been targeted by groups from across the political spectrum. The right boycotted Target both during Covid (because stores requested that customers wear masks) and during past Pride months (because stores featured LGBT-themed merchandise). Since Trump’s inauguration, the left has boycotted Target because it has scaled back some of the DEI programs they had initiated in 2020, after the murder of George Floyd.4
I yield to no one in my love of Target, but I was mad at them once too over an identity issue. One December, we were visiting my family in Minnesota, and I realized that I had forgotten to pack our menorah. I headed to the Target in my parents’ outlying suburb and discovered that they didn’t sell menorahs.5 I was briefly grumpy and could have railed against the store on social media. But why would I expect a store to stock menorahs when it’s in a community where there are no Jews?
It’s like how my mom’s local Target sells jerseys for the Vikings, Timberwolves, and Twins, but not the Eagles, Thunder, or Dodgers—and definitely not the Cowboys. Her Target also offers extra-mild salsa, as befits its customers’ Scandinavian palates. This distribution of products shouldn’t surprise us. It is good business practice for stores to carry products that are of interest to the communities they serve.
Anyway, reports of Target’s DEI-death have been greatly exaggerated. Stores continue to hire and promote workers from local communities. Which makes sense: It is good for business to have a work force that looks like the community the stores serve. It’s not just hourly employees either; Target’s leadership team is diverse too. I find it ironic that progressives are so angry at Target, when Target gives 5 percent of its pre-tax profits to local communities, and its workers donate nearly one million volunteer hours to charitable causes per year.
Whenever I see people rejoicing over Target’s declining stock price and dip in sales, I wonder why they are so happy for Target to be brought down. The Target boycotters want to help racial minorities in low-income communities. But Target is not the cause of their problems, and destroying Target will not help them achieve their goals. It is not better for our country if Target has to close stores, workers lose their jobs, and working families can no longer enjoy the good prices and convenience Target offers. (Besides, won’t shoppers just switch to WalMart, Amazon, or Dollar General?) These boycotters have chosen the wrong target.
Ethical Spending
It’s back-to-school time, and families are buying new clothes and shoes, school supplies, sports gear, and outerwear—to say nothing of Halloween candy. We’re setting our kids up in their college dorms and helping them furnish their first apartments. This is an appropriate time to think about how we can spend our money ethically.
As a start, we can buy fewer new items. We already have way too much stuff, a lot of which winds up in landfills. Buy Nothing groups are a great source for gently-used household goods, as are thrift shops. I am proud that our daughter outfitted her new apartment with hand-me-down kitchenware and furniture she found at charity shops. Check out this cosy reading nook:
We can support local businesses. For example, a friend recently wrote a wonderful graphic biography of Jane Austen (highly recommended!). I could have gotten it from Amazon immediately, but I chose instead to wait and buy it from Fantom Comics, an independently-owned DC shop. Our son is a frequent customer there and also belongs to their book club. I want this shop to stay in business!
We ought to respect others’ boycotts. If a friend prefers not to shop at Toxic Waste Inc., Child Labor Ltd., or Acme Coyote Eradication Corp., don’t purchase her birthday present there. Even if she would really like her own anvil.
We can boycott companies when they engage in morally wrong acts, but we should strive not to be judgy about it. I don’t buy chicken from Tyson Foods because of their terrible record on the environment, worker safety, and animal welfare. Instead, I buy from local farms that are certified cruelty-free. But I recognize that not every family can afford to make this choice.
Finally, though, not everything has to be political, and it’s ok for us to patronize stores that sell items we want or need, with no regard to whatever burning issue is getting everyone het up. When we’re contemplating whether to boycott a business, especially one we rely on because of convenience, selection, or price, we can ask ourselves a few questions. Can we easily do without the company’s products? Is the business guilty of a true injustice? Will our effort and sacrifice help to stop the injustice?
If the answer to any of these questions is no, then I say we boycott the boycotts.
How about you, readers? Do you share my ambivalence about boycotts? Have you participated in any? What happened? What does ethical spending mean to you? Please share your thoughts in the comments!
The Tidbit
“It’s just a fact of life that no one cares to mention. / She wasn’t good, but she had good intentions.”
Foie gras is a horrifically cruel food. Geese and ducks are force-fed, and their engorged livers press on their lungs and slowly suffocate them.
This decision has been misrepresented in the media, which claims that Target has caved to Trump. It is true that Target has decided to stop reporting to “external diversity-focused surveys, including HRC’s Corporate Equality Index,” but this is not the same thing as giving up on diversity. Target’s “Belonging” initiatives are continuing. You can read more about Target’s commitment to diversity here.
When I told my dad that I couldn’t find a menorah at Target, he disappeared into the basement and returned an hour later with a menorah he had built himself.
Ditch your Kindle for a Kobo! Your independent bookstore can even link up with Kobo and when you buy a ebook for your Kobo, the bookstore gets a bit, too.
I think most (not all) boycotts are fundamentally faddish and therefore often aim at the wrong target, as you describe.
This isn't quite a boycott, but it's close: there was a protest campaign against a large grocery store chain in my country several years ago because it sold kangaroo meat as a sort of cool novelty option for foodies. The campaign seemed to largely take the form of "look at these pictures of cute joeys!" The chain caved and stopped selling it.
Problem is: as I understand it, kangaroos are pests in Australia, and they're killed for that reason, not the meat. You're protesting against people buying the meat of animals that are a) wild, let alone free range and b) going to die either way. And now they've successfully got it taken of shelves, what are people going to buy instead? Battery chicken, maybe?
It was asinine and infuriating. Also I wanted to try the kangaroo meat but didn't get around to it in time.