Starbucks and the San Antonio Spurs: a tale of two misguided boycotts
The emerging movements against Starbucks and the Spurs are not only unnecessary and doomed to failure, they manage to dilute the power of boycotting as an instrument of change
In 1971’s Inner City Blues, Marvin Gaye gave voice to every marginalized and disenfranchised person when he passionately sang: Make me wanna holler / The way they do my life. The problem is that one voice hollering alone is easily dismissed as grouchy complaining. But gather a group of fervid voices chanting the same thing and it’s suddenly a righteous choir for change. One of the most effective tools of change is the righteous choir belting for a boycott. During the past couple weeks, two very different types of boycotts have been in the news. The arrest of two African-American men at a Philadelphia Starbucks for Loitering While Black has prompted a call to boycott all Starbucks nationwide. The other boycott involves fans of the San Antonio Spurs who, reacting to head coach Gregg Popovich’s outspoken criticism of president Donald Trump, have chosen to stop supporting the team. Both boycotts are legitimate in that they express the frustrations of people fed up with certain behavior they find offensive. The problem is that both boycotts are misguided and therefore ultimately ineffective at creating positive change.
Boycotts work. And they are non-violent. But they require perseverance and dedication. The Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 lasted for over a year, creating tremendous hardships for those boycotters who relied on the buses to get to work, but their commitment and endurance led to the toppling of a lot of racist dominoes, vastly improving the lives of people of color. In the last few years, several prominent boycotts have resulted in practical change: large companies threatened to boycott Indiana after they passed the Religious Restoration Act, the NBA All-Star game boycotted North Carolina after it passed House Bill 2 that restricted rights of the LGBTQ community, and sponsors boycotted Bill O’Reilly after revelations of alleged sexual harassment, causing the cancellation of his popular show. I have participated in many boycotts over the past 50 years in support of causes I believed in. But activists, despite their sincerity, have to be careful not to create a “boycott fatigue” in which we add so many targets to the list, with the chance of minimal return, that we dilute the power of boycotting as an instrument of change.
Popovich has pulled no verbal punches in his disdain for Trump, describing him as a “soulless coward” and “pathological liar”. Those are either brave or reckless words when you’re coaching in Texas, a state that gave Trump all 38 electoral votes and 807,179 more popular votes than Hilary Clinton. His candor has resulted in a bunch of longtime Spurs fans withdrawing their support for the team they once tirelessly rooted for. Some have given away rooms full of Spurs memorabilia collected over decades of fandom. One disgruntled Spurs follower for 25 years grumbled, “I often curse Pop for doing what he did. He insulted more than half of the Spurs’ fan base, and no sign whatsoever of an apology.”
Feeling insulted by a coach’s political stance is not a good reason to boycott the team because the offense is merely a bruised ego, not a social statement. Following that logic, any time any coach, player, or owner expresses a political opinion contradicting any fans’ political views, the offended players should boycott the team. This would leave all teams with barely any fans. What change do these boycotters hope to bring about? A team in which all players and staff agree with their politics? Or a team in which all players and staff forego their First Amendment rights to express themselves? If fans don’t feel the need to boycott when a team member spouts opinions that agree with theirs, then they shouldn’t boycott when opposing opinions are expressed. What they are actually boycotting is people exercising the First Amendment. Boycotting the Spurs is boycotting the US Constitution. Democracy demands informed discourse. Boycotts like this are designed to repress free speech and are therefore both anti-democracy and anti-American. Worse, by boycotting because someone disagrees with them, they are admitting that their own political views can’t hold up to scrutiny.
The Starbucks boycott is trickier because the offense is straight-forward racism, for which there is no defense, either legal or moral. Only one side’s constitutional rights were infringed upon, leaving the other side without justification. But exactly who is the offending side here? Is it the Starbucks employee who phoned the police and instigated the arrest, or is it the Starbucks corporation? Since it’s the Starbucks corporation that is being boycotted with chants of “No black bucks for Starbucks” then the protesters are proclaiming that the corporation is at fault and that boycotting them will fix the prevailing institutional racism that they have uncovered. Except they haven’t uncovered any institutional racism rampant across the nearly 14,000 Starbucks across America. There are isolated incidents, as there are in every chain stores, but no discernible pattern. The Starbucks corporation has apologized and set up a racial-bias training day for employees in more than 8,000 stores. Some protesters argue that’s not enough time, but Starbucks is merely training employees in proper procedures, not trying to educate everyone on the history and sociology of racism. As long as their employees treat everyone equally, and the company fire anyone who doesn’t, they are doing all they can do. Boycotting them will have no measurable effect on systemic racism and unfairly punishes an innocent party.
Racism is a malignant tumor in our society and, when surgically applied, boycotts can zero in on the malady and attack it with laser precision. But launching widespread boycotts unjustly or without any specific attainable goal is like throwing away the scalpel and attacking the body with a jackhammer. In the end, these unnecessary and unsuccessful boycotts can have the opposite results because they interfere with the boycotts that can actually improve the country.
