How to think about boycotts
The essay on the boycott by Nate Schulman Yuri Artibise posted earlier brings up some good points about a curious modern political conundrum:
How the victims of a boycott who support its aims should respond to it.
Schulman’s essay makes an interesting point about the double standard to which Arizona is held vis-a-vis California.
After all, California passed its own version of SB 1070 more than fifteen years ago, and it’s true it did pass an anti gay–marriage bill in 2008. (I could even cite an even older example people forget about – the recall of most of the California Supreme Court thirty years ago, which wrenched the state’s courts rightward en masse and produced one of the most repressive judiciary systems in the world.)
The answer to this charge is ..
… Life isn’t fair.
A boycott won’t work in California, even if it deserved it. It’s too big, and its economy, even while it suffers like that of many other states’, is too diversified.
You’d have to boycott Google and California citrus … Pixar and Northrup … Hewlett-Packard and Safeway … Wells Fargo and that great bud from Mendocino.
Second, the lines in California are blurry. The issue with Prop. 8, the anti-gay marriage initiative, wasn’t a statewide hostility to gays, it’s that the liberals in the state got outhustled by the yahoos and bigots. (The fecklessness of liberals in the state is a subject for another time.)
Indeed, the state these days (partly as a result of upheavals in the state following its immigration fights in the 1990s) is famously liberal; the Prop. 8 issue isn’t anything that brands the state as worthy of boycotting.
Arizona’s SB 1070, by contrast, fits nicely into the image given to the rest of the country over the last few years:
Boneheads toting machine guns at presidential appearances … Sheriff Joe running around like a latter-day Bull Connor … and now SB 1070.
In other words, Arizona has been asking for it. Any debate over the fairness of a boycott should address that unhappy reality.
Comments
Nate Schulman Saturday, June 26, 2010:
Fair and tough points. Duly appreciate the response.
I was playing devil's advocate without giving enough clues. I was really trying to say boycotting ANY state is absurd both in scope and how it can target one thing but affect quite something else (the wrong folk, or as you put it – "How the victims of a boycott who support its aims should respond to it.")
So I know very well a full boycott of California would never happen after 1070, never could. And that it would be absurd to take that on. And you're right, it's a limited sample to draw from, to strike a match from. But just as well, as I say in my first essay, its just as absurd to boycott all of Arizona. You talk about Sheriff Joe, but that's still too small a sample – Arizona has been asking for 'it', in terms of virulent criticism, sure. But a boycott, really? Not so sure. Then again I'm new here, and very young (26) – I have a lot of idealism that can wilt in the near future :(
Chris Rider Sunday, June 27, 2010:
This is a really interesting discussion. Here's my position as a Californian. A boycott is not a retaliatory action. It's point is to give a nudge to those people who have the power to change a perceived injustice.
Those advocating for a boycott are betting that most Arizonans won't feel strongly enough about this issue to put up with the economic hardship a boycott would impose. Far from branding all Arizonans as bigots, the boycotters are giving Arizona the benefit of the doubt!
I haven't spent enough time in Arizona to know whether this is a good idea. It may well backfire, and in that case it will prove to have been misguided. But if it eventually has the effect of getting enough moderates to vote for repeal, then it will have done it's job.