The reason these boycotts ain’t hittin like they should

The limits of consumer citizenship.

We’re just one week in, and the Trump administration has hit the ground running with its modern-day McCarthyism. The latest phase of conservatives’ extremely effective culture war—the affirmative action SCOTUS case, the manufactured mania over critical race theory, the way “DEI” and “woke” have become slurs—is here, with some real teeth. The administration has charged its employees with rooting out any activity that could possibly fall under the DEI umbrella, lest they face “adverse consequences.” This charge came after Trump placed all federal employees in DEIA offices on paid administrative leave, to be laid off imminently; and amidst his rollbacks of nondiscrimination, pay equity, and environmental justice policies.

Corporate America has been breathlessly anticipating this official shift in the political climate, and sprang into (re)action almost immediately. Amazon, Meta, and Target (among many others) have publicly announced DEI rollbacks of their own, proving what anyone who’s been paying attention at least since 2020 could and probably did tell you: all their Black Lives Matter commitments were lip service. Those rollback announcements had been ChatGPT-generated and ready to publish for months, if not years.

I’ve been seeing a lot of lefties in my bubble urge boycotts, of Amazon and Target in particular. We’re living in a social structure that has so effectively diluted our political power through gerrymandering, campaign finance deregulation, and even more brazen forms of theft and corruption. Americans have come to think of ourselves as shoppers first, and of our interactions with systems and structures as transactions. In a consumer-capitalist society, we are the consumers and our capital is our voice. Our purchasing power is our political power.

Except, it isn’t. Not really.

The hustle culture babes ain’t gonna like this one.

First of all, individual social media posts do not a boycott make. This is where the gap between activists/organizers and people whose activism begins and ends with having correct opinions is the most evident. There’s no specificity to a call to #BoycottTarget. Because, how are we boycotting? What alternatives are we using? And for how long? Until we get what? With no specificity or feasibility, there’s no accountability or impact.

I keep thinking of Jason Isaacs¹ in Armageddon, explaining why just shooting a nuclear missile at the incoming world-ender of an asteroid won’t stop it. “If you consider your target—her composition, her dimensions, her sheer velocity…you could fire every nuke you’ve got at her. She’ll just smile at you and keep on coming.”² You’re not going to bring a massive corporation to its knees³ without a legitimate plan. These joints are built to withstand outbursts that have no stamina. They just call them market fluctuations and keep it moving.

Such slutty little glasses. RELAX.

Keeping with the Target example: Black business owners whose products are currently on Target shelves have made their statements, largely to the effect of ‘a boycott would hurt us more than it would hurt Target.’ And their brands even being at Target has always been hailed as a collective win, but who is winning, exactly? Black Target employees? Black shoppers who get to feel good about buying things that were marketed to us? The Black business owners who get access to a bigger market? This win feels less and less collective as you actually break it down.

It also feels less and less like a win as you listen to these statements. (Trigger warning: this video contains absolutely reckless levels of condescension. Proceed with caution.)

iamtabithabrown

A post shared by @iamtabithabrown

As domestic diva Tabitha Brown put it,

“the thing that concerns me the most…if we all decide to stop supporting said businesses…what that does is, you take all our sales and they dwindle down. And then those companies get to say, ‘oh, your products are not performing.’ And they can remove them from the shelves and then put their preferred businesses on the shelves. And then what happens to all the businesses who’ve worked so hard to get where they are? Then what happens?”

Then what happens? Then this “win” was always too conditional to be true. That’s what happens. Then this “win” was never on our terms. We have no legitimate mechanism as unhappy customers to make the corporation respond to our demand except to keep spending our money, for fear that the corporation will stop selling us what we want. Y’all keep urging us to think “chess, not checkers.” But if the rich white man can knock over the table at any point because he doesn’t like how the game is going, then it doesn’t matter whether it’s chess or checkers that you’re playing, or whether you’re any good at it. The game is rigged. The house always wins.

If you even look like you’re about to beat him at Go, he’ll fake an earthquake and then teehee himself to death over it.

Like, at this point in what we keep calling “late-stage capitalism,” we have to accept that consumer citizenship has run its course, no? That market solutions to structural problems are a myth, written for you by the people who run the market and built the structure? Your individual consumer choice will not change how capitalism works, because capitalism designed itself to absorb that choice. That’s why the satisfaction of an imprecise boycott dissipates so quickly, and you go back to telling yourself, helplessly, that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. Withholding capital isn’t an act of creation or connection. It’s just a deferred transaction.

Rather than consumer citizenship, community citizenship—actually being in community with people and building power with them—is the only thing that will work. That’s why our oligarchs have convinced you that it’s impossible. It isn’t impossible, it’s just difficult, frustrating, slow, and uncomfortable work. It requires conflict and friction, both of which are annoying, and both of which our culture of hyper-individualism teaches us we can avoid. But in a choice between impossible (winning on capitalists’ terms) and difficult (winning on ours), we should choose difficult.

So: Join a community activist group. Get trained in ICE watching, or voter protection. Volunteer your time and energy. Talk to your neighbors. That way, you’re building something and connecting with someone. So then it’s not just you, the dissatisfied individual customer who wants to speak to the manager. It’s us, the community members, who are mobilizing for something more.

1. Relax.

2. Relax.

3. THIS ISN’T MY FAULT.