When Boycotts Do Damage — But Not To Their Intended Targets

Asheville suffers collateral damage from NC’s “Bathroom Bill”

I’m in charge of the Billfold’s Asheville beat because my MIL lives there and we visit once a year or so. It’s a lovely, vibrant town, the kind of place where I fantasize moving so that I could own a house with a porch, eat well, not have to wear a coat for six or more months out of the year, and yet also mostly get to hang out with people like me. People who share my values, you know? Artsy, progressive types. The kind who like bookstores.

Asheville (85,000 residents) has four bookstores, which is more than Queens has (>2 million). Even if you want to quibble about speciality shops, it certainly has more per capita. It takes its literary tradition seriously. And tourists streaming through the town in large numbers and on a regular annual schedule — like salmon, only with more money to spend at local indies — keep that literary tradition going.

Now the salmon are swimming elsewhere, thanks to HB2 and to the ensuing cultural boycott of North Carolina, so bookstores, like the town icon, Malaprop’s, are suffering. The Washington Post reports:

Out-of-town visitors are essential to [owner B’Racz’s] business. But after HB2, sales slumped in April, and again in May, “at a time when they’re up for other independent bookstores,” says B’Racz. “Our business is off on a day-to-day basis.”

Tourists who couldn’t cancel their trips would walk into Malaprop’s and other shops in town and announce that they weren’t spending money.

Authors like Sherman Alexie also canceled readings and events, supposedly in support of LGBT people in NC. And the unintended effect of the large-scale cultural boycott has been to punish the very people who most need support. B’Racz, the owner of Malaprop’s, is queer, and her store — like Asheville in general — is a kind of oasis.

“I didn’t vote for what happened,” says manager Linda-Marie Barrett, who has worked at Malaprop’s for 28 years and wrote a New York Times op-ed decrying the law’s effect on the store’s business. “It took us years to build up our author events and get them to come here.”

The good people of Asheville didn’t vote for the politicians who instituted statewide policies that are hostile to trans and gender-nonconforming folks. And now they’re dealing with the ramifications on two levels: first, having to live under an unjust law, and second, having to live with people from other states pulling business in response. After all, an individual may be able to protest bad legislation by moving someplace else. A town cannot.

This is why, like Dame Helen Mirren, I’m generally anti-boycott. I think boycotts are like sledgehammers: useful sometimes for very specific purposes, but too blunt and heavy to be deployed with grace and occasionally quite dangerous. Unless you want to generate a certain amount of noise and dust, you should probably only swing a sledgehammer at something you are certain can and should fall. And when there are no innocent people standing in the way.

In the case of HB2, a more strategic reaction for celebrities might be to remind their followers to vote in off-year elections. That’s when a lot of the extremists come in and start swinging their elbows. As an action, it’s maybe less satisfying than basking in the self-righteous glory that comes from Publicly Taking A Stand. But it’s more useful and has less of a chance of accidentally hurting the people you’re trying to help.

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