Businesses have every right to pull it from their shelves though, if they think that public opinion is that strong against it.
It's still so weird to me that some businesses during the last month are willing to risk the PR backlash on principle. It's totally undermining my "fuck the corps and the man" attitude I've spent so many years building. There's the argument that having morals and expressing them as a large corporation can have a positive effect on your PR and profits (just ask the Evangelical and other faith-based businesses that have done so), even to the cynical degree of just doing it for PR and sales.
But I don't think anyone who wasn't already buying on Ebay or whoever stopped selling w/e, is suddenly now doing so because "they don't sell the Confederate Battle Flag."
Which means this is at best, I suppose, an actual statement of principle from billion dollar corporations with shareholders (i.e., not just a statement condemning what is obviously bad) or at worst a political act. I guess I've just gotten so used to corporations staying neutral (the obligatory press statement of policy and funneling dump trucks of money into the political system aside) that the fact they're forming opinions about this stuff and are acting on them (like people) is a little weird. Taking a handful of
dramatic sensational political events and reactions as a sign of a trend isn't wise. (The reaction to the Church shooting and the ongoing noise with Trump and people dropping him.) But it does seem like a growing phenomena. There's plenty of prior precedence for corporations acting morally, forming opinions and taking actions based on their morals. But I dunno, this seems like they're getting swept up in the same momentum the public is, and openly getting politicized instead of just operating from the shadows with money.
Then again, maybe this has just been a fast month of what is now becoming regular American insanity and the inevitable reaction to the insanity.