Boycotting Nike because of their Colin Kaepernick ad is not going to change the world. Covering the internet in videos and pictures of burning shoes, cut up socks and defaced swoops does not mean anything to a company worth as much as Nike, and it does not mean anything to the rest of us either. Using the fact that he is an athlete, and provides entertainment as such, as an excuse to not pay attention to the political climate, or hear the plight of people of color in America only makes you seem dense, not like someone who “tells it like it is.” Both individual ownership and chastisement of these views is important, as they are inherently restrictive of the progress that a healthy society and its citizens should have, but there is more to this situation to understand than just individuals.

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One debate that can be made is that Nike is only catering to the desires of one half of the country because they are a target; the free market offers benefit to any company that can appeal to just one half of any market at any given moment. Anyone who is destroying their Nike merchandise has already bought that merchandise, and once the flames of controversy die, it is likely that those people will buy Nike merchandise again in their lifetime. The people that support the Kaepernick cause are likely to support Nike even more for a short time as well. Put simply, companies are given the opportunity to manipulate public opinion to make more money, and their stances have no true impact on social connotations beyond those which propel their own standing. So the true debate found in the Nike boycotts is that of corporate ethics and the fetishization of laissez faire economics in capitalist nations.

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However, the more pressing reason behind this controversy comes in the fabric of the United States alone. Those who can acknowledge that the entire situation at hand comes from the dangerous nationalism present in this country and the contemporary effects of 250 years of slavery are simply not going to be persuaded by anyone who so desperately wants to ignore situations that undermine what they believe about the present day. The belief that the Civil Rights Act cured all racism in America, and for that matter, that the Nineteenth Amendment cured all misogyny (the two generally go hand in hand), is not a rational one. Choosing to believe that there were not opponents to every progressive movement in America, and that they do not continue to oppose those movements today, is especially ridiculous when one appreciates how intensely divided the country is right now. The rights and liberties of minorities’ in this country has not reached a point where it is safe to allow them to stagnate, and evidence of this should come in every burning shoe as starkly as it does in every burning cross.