OPINION: My Tractor Supply hat was an icon. Now it’s in the trash

Editor’s note: David M. Perry Journalist, historian, andGlorious Age: A New History of Medieval EuropeHe is the associate director of undergraduate studies in the history department at the University of Minnesota. His newsletter,Modern Medieval.The opinions expressed here are those of the author. Further comments On CNN.

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The hat was bright gray when I got it, and now it’s faded and splotchy, especially around the brim where sweat spots lighten and darken. It smells of bug spray, fish, and gasoline. But the Tractor Supply Company (TSC) logo shines bright red and white, emblazoned with the company logo in red lettering that reads, “For life out here.”

I don’t wear it much in the winter because it’s not suitable for indoor use, but when the snow melts and I put my old aluminum boat back on the water, when I start pulling weeds, when I do the manual labor that signals the change of seasons, I wear it. Not only because I really want a comfortable hat when working outside, but to me this hat also symbolizes something: Spring is here, and it’s time to clean up, burn, plant, repair, launch, and fish.

This hat has a history. I used to wear my old green Red Sox hat when I went to work or play. But one day I caught a giant carp off the bottom of the St. Croix River and the hat got soaked with fish slime, so I made the horrible mistake of trying to wash it and it got destroyed. The TSC hat took its place, and I was wearing it when I caught the biggest walleye of my life in May.

After reading something on the internet on Thursday, I took my hat off and threw it in the trash.

As part of an effort to distance itself from “non-business activities,” the company announced it was bowing to right-wing boycott efforts and abandoning programs meant to promote diversity, equity and inclusion (perhaps homogeneity, inequality and exclusion?). In a news release on Thursday, TSC said it would stop sponsoring events such as “Pride Festival and the Vote Campaign” (not the Vote Campaign). for The company also said it would eliminate the DEI role and “remove current DEI goals while ensuring a respectful environment.”

Predictably, conservatives are celebrating while liberals are calling for a boycott.

Maybe TSC figures you can’t please everyone, and that the majority of their customers are white conservatives or sympathetic, so the rest of us are beside the point. But I’m a loyal customer. When my pressurized well tank developed a pinhole leak, I went straight to the store in Spooner, Wisconsin. I used a 1 7/8 inch ball I bought there to tow my boat, and when I got a flat wheel on the way back from the lake, I bought an oversized jack and trailer tires there. I also bought marine varnish for my transom. This holiday weekend (I’m in the woods this week), I’m surrounded by store-bought products that loudly tell me they don’t see me as a valued customer. Message received.

But the company gets two things wrong. First, it assumes that the bigots threatening a boycott represent rural America. White conservatives may own the farms, but it’s people of color who actually do the work. Many of them are Latino, but there is also a growing number of Somali and Hmong farmers in Minnesota (and they are increasingly organizing to claim their own land). As John Boyd Jr., founder of the National Black Farmers Association, told The Washington Post: Tractor Supply is “sending the wrong message to America”

Robbie Starbuck, the failed Tennessee politician, is not a farmer. He ran (and lost) to represent a largely urban district, the one I grew up in and know well.

Second, fighting climate change shouldn’t be a partisan issue. Many parts of the country are battling extreme heat, but not ours. Years of drought have warmed the water and made it shallow, which is not good for fish in the North. But so far this year, the drought has given way to cool weather, endless rain, and terrible flooding. Today, the fish in the St. Croix River may be happy, but the river is too dangerous for me to see. And while fishing is essential to my happiness, it’s at least only a hobby. Drought and periods of continuous rain are a disaster for farmers. In the real world, not on right-wing social media, they would be a disaster for the companies that serve farmers.

My hat is in the trash now. Once a company makes a decision like this, it’s hard to imagine them ever going back. I threw a bag of cat litter and some frozen fish guts on it and put it on the side of the road. Gone. But this should serve as a lesson to the next company that faces a campaign like this (and right-wing influencers are already gearing up for the next one). There’s no need to comply. Tractor Supply Company only had to state that they support everyone who chooses to live here, while ensuring that “here” still exists as we come out of this time of fires and floods.