14 DAY TRIAL // Amidst protests from the Afro-American community and various human rights organizations, online retailers have started yesterday to remove products depicting the American Confederate flag from their shops.
If you haven't been keeping up with the news lately, it all started after a young man entered an African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina, last week and opened fire killing nine people. During the investigation, the FBI categorized the event as a hate crime, with the attacker being part of many white supremacy online groups.
The entire nation's problem with the Confederate flag started a few days later when as a sign of mourning, US flags were flown at half-staff across the state. All except the Confederate battle flag flown over Confederate Soldier Monument near the South Carolina State House.
This sparked a nation-wide outrage, but also rallied up sales of confederate flags from people trying to display their racist views.
As the controversy ramped up with every passing day, the PR departments of online retailers started to panic, and fearing any type of backlash and civil lawsuits have decided to pull products that depicted the confederate flag.
Online retailers react by doing the right thing
First there were eBay, Sears, and Wal-Mart in the morning of June 23, closely followed by Amazon, Etsy, and Target later on in the afternoon.
Last one to join in was Google, first through its Shopping service, and then with its Ads offering.
Some of the aforementioned sites have already taken all products down, while others still have confederate flags and related merchandise up for sale, but this may be for only a small period of time until their websites adapt to the new policy.
In a statement on its corporate website, eBay motivated their decision: "We have decided to prohibit Confederate flags, and many items containing this image, because we believe it has become a contemporary symbol of divisiveness and racism."
