I believe based on your remark that we're likely to fundamentally disagree on idealism vs. realism, and that is fine. I find myself usually in the center of realism and idealism since I know the way the world works but I want a better universe; you don't have to pick one or the other. I really don't understand why we have to provide corporations a pass just because they aren't individuals (which Citizens United would disagree with but that is another argument.) We should not just accept the best we're given by a business, we should anticipate the best we want out of them. Companies are made of people calling the shots and there are an infinite number of examples of companies that make enormous profits and stand up for good causes. Patagonia is an excellent example. They don't need to make sustainable products and offer repair and reuse apps to go against fast trend, but they do and they earn a lot of money .
"Everybody should do the ideal thing" is only naive if you do nothing about it. This case does not include the many grey topics where opinions have a location; this is literally a discussion of if you want black people to have rights or not. It is not courageous of a business to state that black people deserve rights just because they will lose white supremacist customers. It really is quite easy for a company to put out a statement of opinion like this, as we have seen from each the companies doing this right now like Amazon and the NFL. I genuinely don't know how it's hard for a multi-million dollar business to give up a tiny fraction of their profits for the greater good. If people who do not like Black Lives Matter constitute a majority of a Organization's customerbase, then perhaps they should not have those profits (not asserting EA's playerbase in against BLM, this is a hyperbolized illustration )
Why don't you support them in doing both? Because we have not seen them doing both. Back up your words. Sony managed things better than EA by not only using a statement, but going after All Lives Issue fans in comments, fitting donations by some employees, claiming they'll have more in the upcoming week, and allegedly forming a studio at San Diego headed by POC developers. Can EA have something in the works and they wanted to get the statement out first? They could've either held the announcement until they had something to showtold us exactly what they are going. In the end of the day should you refuse to acknowledge when a business makes a little step you appreciate then how do they ever learn to generate a big step you appreciate?
Are you currently treating a business such as how a parent talks about a child? I genuinely don't understand why it's our obligation to baby companies into getting empathy. Why do they need to"know" to do good for humankind, why can't they just do it? It is the same as white people putting the responsibility on black folks to educate them not to be racist when there's plenty of resources out there on how to perform it. With that said, I do want to say I apologize if any of my comment comes off as hostile or assaulting to you. I appreciate that this discussion a lot even if I think at the end of this we'll still disagree. It simply seems like you and I disagree about the worth of words. I hope that I'm not making a strawman from your argument when I say you see very little value in creating a statement with nothing to back this up. Whereas when a large company makes an official statement I think that conveys a fair bit of cash even if they don't do anything else.