“No matter what you are — Muslim, Jewish, black, white, gay, straight — you should be proud of what you are. I shouldn’t have to feel bad about being white,” Boggess told the Hunderdon County Democrat in March.

However, many people had a problem with Boggess’ sign, including his neighbor, Bhakti Curtis, who accused Boggess of “mocking Black History Month,” according to the Hunterdon County Democrat.

Boggess took down the sign after a few days and apologized to Curtis.

However, it seems the apology was not enough to keep Boggess in business. Boggess closed his deli and has started a GoFundMe page for his deli in hopes of raising money to reopen.

“It was only supposed to be a white thing but people read more into it than that,” Boggess wrote on his GoFundMe page about his sign. “I did get tons of supporting letters from all across the USA. Which was very comforting during such a stressful time.”

“Then the bottom dropped out and customers were no longer coming into my deli, and now I am forced to close down my Deli and lose my American dream. I have become heavily in debt and getting shut off notices from everywhere for both business and home,” Bogess continued in his note. “I don’t think I deserve this just because I wanted to be proud of being white and be able to celebrate my heritage like everyone else does.”

As of early Friday morning, Boggess had raised $215.

I don’t know about you, but I have no idea what a “white thing” is or  what “white history month” would look like. Did Boggess plan to show episodes of Fifties sitcoms like Ozzie and Harriet, Leave It To Beaver, or Father Knows Best? He clearly didn’t not know best despite having an awesome surname, which sounds like the Blogess.

Here’s the deal: controversy isn’t good for business. It’s a cliche, but the only color that matters is green. There was a local business, whose name I won’t mention to protect the guilty, that did some serious trolling on Twitter last year. Their act included gay baiting and egregious gun nuttery. It was a classic case of keyboard courage because the offensive tweets were deleted within an hour post-outburst. After a series of flame wars, the stupid tweets stopped and the whole thing ended up in the dustbin of internet history. The moral of that story is: use your business feed to promote your product, service or whatever and not your opinions, especially if you’re a dumbass

I hate to see anyone’s business damaged by something like this BUT it’s a self inflicted wound. I guess Boggess was hoping to emulate the Indiana pizza bigot’s tin cup rattling but it’s been a flop thus far. Next time maybe he’ll think first before doing something like this. Then again, thinking doesn’t seem to be his strong suit.

Repeat after me: Bigotry is bad for business.