Tabitha Brown speaking at a Target-themed event during Essence Festival of Culture 2024. Target had a huge presence at the festival, including catering to Black social media influencers and collaborators. (Photo credit: Target)
Note: I use “Black” as directed by the AP, which now classifies Black as a proper noun. But I am also quoting from people who lived during a time when “black” was lowercase.
Tabitha Brown’s video shook people to the core, and not in the way she intended.
Brown’s Jan. 25 Instagram video triggered a lot of discussion around the recent DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) rollback announced by Target. As part of its very willing compliance to Donald Trump’s executive order around the destruction of DEI, Target–which had just stated it would double down on its DEI investing–switched gears and did away with their DEI initiatives.
This move affected consumers, but it also affected the Black-owned businesses Target had lured into its stores. Brown’s various ventures, such as Donna’s Recipe (which is also available in DEI-compliant Ulta Beauty), her stationary and homewares, kitchen utensils and vegan food options, are some of the businesses hurt by the news.
Brown’s basic message is explaining just how much Target’s announcement could hurt Black business owners, including the hypothetical situation of Target taking the businesses out of stores altogether if sales are low. Her hope, she said in so many words, was that we keep shopping at Target to support the Black-owned businesses because they could be first on the chopping block. However, this message rang as insincere to many of her followers, dividing her fans between those who felt she was conning them and those who wanted to remain faithful and support by going in-store.
I watched and read all of this back-and-forth for about two weeks on Instagram and Threads. The more I read, the angrier and less satisfied I got, because instead of people discussing the particulars of a boycott, which I felt was a logical next step regarding Target’s decision, I saw people arguing about if boycotts even worked anymore. I saw former Twitter Blue-Check people saying how we should, essentially, go in Target and spend our money on the Black-owned products, even though much of that money would still go to Target and not the businesses. I saw strawman arguments out the wazoo. So I took to Just Add Color to voice my two cents.
I personally feel like boycotting is the right solution. But I also wanted to get into why this boycott was soliciting all of this emotional feedback. Why did Black people feel so connected to Target to the point of both-sides-ing the effectiveness of boycotts? What did the notion of “Black capitalism” have to do with all of this? And how do we come together over the internet to create boycotts? Buckle up, because I am taking us on an odyssey of consumerism, societal theory and critical thinking.
Why did Brown receive such blowback?
Tabitha Brown in a 2022 Target photo shoot. My personal opinion as to why the outrage surrounding Brown’s video happened is because the very thing that Brown used to become famous–her southern drawl and charm–worked against her. Or to put it another way, it seemed like she weaponized it.
To put all my cards on the table, I have been a huge Brown supporter. My sister and I have bought many of her products, from stationary to seasonings, vegan burgers and pots and pans, to Donna’s Recipe hair care. We are Brown stans. I’ve even interviewed Brown for my day job. I thought she was lovely, personable, and charming, and as a fan, I was indeed fangirling inside.
I say all of this to say that I watched Brown’s video several times, and I had to come away with the same opinion others had–that she was asking a lot of her audience who felt strongly about not wanting to support Target. Not only that, but she was trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes about what the video was actually about. It might not have been how she felt, but her words made it seem like she was talking about her bottom line under the guise of speaking out on behalf of small Black-owned businesses. (Especially since she’s not really a small business anymore.)
Other business owners have echoed the same sentiment, such as The Lip Bar’s Melissa Butler. But the reason why Butler didn’t receive the same level of vitriol as Brown is because Brown regularly employs a manner of speaking that can seem to some as performative. Again, it might not be. But when compared to how Butler speaks–in a non-accented, “regular” tone–you can see how Brown’s folksy, southern way of speaking can come off as practiced and misleading.
I’m reminded of the 1957 movie A Face in the Crowd, starring Andy Griffith in his greatest film role (and film debut). He plays Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes, a “drunken drifter” as described by Wikipedia, who gets launched into superstardom thanks to his guitar-playing, folksy singing, and down-home charm. He’s able to influence the masses through his natural gift of gab. Eventually, Lonesome becomes a massive star, and his appeal breaks him into marketing rooms, commercial deals, and even politics. But the woman who discovered him, journalist Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal) realizes she has to stop the monster she created, and she exposes him to the world. He wasn’t just a simple man with affable wit and likeability; he had become a shrewd businessman who viewed his adoring public as pawns and sheep who will do whatever he tells them.
Andy Griffith in A Face in the Crowd. Photo credit: Warner Bros. Am I saying Brown is nefarious like that? No. But what I am trying to illustrate is how to some people, her reliance on her southern drawl and likeability is similar to that of someone who has developed a character people can see themselves in. When she makes it, you feel like you’ve made it. And she relied on that parasocial relationship to tide her over in this new chapter of her business career. But many people weren’t falling for it this time.
Those who did started finding many reasons as to why the folks who were calling Brown out were wrong. Those arguments, I feel, were disingenuous at best. You can be a fan of someone and still critique them when you feel they’ve messed up. It’s a lot like how if you really love someone, you will let them know when they are in the wrong. What I heard those who were critiquing Brown say was that they wanted to feel respected by Brown in their choice to not shop at Target due to their convictions. They assumed she would feel the same about boycotting, even though her products were in the store. They probably also assumed that she was more powerful than she is–that she could easily take her products out of the stores and sell them online, just like how she does with Donna’s Recipe.
But she showed that even she is just like any other Black business owner at Target–at the mercy of the system and forced to plead with her consumer base to shop where they don’t feel wanted. That, plus the rhetoric other owners were regurgitating about business costs and inventory woes, felt like she was dumping her problems as a business owner onto us, the consumer, who don’t have a financial stake in her business at all. What I heard from the critiques was that Brown shouldn’t expect that getting consumers to play the game would somehow fix the DEI issue, regardless of how her brand was affected. People said that they would try to support her as directly as possible, but a boycott had to happen.
And, despite so many people putting themselves into pretzels around the idea of not shopping at Target, the boycott has gone into effect. But I had to ask myself why everyone, including me, felt so betrayed by Target in the first place.
Why is Target triggering so many emotions?
The hero image for Tabitha Brown’s first wave of items in 2022. Photo credit: TargetI had to think about this for a while once the Target uproar happened. Why was there such an outpouring of anger at Target, when other companies, like Walmart and Amazon, have also rolled back DEI initiatives but without the same amount of outrage?
First, I think it’s because Walmart and Amazon are strategic in their predatory nature, which has worked to insulate them from a lot of backlash. As I discuss further in this article, Walmart is a great example of how a corporation can essentially buy out its competition so that people have no choice but to shop there for their groceries, regardless of how Walmart’s politics makes them feel. Amazon has carved out a similar market. They have long been seen as a source where you can find everything, but now you can also get groceries and other essentials. Don’t even get me started on the Prime overnight shipping, meaning you can buy whatever you need and probably get it the next day, or in some cases, the same day. These businesses feel more like necessary evils, and they use that feeling to their advantage. Dominating the market like that–and making it so easy to compulsively shop there–can tamp down hard feelings (but only to a point, because folks are still boycotting Walmart and Amazon).
I thought about my own emotions regarding Target. Up until now, Target was one of my favorite stores. I felt like I could find all kinds of bougie things there for a reasonable (or at least semi-reasonable) price. It was like my Anthropologie on a budget. (Anthropologie, I believe, is another shop that has rolled back DEI initiatives.)
Even better, I could buy Black brands and brands from other people of color at Target. It appeared like Target truly embraced diversity. The company regularly celebrated cultural holidays like Lunar New Year, Dia de los Muertos, and others, the various cultural history months, and other days that highlighted racial, cultural, gender and sexual diversity. While I had written on Instagram about my worry about these kinds of cultural touchstones becoming capitalist husks of their former selves, I still appreciated how Target repped business owners and creators of color with collaborations, its diverse creators program, and general progressive outlook.
In other words, Target made me feel appreciated, and I liked spending my dollars there. I think that’s why a lot of Black people, Black women especially, liked shopping there as well. Target weaseled its way into “Black bougie brunch culture,” in my opinion. Just like going to brunch became a status symbol in the late 2010s up until now, heading to Target to drop money on the “low-end of the high-end” luxury products became something to flex on social media. Case in point: the Instagram account @BlackGirlsAtTarget. Not only could Black women find things to beautify their home and fill their refrigerators with, but they could also feel like their retail therapy was helping other Black women business owners, thanks to the variety of Black-owned businesses Target invested in starting in 2020, after America was ripped open once again by the George Floyd murder.
Target’s commitment to DEI by engaging with Black businesses and Black customers allowed Black people to lower their guard around Target. Target felt like our place to self-actualize through bougieness and spending.
This reel from Black Woman Sales Academy founder Bria Hash encapsulates what I’m describing beautifully.
Overall, Black people seemingly fell into the trap Target laid revolving around self-actualization through capitalism. It’s a trap we’ve fallen in before, unfortunately, and it seems like a trap we’ll keep falling into until we realize capitalism doesn’t save–it only consumes.
“Black Capitalism won’t save us”
Jay-Z and Beyonce pose with a previously unreleased Basquiat in a 2021 Tiffany ad. The couple received backlash for their continued focus on Black capitalism as Black excellence, especially since showing the painting could have gone against Basquiat’s original wishes. (Photo credit: Tiffany’s)While there have always been Black businessowners and the merits of Black business have been discussed by many leaders, including Booker T. Washington, the concept of Black capitalism became a popular buzzword in 1968, when President Nixon promised to help uplift the Black American population through programs, business programs in particular, to do away with the variety of economic and social issues Black people faced. As part of his initiative, he created the Office of Minority Business Enterprise.
The Carter Administration continued uplifting Black businessowners through loans, training, and a measure to ensure a fixed number of minority businesses were contracted by the government. While Nixon’s administration didn’t see the a ton of improvement among the Black American living experience, President Carter’s administration oversaw “black business’s biggest period of growth,” with government business with Black firms almost tripling from $1 million to $2.7 million by 1980.
Today, Black capitalism has almost become synonymous with “Black excellence,” something I take issue with. You don’t have to own a business or have wealth to be “excellent.” However, with today’s focus on money and excess, thanks in no small part to Jay-Z1 and Beyonce‘s “hood capitalism” schtick by buying Basquiat paintings, diamonds, and renting out the Louvre, many Black people aspire to be wealthy as a means of gaining access to white privileges.
Indeed, the way Black capitalism is thought of today as a shortcut to white acceptance is something that troubles me greatly. Do you think the Snoop Dogg of the ’90s–or heck, even the Snoop Dogg of 2020–would feel like he had to bend the knee at Donald Trump’s second inauguration? I don’t think so. But Snoop’s ascent into perceived whiteness began when he befriended Martha Stewart after she got of jail, and then, after creating several successful businesses with her, he started earning the veneer of whiteness, leading to white baby boomers (women especially) to accept him.
Fast forward to 2024 and he’s everywhere–on commercials, making business deals, becoming a beloved uncle figure at the Olympics, and earning even more white cred by showing his vulnerable, emotional side as a judge on The Voice (all the while sending all of his Black talent packing to try his luck with a white country singer, the most beloved type of singer for The Voice‘s mostly-white audience.) All of that lead to the weekend before Jan. 20, when Snoop decided to perform at a pre-inauguration “first annual” Crypto Ball, co-signing who many have called our modern-day Hitler (or one of our Hitlers, since Elon Musk is also on that list). From my research, I can’t tell if Snoop has legit stock in Bitcoin, but he has flirted with cryptocurrency in the past, also saying in 2013 that he’d accept Bitcoin as a form of payment for his latest album. So it would stand to reason he felt like it was in his best business interest to perform. But as we know in the end, it probably wasn’t worth it.
Snoop Dogg during his 2024 season of The Voice. (Photo credit: NBC)What too many white-aligned Black capitalists seem to forget is that access to whiteness is never free–it always costs something, usually your dignity, your silence, and your allegiance to your people. And if you’re willing to sell those parts of your soul, how can you get them back, especially once white capitalism is done with you? It’s like the classic conundrum in the song “Sinnerman”–when your proverbial judgement day comes, you can’t run to the white mainstream anymore, but you also can’t run back to the Black community who once embraced you. You are a person apart, only seeking refuge in what dark (and sometimes nefarious) spaces you can crawl into.
Bayard Rustin would have probably hated the way Black capitalism has been embraced, especially without any guardrails or deeper thinking attached to it.
Nonsite captured Rustin’s words in a 2023 reprinting. As of writing this article, the research I did to try to find when Rustin actually wrote this treatise on Black capitalism came up empty. Probably in the late ’60s to early ’70s, judging by the fact that he’s writing about the Nixon Administration. But just for the sake of history, know that Rustin died in 1987 and did not contribute to Nonsite two years ago.
The way he begins his essay, though, sounds like it could have been written yesterday. “There has been much talk recently about black capitalism as the new approach to solving the economic and social problems of Negro Americans.” Put “Black” in for “Negro” and you have an essay that might as well have been written about our current tug of war with the concept of Black capitalism.
He writes that Black capitalism is gaining wide support among those in the Nixon Administration and within “certain segments of the black community.” However, he writes that wants Black people to “closely analyze” whether self-actualization through capitalism can actually help us.
“I favor the notion of black people owning and operating businesses, and I should add in this I regard that I find particularly the efforts that some Negroes have made to form cooperatives,” he wrote. “Yet I think that these enterprises have had more of a psychological than an economic effect on black Americans. They have helped destroy the brutal stereotype that black people are not capable of engaging in entrepreneurial activity. But the economic impact of black capitalism has been–and can only be–marginal at best, and if we are not careful, this approach may actually compound the injustices from which Negroes suffer.”
He continues by saying that we can’t forget “that businesses are ‘in business’ not to attack social injustice but to make a profit, and that the ghetto represents a poor market to invest in because of its poverty and deprivation.” He says that businesses can become attracted to “the ghetto” through tax incentives that “guarantee them a high profit and which also insure that they themselves, and not the poor, will the prime benefactors of their investments.”
Even Black capitalists will end up following these rules, since business owners, no matter how altruistic they want to be, will still think about their bottom line first. As Rustin pointed out, “these individuals are a very small and affluent section of the Negro community.”
“It is the black working poor and the unemployed who constitute the mass of Negroes in need of economic uplift,” he wrote, adding that he thought it was “foolish and misleading” to suggest to these people to become capitalists, as if capitalism can help them pull themselves out of an impoverished situation that America thrives upon. What Rustin wanted instead was for the majority of Black people to join the “American trade union movement which is the institution most responsible for the integration of the black poor into the economic life of our society.”
He writes that too many lovers of Black capitalism act like it will easily erase Black poverty. He also rightly feared that Black capitalism could be “the dangerous and divisive trap of abandoning the goals of integration and the elimination of a separatist social structure which has imposed such degradation and hardship upon Black people and which today threatens to divide our nation.” He viewed Black capitalism not as a cure-all for every economic hardship Black people faced, but as a “marginal and supplementary program.”
“I can think of nothing more potentially harmful to black people than the substitution of the delusion of Black capitalism for the absolute necessity for Federal programs to provide all Negroes with dignified employment, decent housing, and superior schools,” he wrote. “Black people cannot ignore these objectives without forsaking the ultimate goal of economic liberation.”
Bayard Rustin in front of the 1966 Senate Government Operations subcommittee. Photo credit: Getty Images/BiographyI think this is part of what rubbed people the wrong way about Brown’s reel. Yes, it’s true that boycotting Target would take money from Black businesses with products inside the store. But her other statements–about how she has a year left on her contract, about how she has nowhere else to put her inventory, about how she could be taken out of Target if her sales are down–shows how what is most important is Brown’s bottom line, not whether people feel comfortable going into Target now. Yes, she will lose money. But Black capitalism cannot be a replacement for Black liberation.
Black capitalists often advance the thought process of “If I make it, we all make it.” But if we’re being honest, that’s a marketing tactic. Yes, it feels good to support Black-owned businesses. I love giving Black-owned businesses some of my money through purchases. But I haven’t “made it” if I buy, let’s say, Donna’s Recipe hair care products (which I have bought and love). Brown’s the one that’s “making it.” She’s the one with the business. I’m currently part of the mass of the Black poor Rustin’s talking about. Has buying Donna’s Recipe lifted me out of the plight of worrying about money? Not at all. But at least my hair’s silky-soft.
Rustin made it clear he didn’t want capitalism to be used as another form of segregation. According to Persuasion, Rustin felt that the Black American population could benefit from race consciousness, but he was also “skeptical that race consciousness would contribute to material progress.”
Even more interesting is how Rustin was also “mistrustful of policies meant to divide goods along group lines; he preferred old-fashioned democratic strategies based on the premise that economic growth lifting all boats could be accompanied by policies meant to direct benefits to those most in need.”
In other words, it seems Rustin believed capitalism could be a tool that supplemented more socialist ideas such as spreading the wealth. According to the Persuasion article, Rustin could already see America was intent on using capitalism as a way to keep certain groups lower, regardless of how much they played the game.
“Bayard was struck by the way that identity-based laws and policies in Asian societies like India, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia were either explicitly meant to benefit majority groups or, if designed to benefit lower castes, invariably failed to eliminate cast consciousness,” the article states. “He was not enthusiastic about the United States embarking on a similar course.”
With all of this said, it would be interesting to know what Rustin would have thought of DEI practices as a whole, since DEI has not only become painted with the same negative brush as affirmative action–racists believing that Black people are merely receiving handouts from the government or some other overarching group–but it’s also been a covert tool that white women reap most of the benefits from2.
If we look at Target’s use of DEI, for example, their efforts to spotlight Black businesses did help raise the status of these businesses. But at the same time, they became stereotyped as “Black businesses,” not just “businesses,” like Hearth and Hand, which is created by HGTV star Joanna Gaines. Gaines is half-Korean and also has Lebanese ancestry, so she could have been part of Target’s DEI initiative as well, since Target also lent the capitalist olive branch to Asian businesses, especially Asian women-owned businesses, as well.
But was Gaines treated as a white woman? Seems like it–not only does she also have German ancestry, but she also married into a white family and has earned a veneer of social whiteness as a result. As a woman whose brand has been successfully marketed towards white women, she has been able to integrate into Target without the “DEI” albatross on her back. In other words, she’s treated as a real business. Black businesses, however, are still given the back-handed glow from the term “Black business” and are subsequently sequestered in the gilded cage of a white company’s racial do-gooderism to relieve white guilt.
Joanna Gaines is a woman of color, but because of the racial position she plays, she is able to get a huge display in Target, showing the confidence the store has in her business. Meanwhile, Black and POC businesses have had to share shelf space. Photo credit: TargetAs Legal scholar and The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Gap author Mehrsa Baradaran said in The Nation article “Black Capitalism won’t save us,” the Nixon administration executed a “brilliant decoy” through the tax incentives, because it didn’t help Black people–it helped the businesses, just as Rustin feared. This decoy has been repeated through various other presidencies, from Carter, Reagan, to Obama and even Trump.
“It looks like we’re helping but we’re actually not,” she said. “All it does is prop up a few black businesses to sort of allow for the segregated market to continue breeding inequality.”
Indeed, the same thing has happened with Target. Yes, the company helped some Black and minority-owned businesses. But for Target, those businesses served double-duty as props that allowed them to continue to breed their version of inequality, which is to segregate and objectify Black businesses under the veil of community leadership and reparation, while other businesses are entered into Target’s landscape without racial ties and are, as a result, are seen as more “legitimate.”3
Yes, boycotting is effective
Rosa Parks on the bus in Montgomery, AL. (Photo credit: Underwood Archives/UIG/REX/Shutterstock.com, Britannica.com)The lie that had been going around the internet describing boycotts as ineffective, not worth it, or not a strategy flies in the face of the boycotting tradition that led to us having our freedoms today. The people who sacrificed their comfort, livelihoods and sometimes even their lives for us to be able to be free today now must reckon with their descendants now saying their sacrifices are, essentially “too hard” to commit to today. That is truly disheartening and, if I’m being honest, disgusting to me.
Point blank: Boycotts work.
As Mississippi Encyclopedia writes, “Boycotts were ways of forcing issues by making situations difficult and potentially unbearable for targeted people or businesses. Civil rights activists frequently used the phrase selective buying to make clear that they were giving their business only to people who treated them with respect or who had clearly rejected Jim Crow practices.”
Let’s break this down–boycotts are called “political tools” in the civil rights movement “to challenge particular forms of discrimination. Boycotts are part of an overall strategy for equality (such as the various campaigns that make up the civil rights movement).
Secondly, Mississippi Encyclopedia’s definition of selective buying differs from the definition people have created on Threads. Selective buying doesn’t mean going into a store that is against you and buying from Black-owned businesses (especially if those businesses are just playing the same capitalist game of using Black consumers to pad out profits). Instead, selective buying means to buy with people and companies who respect Black customers and the community at large. In today’s case, that means shopping with companies who have remained committed to DEI practices, such as Costco.4
Boycotts are how we are able to live how we live today. In a way, it’s only through the boycotts, sit-ins, marches and other forms of direct action that we are now able to pose silly questions about boycotts’ effectiveness today. We have become so removed from these practices due to our conspicuous consumption and other forms of surface-level social gatekeeping that we now have the luxury to forget how hard boycotts actually were.
Many people have used the Montgomery Bus Boycott as a prime example to juxtapose against the Target boycott. Indeed, there are parallels–in both stories, Black people are made uncomfortable by entities they feel they have to use in their everyday lives. Black people in both stories organize around said discomforts and establish a boycott.
Here’s where they differ–whereas the Target boycott was originally organic, springing from public outcry and social media posts, the bus boycott was planned behind closed doors. But to me, that doesn’t make either one better than the other. The Target boycott might have started out organically, but it has quickly taken shape as an organized movement to make Target and other businesses feel the economic effects of mistreating their customers. Walmart, Amazon, and other companies who have rolled back their DEI efforts are being boycotted right alongside Target. And WeAreSomebody.org, a self-described “coalition-building organization for the working-class” created by former Ohio State Senator Nina Turner, has taken the lead on spearheading the boycott to create an organized movement with more boycotts on the way.
“A boycott is simply a strike for consumers,” states the organization. “The rollback of DEI initiatives is a test, corporations and our government are seeing how far they can go to discriminate. We must stand up now. We Are Somebody will be announcing more boycotts throughout 2025, targeting corporations that support policies that harm working class Americans from all backgrounds. …We are organizing for working class liberation one boycott and strike at a time.”
The organization also states that “multiple Black-owned businesses, civil rights & LGBTQIA+ leaders in Minnesota, civil rights & faith leaders across America” are also boycotting along with consumers, providing more power to the boycott.
The organization has one demand for Target: to “reinstate its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs or create new programs with the same or more robust commitments to Black and minority-owned businesses.”
Another difference is that it seemed like back in the day, people had more discipline when it came to their boycotts. As Mississippi Encyclopedia states, “By not shopping, boycotters could…uphold an ideal of self-control, saying that some ideals outweighed the need for certain goods or conveniences such as riding a bus.”
Some of the boycotts that happened in the 1950s and 1960s included the boycotts of white-owned businesses who mistreated Black people who tried to shop there or didn’t hire Black people. There were many other boycotts about different aspects of Jim Crow laws and rules, but the ones about stores se are particularly important to highlight in this moment because the pro-buy-at-Target crowd have said two conflicting things: that we need to keep supporting the Black-owned businesses in Target by shopping there and that, somehow, boycotts will be ineffective because they haven’t been thoroughly planned with objectives. First, as I’ve already mentioned, there are objectives in play, and second, boycotts quickly became a strategy Black Americans used often just because of how effective they were, primarily through the boycotters’ commitment to principle above convenience.
Mississippi Encyclopedia focuses in part on Charles Evers, an activist in Natchez and Fayette, MS, in the 1960s. He was not one to be played with, since he “showed he was ready to use force against African Americans who continued to patronize the boycotted stores.” I’m not advocating for violence against anyone. But barring that fact, if we apply Evers’ boycotts to the current one with Target, what can we learn? I feel we can deduce that freedom has a steep price–your discomfort. You have to be willing to pay the price instead of 1) using Black-owned businesses as an excuse to shop in Target because most of the money still goes back to Target and 2) are you really kidding anyone when you say you’re just going to get that one Black-owned thing? We all know how hard it is to come out of Target with just one item. It’s a slippery slope towards a full cart of things you don’t need, and not just products from Black-owned businesses.
Evers’ boycotts were successful. As he said, “Everything we asked for we have gotten concessions on, and then some.”
How we can create an effective boycott in 2025 (and not get caught up in perfection)
A protest in 2023. (Photo credit: Getty Images for Unsplash)There is still the issue of how thorny this Target boycott has become, not only just with consumers, but with business owners. While there are some business owners like Girl + Hair‘s Dr. Camille Howard-Verović and Oh Happy Dani‘s Danielle Coke Balfour who have cancelled their agreements with Target in the wake of the DEI rollback, others, like Brown and Afro Unicorn creator April Showers are pleading with Black buyers to still patronize Target, where their products are located.
Showers spoke with NPR about her viewpoint on the issue, saying that she feels betrayed not by Target, who gave her products a chance despite the current rollback, but by Black shoppers who say they are not going to buy her products from Target.
“These products were made for them in mind. They were created because there were no brown unicorns. You could not see yourselves in these particular products. And then you make these products, and then the ones that you make them with them in mind say that they’re not going to support it. That’s the betrayal.”
Personally, I don’t think she’s going to win sympathy by putting the blame on the Black shoppers. I also don’t think the statement “there were no brown unicorns” helps either because I don’t know how many Black kids have thought they wanted to see themselves in a horse. Maybe My Little Pony, perhaps. But aside from my thoughts on the product, which I do think is cute even though I’m definitely not the target demographic, Showers statements aren’t going to win people over. Like Brown, the statements sound a lot like, “Think of my bottom line,” and even if it is true, it’s a message that just isn’t going to fly with Black consumers who value where they spend your money. And let’s be honest–a unicorn plush, just like sweet potato-based hair care products, aren’t essentials. This makes it easier for Black people to say “I don’t have to spend my money on that because I don’t need it.”5
NPR’s Michel Martin rightly asks her about what she’d tell consumers who would describe themselves as being “bullied” by Target and other companies. He asked, in part, what she would say to consumers who say, “We want to be respected as consumers, and this is the only way that they can get their points across?”
“I mean, look, one of the signature events of the civil rights movement was the Montgomery bus boycott,” he continued. “Boycotts have a storied history in American history and international events. And so what do you say to people who say this is a time-honored tactic?”
Showers answered, “And people can do what they want and purchase where they want to purchase. We’re saying if you do want to purchase our product and you still want to support us in these retailer stores, you can walk into these stores and purchase our products only and walk out. Those numbers still hurt.”
However, as someone online brilliantly wrote in one of the many threads I’ve seen, you don’t do a boycott halfway. There will be some pain (hopefully just figuratively and not physically like Evers’ tactics). Some of that money spent on the product is still going to Target and, in a way, is still a co-sign of their tactics. And as I wrote earlier, you can’t tell me you can go into Target and come out with just one thing, especially if the thing you actually went to buy is a non-essential item like a unicorn plushie. You’re going to think, “Oh wait, I’m out of paper towels,” and soon you’ll have a cart of stuff you “just had to get.”
I think when it comes to the 2025 boycott landscape, particularly around Target, we have to acknowledge that multiple things can be true at the same time.
- Some Black business owners aren’t in a position to break their contracts or do something drastic.
- Most boycotters aren’t asking Black business owners to do something that gets them into legal trouble, however some Black businesses are finding ways out of their contracts, much to the delight of Black consumers.
- Through licensing deals or other contracts, Target is still getting a lion’s share of the profits from these companies’ sales.
- Plans are great for boycotts, but they are also great for business owners too; this should be a learning lesson for business owners to see about alternatives for housing inventory and other necessities they might have depended on the big box stores for.
- The only way through this Target boycott is to crack some eggs, and sadly, those eggs are the Black-owned businesses in the store. It’s a sacrifice of the few for the needs of the many. It’s not fun, but that’s just how it is.
- Boycotts aren’t just emotional, but they bring attention to big issues and put the pedal to the metal. It’s a way to fight back against corrupt practices and should be celebrated.
- Boycotts will be done online, matter how much handwringing there has been on Threads about using online outlets to create movements. (I personally think a lot of the handwringing was just another way to make people discouraged to boycott and to continue patronizing Target, but that’s just me.)
With those truths spelled out, here’s another truth–we’ve already boycotted in the internet age. Again, I don’t know why people were wringing their hands over online boycotting when boycotts have already happened due to online reaction. #OscarsSoWhite was a type of boycott of the ideal the Academy upheld regarding which films they championed. The movement to boycott fast fashion has continued to grow and spread thanks to social media and YouTube. Boycotting the use of plastics, such as straws, came about because of social media. And just last year, many of us were (and are) still boycotting Starbucks, McDonald’s, and other businesses who supported the Palestinian genocide. Headline after headline showed that Starbucks and McDonald’s took huge hits, with Starbucks announcing it had lost $11 billion dollars at the end of 2023, showing that the boycotting was a success in raising awareness about what was happening in Palestine.
Starbucks has lost billions of dollars since the boycott began in late 2023. (Photo credit: AK on Unsplash)
All of these boycotts show that direct action can now be a global event. Trill Magazine covers the history of boycotts, including boycotts in the digital age, writing that social media has “significantly lowered barriers to participation in social change, encouraging individuals and grassroots organizations to initiate and sustain campaigns on an unprecedented scale, with the only requirement for participants being access to the internet.”
“Additionally,” the article continues, “the new wave of global connection has raised support for targeted boycott campaigns in digital spaces, like ongoing humanitarian issues like the Israel-Palestine conflict.”
TikTok trends, X (and now Threads) hashtags, and more help socially-conscious people connect and develop strategy, share information and petitions, and create community. And there is no sign of these connections stopping. If anything, they’ve only gotten stronger.
“In the digital era, the impact of targeted boycotting has surged with the increased connectivity and virality of online activism and human rights movements,” according to the article. “This socio-political strategy has seamlessly integrated into the shifting landscape of contemporary activism, inflicting significant reputational damage, financial losses, and increased scrutiny upon its chosen victims. Consequently, its functionality has opened the potential for dynamic shifts that could prompt a real change on a broader scale.”
The digital age has allowed everyone to feel like they have the power to make change. There are no barriers to entry, you can join a community that shares your interests, and you can take action with a group of people, maximizing your efforts. The global activist community is powerful, and as far as the Target boycott is concerned, the last thing anyone should be trying to do is limit your own perception of your power. But that is exactly what I saw online over the past week–people, including well-known influencers in the Black online community, poo-pooing boycotts, saying how they don’t work, how online boycotts are never planned well enough (false) or are made as an emotional reaction (newsflash: all boycotts are emotional responses). Some even said how boycotts no longer worked because no company is innocent and how boycotting Target would be hypocritical since no one was boycotting Meta, X, or Google.
If we set aside the fact that none of these arguments came up for the various other boycotts that have happened in the past five years of online activism, we need to acknowledge that everyone is trying to boycott these companies. Many people, including myself, have various accounts at the X and TikTok alternatives, like Spoutible, Spill, Fanbase, Xiaohongshu, and BlueSky. The issue is that, apart from Xiaohongshu, which already had its own robust userbase, the other alternatives haven’t taken off as much as Threads (BlueSky is probably second). And as far as community building, some of the other alternatives aren’t as conducive to community building through hashtags. And let’s not even get into how ever-present Google is.
This isn’t an excuse. But this, not the Target boycott, is where we’ll need researched plans.
If we can use the stores I’ve mentioned as an analogy, Walmart is predatory, yet it’s hard to successfully boycott them because they have boxed out local grocery stores. Without any competition, a community is only left with Walmart to buy their essentials from. People are still boycotting Walmart, though, including me. And like I said, there is no gain without pain in boycotting. But a Target boycott is a much easier lift because there aren’t a lot of essentials there. A concentrated boycott of a place that exercises predatory business practices isn’t impossible, but it will take more work to find alternatives for people who rely on Walmart for their everyday groceries.
Similarly, Google, Meta and even X still have the lion’s share of the internet in its grasp. Thankfully, other X alternatives have popped up. But Google and Meta provide essential services, such as research, connections to family (via Instagram and Facebook), and community via Threads. Really, just basic communication. Even with TikTok, some users begrudgingly went back because TikTok was the way they were making money. Again, it’s not impossible to boycott these places, and more alternatives are popping up, like the American migration to Xiaohongshu. But it will require a much more concentrated effort and plan.
Just because things aren’t perfect, though, does not negate the areas in which you can successfully boycott. How does having a Threads account make a Target boycott less effective or less meaningful? Or, if we take the 1960s boycotters, many of them were women who worked as domestic servants in white people’s homes. Was their bus boycott null and void because they worked in white homes? No! A boycott is so beloved by the everyday person because it gives you clear objectives about one thing. You only have to boycott this one service, product, or company at a time, not change your entire life overnight to be deemed valid in the struggle. Once one battle is successfully fought, you go onto the next battle, all the while dealing with the imperfections of fighting a war within a system designed against you, a system you still have to begrudgingly rely on to get certain needs met.
“It’s your money”
Your money is your power in a boycott. (Photo credit: Ben Iwara for Unsplash)Boycotts are meant to be uncomfortable and in many cases, they will drudge up complicated feelings about the system in which we live. It’s true that there’s no conscious consumption under capitalism–nearly everything we buy is connected to some type of evil, whether you like it or not. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have choice over where you spend your money. It’s your money–you deserve to spend it where you feel most welcomed. And just as important, you deserve the right to reserve your money, no matter what race of person is on the other end wanting you to buy from them. Remember that your wallet isn’t connected to Brown, Showers, or anyone. It’s connected to you, and you get to decide where it goes.
To quote that J.G. Wentworth commercial, “It’s your money; use it when you need it.”
Resources
Black Capitalism Promised a Better City for Everyone. What Happened? – New York Times
We Are Somebody
Bridging Who They Are with Who They Thought They’d Be: The Effects of Gen Zers’ Subjective Well-Being on Their Boycott Responses to Online and Offline Unethical Situations – Online Research Cardiff (ORCA)
Organizing a Boycott – Community Tool Box
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