Move over, Chick-fil-A; there’s a new corporate boogeyman in town. Far-left political activists and social media influencers are organizing against Target after the retail giant announced it is rolling back some of its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. The horror!
Left-wing activists came out of the woodwork to demand that consumers boycott the company. Led by socialist pundit and failed congressional candidate Nina Turner, the organization “We Are Somebody” announced a planned Feb. 1 boycott of the retail giant.
“When companies like Target decide to eliminate initiatives focused on carrying products from Black or other minority-owned businesses, they’re testing us,” the group wrote in a statement that has since been viewed millions of times. “Let’s pass the test and demand better of the places we shop.”
Meanwhile, on TikTok, video after video encouraged viewers to prove their anti-racist bona fides by boycotting the company — or even by stealing from Target in protest. (Bizarrely, some of the people calling for the boycott on TikTok were actual, current Target employees). And some people apparently bought into all the furor.
One viral video shows a man rambling around a Target store, screaming profanities at the low-level employees, accusing them of discriminating against black people and “following Trump.”
This is all much ado about nothing.
Target is still, of course, bound by federal anti-discrimination laws and maintains its commitment to welcoming employees, suppliers, and customers from all backgrounds. All it’s doing is rolling back its DEI initiatives that went above and beyond and, in many ways, crossed over into toxic and divisive territory.
For example, it had set a strange aspirational racial quota, publicly proclaiming that it would seek to socially engineer its workforce so it had 20% more black employees. Getting rid of that and simply hiring people without race as a factor is not some racist regression; if anything, it’s a return to the kind of meritocratic equality of opportunity that civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of.
So, too, Target is scrapping a prominent diversity initiative where it specifically added suppliers to its stores because the businesses were owned by racial minorities. It will still, of course, feature products from countless thousands of black entrepreneurs, and there’s no sign it will discriminate against minority-owned suppliers in any way. It’s just going to stop picking which brands to promote based on the skin color of their owners rather than the quality of their products.
That’s a good thing. (The biggest losers from this move will actually be the DEI bureaucrats themselves, who just so happen to primarily be white women, not black people, who only hold about 4% of chief diversity officer positions.)
But this backlash against Target isn’t just unjustified. It’s worse than that. If successful, it may actually end up hurting many of the minority-owned businesses it’s intended to help. At least, that’s what many prominent black entrepreneurs whose products are sold at Target, who aren’t happy that the company is rolling back DEI programs, are saying.
“If we all decide to boycott [Target] … so many of us will be affected,” business owner Tabitha Brown explained. “Our sales will drop; our businesses will be hurt.”
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“By not shopping in these stores you are also impacting the hundreds of black-owned businesses and women-owned businesses … that are in these stores,” entrepreneur Melissa Butler similarly warned.
That’s right: If these left-wing DEI activists get their way, not only will they punish an American company that did absolutely nothing wrong, but the very minority-owned businesses they say they’re fighting for will be left worse off. Other than that, they’re doing amazing.
Brad Polumbo is an independent journalist and host of the Brad vs Everyone podcast.