Shoppers are gearing up to slap Target with a 40-day boycott over its DEI policy reversal on Wednesday — even as black business owners have warned a boycott could hurt their own brands.
It’s a triple whammy for the retailer as it emerges from a brutal year plagued by low spending and prepares for possible cost increases under President Trump’s tariffs.
“We’re asking people to divest from Target because they have turned their back on our community,” Rev. Jamal Bryant, an Atlanta-area megachurch pastor who started the boycott, told CNN.
Founders of black-owned businesses, though, have pushed back on the boycott and urged shoppers to continue filling their carts at Target – warning the consumer protest could actually do serious damage to black- and minority-owned brands.
“I get it, but so many of us will be affected, and our sales will drop,” Tabitha Brown, an actress who also sells kitchenware at Target, warned in a video posted to Instagram in January. “Our business will be hurt, and if any of you know business, it doesn’t just happen overnight where you can just go take all your stuff and pull it off the shelves.”
The boycott, which started during the first day of Lent, comes more than a month after Target ended its DEI goals, including a program focused on carrying more products from black- and minority-owned businesses.
It’s a sharp reversal for the Minneapolis-based discount chain, which sold a particularly progressive image for years – facing harsh backlash in 2023 when it launched an LGBTQ Pride collection that included kids clothing.
In January, Trump immediately signed an executive order banning DEI policies across the federal level and called on private companies to end their own programs.
Wall Street banks including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, tech giants like Meta and Amazon and Target rival Walmart have scrubbed the controversial goals from their annual filings and websites.
But no company has stoked more outrage among its customers than Target, which led the path for diversity programs in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the ensuing Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.
“Black people spend upwards of $12 million dollars a day, and so we would expect some loyalty, some decency and some camaraderie,” Bryant told CNN.
Some critics have called for shoppers to avoid Target stores and instead purchase products directly from black-owned brands’ websites.
But business owners said this could still do damage, since Target’s website and its nearly 2,000 stores give their brands more visibility and millions of additional customers.
“If you don’t buy our products in Target, they will cancel us from their shelves and make us buy back the products they already purchased from us,” black-owned doll brand Beautiful Curly Me said in a post on Instagram.
“We have dolls on our websites, but having your dolls in mass retail stores gives you a different kind of visibility to millions and really helps us expand,” the brand added.
The boycott could be particularly effective at hurting Target’s sales due to its timing, as the retailer’s chief executive recently warned of price increases following shocks from tariffs.
Target CEO Brian Cornell on Tuesday said that Trump’s tariffs on Mexico could force the company to hike prices on fruits and vegetables as soon as this week.
The company said uncertainty from the new trade policies will dampen its profit this quarter.
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