Black women and Target: a Tainted love story, part one: Target People
In this Joy's House series, I explore the Target boycott. In part one, let's talk about how during the Obama era, Black women truly became "Target people."
Back when my husband Jason, our kids and I lived in Florida, there were two kinds of people: Walmart people, and Target people.
We briefly were Walmart people — when our kids were really small. Walmart sold the cheapest diapers in bulky box sizes, which made life more affordable. (You’d be absolutely shocked what diapers cost back then, and I can’t even imagine what inflation has done to the prices now, though thankfully my kids are in their mid to late 20s.) But then in the early aughts, Walmart started really showing its ass: disrespecting its workers, refusing to raise their pay or allow them to unionize (if you have a few minutes, read this excellent summary of the company’s ongoing war on its workers attempts to unionize.) As someone with a conscience, I decided it was time to switch teams. This was also the era when I quit the local news business to take Wellstone Action training and join the political effort to oust George W. Bush from the White House. And so, we Reids became Target people.
Target prices were slightly higher than Walmart’s, but their stores were bright, cheery and inviting — especially the Target Superstore that opened near our home in Pembroke Pines, Florida — complete with a full grocery store that featured fresh fruits and vegetables, plus a packed toy aisle, perfect for Christmas shopping, cute home goods to make the house look affordably chic, endless supplies of face creams and personal care nicknacks to overbuy, and the khaki pants and skirts and dark blue polos required for our kids to dress in their elementary (public) school uniforms.
The kids enjoyed the shopping as much as I did. There were lots of places for them to safely run around within earshot and explore, though they didn’t enjoy it as much as they loved Costco, where we also had a membership (mainly to stock up in bulk on fruit snacks, juice boxes and freeze pops to keep the boys and their friends on the block occupied and out of my house with their stinky feet — my daughter was mainly an indoors-on-the-phone-with-her-friends kid) and where they gave out free food samples and sold $2 hotdogs, $1 churros and basically served as a low cost family field trip for me, the kids and my perennial bonus child, Evan (I like dealing with even numbers of kids. Better odds of minimal factionalism.)
All was well. In 2011 we moved back to New York when I returned to the NBC News family by taking a job as managing editor of TheGrio. We were enjoying life under our first Black president, and after working on that losing campaign in 2004, I’d worked as a press secretary on the tail end of his 2008 Florida campaign, propelling me into Pundit World. In New York, there were no Targets near where we lived — you had to put in extra effort to find one. I mainly couldn’t be bothered. We had enough housewares, and the kids were old enough to pick their own clothes, anyway.
And then Michelle Obama happened.
Here’s how CBS News reported it at the time, February 10, 2012:
(CBS) This weekend, First Lady Michelle Obama, known for mixing low price off-the-rack items with designer duds, was spotted wearing a $39.99 Jason Wu for Target dress while doing a press event in Florida.
The designer's line for Target went on sale Feb. 5 and flew off the shelves almost as soon as it went on sale, but it looks like the first lady was able to snatch up the Sleeveless Chiffon Dress in Navy Floral with Gold Belt.
Obama, of course, added her own sense of style to the ensemble swapping the gold belt for a red one and cinching it over a blue cardigan.
Obama has a history with the designer: She put Wu on the map in 2009 when she wore an ivory gown he designed at her husband's inaugural ball.
And here’s The Today Show’s version:
By Susan Houriet
I was still so exhausted from my Target from Missoni debacle back in September (it literally took almost a whole day to order a skirt and a couple of baby items) that I didn't even attempt to jump online when the Jason Wu for Target collection went on sale Super Bowl Sunday. As is becoming the norm with the discount chain's designer collaborations, most of the collection sold out within hours, so when I finally did make it to my local Target this weekend there were only a sad 7 items total left.
But the almost empty racks did contain an adorable navy floral chiffon dress, and guess who has it in her wardrobe? The first lady, who basically put the Taiwan-born, American-educated designer on the map when she donned a dramatic ivory Wu-designed gown for her husband's 2009 inaugural ball. Mrs. Obama wore the $39.99 dress over the weekend at a press event in Florida.
As the Huffington Post points out, FLOTUS made the look her own by replacing the gold belt with a red one and adding a royal blue cardigan. The dress is still available in stores if you want to pick it up. At my local Clifton, N.J. Target, I spotted two of those frocks (one of which was missing the belt). As it happens, my colleague Carissa Ray (TODAY.com's supervising multimedia producer) bought the same dress at a store in Brooklyn on Saturday. (And now you know what TODAY.com staffers do with our weekends! And that we have excellent taste.)
Again, as I mentioned, we had no Targets near where we were living in the city, but damned if I didn’t hit the subway to the nearest one in the Bronx, to try to find that dress! Ms. Houriet was right. It was 100 percent sold out.
Michelle Obama didn’t turn Black women into Target people on her own, but she accelerated our love for the store brand into hyperdrive, due to Black women’s intense adoration of her. And of course it wasn’t just Black women. Women of every race, creed and color ran to the stores to try to cop that Jason Wu dress. It didn’t just intensify Mrs. Obama’s status of a fashion and style icon who could make designers and brands at any price point with her visual endorsement (Melania could never); it solidified Target’s status as THE midpriced retail outlet. They weren’t just Walmart with a red circle logo and better employment practices, or just another Marshalls or JC Penney at the other end of the mall. They were something different. They were special. And that strategy was both deliberate, and nearly two decades in the making.
The making of Tar-zhay
Even before The Dress, Target — better known as “tar-zhay” to those who know — was already the go to shop for women who want better brands for lower prices than a traditional department store. Inside the red and white circle retail utopia, one can enjoy discounted versions of designer brands like Marimekko, Mossimo, Zac Posen or Isaac Mizrahi. Most recently, Target signed a deal to sell items by Chip and Joanna Gaines’ Magnolia brand. The strategy dates back to the 1990s; the era when it seemed like every young American, yours truly included, walked around feeling like a Bill Clinton economy-blessed millionaire, and Target made its Sha’Carri Richardson-like break from Walmart (and even gave them that Sha’Carri side eye as they passed the old Walton clan by…)
Thirty years ago, Walmart and Target were more alike than different. Walmart made a bold move to distinguish itself from its competitors in the late 1990s when it introduced its price match guarantee. This refusal to be undersold was the death knell of several other big box chains like Zayre, Woolco and, eventually, KMart.
Rather than get sucked into the undertow, Target made the choice to distinguish its brand rather than compete on price. The big box chain reinvented itself as a more fashionable alternative to Walmart, justifying slightly higher prices with a more luxurious-feeling shopping experience.
Target’s comparatively chic branding lends itself to more collaborations with designers and influencers, but this isn’t a great value proposition for all shoppers. When we examine the subset of respondents that shop exclusively at Walmart, their most salient shared attribute is that they are less likely to believe that higher prices are a reliable indicator of the quality of goods at retail.
A murder in Minneapolis
Fast forward to May 25, 2020 and the murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota — which happens to be home to Target’s corporate headquarters — and things got real. The COVID pandemic, declared that March, was in full swing, while Trump’s re-election effort wasn’t yet, so America’s attention was focused on the tragedy at hand. We watched Mr. Floyd’s agonizing end as it was relayed from the cell phone of a brave 17-year-old girl to our TV screens and the Internet, while we holed up in our homes and apartments trying not to join the growing number of our neighbors and family members being stuffed into body bags and giant freezers in major cities nationwide.
Despite the fear of the virus, Floyd’s murder brought multiracial crowds of Americans into the streets in protests that metastasized across the country, including in deadly fashion in Kenosha, Wisconsin that August, where Kyle Rittenhouse shot three white protesters to death (he was later acquitted of all charges in the case.) And as the fires burned — mainly set by anarchists and right wing accelerationists hoping to leverage Floyd’s death into a race war — and the fury raged, with Donald Trump sitting in the White House stewing over the unrest and the pandemic that threatened the economy and his re-election, Target stepped up.
Target’s board decided to make a gesture of good faith to Black America, promising on August 17, 2020, in Mr. Floyd’s name, a series of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives:
Earlier this year, CEO Brian Cornell shared our team’s steadfast commitment to stand with Black families and fight against racism. Target kicked off the work with a $10 million pledge to advance social justice and support our communities—but that was just the start.
Since then, Target has established REACH—our Racial Equity Action and Change committee—to create an action plan to guide our way. The six founding members are senior leaders from across Target with diverse perspectives and expertise across the business.
In a letter to the Target team this morning, Brian and the REACH committee shared where they’ll start.
“REACH will focus specifically on how we can drive lasting impact for our Black team members and guests. To determine where to focus, we’ve spent time with many of you, spoken with our guests, reviewed research and tapped into our partners to align around four areas of focus: Team, Guests, Communities and Civic Engagement and Public Policy.”
The pledges centered around four areas: diversity and career development, including incorporating anti-racism training; advancing and helping Black-owned businesses to grow, advancing prosperity in Black communities by making material investments, and trying to find ways to help end systemic racism, including supporting “non-partisan efforts to encourage fair, accessible and safe voting.”
It felt like America was in a season of accountability.
That November, Joe Biden beat Donald Trump like he’d stolen something other than votes, E. Jean Carroll’s physical safety and reputation, and billions of dollars from the taxpayers and insurance companies of New York. Trump’s bizarre and dangerous reaction to losing — fueling an insurrection on January 6, 2021 to try to remain in office — even caused complicit Republicans like Mitch McConnell, then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and even sycophants like Lindsey Graham to initially rebuke him — though their intestinal fortitude didn’t last long.
Despite all the hopeful signs, when Mr. Floyd’s killer Derrick Chauvin’s trial began in March of 2021, followed by a record $27 million civil settlement to the Floyd family, I presumed it would go the way these things normally do — a quick acquittal, followed by protests, followed by another killing, new hashtags, and rinse and repeat, with another Black family left devastated. I had covered too many Black Lives Matter cases over more than a decade to presume otherwise. Instead, to my profound shock and pleasant surprise, Chauvin was convicted sentenced to 22.5 years in prison in the summer of 2021. My team and I covered the trial from start to finish on The Reidout, with Paul Butler and Katie Phang by my side most nights. Paul wrote a seminal book on police brutality, entitled Chokehold. I won’t presume to speak for him, but I think he and Katie were surprised too, despite the clearly brilliant work of the prosecutors in the case, under the leadership of Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison.
Chauvin pleaded guilty that December to violating George Floyd’s civil rights to avoid a federal trial, and was slapped with a concurrent 20.5 year sentence in July 2022. His fellow former officers were also convicted of state and federal crimes though at least one has since been released. The lead prosecutor in the case, Jerry W. Blackwell, was confirmed by the Senate as a federal judge, in December 2022. And the convictions held, despite Chauvin’s appeals.
The arc of justice appeared to be bending.
In January 2022, Democrats in the House had passed a George Floyd Justice and Policing Act, in the dead man’s honor, along with an act named for John Lewis, to shore up the Voting Rights Act. The three white men who lynched Ahmad Arbery in Georgia were convicted and sentenced — two of them to life sentences in prison that August.
By then, Target’s promises to Black America were two years old. It’s not clear how many of them had actually been fulfilled, however. Those facts remain as opaque as the ultimate abandonment of the Floyd and Lewis bills by Joe Biden and The Party That Tries To Do Things Through The System But Can Never Quite Figure Out How To Overcome Republican Opposition To Positive Things.
Still, Target continued to bask in the loyalty of Black consumers — mainly Black women, since let’s face it, most straight men anyway, mainly shop at Target because their wives or girlfriends handed them a list of things they need to bring home if they don’t want to sleep on the couch.
by 2025, Target was well into a four year deal to be the retail sponsor of the Essence Festival of Culture, better known in the community as “Essence Fest,” which has drawn thousands of women from all over to New Orleans every July 4th weekend for 30 years. It is arguably the largest single annual gathering of Black women in America, brought to you in part, by Target, which operates a selling space in the main drag of the cavalcade. Target also became the go-to seller of dozens of independent Black beauty and other brands, which joined the big designers in boasting retail partnerships: everyone from The Lip Bar lipsticks to home and stationary goods. There are numerous success stories of Target interns who became moguls, and Black women-owned brands that made their names on Target store shelves. Target was one of the most outspoken supporters of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, funding scholarships, organizations and more. Sure, lots of folks still shopped at Walmart and Ross and Marshalls and other spots, but Black women in a fundamental way, remained Target people.
As in so many love stories, the romance wasn’t meant to last.
Stay tuned for part two of this series, in which I’ll discuss how Black women and Target broke up …
Fascinating!!!
(Et tu, Target?)
I’m looking forward to the next installment. Thank you! 🙏
I really enjoy your writing Joy. Thank you so much! One can tell how much time and work you put into each article! When can we expect part 2?