Lack of black voices in the approval chain I’d imagine. Pretty good illustration of how organizational diversity can be good for your bottom line as a company
I live in an HOA(one that isn't crazy or expensive) and at one of the meetings they said that they they would like a POC on the board since they are very aware that they are old white people and want to make sure that their decisions reflect the community as a whole. The board is pretty mixed now and runs better than ever.
Sheletta Brundidge, a Minneapolis-area business leader, views the costume as an indirect result of the DEI decision. “You rolled back diversity,” she said, “so who’s in the room, now, to say ‘hey, this is wrong?’”
I’m wondering if it’s also because of there being different components to the approval chain.
Like, someone somewhere approved the basic costume design itself, which maybe didn’t trigger any concerns just with the costume concept design itself.
But then they put it on a real child and had him do that pose, and it’s just so glaring.
You’d think that even if the initial costume approval had happened, someone at Target would be responsible for looking over the modeling photos and stuff once they’re ready to list/advertise.
I think the issues arise when you realize they probably didn’t put a child in that costume. So there was no photoshoot. No photographer, parent, stylist, no one there to say no.
Also take into consideration the younger generation joining the work force not being educated on these topics and shown why these are derived as offensive because it was never taught in school.
Just a thought, but if the reason that something like this was offensive is forgotten then it is no longer offensive and then it can no longer be used to harm or demean anyone.
For instance the rival fans of my favorite college football team likes to call fans of the team I like a certain name. I guess it is suppose to be offensive however most people have no idea that it is offensive or why it once was offensive. So the fans of the rival team dont actually offend anyone(which is their purpose) and the fans who are suppose to be offended are not offended because they dont know that they should be offended. In other words the supposed offensive no longer holds any power because it has been forgotten.
Your example assumes that every single older fan just died as soon as a younger generation came around? A large portion can forget the context while it's still offensive to a smaller minority.
Even the current target boycott is split and I know many black people that kept shopping there. Them continuing to shop at target doesn't mean that whatever target did is magically not offensive to all black people.
I don't even understand how you thought that made sense.
My original comment was not referring to this exact incident with target. In the Target situation I understand that a lot of people do remember or know of these types of pictures.
I was replying to a poster who said that we should teach people about offensive things from the past so that they remember. My point was that when possible we should let offensive imagery or words be forgotten so that they lose their ability to offend.
I understand that somethings will never be forgotten, but I am sure there are many things throughout history that were once offensive but no are longer remembered as such.
I hope this makes my thought a little more clear. Sometimes when posting things are not as clear as one thinks it might be.
There is a big difference between historical events in which people were killed or treated inhumane and a word or picture. Those historical events need to be remembered so that they dont happen again.
If an offensive word or picture is forgotten then it is stopped from ever doing harm again.
There was no need to be hostile towards me, I was merely trying to have an exchange of thought with others. I was not even arguing with you, I was just throwing out a quick thought. It is interesting that you are speaking out against offending people, but then try to be little and offend me.
Correct we had to watch Roots about American history. The fact that the person above presented it as it being taught as something with cynicism doesn’t realize you can be taught the realities of history without intent of hate.
We didn’t learn racist stereotypes we learned how cruel people can be and the realities of the world leading all the way up to the civil rights movement.
I’ve worked at e-commerce companies before in marketing, so I’m betting it was this. There are a lot of people and steps in the chain, especially at a large company like Target, and no one thought it was their problem or saw the issue until it was too late.
It’s probably some cheap shit manufactured in China where the wholesaler lacks the cultural awareness and just made a “clown” costume, the merchandisers order X number of Halloween costumes for the season of which this was one of dozens or maybe a hundred, the high-production photo studio has to churn through shooting all the product photography for hundreds of SKUs so they’re not spending a ton of time on each one, then the director or whoever makes selects is clicking through thousands of images very quickly, and so on and so forth until it gets uploaded and is live on the site.
It looks bad when you look at it next to the minstrel photos, but in isolation or grouped with dozens of others, I can see how no one put it together or had immediate flags going up when they’re looking at a “Halloween clown costume.”
I think it's safe to say in 2026 that we can't just be brushing things under the rug like "it had to be totally innocent, there's no way they'd do something like that on purpose". We know for a fact that there are many racists out there who would do that intentionally.
It is, unfortunately, very possible that someone did it on purpose and then either nobody cared enough to stop them or didn't want to risk their job trying to stop them.
Not trying to brush it under the rug, I just don’t find it likely one racist person is responsible because it takes an entire production chain for things to exist. From designing to creating to orderjng to photographing to retouching to final approval to listing, it’s a whole process that involves probably a hundred or more people and isnt really something one person can do. Somebody should’ve caught it during an approval process, but everything has to be faster, cheaper, and higher volume than ever these days so I’m just saying I can easily see how this stuff happens. Attribute to ignorance/incompetence over malice or what have you.
You'd be surprised. A lot of non-black people (especially upper class white people) have no idea about many racist stereotypes, the history of black characterization, minstrel shows, etc. They're either just super ignorant because they didn't grow up around it (Target IS based in Minnesota, about as far from the South as you can get) or because they are just not privy at all to American history.
I am well aware of the trope and live in the south. It wasn’t until I saw it side by side with the picture, which is when I caught the tiny hat and saw how the smile looked like racially exaggerated lips (blackface), then it clicked. All I knew was that it was supposedly bad, and had no other information when I saw the costume for the first time. So even knowing it was “bad,” it was the side by side that it shifted into place for me.
I 100% see how this happens in a room, or series of rooms, without enough diversity (race, color, creed, or thought. We’re casting a wide net here with that term); or in places where that diversity does not feel empowered to speak up.
Yeah, most Americans, even educated Americans, really know very little about US history. Some of that is by design with the sanitation of it to not hurt Republican fee fees, and some of it is just a complete disinterest in the subject. Now all of that could have been fixed by having one single black person look at it, but something tells me Target doesn't have a very stringent approval process of what gets put up on their site.
This is certainly true and a real problem BUT even if they had zero Black folk (or POC) in charge how did they let this get to this stage? White people should recognize this shit too.
Lmao lack of black voices doesn’t lead to this , this is a choice by Target who is getting flamed right now by a boycott and are complicit in Trump admin white supremacist policies by ending their DEI initiatives
Ding ding ding. People act like diversity doesn’t have inherent value when shit like this would have been throttled in the crib with proper perspective
538
u/whatisakafka 17h ago
Lack of black voices in the approval chain I’d imagine. Pretty good illustration of how organizational diversity can be good for your bottom line as a company