Target’s Racist Costume Wasn’t a Mistake

Was Target’s racist Halloween costume really a mistake?

I have a conspiracy theory—but it led me to a much bigger question about corporate power and individual responsibility.

Why are ordinary consumers expected to give up the things that bring us ease, pleasure, and joy in order to hold massive corporations accountable? Boycotts can create pressure, but do they actually redistribute power? And why does protecting ourselves from corporate misconduct so often become another unpaid job for ordinary people?

In this episode, I wrestle with Target, the Black consumer boycott, corporate accountability, ethical consumption, capitalism, and an uncomfortable question: Is changing the world more our individual responsibility than corporations have convinced us to believe?

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Was Target's racist Halloween costume actually a massive corporate failure? Or was it retaliation against black consumers boycotting it? I have a conspiracy theory that that costume was corporate pettiness at its finest. And that question sent me somewhere even deeper into whether we fundamentally understand corporate power or if boycotts are actually effective. If you're unfamiliar, I'm gonna put up a picture of the costume, but so many parts of this costume are deeply offensive, almost to the point that it can't be a mistake or unintentional. Not only is it the actual costume itself, but it's also the styling. It's a selection of a black boy as the model, and it's the posing in the promotional picture. Those four things individually are so deeply offensive that it doesn't make sense that there weren't enough checks and balances within Target's corporate structure to catch how deeply offensive that costume would be. Four different areas, not only the costume designer, but also the person who picked the model, and also the person who took the photograph and posed the child. There were so many different places where someone could have said, regardless of whether you're black or not, hey, wait a minute, this looks bad, that it makes me feel at my core that that whole custom was a setup. One of the greatest lies that capitalism has ever told us is that corporations don't have a personality. Anyone who's ever worked for corporations and had access to intimate conversations within the C-suite knows intimately that the bigger the organization, the more profit they make, the more evil and dark the leadership team is. It's one of the reasons why about two years ago, I made a decision to only work with small to medium-sized businesses. We have been taught that corporations are neutral, faceless entities. But corporations are a collective of individual humans making a decision. People choose what gets produced, what gets promoted, people decide what risks are acceptable, and people decide which communities of consumers are worth alienating. And these decisions reflect those individuals' ideology, preferences, and yes, even their pettiness. Capitalism gives very human behavior the veil of being a non-human entity. Why does this even matter? It matters because when we look at corporations as humanless entities, it also frees them of the need for accountability. If I harm someone, you have the right to say, Michaela, why did you do that? But when corporations harm someone, it is often hard to hold them accountable in the same way. They get to use different language. That was oversight. Our processes failed. That doesn't reflect our values, but it so clearly does. We're reviewing what happens. And then they continue to review it until we all forget or move on. And often the people who made those decisions within the organization are never fired, never demoted. And the sad part is the larger the organization, the more likely that the problematic people within said organization get away scot-free because of the process. Also, corporations have become incredibly effective at individualizing systemic responsibility. Here's a perfect example: climate change. We have been told for years, turn off the faucet while you're brushing your teeth. And yet, and still right now, we have data centers using more and more water than we as humans could ever consume within a given time. We're told that when a corporation is corrupt, that we the individuals should boycott them. And I do want to say I believe in boycotts. I've been doing boycotts since October 7th. A lot of my favorite things, foods, products, stores, I can no longer enjoy because I boycott. But it makes me wonder why I am required to deprive myself of the things that I enjoy rather than the leaders of those organizations make seismic change around their moral standing, where they invest their money, who they work with, what they produce? Why am I the individual supposed to make more changes in my life than those at the top of these major corporations with more power, with more money, with more control than I'll ever have? At what point does protecting ourselves from corporate misconduct become another unpaid job that we as ordinary people have to take on while the oligarchs get to do whatever they want without any repercussions or without any repercussions that seismically change the quality of their life. And I think what's so annoying about the fact that we have to rely solely on boycotts to align ourselves with businesses that represent our values is that the more effective recourse would be legislatively, would be to have our governments that take our tax dollars use that money to actually hold corporations accountable to the things that we want, to the things that we pay them money for. Legislation. But because legislators are as greedy and corrupt as the leaders of these corporations, boycotts are all we have. The only way we can let these corporations know that we individually don't align with them is to use our individual purchasing power. So that means we lose a product that might give us ease, that might be the treat we give ourselves at the end of a long week, that makes us feel pretty, makes us feel more like ourselves. We have to give up the parts of our life that we enjoy in order to hold major corporations accountable. And then oftentimes they don't change what they're doing. Target didn't bring back DEI even though we were boycotting them. And then they have the nerve to be petty enough to punch back at us for depriving them of millions of dollars, even though they made it clear they don't care about us in the first place. So it leaves me wondering: was my sacrifice meaningful in the bigger scheme of things? Or are we being encouraged to prioritize personal purity over systemic change? Also, what other tools do we have at our disposal beside our individual dollar to make change in the world that we feel so desperately passionate about? It's obvious by Target's response that boycotts do create pressure, but is that pressure really enough for systemic change? And say that I'm wrong. Say it's not one big petty retribution. Say that Target in removing DEI from one of their core corporate values meant that they had no one internal to actually catch how repulsive that Halloween costume was. That's scary to me. It's scary that not enough white Americans know the history of black people to catch that historical reference. It scares me that in a corporation with thousands of people, not one person was able to catch or felt empowered to inform how problematic that was. We're in the year 2026. These visuals are pervasive everywhere, online, in social media, on YouTube. And yet it still is something that was allowed to slip through the cracks? I'd rather believe that Target was being petty than that it actually didn't know better. That's actually scarier to me. That no one inside of that corporation knew better. So I'm left with this question for myself and for you. Do boycotts actually redistribute power? Or have corporations convinced us that it is more our individual responsibility to better the world than their corporate responsibility? Have corporations convinced us that it's better we give up the small things that make our life more enjoyable than actually holding them accountable and regulating them to be responsible for the wider societal good? And is there really such a thing as ethical consumption within capitalism? And if so, what is our individual responsibility to that? And how much should it be weighed against a corporation's responsibility? I'm in this place in my life where I'm trying to decide what is worth more. Me depriving myself of the things that I enjoy, that I've finally earned, that I can finally afford, or standing up for the moral issues that I truly believe in. Either way I look at it, I get hurt. While from the outside, it looks like the oligarchs, the must, the Jeffrey Bezos, the Zuckerbergs, the Trumps get away scot-free with no responsibility, no accountability, and the ability to ruin the world for the rest of us. I wonder how much my one small act is enough to move the needle, seismically enough to change the things that I'm against. I don't know if it's an issue of every small contribution counts, or if I'm falling into the trap of capitalism that prioritizes individualism when it suits the system, but also transfers power to the corporate collective when that suits the system. It oftentimes feels so debilitatingly powerless that there's so many bad things happening in the world, and there's not obvious ways to change or fix it. And maybe it's because I'm not thinking about this more broadly. Maybe it's because I have narrowed my lanes of what I can actually do, what forms my activism can take. Maybe the question is what are some other ways where I can hit hard? Maybe making videos, even talking about this, is my contribution in some small way. But at 47, the world has never felt more dark and more evil, and I've never felt more powerless to make a change in a way that can possibly impact others around me or those that I care about or communities I identify and want to protect. And so Target can keep being petty if they want. And they'll probably be okay. They probably won't go out of business, they probably won't have to declare bankruptcy. But when they show me that they're as petty as the next small man, then I'm gonna be petty with them back. And that's why I believe that Halloween costume was not a mistake. If you like this video and you stayed to the end, thank you so very much. Please give me a like and a follow, and I'll see you all next week.