As retailers drop DEI, some Black customers drop them

Davone "Day" Madison, 51, Chicago

Davone Madison often visited Target without a shopping list, letting the store’s “vibe” determine what she would buy. Now, she said, she plans on “never going back” to Target or Walmart and hopes other Black people will boycott for at least one year, she said.

“These companies, if they are going to come back, they need to come back begging for us,” Madison said. “They need to come back wanting us as consumers and respect our Black dollars.” 

Madison now gets most of her groceries at Costco and Living Fresh Market, a Black-owned grocery store.

Kasera Brown, 33, Frisco, Texas

Kasera Brown said she and her friends expected DEI rollbacks from Walmart after the election, but Target caught her off-guard. The store “is my safe space,” she said, adding that she visits up to four times a week. 

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to trust them again,” Brown said. “They’ve broken that trust, and I don’t think that there’s going to be a good way to apologize.”

Dawn Hardy, 51, Charlotte, North Carolina

Dawn Hardy, a literary publicist, said she felt betrayed by Target’s plans, since in her eyes, it had been a champion of products by Black creators. Some of her clients’ books have been featured in Target stores as part of Black History Month displays, said Hardy, who even bought stock in the company because she believed in its success.

“So for them to be one of the companies that is now backing out of DEI, I actually was really surprised and disappointed, and I was like, ‘Oh, Target, I gave you guys all my money,’” she said.

Instead of shopping weekly at Target, Hardy now shops small and hopes the impact of a large-scale boycott will prompt the company to reconsider its rollback.

Denisha Miller, 39, Bronx, New York

Denisha Miller is using the boycott as an opportunity to explore more of her hobbies in a way that also supports Black businesses. 

“I love to do different dishes because I love to cook,” Miller said. “That’s one of my hobbies. So if I have to go to a Black-owned restaurant and see what the chef has on the menu, I’ll do that. Or a Black bookstore. Anything that’s Black-owned I’m really interested, because I want to support and I want to feel good that I gave back, too.”

Jasmin Robinson, 33, Atlanta

During what she describes as a “bad month,” Jasmin Robinson said, she could spend upward of $1,000 at Amazon, Walmart and Target. But now, Robinson, an attorney, said she’s supporting more Black-owned businesses and services from her clients and sees those big retailers as “that ex that I’m just never getting back with.” 

“When I think about our ancestors who boycotted the bus system for over a year, the extreme temperatures and things that they endured, it’s like what, I’m complaining about shopping at Target? Absolutely not. I don’t ever have to shop there again.”

Tanzania Black, 33, Houston

“I had a friend initially, when it all started, who was just like, ‘I don’t really care,’ and now, I have her saying, ‘Who are we boycotting this month?’”

Amanda Wright, 26, Brooklyn, New York

Amanda Wright, the owner of El Punto Cubano, a food stall at DeKalb Market Hall in Brooklyn, said it has been easy to leave big retailers behind — even if the food hall is in the same building as a Target. She now buys products from Black-owned brands that she once purchased there, directly from the brands’ websites. 

“I’ve always shopped with Honey Pot Co. I’ve been shopping with them for over, like, four years now. That’s one of my favorite Black-owned brands. The Lip Bar, as well. For cosmetics, I love their lipsticks.”

KK Middleton, 45, Central Alabama

Boycotting big-box stores and fast-food giants is nothing new for KK Middleton, the senior pastor of two churches in Alabama. Middleton has implored churchgoers and social media followers to boycott major retailers for at least half of 2025, and he hopes his message of mindful spending reaches those who don’t believe there is any benefit in boycotting. 

To him and many others who spoke to NBC News for this article, the boycotts have the potential to be as influential as the Montgomery bus boycott — a key event in the Civil Rights Movement that began in Montgomery, Alabama, in December 1955 after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus. Parks helped ignite a 381-day boycott of the city's public transit system and inspired other civil rights protests across the country.

“Yeah, it was awkward. It was uncomfortable,” Middleton said of the boycott. “But then you realize at the end of the day,” it’s possible to live without these stores.

“And a lot of times, we've just got to be reminded as individuals, this is a luxury. You don't have to go to these places. They have nothing unique that you can't get from somewhere else.”

“It doesn't make me feel good to give my money to people who don't give a damn about me.”

Nakita Harvey, 37, Port Washington, New York

Nakita Harvey’s nearest Target store is less than a five-minute walk from her home, but she hasn’t been there in months. 

“The more I thought about it, I was like, ‘You know what? Once people show you who they are, you should just believe them,’” said Harvey, a home health aide and mother of five, who is studying to become a teacher. “And even if they put it back, it doesn't take away the fact that they were willing to just do away with that.”

Harvey has sometimes spent more at smaller businesses for the same items she could buy for less at Target — and it doesn’t bother her.

“I'm just not going to give them my money,” she said. “It doesn't make me feel good to give my money to people who don't give a damn about me.”

Sophia Ellis, 39, Fort Worth, Texas

Sophia Ellis visited Target for her favorite products from Black-owned brands, including the Lip Bar, Ghetto Gastro and Tabitha Brown’s seasonings. She also stocked up on merchandise during Pride Month. That has stopped. 

While a public apology from the store would possibly help, it may already be too late: “We kind of figured out how to live without you,” she said.

Beverly Mahone, 67, Durham, North Carolina

Beverly Mahone, once a loyal Walmart shopper, said she hasn’t supported the retailer in months. She has also ditched Whole Foods, a store she loved, which is owned by Amazon.

“They're saying, ‘We don't care about you, but we'll take your money.’ How does that sound?” she said. “It's like, ‘I don't really love you, but I'll marry you.’ I mean, it's crazy.”

In a statement to NBC News, Whole Foods Market said the company “is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive company and continues to support programs that do so.” 

Mahone and her husband are empty nesters who now plan to get more use out of their Costco membership because Costco hasn’t stopped its DEI policies. For Mahone, DEI is deeply personal. She believes it gave her access to job opportunities that she was qualified for but would have otherwise been denied. 

“Without DEI,” she said, “there are going to be a lot of qualified candidates who are just going to be overlooked. That's the sad thing.”

Lamar Richards, 24, Ann Arbor, Michigan

Lamar Richards has grown accustomed to traveling 45 minutes or so from his home in Ann Arbor to Detroit or to Toledo, Ohio, to buy hair products from Black-owned businesses that he would typically get from his neighborhood Target to care for his locs.

“One of the reasons that the Montgomery bus boycott worked is because we, as a people, became OK with being inconvenienced on behalf of what we knew was possible,” he said. “And so I've accepted that.”

Sydney Freeman Jr., 40, Moscow, Idaho

“My dad used to say, ‘My money is just as green as everybody else’s,’” Sydney Freeman said. “We deserve the same types of services, and when a company says that they’re going to service our community and then reneges on that, I think we need to hold them into account.”

How long will he participate? “Indefinitely,” Freeman said, without hesitation.

Rachelle Biennestin, 30, Somerville, Massachusetts

Rachelle Biennestin said it was “sad” that some are downplaying the potential effectiveness of a mass boycott. 

“People need to realize Target, in one day, makes [over] $250 million, which is a lot of money,” said Biennestin, who said she used to spend about $500 a month at Walmart and Target. To those who say the one-day boycott at the end of February wasn’t effective, she said, “You gotta start somewhere.”

“I feel like a week of boycotting, a month of boycotting, could really send a huge message to the company. I think more people need to do their research.”

“It’s unacceptable.”

Asa Khalif, 40, Philadelphia

Asa Khalif had become “a very loyal shopper at Target” after it pledged to spend more than $2 billion on Black-owned businesses by 2025 along with featuring more Black-owned brands in its stores after the Floyd murder in 2020. Now, he said, that loyalty is gone. 

Khalif, a lifelong activist, recently visited his local Target, piled nearly $300 worth of clothes into a cart and told the cashier he wouldn’t buy them. He said about five other Black and Latino shoppers who witnessed the protest left the store with him. 

Khalif added that to take the type of spending power Black people have and take them for granted, “it’s unacceptable.”

Arthur Harrington, 23, Detroit

“Where you spend your money, it’s an indication of where your values lie,” said Arthur Harrington, a student at Wayne State University School of Law in Detroit.

Mylene Cornelius, 64, Valley Stream, New York

About two weeks ago, Mylene Cornelius lost the lock she uses at the gym. But rather than go to Walmart, which would have been her go-to, she wandered around her neighborhood trying to find a replacement, she said. For a church event, she stocked up on items from a local Christian store instead of Amazon, even though it cost more. 

“As a Black person, basically, I don't like them abandoning programs that were put in place to try and equalize the job market,” said Cornelius, a retired tax assessor who worked for New York City for 38 years.

Devin Freeman, 23, Kernersville, North Carolina

“Money is authority, and if we can divest away from these companies, that's going to affect their stocks, as well as their shareholders, and then they're going to have to turn to why is it that they're not making the same revenues as previous quarters. Because people have rallied and have used their power,” he said.

Pamela Purifoy, Durham, North Carolina

Pamela Purifoy said she was shocked when she learned that Target had concluded its DEI goals. “At first, I didn't believe it,” said Purifoy, who works in public relations and marketing.

“Target, to me, led the way with all of their progressiveness, with supporting Black businesses, women, diversity,” she said. “You could really see their diversity efforts and everything that they did.”

Her boycotting has had unintended benefits. “I think I may have saved myself some money by not going there so much,” she said, laughing.

Greear Webb, 24, Atlanta

Greear Webb, a second-year law student, began boycotting Target, McDonald’s, Walmart and Amazon during Black History Month, and he has been encouraging his peers and family members to join him, “in the spirit of the Civil Rights movement.”

“It’s undeniable that people of color in this country, and the most marginalized, need help in ways that people who are privileged do not,” he said. “And so the point here is to uplift the most marginalized so that we can all succeed.”

His pastor at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church near Atlanta, the Rev. Jamal Bryant, is among the faith and civil rights leaders who organized a national 40-day “Target fast,” which began on the first day of Lent.

Webb said he has felt frustrated by and disappointed in the companies that he said rolled over to Trump’s decrees taking aim at diversity, equity and inclusion policies. 

Companies like Target, Walmart, Amazon, and others “should look like the people they serve, and they should have a backbone when it comes to defending said people,” he said.

Webb said he recognizes the discomfort that boycotting is likely to pose.

“It is difficult to boycott. It is difficult to change up your schedule or your routine, but that's what our ancestors did,” he said. “That's the type of bold action we saw during the Civil Rights Movement and during the gay rights movement and during the anti-war movement. And so, when you're trying to change a system, specifically a system that's been in place for hundreds of years, that prioritizes people with wealth, that prioritizes people with white skin, it's going to take significant action, and it can be hard, but I do believe that we will win and actions like this will make a difference and really uplift America's marginalized.”