Editorial Opinion: If We Are Going to Protest Target, Protest the Numbers; Not the DEI Slogan

Opinion from Our Black News (2026)

For more than a year, activists have treated Target's decision to pull back from its formal DEI commitments as if the disappearance of the letters D-E-I automatically meant the destruction of economic opportunity for Black America. That argument is emotionally powerful. It is also too simplistic.

Here is the uncomfortable question Black America should have asked long before the 2025–2026 protests: What did corporate DEI actually deliver to Black men, Black women, Hispanic men and women, and Asian workers?

The answer, based on the available employment data, is not nearly as flattering as the corporate press releases.

The evidence does not support the absolute claim that DEI "only helped white women." But the data do support a more defensible—and more important—argument: the largest and clearest gains in corporate advancement have often gone to women who were already relatively well positioned, while Black and Hispanic workers, particularly men, remained underrepresented in positions of real institutional power. That should have changed the focus of the protest.

Follow the Leadership Numbers

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's national employment data show why we need to stop treating "women" and "people of color" as if they are single, interchangeable categories.

Women have made substantial gains in corporate leadership. Yet those gains have not been distributed equally across racial groups. Reporting on the EEOC's 2023 private-sector data found that White and Asian women had made the fastest gains and were no longer underrepresented in executive and senior-management positions relative to their representation in the workforce. Black and Hispanic women, meanwhile, remained underrepresented, and Black and Hispanic men also remained underrepresented in senior leadership. White men still held a disproportionate share of executive and senior-management positions (Associated Press, 2026). (AP News)

That matters because a company can announce that it is improving "gender diversity" while doing very little to solve racial exclusion. It can celebrate the advancement of women while the women advancing are disproportionately White or Asian. It can boast about "people of color" while Black workers remain absent from the highest-paying positions.

That is precisely why DEI should never have been evaluated by slogans, training sessions, Black History Month displays, supplier advertisements, or the number of executives who attended an equity workshop. The real question is who got hired, who got promoted, who became a vice president, who became a senior executive, and who received the contracts.

Target's Own Numbers Raise the Right Questions

Target's publicly available 2024 EEO-1 data provide an example of why activists should demand precision.

Among Target's 899 executive or senior-level officials and managers, the company reported a workforce heavily concentrated among White employees. Target reported 296 White men and 342 White women in those senior positions, compared with 43 Black men and 40 Black women. The same data reported 40 Hispanic men and 32 Hispanic women and 44 Asian men and 39 Asian women (Target Corporation, 2024). (Target Corporation)

Those numbers do not prove that Target intentionally discriminated against anyone. EEO-1 statistics alone cannot establish illegal discrimination. But they do establish something important: there is a measurable leadership gap that cannot be solved merely by arguing about whether Target uses the acronym DEI.

Target's own 2023 workforce diversity report showed that women made up 56% of its total workforce and 56% of its managers. Yet the company's leadership team was still 72% White and only 28% people of color; only 6% of that leadership team was Black and 11% was Hispanic or Latino (Target Corporation, 2023). (Target Corporation)

So what should the protest have demanded?

Not simply: "Bring DEI back."

The demand should have been:

Show us the hiring numbers.

Show us the promotion numbers.

Show us the turnover numbers.

Show us the salaries.

Show us the racial and gender composition of executive leadership.

Show us how many Black men, Black women, Hispanic men, Hispanic women, Asian men, and Asian women are moving from entry-level jobs into positions of authority.

That would have been a protest rooted in outcomes instead of branding.

The Broader Economy Tells the Same Story

The EEOC's research on the high-tech workforce demonstrates that the problem is larger than Target. Black, Hispanic, and female workers remained substantially underrepresented in the high-tech workforce, while Black, Hispanic, and Asian workers were underrepresented in managerial positions compared with their representation in the workforce overall (EEOC, 2024). (EEOC)

This is the fundamental flaw in broad corporate DEI campaigns: they can combine groups with very different employment experiences and then declare success when one category improves.

A gain for White women is counted as a victory for "diversity."

A gain for Asian professionals is counted as a victory for "people of color."

A Black employee resource group is counted as evidence of inclusion.

Meanwhile, the Black employee may still be working below the executive level, the Hispanic employee may still be absent from the corporate suite, and Black men may remain among the groups with the least representation in positions of institutional authority.

Aggregation can hide inequality.

And that is why the conversation needs to become more sophisticated.

Target's DEI Rollback Was Not the Same Thing as Eliminating Every Black Opportunity

Target announced in January 2025 that it was concluding its three-year DEI goals, ending its REACH initiatives as planned, changing its supplier-diversity structure, and altering some external diversity commitments. At the same time, Target continued employee resource groups, mentorship and development communities, and later stated that it had fulfilled its commitment to invest $2 billion in Black-owned businesses (Target Corporation, 2025). (Target Corporation)

That does not mean Target deserves a free pass.

It means the argument should be more precise.

If Target promised $2 billion for Black-owned businesses, then activists should audit where that $2 billion went.

If Target says it supports Black entrepreneurs, then publish the number of Black-owned companies that received contracts before and after the policy changes.

If Target claims equal opportunity, then release hiring, promotion, retention, and executive-placement data broken down by race and gender.

If Target says its workforce reflects America, then demonstrate that Black and Hispanic employees are represented proportionately not only at the cash register and warehouse floor, but also in corporate leadership, merchandising, finance, technology, legal departments, and the executive suite.

That is accountability.

Protest the Outcomes

I understand the anger directed at Target. Corporations made highly visible promises after the murder of George Floyd and the racial reckoning of 2020. Communities were therefore justified in asking whether those promises were real.

But protesting the removal of the word DEI is not enough.

A corporation can keep the DEI department and still fail to hire Black executives.

A corporation can sponsor a Juneteenth celebration and still have no meaningful pipeline for Hispanic management.

A corporation can advertise Black-owned products and still fail to promote Black women.

A corporation can have an Asian employee resource group while Asian workers remain underrepresented in senior management.

And a corporation can proudly announce progress for women without telling us which women actually received the promotions.

That is why I reject the lazy assumption that restoring DEI automatically restores justice.

Justice is measurable. Opportunity is measurable. Power is measurable.

If Black consumers are going to use their enormous economic power to protest Target or any other major corporation in 2026, then the demands should be specific:

1. Publish annual hiring rates by race and gender.

2. Publish promotion rates by race and gender.

3. Publish executive and senior-management representation by race and gender.

4. Publish retention and voluntary-turnover rates by race and gender.

5. Audit pay equity by race and gender.

6. Track contracts awarded to Black-, Hispanic-, Asian-, and women-owned businesses separately.

7. Establish measurable consequences when a company repeatedly fails to create equal access to leadership.

Do not give corporations credit for changing the vocabulary.

Do not punish them merely for changing the vocabulary either.

Follow the jobs. Follow the promotions. Follow the contracts. Follow the money. Follow the power.

The biggest mistake in the Target-DEI debate is pretending that all historically marginalized groups experienced corporate diversity programs in the same way. They did not. The data show continuing differences by both race and sex. The evidence does not allow us to honestly say that DEI benefited only White women—but it does show that broad diversity gains can conceal the continuing exclusion of Black and Hispanic workers from senior positions.

So, yes, protest Target if the numbers justify it.

But do not protest an acronym.

Protest the company if it cannot prove that Black men, Black women, Hispanic men, Hispanic women, Asian men, and Asian women have genuine access to hiring, advancement, contracts, and corporate power.

That is a protest worth having.

References

Associated Press. (2026, July 21). U.S. civil rights agency moves to end demographic data collection after 60 years. Associated Press. Associated Press report

Target Corporation. (2023). 2023 workforce diversity report. Target workforce diversity report

Target Corporation. (2024). 2024 EEO-1 reporting. Target 2024 EEO-1 report

Target Corporation. (2025). Target's Belonging at the Bullseye strategy. Target's 2025 strategy statement

U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (2024). High tech, low inclusion: Diversity in the high tech workforce and sector, 2014–2022. EEOC report

U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (2024, September 11). EEOC research finds unequal opportunity in the high tech sector and workforce. EEOC findings summary