Like many other companies, Target Corporation has put its DEI programs out of their misery. Most Americans applaud the end of DEI, but the Congressional Black Caucus is not amused. Thus, it is threatening to boycott Target:
Now, the Congressional Black Caucus is making thinly veiled threats to endorse boycotting Target if it does not reinstate “diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives that were eliminated or rolled back,” according to a statement the caucus released after a meeting with Target CEO Brian Cornell and other executives last week.
The Congressional Black Caucus’s interest in Target is not merely philosophical. It turns out that Target has been funding the Caucus’s Foundation, which is indistinguishable from the CBC itself:
The CBC and the foundation are technically two separate organizations, but they have worked in such tandem that they are often considered to be two sides of the same coin. The New York Times wrote that the CBC and the CBC Foundation “are so deeply connected it is sometimes hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.”
This is how Target has supported the Black Caucus and its Foundation:
Since 2020, Target has donated at least $1.4 million to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, a think tank that works hand in hand with the 62-member caucus. Target pledged $1 million over five years to the foundation through its Racial Equity Action and Change (REACH) initiative to “advance social justice and racial equity for Black individuals” in the wake of the death of George Floyd. The retail giant donated $200,000 to the foundation for “meeting expenses” in December to honor several caucus members, according to lobbying records.
Such corporate blackmail money flows freely on the Left. Target wouldn’t dream of supporting my organization, which, like Target, is Minnesota-based. We advocate for free enterprise, the system that has allowed Target to prosper. But Target’s money goes to the far-left, and sometimes downright insane, Congressional Black Caucus.
The Caucus demands that Target “reinstate diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives that were eliminated or rolled back.” One wonders: do the members of the Congressional Black Caucus understand why Target and many other companies have either done away with, or at least pretended to do away with, their DEI initiatives? It is because race discrimination in employment is illegal. This has always been true in theory, but in the Harvard and North Carolina cases the U.S. Supreme Court finally said out loud that it is illegal to discriminate against whites and Asians, too.
Those were education cases, but every general counsel in America realized that the same standard would apply in the context of employment. Every substantial company in America has been discriminating against whites for many years under the guise of affirmative action and, later, DEI. Many have discriminated against Asians, too. Not wanting to be sued into oblivion, companies have changed their ways, or at least have pretended to adopt race-neutral policies.
Which, of course, is a very good thing. But if companies like Target have sworn off race discrimination for fear of legal consequences, it is hard to see how threats from the Congressional Black Caucus–whose members either don’t know the law, or don’t care–will change things.
