Target apologized for and pulled a children’s Halloween costume evoking Blackface. Critics blamed DEI cuts. But my experience in a college classroom suggests a far more troubling explanation.
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When I read that Target was pulling a racially offensive costume and apologizing to consumers, I figured it was a slow news day, with the usual clickbait mountain being made out of some dubious molehill.
Then I saw the costume: an actual Blackface outfit reminiscent of minstrel shows, modeled by a Black child. Whoa.
The costume is indeed unambiguously racial and racist. Target was right to pull it from shelves, and the company should figure out how it was released in the first place.
Many people have a theory: Because Target reduced the size and scope of its diversity, equity and inclusion goals in 2025, racism was bound to rear its untrammeled head. If you assume that the educated Americans working in Target’s corporate offices knew what minstrel shows were, and can spot minstrelsy-adjacent costumes when they see them, then it makes sense to root this misstep in racial insensitivity and to trust that pouring money back into DEI would fix it.
Unfortunately, I think things in America today are both better and worse than that.
The problem isn’t racial insensitivity, but historical illiteracy
The good news: I’d bet the mortgage that this costume was not made or marketed with any racist intent. The bad news: That’s because many educated Americans, perhaps most, including those still working on Target’s DEI initiatives, have little to no idea that minstrel shows existed – let alone what they looked like.
In other words, the real problem isn’t racial insensitivity specifically, but historical illiteracy broadly.
Back in 2012, I was teaching a freshman rhetoric seminar at a midsize, private university. I had my students read, then watch, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech. When the video ended, I asked my students: “What was the message?” A few hands shot up, and I called on a young man in the last row. “To end slavery,” he proclaimed confidently. A couple of girls up front tittered.
But it was clear not everyone got the joke. Keeping my voice and face as impassive as I could, I asked the class: “How many of you believe that the person we just watched give this speech on this video was enslaved?” Just under a third of the students raised their hands.
These historical illiterates, and their cohort, are now in their early 30s – old enough to be making merchandising decisions at Target. I rest my sad yet reassuring case.
Of the Target costume, one commenter on r/BlackPeopleofReddit said: “I don’t see how anyone could look at it and not notice what it was.”
I do, though. After all, I spent over a decade in the DEI-obsessed, learning-lite halls of higher education.
I know that the way toward a society in which ignorant people don’t unwittingly attempt to make money off of racist imagery is not through more DEI. Instead, we need to prioritize some fundamentals that those very progressive initiatives have long crowded out: basic reading and American history.
Elizabeth Grace Matthew writes about books, politics and culture. Follow her on Substack.