Dr. Jamal Bryant of Atlanta-area New Birth Missionary Baptist Church is expanding his charge to “fast” from Target, which he urged Christians to do during Lent, to a “full out boycott.”
The end of the Target fast was conditional on the company meeting four demands. When Bryant announced on Easter Sunday, April 20, that the Target boycott would be ongoing, he said that Target had met only one of the four requirements.
“I had to share with Target that we gave [the company] 40 days to answer four, not one,” said Bryant. “And they only came back with one. So I told them what I’m getting ready to tell you: We ain’t going back in there.”
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Various corporations, including Target, have pulled back on their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives because of President Trump’s executive orders targeting DEI. In a statement published Friday, Jan. 24, titled “Target’s Belonging at the Bullseye Strategy,” Target said it was committed to inclusion and that it would make several changes this year, including “concluding our three-year diversity, equity and inclusion goals.”
In April 2021, Target had announced a “commitment to spend more than $2 billion with Black-owned businesses by the end of 2025.”
“This investment builds upon Target’s previous commitments, including increasing Target’s representation of Black team members by 20% over the next three years,” said the announcement, “and committing $10 million from Target and the Target Foundation to support nonprofit partners focused on addressing the systemic and structural barriers facing Black communities.”
On Feb. 2, Jamal Bryant called on the congregation of his megachurch, as well as the “conscientious Christian community all over this country,” to use the season of Lent to participate in a 40-day “fast” from shopping at Target.
Lent is a period in the church calendar prior to Easter when many Christians practice self-denial. Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, which fell on March 5 this year, and ends on Maundy Thursday, a few days before Easter.
Bryant had a goal of getting 100,000 Christians to make their commitment to the Target fast official by signing a form at targetfast.org. The Target Fast website, which has since been changed, listed Target as committing the “highest insult” out of a number of companies rolling back DEI initiatives; the reason given was that Target had “pledged spending over 2 billion with black owned business [sic] by the end of 2025.”
“To stop the program at the start of the year is betrayal,” said the site. It was not clear from Target’s January statement that it was ending or that it was committed to fulfilling its pledge to give Black-owned businesses $2 billion dollars by the end of this year.
The website listed four requirements for Target to fulfill in order for the fast to end, including honoring its $2 billion pledge and reiterating its commitment to DEI. The other two requirements were giving $250 million to Black banks and supporting “pipeline community centers at 10 HBCU [historically Black colleges and universities] to teach retail business at every level.”
The Target fast movement offered 300 Black-owned businesses as alternative places where consumers could shop. Bryant said he was announcing the fast a month before Lent in order to give time for Black business owners to remove their products from Target and join the National Black Chamber of Commerce.
Targetfast.org now offers a t-shirt for sale that shows Target’s bullseye logo crossed out and has the words “stay on target.” The site also features a “Black Wall Street Ticker” displaying a list of companies to boycott and a list of approved companies to “buycott.”
“Not since the Montgomery bus boycott has Black America come together in such a unified vision, unified focus, and a unified front,” Bryant told worshipers on Easter as people wearing the Target fast t-shirt stood behind him. “And we’ve done it, ladies and gentlemen, we have done it for 10 weeks, for 10 weeks,” he said as people applauded. “We’ve stayed out of Target.”
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The pastor told congregants that the boycott didn’t start with New Birth as there was already a “grassroots movement afoot that was doing a Target boycott.”
“We came along just as one church and said that the Body of Christ needed to be a part of it and that we were going to take fasting as a spiritual principle,” said Bryant, “because we understand that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but they are mighty under God for the pulling down of strongholds.”
