Target Scammed Black Vendors and We Have Receipts

In 2020, Target pledged to support Black creators and communities. Target spotlighted their products, and made headlines with its public commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion. But now, those promises look like little more than PR spin.

Black creators and vendors who once collaborated with the brand say they weren’t just abandoned — they were exploited. From one-sided partnerships to pay-to-play marketing schemes,  this episode investigates how a major corporation cashed in on the racial justice movement… and then just walked away.

We speak to Kiara Imani, a former Target vendor who is one of the Black entrepreneurs  now speaking out. She was originally thrilled when a game she designed, "LikeU Cards," was included in Target's collection, only to quickly realize she was caught up in a pay-to-play scheme that was more about Target's PR than actually selling her product. 

She's also an attorney and author of the book Therapy Isn’t Just For White People. She explains what went down, what she was promised versus what she actually got, and unpacks the backlash, the boycott, and why some former Target collaborators are now calling it what it really was all along: a scam.

Kiara’s TikTok about Target: https://www.tiktok.com/@kiara_imani_will/video/7481347076442606894

Buy Kiara book Therapy Isn’t Just For White People: https://www.mahoganybooks.com/9781735145884

Check out LikeU cards: https://likeucards.com/?srsltid=AfmBOoqCZCnuFV-4u8l9PynC9x1nNFbC0DCrVv0_IYqoRsPTvnt-FEX5

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Support without capital is counterfeit. It's not support, it's lip service.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
There are No Girls on the Internet. As a production
of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd and this
is there are No Girls.

Speaker 3 (00:20):
On the Internet.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
This is the story of a breakup, not between two people,
but between.

Speaker 4 (00:27):
Me and my favorite big box retailer, Target, and I'm
not the only one.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
After George Floyd's murder back in twenty twenty, Target, headquartered
in Minneapolis where his death took place, was one of
many companies that made big public commitments to racial equity.
They promised to support black communities, fun black creators, and
put black owned brands on their shelves. But in early
twenty twenty five, that all changed. Target quietly announced it

(00:56):
was walking back its DEI efforts, and for a lot
of us, that was a deal breaker. We started boycotting
because it felt like a betrayal. But here's the part
we didn't see. In the middle of that boycott.

Speaker 5 (01:08):
For people like Kiara, my name is kiar Imani and
you can call me Kiara. My friends call me Kiki.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Black creators and entrepreneurs like Kiara had finally gotten a
chance to be on the shelves at Target, A big opportunity, right,
Not quite. In today's episode, you're going to hear help
Black creators who partnered with Target didn't just get screwed
by the store.

Speaker 4 (01:30):
They got low key scammed. But first back to Kiara,
it was against the backdrop of the protest of twenty
twenty that Kiara Amani, attorney and author of the book
Therapy Isn't Just for White People, got the idea for
like you cards.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
It really was birthed out of a place of having
a lot of political turmoil in twenty twenty. There was
a depth of George Floyd. We were all at home.
People were having a hard time communicating and talking to
one another. One of the things that I found, very
specifically was that people would make a lot of assumptions
about what you believed, how you saw the world, based

(02:06):
on who you were, your color, your gender, all these things.
And I found obviously people were frustrated because people have
differing opinions, and I know that that can be really stressful,
But what I really saw was people being frustrated because
they felt misunderstood, like they don't see me, they don't
hear me, they don't understand why I'm so angry. They

(02:27):
don't understand why I'm so triggered. So the idea was
to create a card game that could help people feel seen, heard, understood.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Like a lot of companies, in twenty twenty, it seemed
like Target was listening. That year, they launched the REACH
Initiative Racial Equity Action and Change, promising to increase black representation,
support black team members, guests, and communities, and even advocate
on racial policy. Then in twenty twenty one, they made
a bigger commitment to spend two billion dollars by the
end of twenty twenty five supporting black businesses and the

(02:59):
carryover five hundred black owned brands. They'd also be launching
Forward Founders, an equity free accelerator to help over sixty
black and diverse entrepreneurs scale into mass retail.

Speaker 4 (03:09):
Sounds pretty good, right, Kiera thought so too.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
I was kind of just working through my own feelings
about being black and growing up in predominantly white spaces
and not feeling seen and watching somebody in pain where
everybody was pointing to the reasons why it was okay,
as opposed to saying why is it happening? And all
of those things, and then there were companies coming out
saying we stand with George Floyd, we stand with the

(03:33):
Black community, and that was very inspiring. Our business model
from the beginning, the plan was to go straight to
B to B, which is like selling to a business
who then sells to customers, as opposed to going B
two C because going B two C is incredibly expensive.
People spend hundreds of thousands of dollars these big companies
on marketing trying to reach customers, and obviously social media

(03:54):
is a really helpful tool, but unless you are really
pushing your content out there with it's in paying, it's
not always the most effective at reaching people. So Target
made that statement and I was like, this is perfect.
They are pledging to spend money on black businesses, small
black businesses. We're a small black business. We seem very

(04:15):
mission aligned. They care about the black community.

Speaker 4 (04:17):
We're black.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
We created a card game that's where everybody, so I
think it'd be good for the stores. So I got
on LinkedIn and started finding emails and reaching out to
every person I could find at Target. And this is
not an ad, but I love LinkedIn because there are
only so many monikers for a company. Usually it's first
name dot last night at company dot com. If it's

(04:38):
not that, there are only other few first initial last
night at company dot com. So once you figure out
one and you don't get that bounce back, you know
you have the email for almost everybody at the company.
So I found as many people as I could that
worked in buying, and then one person, I think a
black woman who worked in baby products, connected us to
another person who connected us to another person eventually got

(05:00):
to the right buyer. They loved the game. It gave
us some suggestions about how to fix the packaging to
make it stand out on shelves, and so we took
all of those suggestions. We revamped our packaging completely to
be better for shelves, put all of our own money
into this. I personally invested like forty k of my
own personal money that I really didn't have all my
savings trying to make this product perfect for shells. And

(05:23):
eventually they were like, you did all the things, congratulations,
welcome to Target, and we were so excited about it. It
just felt very surreal.

Speaker 2 (05:32):
This creation that came from such a place of turmoil
and difficulty is now on the shelves at Target.

Speaker 4 (05:38):
How did that feel.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
It was really surreal. I think that's the best word
that I have to describe it. But we were also
moving so quickly that I don't know that we ever,
or I can speak for myself. I never really took
the time to soak it in and say, I'm this
girl from a small town in Virginia who had all
these big dreams and I moved to LA and I'm
doing all the things that I said I was gonna do,

(06:00):
and really take that moment, because as soon as you're
in stores, it's like, we had to get certifications, we
have to make sure insurance it's good, We're figuring out
the warehouse, we're talking to our manufacturers, trying to figure
out costs, trying to figure out projections. So we didn't
really sit or I didn't really sit in the gravity
of the feeling.

Speaker 5 (06:18):
I think it wasn't until I.

Speaker 1 (06:20):
Probably rocked into my first target and saw the product
on shelves that I was like, WHOA, I want to
tell everybody that's my product. And then very quickly my
business mind switched on again. I was like, is this
the good placement? Who can I talk to?

Speaker 4 (06:33):
Is this? You know?

Speaker 1 (06:35):
How many products are in this store and how's it selling?
And so there was a lot of mix of emotion,
but it was so I would say, crowded by trying
to make sure you get to the next step, the
next thing.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
This is an episode that's not pro Target, but it
does it must be pretty cool to see something that
you created on the shelf at a store like Target.
Like I don't felt with Tart any more personally, but
I don't want to take away from what a cool
moment that must have been.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
I think to your point, obviously this conversation takes a
turn at some point, but less about the store itself.
I think in the moment when all of these companies
were making pledges and I had again grew up in
Virginia and had some very racist experiences growing up that
I talked about in my book. I had people from

(07:26):
ten to fifteen years ago calling me to apologize for
things that you know, they're like, I think back on
these moments and I'm sorry. I had a girl from
class in law school who was like, Hey, you know
how our professor you were the only black person in
our class and he used to call you colored and
made you uncomfortable. When we all saw it no one
said anything like we should have said something. So just
all of the acknowledgement that people were actually seeing it

(07:51):
felt good to be like, whoa, my experiences aren't invisible.

Speaker 5 (07:55):
I'm not being gas lit.

Speaker 1 (07:57):
Somebody believes me about what it's like to be a
black woman in this country or just a black human being.

Speaker 4 (08:04):
I really know how that feels. I'm also from Virginia.

Speaker 5 (08:07):
You know, you know the vibes that you know.

Speaker 1 (08:09):
I grew up with friends parents who were like doing
battle re enactments off the battlefields because Manassas was one
of the battles of the South one and then people
would have parage and celebrate that, and that felt weird.
And I'm passing statues and schools that are named after
Confederate soldiers at the Confederacy Loss and I'm like, but
you guys wanted slaves, and they're like, no, we're just
celebrating the past.

Speaker 5 (08:30):
So a lot of gas.

Speaker 4 (08:32):
Lighting that is. That was also a big part of
my experience.

Speaker 2 (08:37):
I used to drive down Monument Avenue to get to
my high school every day, and when I was in
elementary school. People think I'm making this up, but I
swear to you this was real. When I was in
elementary school, my public school would do Civil War Day
where kids could choose to be Confederate or Union soldiers
and come to school dressed up as either side and
do a battle march on our school wolve's front lawn.

(09:01):
Every time I tell that story, people are like, well,
certainly that wasn't happening in nineteen ninety two in Virginia,
and I.

Speaker 4 (09:06):
Say, sir, I can assure you that it very much was.

Speaker 5 (09:10):
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (09:11):
This is why I'm grateful for the Internet, because I've
told people just google Manassas Civil War parade like it'll
you can see the Google battle re enactments. I'm not
making it up, but you can see it for yourself.
And had a friend watch it. She was like, this
is one of the craziest things I've ever seen. And
I was like, yeah, if.

Speaker 2 (09:28):
The story of me and Target is a breakup story,
then this is the part where I tell you how
good things used to be. All those big announcements about
supporting black owned brands, well, my black ass ate it
right up, because listen, I'm a Target girl. Do I
want to get a nice coffee and walk around Target
for no reason at all?

Speaker 4 (09:44):
Yes? Yes, I do, and it wasn't just the vibes.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
Target was one of the first big box stores to
carry products for black natural hair. I literally could not
have gone natural had there not been a Target in
my town. So when Target said they were supporting us,
it felt real. Well, it felt like they saw us.
But like any bad relationship, comes that moment where you
start to question things and maybe even start to wonder
am I being lied to. I've tried to explain this

(10:11):
to people, but Target, especially in twenty twenty, but for
me even before, it kind of felt like Target was
like for us. Now, obviously they're a corporation. I think
we're all smart enough to know that they are about
money first and foremost. But they did all of these
things to signal that they did want to make investments
in our community. And so I think giving given the

(10:33):
boycott and everything, people will often ask me, well, where's
the smoke for Walmart?

Speaker 4 (10:38):
Where's the smoke for Amazon?

Speaker 2 (10:39):
And the reason why I think it's different is because
Target went out of their way to make to like
signal to us that they see us, They're for us,
they want to be in community with creators like you,
and as far as I know, I mean, I feel
like Amazon and Walmart have been very clear about who
they are the whole time, and so for me, Target

(11:01):
felt different.

Speaker 4 (11:02):
Do you did you feel similarly?

Speaker 5 (11:04):
Absolutely?

Speaker 1 (11:05):
I tell people all the time, it's cut and dry,
it's not hard. I don't like being lied to. I
am an attorney by training. I understand business. I understand money.
I understand that for profit businesses are in it to
make money. But Target made a financial commitment to the
black community. I want to believe that you're going to
do what you say you're going to do. That should

(11:26):
be a very basic tenant principle of morality of business,
of community doing what you say you're going to do.
For us, specifically, when it came to Target, you know,
they were having all of these there's by Black on
the app, and then there's a by Black section in
the stores, and they were coming off as trying to
be a part of the community. For lack of a

(11:48):
better metaphor, they wanted an invite to the cookout so bad,
and they were saying all the things and doing all
of the things and speaking the language. And very quickly
we started to I would say a year or two
into the partnership, Oh, this was performative.

Speaker 2 (12:07):
One of the things that's always rubbed me the wrong
way is how companies frame their support for black business
like it's charity, Like we should just be grateful for
the opportunity.

Speaker 4 (12:15):
But let's be real that framing is offensive.

Speaker 2 (12:19):
Why is it that when a major corporation invests in
a black owned business, it gets talked about like a handout.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
The first thing being I think it was our second year,
the first year we were in the toy catalog for Christmas,
and I would say they kind of did the things
they said they were going.

Speaker 5 (12:32):
To do again.

Speaker 1 (12:33):
They didn't just say, oh, we're going to support black businesses.
They said we're going to make a financial investment in
these businesses. So as a small business, when you hear investments,
especially when it pertains to marketing, that's an incredible opportunity.
We know black businesses are the least funded by venture capitalists,
and we know you need a marketing budget to do well.
It's not just the budget for the warehouse and the product.

(12:53):
There's an extra capital that has to be there in
order to market the product. So it also was frustrating
because other people would be like, oh, you are expecting
a handout. I'm like, almost every white business I know
got an investment, and you just say they had.

Speaker 5 (13:08):
They believed in the product, so they had investors.

Speaker 1 (13:10):
Why is it that our business can't be a business
that's taking an investment. Why do you see it as
a handout when it comes to a black business. Everybody
builds a business on somebody else's money, not everybody most people.
Most people build a business on somebody else's money. They
get funding in order to get to a certain level.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
So all those inspirational Target ads, the ones featuring traditionally
marginalized creators and black owned brands, the ones that gave
me all those warm fuzzies and made me feel super seene, Yeah,
it turns out that a lot of those creators had
to pay Target out of their own pockets to make
that happen. Let me say that again, the very people
being spotlighted, the ones whose stories are being used to

(13:48):
sell inclusion and progress and make Target look really woke,
those same people were often footing the bill themselves. So
while I was busy watching those ads thinking wow, Target
really gets it, the truth is a lot of that
visibility came with a cost, like a real financial cost,
not to target to the very people they claimed to
be helping and uplifting.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
So I would say, like our second year in, we
got all these emails about Black History coming up and
we would love to feature you. And you know, I
don't know if you remember, but they were doing all
these commercials with the black or leftin of brands and
all of these ads, and we were like, cool, that
sounds like an awesome opportunity. You were going to give
us visibility. We are paying for the rest. To be clear,

(14:30):
we were paying out of pocket with our own money
for the warehouse, we were paying for the product, We
were paying for insurance. There was no like check that
they gave us to help out. The only help was
the visibility. So we have a meeting and they're like, yeah,
we'd love to feature you for Black History Month. If
you here's the deck, here's the presentation. If you want

(14:51):
to be part of you know, this group of like
ten products on the web page, on this random landing page,
it's only five thousand dollars. If you want to be
part of this, it's only fifteen thousand dollars. If you
want your own features, it's only for the low price
of seventy five thousand dollars, you too can be And
I was like, wait a second time out, what's happening.

Speaker 3 (15:14):
Let's take a quick break at our back.

Speaker 2 (15:30):
So while Target was raking in warm, fuzzy pr from
rubs like me for spotlighting black owned brands, they were
also shaking those very brands down for money just to
be spotlighted. So while it looked like support, behind the scenes,
it was more like a pay to play scheme dressed
up as progress.

Speaker 1 (15:46):
I'm an entertainment attorney, right, I work with talent and
brand partnerships. If you're on social media and Instagram, you know,
if a brand is partnering with talent and the talent
is being paid, they're supposed to say add hashtag whatever
brand partner. This is an ad. You see the links.
The FTC makes it very clear. But with Target, they
made it appear as if this was they were doing

(16:08):
some philanthropy for the black community by giving us visibility,
when in actuality, they were taking fifty percent of the product.
We paid for everything out of pocket, and now you're
asking me to pay for the marketing. So it became
something that it was like, this feels like a marketing scheme.
It's more expensive to be in target, Like this isn't
you investing in me? This is me investing in your business,

(16:30):
Like you're taking our money to build out your business,
and you pitshed this as something completely different.

Speaker 2 (16:37):
When a company promises one thing, take somebody's money and
deliver is a totally different thing.

Speaker 4 (16:42):
I mean, I don't want to call it a scam,
but it sounds like a scam to me.

Speaker 2 (16:47):
And they didn't just scam the brand, they scammed us too,
the people who actually believed and what they stood for.

Speaker 4 (16:53):
I'm stunned.

Speaker 2 (16:54):
Like I knew so doing my research on you and
doing my research all my black readers, I knew there
was a lot of legwork and money that it took
to play ball with some of these big brands, I
didn't know it was like this. I mean, this sounds
like pay to play, Like this almost sounds like, I mean,
let alone the false narrative that they are giving you

(17:16):
a handout.

Speaker 4 (17:17):
This is them. It almost sounds like they're like low
key scamming you all.

Speaker 1 (17:21):
And that's what it felt like to me, if I'm honest,
a marketing scam. And I've talked to other small business
owners about their experiences who feel the same way, some
of whom had even worse experiences than we did. People
who paid ten twenty five thousand dollars and Target forgot
to turn on the shipping so people could see the ad,
but no one could buy the product. So that's a
waste of a small business of money. People just had

(17:43):
really horrible experiences. And I think again it comes back
to transparency. We know for most small businesses, if you're
getting into the retail game, it's going to cost a
lot of money, which is why people get investors. If
a company is saying, hey, we understand why the Black
commun unity has this disparity. We understand that your ancestors
built this country on their backs and we're never compensated

(18:06):
anything for it and have set you back probably thousands
of years. So we kind of want to do our
part to make things better. So we're going to make
a financial investment. But then when you start to do
the numbers, it's you're actually investing in them. To me,
that is false, it's false advertising, it's deceptive, it's manipulative,
not to the small businesses only, but to the consumers,

(18:28):
to the customers. Because the people I know who were
going to Target. Of yeah, they would go, they would
buy our game, they would buy the other black products.
But then you're there on a Saturday, and I'll speak
for myself. I was buying everything else too. I was
a Target girly, so I would stop Starbucks, get my coffee,
do my runs, add the things to my cart. So
people like to pretend like, oh, Target was doing the

(18:49):
business as a favor. I'm like, no, Target was doing
every business a favor, because the foot traffic they brought
in by pretending to be dedicated to something that they
actually were not, was affecting everybody. Everybody was getting more
foot traffic. Everybody was doing well, and they saw that
when we left the stores, the foot traffic decreased. And
a lot of times these businesses know the price of everything,

(19:12):
but the value of nothing. They didn't understand the value
of supporting the black community, which is wild to me,
especially because black women spend more money really on hair
care and beauty and in that space than anybody. So
you should be wanting you, You should basically be doing
whatever we say because if you support us, we're gonna
support you. That's the way black women are. I am loyal, Okay,

(19:35):
if I decide I like you, I like you. I
don't even like going to another hairdresser because I'm like,
I have a hairdresser, and not a lot of black
men are the same with their barber. Like we are
very loyal people, so to the extent where treated well,
we'll continue to show up. But my mama did not
raise no fool. When our communities show up, we bring
profit with us. The CEO of Target actually bragged about

(19:56):
how diversity and inclusion efforts were profitable for the company. Unfortunately,
leadership next podcast.

Speaker 6 (20:02):
When your teams, your leadership represents the consumer you serve.
I think good things happen so I can see the
benefits for our shareholders. I know that focus on diversity
and inclusion and equity has fueled much of our growth
over the last nine years.

Speaker 2 (20:21):
This interview was in twenty twenty three, when the political
backlash against anything woke was really taking hold. Target CEO
was asked how he will maintain Target's dei stances and
a changing political climate.

Speaker 6 (20:31):
We think about what's right for our team and what's
consistent with our culture and alan When we do that,
I think we make really good decisions and we add
value for our shareholders, and that's part of why we've
seen explosive top line growth. So I think the facts
are in the results for us and the things we've done.
From a D and I standpoint, it's adding value, it's

(20:54):
helping us drive sales, it's building greater engagement with both
our teams and our guests. Those are just the right
things for our business today.

Speaker 4 (21:02):
So what's interesting about what you're saying is that I.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
In preparation for thinking about Target, I listened to old
podcast episodes where their leadership was on different business podcasts
and all the stuff that you just said, Target knows
they they clear as day. Their leadership went on podcasts
and said, oh, the investments that we made in black
creators helped our bottom line.

Speaker 4 (21:23):
And so this idea that them.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
Quote unquote supporting creators of color was a handout they were.
I mean, it's disgusting to hear how scammy that support
in quotes actually was. But like supporting it, being inclusive
is good for business, right Like they're not doing it
because it's charity or because it's the right thing to do,

(21:46):
per their own leadership publics, their public statements.

Speaker 4 (21:50):
They were doing it because it made them more money.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
And so it's just wild to me how quick they
would be to turn on this loyalty that they built,
even though that loyalty was built on a lie. Like,
I just don't understand why they would block their own
bag in that way.

Speaker 1 (22:07):
I think people get very cocky, and you see it
a lot in corporate America where they start to take
advantage of the very people that they're pledging to help.
And I've seen just really egregious things working as an attorney.
But you know, obviously the disparity in pay between white
craters and black creators are. With white craters, it's like, oh,
we can't use this likeness or image without her permission.

(22:30):
With black creaters, it's like, let's just tagger and not
pay her. And I'm like, come again, and they're like,
don't you think she'll be honored to be included in
this campaign? And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, You've
never said that for any of the white creators that
they'd be honored. You understand that their business, their brand
actually is their income and you can't feature their image
or their likeness without paying them. Why is it when
it comes to the black craters for Black history month.

(22:51):
You're like, they they're just going to be honored to
be mentioned, so it's not unique. I think what really
was hurtful with Target is that there were so many
promises made, not just to the public, but we had
meetings with our buyers at the time. We had, you know,
all of these promises that were made, all of these
campaigns we were supposed to be included in, and we
were getting really excited based upon what we were told

(23:13):
was going to happen, and then it didn't happen, and
people started to talk about, oh, it's the ROI the sales.
We understand that, like I said, black business, diverse businesses
was good for Target's bottom line, which is why they
did it and why they continued to do it. I
think when they started to get cocky and everybody was
doing well right, like everybody's eating, all of a sudden,

(23:34):
it's like, thanks for coming to the party. You can
see yourself out. We good, we full here. I'm like, oh, okay,
And I really believe, especially when it comes to supporting
black businesses, that support without capital's counterfeit.

Speaker 5 (23:48):
It's not support, it's lip service.

Speaker 4 (23:50):
That's very very well put.

Speaker 2 (23:52):
And you know, I want to talk more about this
sort of legwork that it took, you know, financial leg
work that it took to play ball with Target in
this way.

Speaker 4 (24:01):
I think it did give.

Speaker 2 (24:03):
Me warm fuzzies to walk around Target previously and see
women who looked like me, you know, in on the
shows like I'm not gonna lie.

Speaker 4 (24:11):
Like that felt good.

Speaker 2 (24:13):
But I think that the way that that looks flashy
and cool from the outside, when from the inside it
maybe isn't so flashy and isn't so cool. I've been
and I've had experiences like this where I'm invited on
a brand trip and if people knew it's like actually,
like like I read about your the trip that you
took to Italy where it's like, actually, we had to
pay for the flights and the lodging and we.

Speaker 4 (24:33):
Probably spent more money on our own to get there.

Speaker 2 (24:37):
And yet Target gets to have the like the like
good pr of having invited these like diverse creators to Italy.
And I guess the question is, like, I don't know
in my experience, that has taken some emotional work to
be like yeah, it sucks, like yeah, it sucks to
feel like you're gonna be included in this fancy thing

(24:59):
and actually have to pay to play, and there.

Speaker 4 (25:01):
There was an emotion.

Speaker 2 (25:02):
I guess there was an emotional not only a financial
but an emotional cost that you have to carry where
you have to sort of eat these little indignities that
people on the outside simply aren't privy too.

Speaker 4 (25:14):
They don't see.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
One hundred percent, and so many of us were siloed
in our experiences, so you start I think it feels
very similar to tell people to like a bad breakup
where you were really excited about the person, You're posting
them all over your socials, and then they leave you
and you're embarrassed and your stat and you're like, do
I take the pictures down? Was it a good relationship?
Did you ever love me? And then maybe you start

(25:37):
questioning yourself was I not enough? Could I have been better?
Of course, we can always be better at some capacity,
And there's this spiral that you kind of go down.
And it wasn't until that, you know, Target made the
announcements about pulling back, and we were learning other I
was talking to other small black creators who had the
exact same experiences, people who had taken out two hundred,
three hundred thousand dollars in loans. These invoices weren't being

(26:00):
paid who were dropped suddenly. And I think what's hard
for us too, is that we are a card game
that was literally built on telling stories, being honest, having
hard conversations. Small businesses have to forecast, like a year out.
People don't understand that either, because if you're shipping your product,
that shipping time, depending on the state of the country,

(26:21):
that shipping time can be a very long time. And
it's very expensive to ship product quickly, and you have
to order a lot of products in order to get
a good rate. So we have to forecast. We can't
afford to, you know, be in February and we're planning
for March, June, July, August, September, and then we already
have all the product for the season, and then right
before the season you're like, yeah, by the way, what

(26:42):
do you mean, by the way, We've already made the purchase.
So even if there was going to be a conversation
about scaling back, what I would have liked was some
sort of notice, you know, meet with us a year
in advance and say, hey, next year, we're actually planning
to scale back. This is probably going to be your
last year in store. I'm going to give you an
opportunity to plan accordingly. So because we understand you're a

(27:04):
small business. We made all these promises. We're taking the
promise back. A nice runway would have been nice.

Speaker 2 (27:11):
Right after Trump was elected, Target made a big shift.
They abandoned all of their dea goals and announced that
all of those big commitments to the black community were
coming to an end.

Speaker 4 (27:21):
Kiara had just become a new mom.

Speaker 2 (27:22):
She had poured her time, energy, and a lot of
her own money into making the partnership with Target work,
and then just like that, she was dumped. You've said
that like there was no big announcement or anything.

Speaker 4 (27:36):
They just pulled back, And.

Speaker 2 (27:38):
This was happening for you and your personal life when
you would just you were like a new mom, congratulations
on that, by the way, But like already all of
these big personal life changes and Target just pulls.

Speaker 4 (27:51):
Back, Like what was what? What? What? Tell me what that was?

Speaker 1 (27:53):
Like? It was very confusing. As I mentioned, I think
as a small business, when you're forecasting, notice is everything.
Communication is everything. Telling somebody, hey, next year, we're going
to pull back. We've made all these promises we're not
going to keep them. If they would have had the
dignity to tell us like, that's that's what we're looking at.

(28:16):
So we're going to give you this year to finish off,
you know, product merchandising, so you guys can prepare accordingly
so that when you're forecasting for next year, you know
that's don't plan to come back. That would have been
very sad, but it would have given us time. We
were already we had inventory already for Christmas, because Christmas
is like best selling time, especially if you're in like
the game and toy space. And so then when fall

(28:38):
of twenty twenty four and they had made the announcement
in you know, early twenty twenty five, when they told
us for the fall that they weren't going to move forward,
I'm like, what do you mean? We already have all
the inventory for the holiday here. And there was no explanation,
There was no talk about sales. I think the exact
wording we got was there's been a shift in the lineup,
good luck, carry on. And so even that felt very cold,

(29:00):
especially because at the very beginning again there was a
lot of conversation and convincing us to do it, and
then you know, but you got to go get your
diversity certification so that we can put on our page
that you're black. We got to be able to tell
people because we didn't really care, like you could tell
them or not tell them we're a black business. But
it was important to Target because that's part of their
pr to show how many black businesses they have. So
there was all this courting and then it felt like

(29:23):
a breakup through a text message good luck, hope all
is well, and you know that that was it. There
was no additional conversation. Oh and then they add and
we'll let you know if we need you to buy
any of the product back, which also terrifying for a
small business. So I actually had a journalist reach out
to me winter twenty twenty four before the announcement, independently

(29:45):
from a reputable news source, and she was like, Hey,
I've been doing some research and I've noticed that a
lot of the black businesses that Target pledged to support
in twenty twenty are no longer in the store or
on the shelves. Like I'm just looking them up and
it's like gone, gone, gone, what's going on? And that
was the first time that fell a little validating because
I was like, wait a second, is that true? So
I started doing my own research.

Speaker 5 (30:05):
She was right.

Speaker 1 (30:07):
They made the announcement, and then other small businesses started
reaching out to me and I started having conversations, and
I was like, whoa. I thought that this was happening
in a silo, but we're all having the same experiences,
and so, if anything, I think it's actually been such
a blessing because we have now I've created I feel
like a community of other small black entrepreneurs. And again

(30:30):
this is these are like the small businesses. None of
us are celebrities. We don't have celebrity names or like
celebrity backing. We don't have millions of followers. I made
a viral, you know, TikTok video talking about my experience,
but I think at the time I had like one
hundred and thirty followers on TikTok or something kids you not,
So we didn't have like these huge platforms. It was
really just the visibility that Target promised and then they've

(30:52):
removed it after we'd all spent a lot of money
and had a lot of product left, and was kind
of like good luck.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
So I so much stays to say about this one
is that I firmly believe that you know, business is business,
I get it. But how you move in business is
a choice. So, as you said, they could have respectfully
communicated with clarity and transparency with you. Wouldn't have You
wouldn't have loved it, You wouldn't have been throwing a party,
but you would have understood and moved on and been

(31:21):
able to make plans, YadA, YadA, YadA. The choice to
essentially break up with you via text that that's a choice.

Speaker 4 (31:27):
That's not business.

Speaker 2 (31:29):
No one forced them to handle business in such a disrespectful, sleazy,
dirty way. Uh, that was a choice, And I think
that communicates a lot about about like that tells me
a lot about the people who are leadership that target.

Speaker 4 (31:42):
I guess I'll say that.

Speaker 2 (31:44):
And then, you know, when you were talking about how
you felt quite siloed, I have to imagine that target
was sort of banking on you, as an individual creator,
internalizing this negative feeling and thinking I must have done
something wrong. They must have had some infra about my product,
about how it wasn't going well. This must have been
I must have made some sort of mistake. They probably

(32:06):
weren't counting on you reaching out to other creators and realizing, oh,
this is a pattern.

Speaker 4 (32:10):
They're doing this with all of us. They probably just wanted.

Speaker 2 (32:13):
You personally to internalize that you had like botched this
opportunity in some way.

Speaker 1 (32:18):
I fully agree. And again, I'm an attorney, so I'm
an investigator. Even I think slightly before we got the announcement,
there were stores where I'd pop up because we don't
get any information from Target about our demographics.

Speaker 5 (32:31):
Like who's buying, like what.

Speaker 1 (32:33):
They don't share any of that, so we also have
no knowledge of that other than where it's selling and
maybe what stores it's selling in. We would ask questions
about which cities is it selling best, which stores is
it selling in, so I could figure out where we
need to get our sales up. So some of these
stores that they tell me we had product in, I
live in Los Angeles, so there were good number of
stores here. Some of these stores I started to pop

(32:54):
up in and I'd be, you know, walking through the
gay mile in the section, and I didn't see our
product anywhere, and I'd be very con and I'd look
online and I'd be like, Okay, there's units, but it's
not here. So i'd find a manager or something. There's
one store in particular. Finally I had a conversation with
the human and I was like, hey, excuse me, I'm
a creator. My product is supposed to be here. Can
you go find it? And they went to the back

(33:16):
and brought the product out and they're like, oh, here
it is. And I was like, wait, why isn't it
on shelves and they were like, oh, sometimes if we
only order a small amount of product, we don't actually
put it on the shelf because then we have to
print out the tags and it costs money for the store.
And that made me irate because again, deceptive, I'm giving
you almost fifty percent of my profits and what you're

(33:36):
supposed to be giving in return is shelf space. It's visibility,
it's the idea that all these people who come to
Target are going to see the product. Now I'm really
feeling like Rosa Parks because you're telling me we did
all this and the product is in the back of
the warehouse. So there we was so much that was
going into it. When people would talk about like, oh,
but what were the sales? Were the sales and like,

(33:58):
you have no idea? What was happening on the back end.
Of course, you want a product to sell. We did
well when our product was in the toy magazine, When
our product was on stores, we were always like right
in the pack, selling well. Like there was never an
issue of like, no, right, no one's buying your product.
Of course, if your product's in the back, if your
product's not featured, if you have no visibility, if all

(34:19):
the promise for marketing is taken away and nobody knows
it exists, you're not going to sell a product.

Speaker 2 (34:25):
I mean, I I'm it's not often that I am
like speechless and flabbergasted, but I the idea of putting
your products on the back that goes counter to how
people shop at Target.

Speaker 4 (34:37):
When you're stopping at Target, it's I can't, okay. I
don't think I've ever had.

Speaker 2 (34:41):
An idea of something I wanted to buy and then
gone to Target specifically to buy it, and then if
I didn't see it, I asked, I asked the cashier
or something. People need to see the item on the
shelf and then make the decision to buy it, and
so having it in the back and is banking on
someone coming in and being like, oh, do you have
the game is I mean, it almost sounds like they
I didn't want you all to make money.

Speaker 4 (35:02):
Could that be the case.

Speaker 1 (35:03):
I can't speak to their intentions because I'm not in
their minds, but I do know it's deceptive to say
we have one hundred something black people in our stores
that were featuring when we're not actually being featured, Like
that's crazy to me, but they continue to get away
with it. And I don't think these problems are unique
to Target. I think with big retail in general, there's

(35:25):
a lot that I wish I knew before we were
in about the product. But I'm the first person in
my family to have a product in stores, so this
was definitely a level of education for all of us.
But I think more so than that, it was the
lack of transparency and being told one thing when another
thing was happening. And we just kept experiencing that over

(35:45):
and over again.

Speaker 5 (35:46):
And I don't like that. I don't like being lied to.

Speaker 2 (35:48):
Had you known how quickly Target was going to pull
their investments in black creators and how they were going
to treat you, and like the leg work and fight
and like personal financial cost, it was going to come
to come with the beating target, would you still make
that deal?

Speaker 5 (36:04):
Absolutely not.

Speaker 1 (36:05):
There's no way we spent more money. We spent more
money than we made. We would have taken I would
have taken those savings and put them into trying to
reach customers Again. The whole idea was that this is
actually going to be financially beneficial for us because we
have a company that's going to invest money to help
us reach customers. So the very little capital I did
have saved up, I used to make the product better

(36:28):
to be put on shelves that wasn't even showcased on
the shelf, like y'all told us we needed a telescope
box that would show nicely. If you weren't going to
put it on the shelf, you could have let us
keep the little hanktag boxes and what we need a
good forty thousand dollars.

Speaker 2 (36:42):
God, I mean, I know that you're not calling Target scammers.
This the whole thing just feels scammy to me, Like
it just feels like a like a bait and switch,
Like when you promise one thing and deliver a completely
different thing.

Speaker 4 (36:57):
The word I have for that is a scam.

Speaker 1 (37:00):
Like, my God, and I mean this sounds terrible. It
is what it is, gonna be honest. I grew up
in the South right, like, I knew who was racist.
I knew who flew the Confederate flags. I knew who
the kid in my class he was like, You're just
gonna get in because you're black. I'm like, actually, I'm
at the top of my class. I'm over four point
zho GPA and I'm president of everything. That's why I'm

(37:21):
going to get into a good school. Not because I'm black,
but like I knew who to look at and be
like yes, no, yes, no.

Speaker 5 (37:29):
This was hard for me.

Speaker 1 (37:30):
I think this season has been hard, even living out
in LA because the racism exists, but it's all gaslighting.
It's done behind closed doors. People say one thing to
you and then you get behind a closed door and
it's something completely different. The conversations shift. And at this
level in my career and now, I've in rooms where
a lot of decisions are made and I sometimes I'm

(37:50):
screaming at the top.

Speaker 5 (37:51):
Of my lungs.

Speaker 1 (37:52):
Everybody's lying, like you don't care about these communities. This
is are all about the ROI you want to make
and I'm not saying making money's bad. If you're a business,
you want to make money. Hopefully the relationship is mutually beneficial.
But that's the piece that's missing. It has to be
mutually beneficial. It can't just be beneficial for you in

(38:12):
detrimental for me. That's not a relationship. That's manipulation. I'm like,
you could tell me a joke, you could tell me
something I don't like, but don't tell me lie.

Speaker 5 (38:22):
The lie is what triggers me.

Speaker 1 (38:27):
More.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
After a quick break, let's get right back into it,
essence best. The multi generational Celebration of Black Women took
over New Orleans earlier this month, but this year some

(38:49):
folks were side eyeing the sponsors because Target was one
of them, and around this same time, mega popular streamer
Kai Sinat announced a brand partnership with Target two. It
also made a three hundred thousand dollars donation to a
black church organization, a move that, let's be honest, looked
like damage control. So how does Kiara feel about black brands,
creators and organizations who still play ball with Target even

(39:12):
after the boycott, even after the about face. Honestly, she
gets it because for a lot of black entrepreneurs, especially
the smaller ones. This isn't just about values. It's about survival, visibility,
what you have to do to feed your family. And
that's part of what makes us all so painful and complicated.
Target built a pipeline that black brands bought into emotionally
and financially, and then they just walked away, leaving people

(39:35):
to either stay in the game or lose everything they
put in. Is there a flip side to this because
right now a lot of us are asking questions of
like big, higher profile black creators of partnerships with Target,
and asking like, what are your thoughts on the boycott
this and that? And I wonder if is there a

(39:57):
dynamic where black creates are expected to shoulder a burden
from our community that non black creators don't have to shoulder. Right, Like,
nobody's asking white creators like, oh, are you planning on
pulling out of Target given the boycotts? But I almost
wonder if we are asking black creators to shoulder something

(40:17):
that their non black peers to simply don't have to
think about.

Speaker 4 (40:20):
Does that make sense?

Speaker 1 (40:21):
Yeah, it's one hundred percent does And I tell people
all the time buy from black creators and the space
where they're telling you is most beneficial for their business.
Because you don't know what people's contracts look like. You
don't know, like we had our actual physical product. A
lot of the bickers creators have licensing deals, which is
completely different. It's not a product that they've created owned

(40:41):
have in their hand. It's a product that the company
makes or another company makes, and they just get the
right to put their name on it. They might have
the right to license your name for the next two
years without you, and if you pull out, you have
to pay them a million dollars. As I mentioned, even
for us that they let us know, you might have
to buy back your product if we don't sell out
of it, or if we take it off stores. So
it can be very expensive to get out of a situation.

(41:03):
I think the best way to talk about it is
somebody in the abusive relationship. It's very easy to be like, girl,
why are you still with that man? There's just so
much that goes into it. You don't know their financial situation,
you don't know what traumas they have.

Speaker 5 (41:15):
You don't know.

Speaker 1 (41:16):
You just don't know, and people need the space and
the time to have the freedom to make decisions that
make the best sense for them and those decisions. I
think it's not fair to say the decision that you're
making to try to make sure you're in a situation
that's not going to pull to you in the hole
is contrary to what it means to support the people

(41:36):
to support.

Speaker 5 (41:38):
And again, very complicated.

Speaker 1 (41:40):
I think it really is kind of like a creator
by creator, case by case situation.

Speaker 2 (41:44):
That's a really eloquent way of putting it, and I
appreciate it in your TikTok that I initially saw that
you were like, listen, people gotta do what works for them.
But here is where I personally am at right like
keeping it with like, here are the decisions that I
am making as it pertains to target people can do
what works for them.

Speaker 4 (42:00):
Here's where I'm at.

Speaker 1 (42:01):
One hundred percent. And I don't know if you've ever
had this experience of working in corporate America. Kind of
the same thing with the job. If you're at a
job and managers are toxic and you're like, this is crazy,
they're racist, girl, I'm out. If you have the luxury
to be out today, that's good for you. But like
I got rich, so I might need to like apply
to other jobs. First, have some conversations, figure out a

(42:23):
plane before I can get out, Like, everybody's situation is
just so different, so it's hard to judge on the
outside when you don't know what's happening on the inside.

Speaker 2 (42:31):
And to that vein, I mean, what do you make
of hearing Target as a sponsor of Essence Fest this
time around, or like Target is giving money to these
big black church groups, what do you make of that?

Speaker 1 (42:42):
I think we all have to make choices about how
we're going to concede given that capitalism and racism are
the waters that we're swimming in. Like I feel some
type of way about I don't know things that Mark
Zuckerberg says, but I still have an Instagram. I feel
some type of way about how where products are coming

(43:02):
from and whether they're being sourced in an organic matter,
if it's harming the community. I hate that AI is
bad for the community, But also sometimes I use it
to help me with an email, and I have to
have conversations with myself like, ugh, what are the unless
I'm going to like live outside in a tent with
no cell phone and no computer and no contact and

(43:22):
grow my own food and all these things I think
we're all making if we're honest with ourselves, there are
areas where we're all making concessions in ways that we
are that are not the most ideal. But you have
to ask, like, where what's the most important? What sacrifices
am I willing to make? Can I stand on business
when it comes to those sacrifices. And I've heard other

(43:43):
people say to kind of use your money the way
that you would use your voice. So when things become
to a certain extent, things become incredibly egregious. It's like, okay,
like I got off X, I don't have a Twitter X,
whatever it's called.

Speaker 5 (43:55):
I don't use that anymore.

Speaker 1 (43:57):
At a certain point it becomes so egregious that you
have to step away. But I think everybody has to
just decide for themselves. How can I look in the
mirror and feel like I am showing up as the best,
most capable, honest person and still try to find a
way to navigate the fact that we got bills to pay.

Speaker 2 (44:16):
Yeah, that's a really good way to put it and
very realistic. I sometimes feel online people it's like they
think we all can be like people should do what
they can do, But it's sometimes I feel like there's
an expectation that we can all be these perfect advocates
and perfect activists all the time.

Speaker 4 (44:33):
And yeah, if I like, like, I'm not going to.

Speaker 2 (44:36):
Be grudge a single parent or a new parent or
somebody who is disabled, like, oh no, you have to
shop in this way, Like I personally might be able to,
you know, make certain economic choices that somebody else might
not be able to make, but they might have the
same sentiment like I do feel like we should be
a little bit more, have a little bit more grace

(44:58):
for where folks are and are not able to show up.

Speaker 1 (45:01):
And that comes back to community and the reason we
create this game in the first place. Like people don't
know their neighbors. So even the one day boycott where
it was like we're not spending any money, don't get gas,
don't do anything. Black people don't spend Well, if you
have to get to work and you don't have gas,
but you got to get to work so you cannot
lose your job, but feeds your baby, you got to
get gas. In an era where we had community, we

(45:23):
know our neighbors, what it meant to boycott was like
not only am I not going to drive. I got gas,
so says if you need a ride to work, I
got you. We don't have it anymore. We don't have
the neighbors and the grandmas and the aunties and the
uncles and the dazz the people to rely on to
help us through these situations. So people are wanting to
boycott for the good of the community, but then there's

(45:44):
no community to support them through that boycott. So I
think we have to be realistic, Like, before you say
anything to anybody to your point. I had a friend
literally text me it was like, girl, I had to
get diapers from Target.

Speaker 4 (45:55):
It was half off.

Speaker 5 (45:56):
It's right down the street.

Speaker 1 (45:57):
And I was like, you don't have to apologize to me,
But unless you're willing to be the friend that's like,
don't go to Target. I got extra money in my
bank account. I'm gonna send you diapers this month, so
you don't have to worry about unless you're willing to
shoulder the responsibility so that we can all carry it together.
An aunt can't carry a cake by itself.

Speaker 3 (46:16):
It just can't.

Speaker 2 (46:17):
And I mean, you've you have this great quote saying
I'm boycotting not because I'm bitter, but because I want
my money and energy into spaces where diverse communities are
valued and included, not just black dollars.

Speaker 4 (46:28):
What does that look like to you?

Speaker 1 (46:30):
So for me, a lot of this has been shopping local.
So I live in Pasadena, try to go to the
farmer's market once or twice a week. And I think
I've mentioned like I know the people that I buy
my honey from. I know the people I buy my
yogurt from. I know the lady who I buy my
pasta from. I know what they believe. I know what
they're working towards in the world, or at least how
they appear. Can we ever really know somebody? You know?

Speaker 5 (46:51):
Like, what are you doing in your secret life?

Speaker 4 (46:52):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (46:53):
No, but I know how you You know how you
show up. I know the conversations you're having.

Speaker 5 (46:57):
I know that you know you.

Speaker 1 (46:59):
Notice that same mom didn't have enough money and he
told her, don't worry about it. Get I got you
take it. I know that you'll give someone an extra
three or four yogurts because they've been such a loyal customer.
Like I know your heart posture, I know the care
that you have for your community. So I'm actually able
to put my money behind people who stand on business
for what they stand for, what they believe in, as

(47:20):
opposed to some of these large companies that I've worked for.
So many of them people are sitting in a room
and they could care less about.

Speaker 5 (47:27):
You, or your mama or your cousin, and.

Speaker 1 (47:29):
So much of us. We make money to spend money.
Like the value of money in and of itself is nothing,
Like you can't it doesn't help you breathe, you can't
hold dollar bills, And then all of a sudden you
have clarity in your mind, maybe if it's psychological for you,
but there's no actual value to money other than what
it can afford you, like what can you buy with it?
What can you do with it? What type of power

(47:51):
does it give you? So the question becomes not the
money itself, but what is the person who has the
money planning to do with that money? And if some
of these big businesses corporations, you know they're going to
use the money to push forward narratives and political ideologies
and things that are going to make the world a
terrible place for you and everybody around you, it just
feels incredibly irresponsible to some extent not try to boycott

(48:16):
in a realistic way.

Speaker 2 (48:18):
Don't let anybody tell you that boycotts don't work, because
Target is feeling it. The store had measurable drops and
foot traffic, sales, reputation, and stock price. Their CEO, Brian Cornell,
even had to take a pay cut. But don't worry,
he's still making millions. Yeah, And I mean we have
to keep it real. That sounds like the boycott is working.
You know, foot traffic is down at Target. Their CEO

(48:41):
is a whole mess of hot water.

Speaker 4 (48:43):
Because of all this.

Speaker 2 (48:44):
And I will say, like retail shopping is down like
in general, but Costco is not having a rough time.
And like when Trump wrote like was signaling that he
wanted companies to abandon.

Speaker 4 (48:58):
DEI, Costco said kick rocks from the are doing fine.

Speaker 2 (49:00):
So like this was definitely a choice, and it seems
to be a choice that it's not working out in
Target's favor.

Speaker 4 (49:05):
And I think that speaks to the loyalty of real community.

Speaker 2 (49:10):
Like we I was a Target girly, Like I was
the person who would go to Target if I was
bored or just like wanted to be in the air conditioning,
but just see, like I want to walk around to see
if they got a Target, I want to. I want
to get a coffee and walk around Target like that
was my happy place. And I guess this is interesting
to me how quickly this thing that was so ingrained

(49:30):
in my behavior became not needed, Like I don't miss it.
I don't, I don't. I've replaced it with other things.
And part of me is that I probably shouldn't have
been spending the money anyway. And I just like, I
guess it's just like they really had something there and
they gave it up for nothing, because I have no
desire to go back into a Target. I don't even
miss it.

Speaker 1 (49:50):
You create again normals what you're used to. So I
think that at first it was like, well where are
we gonna go? But you find your new routines. I get, I,
you know, get. We go to the farmer's market my
house like twice a week. We have our vendors, we
have our things, and I don't miss it either. I
make my own coffee at home now I don't have
to stop at Starbucks, and I'm saving money. So it's like,

(50:10):
wait a second. In a lot of ways, this boycott
is not just bad for you, it's financially economically and
socially good for me.

Speaker 4 (50:19):
We're taking our power back a little bit.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
Yeah, So, if this is a story about a breakup
between me and Target, let's talk about the last time
we saw each other. I walked by the local Target,
the one where I'd enjoyed so many Target runs in
the years before, and Target just looked kind of bad.
I swear, I can't make this up. There was a
cardboard cutout of country singer Morgan Wallen right at the entrance,

(50:43):
advertising his newest country album, and I couldn't help but
wonder hadn't Target and I really had a relationship at all?
What had we even seen at each other? And the
Target in my community is in like a shopping plaza.
So I go into a big plaza and it's a
Target and other things. So I walk by the Target
still but I don't necessarily have to go in. And

(51:03):
the last time that I walked by the Target, a
couple of weeks ago, they had this big stand with
the country music artist Morgan Wallen, who, like, I don't
know if you know him, he's I'll just say he yeah,
He's known for some like, let's just say, racially insensitive
behavior and comments and leave it at that. But I
live in a majority, like a majority black neighborhood. I

(51:24):
live in a heavily black city, and seeing these like
massive Morgan Wallan stands like literally at the entrance of
the store, it just made me think that Target used
to be for the gals, gays and days, and now
they don't know who they're for. Like I was like,
it's not the white dads who listened to Morgan Wallen
who are going to Target. Like it just made me think,

(51:45):
I don't. I don't know that Target knows who they're
for anymore.

Speaker 4 (51:49):
Did you get that.

Speaker 5 (51:50):
Sense and know it's very confusing?

Speaker 1 (51:52):
Yeah, because I we got. We did give statistics about
who's most likely to shop at Target, and it's women
who are college educated, who have like one kid, I
think at least one kids. Like their biggest audience. I'm
your audience, Okay. I buy all your things. I buy
the hair stuff I buy, I stop for groceries, I
get the black owned stuff, I get stuff for my son.
Pretty much everything in your store is something I would buy.

(52:16):
So to me, again, it comes back to not the
reason we created the card games, not knowing your community,
not knowing people, not knowing what's going to affect them,
what they care about, what they don't care about. I
heard someone say, who's you know? Won't give me names?
Pretty high up and people were worried about the boycotts
and how it's going to affect business, and this high

(52:37):
up white woman leader was like, uh, black people will
forget about it, Like, give it a couple of weeks,
they'll forget about they'll move on. And I'm like, you
the audacity to think you know us so well? How
dare you think you understand this, this movement and to
feel like you know what's going to happen with it?
And then you know, I do start to ask myself

(52:59):
the hard questions. Is there a reason they feel like
we're easily manipulated? Is there a reason they feel like
we don't stand on business? Is it because we never
fought for reparations? We've been letting White America get away
with things for so long. We've let them tell us
we have to wear straight hair in the workplace and
not natural hair because our natural hair is aggressive, and
we like, have we conceded too much to the point

(53:22):
where they're like, you've already told me how to treat
you so I'm just going to continue. Not that we
should internalize it and say that it's our fault, but
I have been asking myself the question like number one,
where do you get the audacity? Number two? As a community, like,
let's have a conversation. Are we contributing to that feeling
of being able to bully us without us saying or

(53:43):
doing anything about it.

Speaker 2 (53:44):
I know that you've been since the shift with Target,
You've been reinvesting in like education spaces, community spaces. How
can folks support you? How can they support your work?
Where can they get the book?

Speaker 4 (53:55):
Like? How can folks show up for you as a creator?

Speaker 1 (53:58):
Yeah, so my book therapy is and just for white people.
If you're not shopping on Amazon or Barnes and Nobles,
they've had their own. Everybody has a thing right now.
A lot of black owed bookstores also have access to
the book, or you can call your black home bookstore
and ask them to get the book. Tons of the
black home bookstores in LA have the book, so you know,
shop according to your preference.

Speaker 5 (54:20):
Target.

Speaker 1 (54:21):
Please don't We're not I think we're still listed. But
they just as like out of stock recently set out
of stock. Either they actually sold out or they were like, Ooh,
this girl's talking too much.

Speaker 5 (54:31):
Take that product off the shelf.

Speaker 1 (54:32):
You can go to our website l ik eu likeucards
dot com, we have our flagship game. We have games
for parents. As you mentioned, we're trying to do more
stuff with kids because I think at the end of
the day, if we're going to shape the next generation,
how we shape the people growing up is so important.
So our kids game really helps parents step into their
kids psychological world and to get on their level and

(54:54):
to not make assumptions about how they see the world
and to really hear them. So that's also available on
our website and stay tuned. We have some other fun
ideas coming down the pipeline and just playing with new
ways to bring the community together. Everything we do comes
back to the same goal of bringing community together.

Speaker 2 (55:14):
Community has been such a big theme of this conversation.
Do you have any closing thoughts about community that you'd
like to leave folks with.

Speaker 1 (55:20):
In order to be part of the community. I do
think it starts with ourselves, and a huge part of
that is how you interact with your neighbor. So if
we're going to get to this next phase of like
coming together to like make a change. You see your
neighbor outside, wave say hi. If they don't wave back,
don't feeling well, that's my I'm never waving again because

(55:40):
they didn't acknowledge me and you're not the center of
the world.

Speaker 5 (55:43):
Maybe they just found out their mom has cancer.

Speaker 1 (55:46):
You know, like give people brace that find ways to
connect and ways that also are allowing people to show
up as humans, not as these perfectly like robots.

Speaker 5 (55:56):
I don't know, that's all. That's all I got.

Speaker 2 (56:03):
Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
just want to say hi? You can reach us at
Hello at tangody dot com. You can also find transcripts
for today's episode at tengody dot com. There Are No
Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Todd.
It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed. Creative Jonathan Strickland
is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and
sound engineer. Michael Amado is our contributing producer. I'm your host,

(56:25):
Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate
and review.

Speaker 3 (56:28):
Us on Apple Podcasts.

Speaker 2 (56:30):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app
Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts,