The fast is over.
But the boycott ain’t.
Pastor Jamal Bryant may be a very good man, an activist, a civil rights leader, a man of faith who believes he is doing the work God placed in front of him. I’m not here to question that man’s faith or his intentions.
But I do have one question.
What did we get that made him decide the Target boycott was over?
Negro please.
Bryant said something that made me almost cuss out loud:
“We are effectively, today, closing this chapter because we have other fights that we’ve got to see.”
What we?
Did we get reparations from Target for the harm they caused by bending the knee to political pressure against DEI?
Did the Black vendors who had their products quietly removed from Target shelves get restored contracts?
Did those businesses get compensation?
The Target Fast pledge gathered more than 300,000 signatures.
How many of those 300,000 people signed a treaty with Target?
Where are the transcripts of the meeting?
Where did the $2 million pledged to Black-owned businesses go?
Because from where many of us are sitting, this chapter didn’t close.
It just got closed for us.
And that raises another question Black people have been wrestling with for generations.
Who exactly gets to speak for us?
No other community in America operates like this.
The Asian community doesn’t appoint a single leader to represent hundreds of millions of people across dozens of cultures and nationalities.
The Latino community doesn’t have a national spokesperson that everyone must follow.
Jewish Americans don’t have one pastor, one activist, or one politician who suddenly gets to decide when a collective fight begins or ends.
But somehow Black America keeps finding itself in this position.
We elevate leaders.
Sometimes very powerful leaders.
Sometimes brilliant ones.
Dr. King.
Malcolm X.
Fannie Lou Hamer.
Ella Baker.
But even during the civil rights movement there were disagreements about who spoke for whom and what direction the movement should take.
And here’s another truth people forget.
Dr. King did not die universally loved by Black America.
By the time he was assassinated in 1968, many Black activists thought he had moved too slowly. Others believed he had become too radical once he began speaking against the Vietnam War and organizing the Poor People’s Campaign. Some believed his strategy of nonviolence had reached its limit.
Leadership in our community has never been unanimous.
There has always been debate.
Always disagreement.
Always tension about who speaks and who decides.
And the danger in this system is something our history has already taught us.
Sometimes white society gets to choose the leader it prefers to deal with.
The reasonable one.
The negotiator.
The person willing to say the tension is over.
Meanwhile the people who actually started the movement are still standing outside saying,
“Hold up… we ain’t finished yet.”
That’s where the divide begins.
Nina Turner made it plain. She said she isn’t going back until Target apologizes.
She even gave it the church response:
“As for me and my house, we will not be going back to Target.”
Meanwhile the USA Today headline said it all:
A Target boycott ends with no concessions to DEI rollbacks.
No concessions.
None.
Pastor Bryant said he was satisfied that Target remains committed to diversity, equity and inclusion.
But others standing in the middle of this fight see something very different.
Nekima Levy Armstrong, founder of the Racial Justice Network, said it directly:
“How can you call off a boycott focused on diversity, equity and inclusion and have no results to show for it? That is a slap in the face for the people.”
She didn’t stop there.
“But who’s standing here? The people who actually called the boycott. The people who were actually willing to hold this company accountable and are not willing to compromise with Target Corporation until they do the right thing.”
Now here’s where the history lesson comes in.
Pastor Bryant may have fallen into the trap.
And I can’t say that with certainty because I don’t know the full story of that man’s life or work. But I do know the trap.
It’s one of the oldest political strategies ever used against Black people in America.
Divide and conquer.
Slaveholders understood something very clearly. If the enslaved people ever moved together as one body, the system would collapse overnight. So they built an entire social structure around division.
House versus field.
Trusted versus suspect.
Preacher versus rebel.
Leader versus masses.
Keep the people separated and the revolt never happens.
Malcolm X explained it better than anybody in 1963 when he talked about the house Negro and the field Negro.
The house Negro loved the master more than the master loved himself.
When the master got sick, the house Negro said,
“What’s the matter boss, we sick?”
When the master’s house caught fire, the house Negro would run to put the fire out faster than the master himself.
But the field Negro?
Malcolm said when the master’s house caught fire, the field Negro prayed for a wind to come along and fan the flames.
Now I’m not going to call Pastor Bryant a house Negro.
I won’t go that far.
But I will say this.
Target’s house was on fire.
Profits down.
Foot traffic down.
Black people — and plenty of others — refusing to shop there.
And just when the pressure started working…
someone walked in and said the fire was productive.
Malcolm also warned about something else.
If someone holds a gun on a white man and forces him to put his arm around you, that isn’t brotherhood.
That’s hypocrisy.
Real brotherhood only happens when the arm goes around you willingly.
That lesson should sound familiar.
When George Floyd was murdered, corporate America rushed to put its collective arm around Black people.
Companies issued statements.
CEOs took knees.
Billions in DEI promises appeared overnight.
But many of us knew something then that is being proven now.
That arm wasn’t placed around us voluntarily.
The entire world was watching.
And now that the cameras have moved on, many of those same corporations are quietly removing that arm and pretending it was never there.
I will never disrespect Pastor Bryant. He made the decision he believed was right.
But the question still hangs in the air.
Who gets to decide when the fight is over?
One pastor?
One meeting?
One press release?
Or the people who started the boycott in the first place?
Because if this is truly a Black conversation, then every Black household gets to make its own decision.
And mine is already made.
For me and my house, we will never go back to Target. ✊🏾
