From Boycotts to ‘Good-Buys,’ Consumers Are Showing Support for DEI

The Washington Post

14:22 JST, March 1, 2025

The 500 parishioners marched into a Detroit-area Target, filling their baskets with lip gloss, mocktails and seasonings. Popcorn, too. Hair dye and dolls. Within 90 minutes, they had purchased about $25,000 in merchandise, all made by Black-owned businesses.

It was a “good-buy,” meant to show Target what it stands to lose by abandoning diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), said the Rev. Charles Williams II, who helped coordinate Sunday’s outing by 20 Black churches. Weeks earlier, the retailer said it would scale back its DEI efforts, which included dropping its $2 billion commitment to supplier diversity, a pledge made after the 2020 murder of George Floyd.

“We sent a clear message to Target that our voices and our dollars matter,” he said.

Similar grassroots efforts are materializing across the country as brands such as Walmart, Meta and Google ratchet down diversity programs in the face of legal and political headwinds. Consumers are spearheading short-lived spending embargoes against companies that retreat from DEI, or “buycotts,” to reward minority-owned small businesses and brands that say they value diversity. Such efforts reflect some consumers’ heightened focus on conscientious spending, experts say, and a willingness to withhold their dollars from companies whose values clash with theirs.

Among the calls to action circulating on social media is Friday’s “economic blackout” organized by John Schwarz, founder of the People’s Union USA. The group, which bills itself as a nonpartisan, grassroots movement dedicated to economic resistance, is urging Americans to do zero spending for 24 hours to raise awareness about certain retailers’ positions on DEI and convey that many Americans are struggling while corporations are raking in big profits.

“We are the economy, we are the workforce,” Schwarz said. “And they only benefit because we get up every day and do what we do.”

By midmorning Friday, Schwarz said the blackout has so far been a success. He visited his local Walmart, where he said the parking lot seemed emptier than usual.

“There’s truly no way to measure” the breadth of the movement, he said. “This has grown so much farther than I ever imagined.”

Other actions are pending, including week-long boycotts targeting Amazon, Walmart, Nestlé and other brands that have scaled back DEI policies. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) In late January, the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network vowed to identify two companies that dropped DEI for boycott within 90 days. More than 70,000 people have signed up online to participate in a 40-day “Target Fast” that kicks off next week, on Ash Wednesday.

Target did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.

Trista Harris, president of leadership consultancy FutureGood, said the current wave of consumer action is building off trends of “conscious consumerism” that have been developing for the past decade.

“If I’m going to spend any money, I want it to be aligned with the future I want to see,” said Harris, even as she acknowledged that making purchases based on values instead of convenience can be “exhausting.”

“But once you get into that mode, you’re going to stay in that mode,” she said.

Sending a message

It’s unclear how much impact such initiatives have on companies over the long term, industry experts said. The $25,000 in sales from the “good-buy” at Target is a ripple, relatively speaking, for a company that generated $25.2 billion in sales during its most recent quarter.

Still, some activism breaks through. In 2023, Target’s revenue tumbled after its Pride Month collection became embroiled in the culture wars. The same year, Bud Light was boycotted after it partnered with transgender actress and influencer Dylan Mulvaney in a social media ad, hurting sales.

The week after its DEI pullback, Target’s store traffic was down 4 percent compared with the same period in 2024, according to data from Placer.ai, though the tracking company noted there could be many reasons for the decline. In the first three weeks of February, traffic fell 8.6 percent, 3.9 percent and 7.9 percent, respectively, year-over-year.

Americus Reed, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, noted that protesting movements and organizing “takes time.” It’s difficult to parse which online campaigns will end up being little more than virtue signaling – or “moral peacocking” – or motivate consumers to actually commit.

“We’ll see, because the ultimate test is: Are you willing to inconvenience yourself for your ideological point of view and to protest against something?” said Reed, who studies how consumers’ identities and values influence their spending decisions.

“And for most people, the answer is no, especially if they can’t buy eggs and yogurt – they’re worried about other things.”

In ‘survival mode’

Days into his second term, President Donald Trump ordered the dismantling of federal DEI policies and programs – portions of which have been temporarily blocked under a preliminary injunction – sparking upheaval and layoffs across the federal workforce, while telegraphing similar aims for the private sector.

Trump’s moves have accelerated changes some companies were making to their DEI strategies in the wake of the 2023 Supreme Court decision that overturned race-conscious college admissions. The past year has seen companies move away from policies based around race and identity – such as employee resource groups and mentorship programs for women and people of color – and rebrand policies with a focus on inclusion. Headlines have been studded with announcements from giants like Google, Accenture and Deloitte in recent weeks, as they retired workforce representation goals, citing the changed legal and political landscape.

Meanwhile, there have been shareholder proposals and lawsuits challenging corporate DEI efforts, alleging they pose financial and legal risks. This week, shareholders at Apple rejected a proposal from the National Center for Public Policy Research that called for the company to “cease its DEI efforts.”

“With 80,000 employees, Apple likely has over 50,000 who are potentially victims of this type of discrimination,” NCPPR’s proposal stated. “If even only a fraction of employees file suit, and only some of those prove successful, the cost to Apple could reach tens of billions of dollars.”

Many companies are in “survival mode,” Reed said, as they try to interpret Trump’s orders targeting “illegal DEI.” Agencies have been instructed to draw up lists of companies to investigate over diversity policies, and the Justice Department has signaled that firms could face criminal penalties over their efforts.

Target has been an “easy target” in this climate, Harris notes, because of the company’s history of supporting people of color and the LGBTQ+ community, and because of its public commitments to DEI, particularly following Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, where the company is based.

Ashley Steele once considered herself a devoted Target customer. The Minneapolis native said her family valued the company’s presence and investments in Minnesota communities. As a kid, she bought her first Black Barbies there. Years later, when she started a networking group for professionals of color in the Twin Cities, members of Target’s Black employee resource group were among the first to join. Even a move to Montreal last year was no real barrier. She would make the 90-minute drive to New York every few weeks to visit a store.

But Steele, 36, hasn’t gone back since January, and she doesn’t plan to any time soon. She’s shifted her purchases to small businesses and companies that have stuck with DEI, including Costco. Many of her friends and family have made similar changes.

“I’m realizing I don’t need Target as much as I thought,” Steele said.

These kinds of reactions, particularly from diverse communities, mean retailers could be leaving money on the table, said Carmen Bohoyo, a vice president at Kantar, a market research firm. “It’s going to be really important that brands and companies and retailers keep paying attention to implementing inclusive practices, because even though maybe they don’t see right now a major setback, they definitely will be slowing down their opportunities for growth in the future.”

Williams, the pastor of the Historic King Solomon Baptist Church in Detroit, said some parishioners reported shifting much of their shopping to the club store. Costco’s foot traffic climbed the first three weeks of February according to Placer.ai, up 5.7 percent, 4.6 percent and 4.8 percent, respectively, from the year-ago periods – though, like Target’s decline, there could be many reasons for increases.

Companies that have continued their DEI initiatives recognize their long-term benefits, said Daryn Dodson, co-founder and managing director at Illumen Capital, an Oakland, California-based impact investment firm. For example, Latino American consumers generate $3.2 trillion, or nearly 11 percent, of the country’s gross domestic product, according to a report from the Latino Donor Collaborative. Consumers across the board fuel nearly 70 percent of the GDP.

“It’s quite obvious, given the data and evidence, that there is a massive market that aligns with this value,” Dodson said. “I think that’s one of the reasons why [some companies] stay the course, while others change and find a new hot thing.”

The perfect storm

As corporate giants like Google, Meta and Pepsi have retired certain DEI efforts in recent weeks, tens of thousands of users have signed up for what Charles Walker, an entrepreneur and social equity advocate, calls the world’s first “conscious spending platform.”

Founded last year, Friends of the Movement allows consumers to choose companies to “buycott” or “boycott” based on their values, including on LGBTQ+ issues, abortion, gun control and DEI. Tension around the latter has contributed to a flood of interest in his platform of late, he said.

“It’s been the perfect storm,” Walker said. “People are ready to let their voices and dollars be heard.”

Walker’s platform is partnering with Atlanta pastor and civil rights leader Jamal Bryant for the launch of a 40-day “Target Fast” on March 5, which is rallying consumers to sell their Target stock, abstain from spending at its stores during Lent and support Black-owned businesses instead.

For Walker, Williams and his fellow Detroit-area pastors, the focus on Black-owned businesses has echoes of the bus boycotts and other efforts of the civil rights era, when Americans used their wallets to show their “economic might.”