Target, Inc. is no stranger to controversy. You might recall the transgender bathroom policy that ended up costing it tens of millions of dollars in single-stall toilets rather than ditching the idiotic policy.
And who can forget the 2023 “Pride Swimsuit” collection with the “tuck-friendly” adult swimsuits designed with extra crotch coverage for trans women. Target had learned its lesson from the unisex bathroom debacle and this time caved to social media pressure from the right to remove specific controversial items from shelves and its website.
The company just released its catalog of kids’ costumes for Halloween, and the leftist racialists pounced.
Target issues an apology after pulling a Halloween costume that drew backlash for its resemblance to blackface and minstrel imagery.
“As a company, we got this wrong, and we are deeply sorry. We know this is especially hurtful for our Black guests, team members and partners.” pic.twitter.com/9vuTnPAHku
— No Jumper (@nojumper) August 25, 2026
Does it really resemble a minstrel costume?
Target pulls dark faced Halloween costume after blacks said it was racist and offensive.
After many referenced it to old pictures from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. pic.twitter.com/dHS7CPL20p
— Tx_Coffee_Girl (@Tx_Coffee_Girl) August 25, 2026
As with most controversies of this sort, you have to force yourself to see the resemblance. It looks more clownish to me, but then I don’t make a living scanning social media every day, trying to find new and inventive ways to accuse someone of being a racist.
I will say that I know a little about dancing on stage, and I can assure you, no minstrel would have been caught dead in those baggy pants trying to perform the kind of energetic dances that were a large part of minstrel shows. The second X post clearly shows the narrow cut of the dancer’s pants.
The costume was sold as the “Kids’ Glows Under Blacklight Circus Clown Halloween Costume,” according to the since-deleted listing.
“As a company, we know we got this wrong, and we are deeply sorry. The costume is offensive and should never have been part of our assortment. It is no longer available for sale,” company spokesperson Brian Harper-Tibaldo said in a statement to FOX Business.
“We know this is especially hurtful for our Black guests, team members and partners. Removing the costume is an important first step, and the company is looking closely at how this happened and what needs to change to ensure this won’t happen again,” he continued.
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The move to pull the costume comes after social media backlash in which critics accused the Minneapolis-based retailer of selling racist merchandise.
“You really don’t have anyone left in Minneapolis to say, ‘Hey, that’s racist’? Y’all cut DEI and now you’ve got a minstrel clown costume for kids on your website,” one user said on Threads.
This comes on the heels of several reputational hits for the retailer that have hurt sales in recent years, including Target’s handling of its Pride Collection in 2023 and its rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives after President Donald Trump returned to the White House.
Target joined a broad corporate effort to scale back diversity initiatives after Trump issued a series of executive orders aimed at rooting out DEI.
I doubt whether more than a handful of people were “offended” by this costume until they were instructed to be offended. “It looks like a minstrel costume,” except it doesn’t. It looks like a clown costume that’s been bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated by people who want their viral moment on social media, or who want attention for their “moral outrage” that a clown costume can be seen (if you look real, real hard) as racist.
Ending some diversity programs at Target had no impact on adding this costume to Target’s Halloween catalog. How many eyes saw this costume and approved it before it was added to the collection? Were they all white? Sorry, that doesn’t wash. The fact that it made it all the way into the stores tells me that it took imagination and an agenda to see this costume as anything other than what it is: a mundane clown costume that was deliberately turned into an issue by people who don’t care if it’s racist and only see it as a means to an end.
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