Target is facing backlash on social media after releasing a children’s Halloween costume that looks eerily similar to the types of costumes worn by turn-of-the-century minstrels – the racist practice in which White performers darkened their faces with coal, burnt cork, or shoe polish in a mockery of Black people.
Significance. Target’s new kids’ costume, designed by Hyde and EEK! Boutique, featured a clown-like outfit with a chevron print top and harlequin patterned pair of pants. The costume also came with black gloves, a mesh mask with a wide grin, and a tiny top hat secured to the mask.
People on social media expressed outrage in comments and posts over the similarity to minstrel performers who made fun of Black people in the 19th-century.
Some online accused Target of purposefully selling the costume and ignoring its racist inspiration.
Others highlighted that the child in the picture was purposefully posed to look like “Jim Crow,” a minstrel character popularized by Thomas Dartmouth Rice, who was widely known as “the father of minstrelsy,” according to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Target faced widespread boycotts for pulling back from diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
The costume has now been taken off the Target website and app. The Emancipator reached out to Target for comment, but has yet to get a response.
On Monday evening, the company apologized for the costume and said it “should never have been part of our assortment.”
“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,” Target wrote in a post on social media. “Removing the costume is an important first step, and we are looking closely at how this happened and what needs to change to ensure this won’t happen again.”
Overlooked angle. Minstrelsy was a stereotype-and trope-filled form of entertainment invented by White actors to mock and belittle Black people. According to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, minstrelsy was first performed in the 1830s in New York. The White actors would paint their faces black and wear worn and dirty clothing to impersonate and mock enslaved people.
Their performances consisted of deriding Black people and characterizing them as “lazy, ignorant, superstitious, hypersexual, and prone to thievery and cowardice.”
The power structure. Blackface and minstrel characters became popular and, as the racist art form spread, performers across the country brought it to new heights on the stage, in theaters, on radio, and eventually on TV and in film. Many harmful stereotypes about Black people today are rooted in those racist impersonations.
Curator Dwandayln Reece at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture said in a video, “[minstrelsy and blackface] objectifies African Americans and distances them from their humanity. It made them seem foolish, simple of mind, not intelligent, and cheap.”
She further said it created “an image and stereotype that people use to judge African Americans from here on out.”
