Target is the latest company to scale back several of its “woke” DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) policies after being investigated by Robby Starbuck, the political commentator and filmmaker from Tennessee announced Friday.
Since June 2024, Starbuck and his team have worked to expose multiple prominent American companies that push DEI initiatives in the workplace, often leading the targeted companies to publicly reverse course to avoid or respond to backlash from consumers.
MASSIVE news: Target is ending many of their woke policies. I can now exclusively tell you what’s changing and how it happened.
Recently executives @Target found out I was doing a story on wokeness there. When we learned they were prepared to make changes, we shifted our focus… pic.twitter.com/4R7tGIn5Fk
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) January 24, 2025
On Friday, Target officially joined the list of companies that have scrapped its controversial DEI policies, announcing a list of six key changes the company has committed to implementing.
In a fact sheet posted to its corporate website, Target said it would be concluding its “three-year diversity, equity and inclusion goals,” “Racial Equity Action and Change (REACH) initiatives in 2025,” and stopping its involvement in all external diversity-focused surveys, including HRC’s Corporate Equality Index.
The company also committed to ensuring its employee resource groups are “fully focused” on development and mentorship and evaluating its corporate partnerships to ensure they are directly connected to its “roadmap for growth.”
When it comes to working with suppliers, Target said it will also be rebranding its “Supplier Diversity” team to “Supplier Engagement” to “better reflect” the company’s “inclusive global procurement process across a broad range of suppliers, including increasing our focus on small businesses.”
In addition, while it was not included on Target’s fact sheet, Starbuck confirmed that the company has also committed to not marketing Pride merchandise to children.
Starbuck said Target’s announcement comes as a result of him approaching company executives in November 2024 that he was investigating the company’s DEI policies and, after learning that the company was willing to evaluate its practices, working with Target to eliminate several of the controversial policies.
“Target has 415,000+ employees and a market cap of nearly $65B. This won’t just create a healthier environment for employees who will have a neutral workplace without feeling that divisive issues are being injected but it will also extend to their many suppliers who will no longer feel pressure to endorse these policies,” Starbuck wrote in a post published to X.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Target Store” by Robert T Bell. CC BY 2.0.
