Photo: frederickjoseph.com
Author Frederick Joseph is urging consumers to not buy his books at Target after the retailer announced it was rolling back its diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
On Wednesday (January 29), Joseph, author of "The Black Friend," shared a video on social media asking his followers to not support his books at Target.
“When it was like, oh, well being, quote, unquote, woke makes money. ‘Let’s partner with Black people,’” Joseph said of the retailer. “Now that Trump is in office, and there’s this, you know, sort of anti-Black, anti-woke agenda sweeping through not just the federal government, but also corporations around the country, now they’re like, ‘Okay, well, Black people, brown people, trans people, queer people don’t make money anymore, so we’re off it.’”
“And then I’m sure that when the pendulum swings back, they’ll be back on it again. I can’t stand for that," he added.
Last week, Target joined the list of major companies, including Amazon, Walmart, and McDonalds, that are rolling back their DEI policies. Many consumers decided to boycott the retailer over its DEI rollback. However, some entrepreneurs who sell their products at Target, including Tabitha Brown, pushed back against such a move, saying it would negatively impact sales for small and minority business owners.
Joseph, who has sold his books through Target since 2020, said it's "not lost" on him that the boycott could hurt his sales, but it's
"necessary" to fight against injustice.
“I know that the weight of this decision is not abstract,” the author wrote in a follow-up essay to his video. “It is financial. It is logistical. It is the difference between a book moving thousands of copies in a single week and one that struggles to find its audience.”
"This is not easy. But it is necessary," he added.
Joseph currently has a book called “This Thing of Ours” available for pre-order. He said he would be removing all links to Target's store on his website and encouraged his followers to shop at Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, and anywhere else that “actually supports and cares about marginalized people.”
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