They Apologize and Keep the Profits: Target, Gucci, and H&M Keep Showing Why We Must Own the Means of Production
There is a pattern we need to stop pretending we do not see.
A corporation releases a product or advertisement that disrespects Black people. The public calls it out. The company removes the product, issues an apology, promises to “do better,” and then goes right back to doing business.
The offensive item disappears. The profits do not.
That is what happened with Target in August 2026. It happened with Gucci in 2019. It happened with H&M in 2018. And the same question came up when old Eminem recordings surfaced in 2003: What happens when people and companies profit from Black culture while showing contempt for Black people?
The answer is uncomfortable but simple:
We are creating the culture, but too often somebody else owns the factories, the supply chains, the stores, the platforms, the media, and the money.
Until we own more of the means of production, an apology is often the only thing they believe we deserve.
Target’s Halloween costume was not harmless
In August 2026, Target listed a children’s costume called the Kids’ Glows Under Blacklight Circus Clown Halloween Costume. The costume included a black hood with an exaggerated, snaggletoothed smile. Critics immediately recognized the imagery as evoking Jim Crow-era minstrel caricatures and blackface.
The product was listed, backlash followed, and Target pulled it.
Target apologized, saying the costume was “offensive and should never have been sold.” The company also said it was reviewing how the product was approved and what needed to change.
That response matters: but it is not enough.
This is the same Target that faced a major boycott over its Pride merchandise in 2023. It is also the same Target Tarik sued. And after Target scaled back parts of its diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in 2025, people were right to ask whether the company had weakened the internal checks that might have caught a product like this before it reached the public.
The question is not just, “Who approved the costume?”
The larger question is:
- Who owns the company?
- Who designs the products?
- Who sits in the approval meetings?
- Who understands the historical meaning of racist imagery?
- Who has enough authority to stop a profitable product before it reaches the shelf?
When Black people are missing from those rooms: or present without real power: this is what can happen.
Gucci turned blackface imagery into an $890 luxury item
In February 2019, Gucci sold an $890 black wool balaclava-style sweater. When pulled over the face, it created an opening around the mouth surrounded by oversized red lips.
People around the world condemned the product because it resembled blackface imagery. Gucci removed it from its online and physical stores and issued an apology.
Again, the apology came after the product had already been designed, manufactured, marketed, priced, distributed, and sold.
That entire chain represents ownership and control. The company controlled every step. Black consumers were invited to spend money in the same system that had turned a racist caricature into a luxury product.
Gucci later described the incident as a learning moment and emphasized diversity as a core value. But a “learning moment” does not erase the fact that somebody was paid to design the item, somebody approved it, somebody photographed it, somebody priced it, and somebody put it in stores.
Read the reporting from NPR and The Guardian.
The product was removed. The structure that produced it remained.
H&M put a Black child in a racist slogan
In January 2018, H&M featured a Black child wearing a green sweatshirt that read “coolest monkey in the jungle.”
There is no honest way to separate that word from its history. Black people have been called monkeys for generations as part of racist propaganda, colonial violence, and dehumanization. Putting that phrase on a Black child and using the image to sell clothing was not merely a “mistake in wording.” It showed a failure of judgment at multiple levels.
H&M withdrew the garment and removed the image. The company apologized. The Weeknd, who had worked with H&M, said he was deeply offended and ended his relationship with the brand. Protests in South Africa led to store closures and widespread condemnation.
The New York Times documented the original controversy, while The Guardian covered H&M’s apology and withdrawal.
The pattern is familiar:
- A company uses Black people, Black bodies, or Black culture to sell.
- The company fails to respect Black history.
- Black people organize and apply pressure.
- The company apologizes.
- The company continues operating, while the public is expected to move on.
That is not accountability. That is crisis management.
Eminem shows another side of the same problem
Eminem’s case is different from the corporate examples, and we should be honest about that.
In 2003, The Source magazine published old recordings in which Eminem used racial slurs and made disparaging comments about Black women. Eminem acknowledged the recordings and apologized. He said he made them as a teenager, after breaking up with a Black girlfriend, and described the words as the product of anger, stupidity, and immaturity.
His explanation does not make the language acceptable. But the context matters. Eminem was an artist who rose to fame through hip-hop: a culture created primarily by Black people: and was embraced by Black audiences and institutions. His controversy raised a serious question:
What happens when somebody profits from Black culture while carrying racist ideas about Black people?
Hip-hop gave Eminem a platform, language, influence, and audience. His success was not created in a cultural vacuum. Black communities helped build the cultural marketplace that made his career possible.
That does not mean Black people have to reject every artist forever. It means we have the right to examine who benefits from our culture, who respects us, and who believes they can use our creative labor without respecting our humanity.
The question is not only whether someone apologizes.
The question is whether the relationship changes.
We have buying power: but buying power is not ownership
People often point to the estimated $2.1 trillion in Black buying power as proof that Black America already has economic power.
That number shows our market influence. It does not mean we collectively own $2.1 trillion in factories, land, logistics companies, banks, media platforms, technology, or manufacturing infrastructure.
Buying power is what we can spend.
Ownership power is what we control.
The difference is everything.
When we spend money with a company like Target, Gucci, or H&M, we may help generate revenue. But unless we own part of the company: or build competing companies: we do not control:
- The design process
- The factories
- The raw materials
- The supply chain
- The distribution network
- The retail space
- The marketing message
- The media platform
- The profits
We create trends. They package them.
We create music. They distribute it.
We create language, style, and aesthetics. They trademark, mass-produce, and resell them.
Then, if they insult us, they offer an apology as if the apology itself is the remedy.
It is not.
Ownership is the defense
We do not need to beg corporations to respect us while continuing to make them rich. We need to build structures where our dignity, creativity, labor, and money remain connected.
That means supporting and building:
- A Black owned sneaker company that controls its designs and brand message
- A Black-owned boot company creating footwear rooted in cultural pride
- A Black-owned shoe store where the dollar supports our own operation
- Manufacturing and production partnerships that can grow into greater ownership
- Black-owned media and entertainment platforms, including the Nagast Entertainment Network
- Community financing structures such as the Nagast Community Fund
- Businesses that employ, train, and reinvest in our neighborhoods
This is why Nagast creates more than products. Our red black and green sneakers, African-inspired apparel, Marcus Garvey hoodie, and Egyptian sweater designs are part of a larger argument:
Our culture should not only be inspiration for somebody else’s balance sheet. It should be the foundation of our own.
From consumer protest to economic strategy
Boycotts can be powerful. Public pressure can force a company to remove a product. Social media can expose what corporations would rather hide.
But a boycott alone does not build an alternative.
If we stop buying from one company and send the same dollar to another company with the same ownership structure, we may win a moment without changing the system.
The goal must be to redirect the dollar into businesses and institutions that can grow.
That is the larger point behind the Community Fund conversations and the previous $2.1 trillion framing. Our spending must become capital. Our capital must become ownership. Our ownership must become productive capacity.
We need to move from:
- “They hurt us, so we are leaving.”
- To “We are building what we need.”
- From “They do not represent us.”
- To “We own the platform.”
- From “They took our culture.”
- To “We control the companies that carry it forward.”
That is also why the conversation in the Project 2025 blog cannot be separated from economic independence. Political attacks are dangerous, but political protection is limited when we do not control the economic systems that shape our lives.
The takeaway: apologies are not ownership
Target, Gucci, and H&M each showed us the same cycle: offensive product, public outrage, apology, removal, and business as usual.
Eminem’s controversy showed us another version of the same question: what happens when someone profits from Black culture while disrespecting Black people?
We should accept sincere accountability when it is real. But we should never confuse an apology with justice, and we should never confuse buying power with control.
The long-term answer is ownership.
We need to own more of the design, production, financing, distribution, media, and retail systems connected to our culture. We need to support Black-owned businesses not only when a corporation embarrasses itself, but every day: before the crisis, before the boycott, before the apology.
They can keep apologizing. We have to keep building.
When we own the means of production, nobody can reduce our culture to a trend, turn our pain into a product, and expect a statement to settle the matter. We become more than consumers reacting to disrespect.
We become the people controlling what gets made, how it is made, who benefits, and where the money goes.