By Jenn M. Jackson, YES Magazine
Someone is going to read this and think I wrote it because I hate football. Another person will read this piece and think I have a deeply ingrained dislike for Black men and rap music. Others will see this article, skim a few lines, and believe I want only awful things for Black women entrepreneurs. But, truthfully, I want us to think more critically about what our liberation looks like and how we intend to get there.
Since the new presidential administration has entered the White House, there have been a number of catastrophic cuts to critical policies and amendments, including the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1965 and the resulting equal protection clauses that have been in effect for decades. These policies—many of which have been gutted via executive order—were created to ensure women, low-income folks, disabled people, members of racial minority groups, and other historically disprivileged groups in the United States have equal access to the workforce.
These cuts have also resulted in companies such as Meta, McDonald’s, Walmart, and Ford rolling back their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives that were designed to make employment more accessible for all people, regardless of their race, ethnicity, creed, or color. The problem is that many of these same companies have been actively recruiting members from marginalized racial, gender, and class groups for decades under the premise that they actually valued diversity.
Target, a company that has embraced DEI wholesale for the past decade, surprised many Black consumers and Black-owned brands when they rolled back their DEI initiatives in January. This disappointing decision has led to calls for mass boycotts of the big box retailer, which has lost $15.7 billion in market value, faces plummeting stock values, and is being sued by stakeholders. Recently, Pastor Jamal Bryant, a prominent voice within Black religious communities, called on his congregation to boycott Target for the 40 days of Lent to “divest from Target because they have turned their back” on Black communities.
Despite Target’s abandonment of the DEI initiatives that ingratiated the brand to Black consumers, their recent decisions are a stark contrast to what many Black communities have come to admire them for. These efforts also brought many Black business owners to Target’s shelves. Though the company seems to have lured Black consumers and brands to their stores under what now seems like false pretenses, a prominent Black influencer, content creator, and, now, mega-brand has surprised her supporters by backing the brand.
On Jan. 27, popular vegan influencer Tabitha Brown, whose products are carried in Target stores all over the country, posted a video to Instagram asking her followers not to boycott the retailer because “it has been very hard for Black-owned businesses to hit shelves.” Emphasizing how “heartbreaking” it is for her to feel “unsupported” by retailers such as Target, Walmart, and Amazon, Brown shared that she still sells her products with these companies: “I do business all over, just like many other people.”
She then encouraged her followers to reconsider boycotting Target because of the potential long-term impact on Black-owned businesses. “What happens to the businesses that have worked so hard to get to where they are?” Brown asked her followers. “To get there, we unfortunately have to play the game.”
But how long should we have to watch a few extremely wealthy Black folks “play the game” before we acknowledge that they might be playing us, too?
“Don’t allow foolishness to take us into separation and weed us out,” she implored. The video received mixed responses from those who felt Brown’s message centered the needs of Black business owners over larger Black communities and their concerns about representation. Others suggested that negative responses were just rooted in a hatred for Brown.
But, others, myself included, suggested on social media that it was quite possible Brown’s followers were simply disappointed because they were looking in the wrong place for liberation. No shade to Tabitha Brown. She seems like a lovely human being. But is she a comrade, abolitionist, or freedom fighter? Absolutely not.
The messaging Brown provides here suggests that the only way for Black people to “win” in this society is by playing into capitalistic, anti-Black, exploitative labor and production models that have never served us. No other event exemplifies this more than American football and the phenomenon of Black artists giving “revolutionary” Super Bowl performances.
On Feb. 9, rapper Kendrick Lamar joined this “tradition” when he performed one of the most iconic halftime shows in Super Bowl history. In addition to being the most unrivaled lyricist alive, Lamar presented viewers with imagery of wave-cap-wearing Black men symbolically dancing in the form of an American flag, gaggles of Black folks pouring from a hoopty on stage, and even Samuel L. Jackson dressed as Uncle Sam. And Lamar performed all of this in front of the first president to ever attend the Super Bowl.
Lamar opened the performance by telling 133.5 million viewers: “The revolution is about to be televised. You picked the right time, but I’m the wrong guy.” Playing on the iconic 1971 Gil Scott-Heron song, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” Lamar excited Black viewers about the potentially disruptive and culturally impactful performance. But, honestly, that line left me at “yikes.”
Lamar’s chart-topping song “Not Like Us” is one of the greatest and most successful diss tracks of all time. His opponent, Drake, hates it and has even sued the distributor, Universal Music Group, for defamation. But over time, the song has moved beyond its origins to become a catch-all critique of larger culture, namely because of the line “You not a colleague/ You a fuckin’ colonizer.”
What’s more striking is that Lamar performed this song in front of the same NFL fans who ousted Colin Kaepernick for taking a knee to protest racial injustice in 2016 and removed the words “END RACISM” from the end zone ahead of the 2025 season. At this point, maybe the question we should be asking is: Who do we mean by “us”?
But Black folks seemed largely OK with this performance being touted as “the revolution.” Just like Brown’s request that folks keep patronizing Target, Lamar hasn’t been as critiqued as he should for giving the performance of a lifetime in front of a fascist.
Wealthy Black folks acting in their own best interests and the interests of those closest to them isn’t synonymous with Black uplift or community investment. In this political moment, there’s a fascist who refers to himself as “king” and who stands to unravel every protection and equity initiative secured by organizers and freedom fighters for the past two generations. We don’t also need more empty platitudes from Black celebrities and influencers, or pretend revolutions that line the pockets of mega-wealthy NFL owners, record producers, and racist businessmen.
I also hope this moment is teaching those of us who are truly invested in building a freer and more just future that we won’t often find the revolutionary work of dismantling white supremacy and building a better world by looking up at people who are deeply embedded in it. We have to look at the people alongside us—the bus drivers, church mothers, nurses, school teachers, and librarians—who are not only struggling each day to confront the realities of this administration but who are directly impacted by its violent and harmful policies.
I’ve never disagreed with Lamar before, but he got this one wrong. The revolution will not be televised because the revolution won’t be happening on a football field or in store aisles. The revolution will happen where it always has: silently, quietly, and away from the white-coded and white-centered systems seeking to pacify and destroy it.
