It cost 25 dollars and was intended for a child to dress up as a clown for Halloween.
But it only took seeing the model’s photo on Target’s website for thousands of people to notice something else: the exaggerated red lips, the black mesh covering the face, the pose. Everything evoked an image that the United States knows well and that has caused pain for more than a century: that of blackface used in racist minstrel shows.
On Reddit, the reaction was immediate. “What else could this be besides historically accurate racism?”, one user wrote. Another said they had spent ten minutes looking at the image without finding another interpretation. Target pulled the costume from its Hyde and EEK! Boutique line, but the screenshots were already circulating everywhere, and with them came renewed calls to boycott the chain.
