The legacy business press has a new favorite word for Target: comeback. On May 20, the retailer reported that comparable sales jumped 5.6% in its latest quarter — its strongest result in four years — and raised its sales guidance for the rest of the year. CNN ran the headline "Target's comeback strategy is working." Wall Street analysts cheered. The narrative writes itself: a struggling retailer found its footing again.
But buried in the very same coverage is the part nobody wants to say out loud. As CNN put it, Target "scaled back Pride displays and rolled back DEI programs" — and only then did the customers come back. They're calling it a comeback. We're calling it a confession.
What Actually Happened
Target's numbers are real, and they're good. Comparable sales — which combine in-store and online — grew 5.6%, the best showing in four years. CEO Michael Fiddelke, who took the top job earlier in 2026 promising to turn the ship around, told reporters the gains were "spread evenly across income groups and merchandise," including discretionary categories like toys and beauty that shoppers abandon first when they're angry or broke.
Retail analyst Joe Feldman of Telsey Advisory Group told clients, "We believe Target should regain market share as it progresses." Fiddelke leaned on buzzy brand collaborations — Pokémon, the influencer-favorite label Parke — to drag foot traffic back through the doors.
Here's the timeline that matters: Target spent 2023 and 2024 as the poster child for corporate overreach. Aggressive Pride Month merchandise — including the now-infamous "tuck-friendly" swimwear and partnerships with controversial designers — triggered a customer revolt. Sales sank. The stock bled. Then, in early 2025, Target quietly retreated: it dialed back the in-store Pride spectacle and rolled back formal DEI programs. The activist left howled and threatened boycotts of their own. And in the first full quarter after the retreat fully set in, Target posted its best sales in four years.
Correlation isn't always causation. But when a company alienates its core shoppers with politics, watches sales crater, reverses course, and immediately recovers, you don't need a McKinsey deck to connect the dots.
The Detour That Nearly Sank the Ship
Target wasn't alone in learning this lesson the hard way. The cautionary tale every executive now knows by heart is Bud Light. Anheuser-Busch's 2023 partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney detonated a consumer boycott so severe the brand lost its decades-long crown as America's best-selling beer and never fully recovered. In the BWF database, Anheuser-Busch InBev still carries a 70/100 woke score and Bud Light a 45 — a permanent scarlet letter earned in a single ad campaign.
The pattern is now textbook. Pour your brand into divisive social activism, watch your most loyal customers walk, then spend years trying to win them back with discounts and gimmicks. "Go woke, go broke" stopped being a slogan and became a quarterly earnings risk factor.
Don't Pop the Champagne Yet
Here's where we part ways with the cheerleaders. A good quarter does not earn Target a clean record — and it certainly doesn't earn it a spot on your shopping list. In the Buy Woke Free database, Target still scores 71 out of 100 and is rated "extremely woke."
Why? Because scaling back the most visible Pride displays is not the same as abandoning the underlying machinery. Target spent over a decade building its progressive brand identity — same-sex couples in "Made to Matter" advertising, CEO endorsements of Black Lives Matter, ESG reporting, supplier diversity quotas, and HRC-aligned policies. A few quieter store shelves don't unwind all of that. What changed was the marketing, not necessarily the corporate DNA.
And that's the trap. Companies like Target aren't having a change of heart — they're managing a brand-safety crisis. The moment the political winds shift again, the rainbow merchandise can reappear overnight. A comeback built on tactics, not conviction, is reversible. Conservative shoppers who reward the retreat with their wallets may find themselves funding the next relapse.
The "Radioactive" Word the Consultants Won't Drop
The broader corporate retreat from DEI is undeniable. Over the past year, company after company has scaled back diversity commitments — partly under pressure from the Trump administration's executive orders and an EEOC, now chaired by Andrea Lucas, that's actively suing employers including The New York Times and Nike over "unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination."
Yet the DEI industry isn't going quietly. At Fortune's Workplace Innovation Summit this month, former chief diversity officers conceded the acronym "DEI" has become "radioactive" — while insisting the work behind it is more important than ever. They trotted out the familiar McKinsey statistic claiming the most diverse companies are "39% more likely" to financially outperform their peers.
That talking point deserves scrutiny. McKinsey's diversity-equals-profit studies have been repeatedly challenged by independent researchers who failed to replicate the findings — correlation dressed up as a business mandate. If diversity quotas were the golden ticket to profitability, Target wouldn't have needed to retreat from them to post its best quarter in four years. The market just ran the experiment in real time, and the consultants lost.
Notice the rhetorical pivot, too: when the label becomes toxic, the defenders simply rebrand. "DEI" becomes "belonging," "inclusion," or "culture." Same programs, friendlier name. Shoppers who care about where their dollars go can't afford to be fooled by a coat of fresh paint.
What It Means for Your Wallet
Target's quarter is a data point, not a redemption arc. The lesson for corporate America is clear, and conservatives should say it plainly: alienating half your customers to chase activist applause is a losing strategy, and the market punishes it every single time. The retreat from woke isn't a betrayal of principle — it's a return to the basic job of a retailer, which is selling people what they actually want to buy.
But a 71/100 woke score is a 71/100 woke score. If you stopped shopping at Target over its politics, one good earnings report isn't a reason to come back — it's a reason to keep the pressure on. The boycotts worked. The retreat happened. Don't reward a company for getting caught and course-correcting; reward the companies that never sold you out in the first place.
Want to know where your favorite brands really stand? Search the Buy Woke Free database before you spend, and put your money where your values are.