Target removed a children’s Halloween costume from its website that social media users criticized as evoking racist minstrel and blackface imagery.
In August 2026, a claim circulated online that the retailer Target removed a children’s Halloween costume from its website that social media users criticized as evoking racist minstrel and blackface imagery.
For example, one Facebook user who posted an image of the alleged costume wrote (archived):
Target removed a children’s Halloween clown costume from its Target website after facing intense online backlash. Critics pointed out that the costume’s dark face covering and exaggerated wide mouth resembled historical minstrel and blackface caricatures.
The image the user shared showed a Black child wearing orange-and-black striped pants and a shirt with a black hood with a large smile printed on it, a small orange-and-black hat and black gloves. The image showed the child in a “running” pose.
Claims that Target sold the costume despite its racist imagery and later removed it also circulated on Instagram (archived), Threads (archived), X (archived), Bluesky (archived) and Reddit (archived). Snopes readers contacted us about the claim.
The claim was true. After sending Target an image of the costume and asking whether it listed, then removed it from its website, a company spokesperson replied via email on Aug. 24:
As a company, we know we got this wrong, and we are deeply sorry. The costume is offensive and should never have been part of our assortment. It is no longer available for sale. We know this is especially hurtful for our Black guests, team members and partners. Removing the costume is an important first step, and the company is looking closely at how this happened and what needs to change to ensure this won’t happen again.
According to a since-deleted listing for the costume on Target’s website, the retailer originally described the costume as a “Circus Glow Clown Halloween Costume.”
We asked the spokesperson when Target removed the costume. We also contacted a costume store with the same name as the one Target said produced the costume for comment on the removal. We await replies to our queries.
Social media users said the costume evoked racist minstrel and blackface imagery.
Blackface minstrelsy, which the National Museum of African American History and Culture describes as “comedic performances of ‘blackness’ by whites in exaggerated costumes and make-up” dates to the 1830s. It involved white performers artificially darkening their faces and wearing tattered clothing to imitate Black people in performances that depicted them as “lazy, ignorant, superstitious, hypersexual, and prone to thievery and cowardice,” the museum wrote.
Jim Crow, whose name since became associated with racial segregation laws across the U.S., is perhaps the most famous blackface minstrelsy character. One social media user circulated an image of the Jim Crow character beside the photo of the child wearing the Target costume and noted similarities between their poses.
The National Museum of African American History and Culture wrote that blackface and minstrelsy were ways in which white people defined and distinguished what it meant to be white from what it meant to be Black.
Speaking to PBS’ “American Experience,” author Mel Watkins reportedly said minstrel shows had a huge role in shaping and perpetuating stereotypes about Black people. He said:
It was advertised as a peephole view of what black people were really like. To that extent, it affected all of society because those people who didn’t know blacks, and there were many places where there were very few blacks, assumed that those characterizations, those depictions, those foolish characters on stage, were real black people. And so it had an immense effect on the way mainstream society thought about blacks.
For further reading, Snopes has previously investigated other claims regarding the racist practice of blackface.
