Baptist Church Monkey Shine

 

When the story broke that the National Baptist Convention had accepted $300,000 from Target—during a boycott initiated by Black organizers—my phone blew up. Group chats. Texts. DMs. Everybody had the same question: Did you see this mess? I was deep in edits, trying to stay focused so I could finish a piece the editor had been waiting a year for me to complete. I kept looking at my phone, sighing, and thinking, “When will the Baptist boys ever learn?” Or, in the words of my great Aunt Dora, after she plopped into her favorite porch chair and unfolded the local Negro newspaper: “What kind of monkey shine is this?”

I should say upfront that I’m not NBC. I’m ordained African Methodist Episcopal (a church that has its own share of monkey shine). But that’s beside the point. I’m a black ordained woman. This is my industry—even if it’s not my denomination. I’ve been in and out of NBC spaces all my career. Preaching. Teaching. Lecturing. Heck, some of my best friends (bless them) are NBC members. And I claim the Black Church—capital B, capital C—as mine. With love. With pride. With critique.

So yes, I’m late weighing in. But I’m not quiet.

Let me walk you through what happened. On February 1st, Nina Turner—former Ohio State Senator, former Bernie surrogate, founder of “We Are Somebody”—called for a boycott of Target. Why? Because Target caved to right-wing pressure, gutted its DEI initiatives, and pulled back on support for Black and queer vendors. Turner didn’t just call it out—she organized. And Target has felt it—sales are down, market analysts are watching, and the company is scrambling to contain the fallout. This wasn’t performative outrage. It was strategic. Organized. And it’s working.

 Enter NBC. Not as co-organizers. Not even as supporters. They weren’t there in the beginning. They didn’t make a public statement when Target folded on DEI. And they definitely didn’t amplify the boycott in its early stages.

 But then—out of nowhere—NBC shows up in brokering a deal with Target, accepting a check for $300,000. No transparency. No plan. Some weak talk about what the money is for. Just a handshake. Just… optics. And now we’re all standing in the aisle like confused shoppers holding a receipt for something we never agreed to buy.

 Let me pause here to say this clearly: Nina Turner is no lightweight. She’s a former Ohio State Senator, a longtime advocate for working-class people, and a fearless Black woman who’s never been afraid to speak truth to power—whether on the Senate floor or the campaign trail. And she started this boycott. Period.

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 And the way some Black male leaders have since stepped into the spotlight, grabbing the mic and the credit, is not just frustrating—it’s textbook. The erasure of Black women’s leadership in public protest is not new. It’s as old as the movement itself.

 And yes, I said Black male leaders. Black male preachers. Because sexism is part of the story here, too.

 Was there no Baptist lieutenant around the NBC board table to say, “Excuse me, Mr. President, but this feels off”? Where was the caution? Where was the moral imagination? The institutional memory? The basic sense to say: “Maybe this isn’t a good look. Maybe we don’t need to be the face of a deal no one asked us to broker.”

 I am reminded of a scene in Lorraine Hansberry’s play “A Raisin in the Sun.” You know the one. When Mama Lena Younger, played by Claudia McNeil in the 1961 film, turns to her son Walter Lee, played by Sidney Poitier, and says:

 “Son—I come from five generations of people who was slaves and sharecroppers—but ain’t nobody in my family never let nobody pay ‘em no money that was a way of telling us we wasn’t fit to walk the earth. We ain’t never been that poor. We ain’t never been that dead inside.”

 That’s what this felt like: a moment when someone should have stood up and said, We ain’t never been that dead inside.

 $300,000 is not nothing—but it’s also not everything. It’s crumbs from a corporation that was looking for a way to save face. And the NBC let itself be the broom from the Household section of the store sweep Target’s problems under the rug.

 I’m not here to drag anybody. I’ll leave that to the young people. They’re doing a fine job lighting up the block on social media—dragging and dissecting every frame of the letter like seasoned historians of the foolish. I’m here as an elder in the work. I’ve earned the right to speak. I’ve gotten to the steps of NBC pulpits and been turned away from stepping onto the dais. I have the bruises and scars from those early years of being a woman in ministry to show for it. But I also know some really good NBC churches with decent integrous NBC pastors. I even know some of the men around that NBC board table. I believe some of them meant well.

 But meaning well isn’t enough when history is watching. Bros, you are clueless.

Don’t you know? New levels, new devils. National platforms come with national responsibilities. This isn’t just about a check. It’s about legacy. It’s about being wise to how corporate America plays our institutions. It’s about learning the lessons of the past and not becoming cautionary tales in the future.

You were Esau trading his birthright for a bowl of stew (Genesis 25:29–34). Hunger made him shortsighted. Desperation clouded his judgment. We can’t let institutional fatigue—or the allure of quick cash—make us forget the birthright we carry as stewards of the Black Church.

 I offer this not as condemnation but as counsel: Read a book on Black economic resistance—start with “Collective Courage” by Jessica Gordon Nembhard if you want to understand how cooperative economics helped us survive when the market shut us out. Watch the movie Burial (starring Jamie Foxx) and see what happens when our dead are sold off for profit and somebody’s always willing to sign the deal. Understand the stakes. If you’re going to sit at the table, don’t just be grateful for the invitation—ask who built the table, who paid for the chairs, and what’s on the menu (don’t let that be you).

Because if all we’re being served is symbolism and silence, then we are, in fact, too poor. And maybe worse—too dead inside

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