Following racist backlash over Target ad, Honey Pot CEO isn't shaken by negativity: 'People can feel and say what they want' (any other race would be called racist)

Hey Target..... my hundreds and hundreds of cash a month that I USED TO SPEND at your store will be going to another store.

Following racist backlash over Target ad, Honey Pot CEO isn't shaken by negativity: 'People can feel and say what they want'

Kamilah Newton

Yahoo LifestyleMarch 3, 2020, 1:38 PM CST

After being featured in a Target ad series, “Founders We Believe In,” the CEO of the natural feminine-hygiene brand Honey Pot Company was unexpectedly hit with criticism — for saying she hoped to create opportunity for black girls with great ideas.

“The reason why it’s so important for Honey Pot to do well, is so the next black girl that comes up with a great idea, she could have a better opportunity,” company founder Beatrice Dixon says in the ad. “That means a lot to me.”

Apparently this didn’t sit right with a number of Target’s customers, as the criticism and harassment, Dixon tells Yahoo Lifestyle, started almost immediately after the commercial’s release — “first through social media, email, and now Trustpilot reviews.”

Still, says the ever-positive entrepreneur, “The silver lining in all of this has been able to see the outpouring of love and support. Even though we’re getting negative reviews, it’s beautiful that people can feel and say what they want.”

And do that they did. On customer review site Trustpilot, Honey Pot received a storm of negative reviews over the weekend, lowering her average rating to one star. One customer review read, “I can't support a company in good faith that is openly racist about their customers.”

Meanwhile, many of the poor reviews included blatantly racist rhetoric, including, “13% of the population commits 50% of murders and 80% of all crime. They should empower black women to get black men to stop raping 10-40 thousand white women per year in the US. Your entire race is a joke. You commit 25x more crime against white people than we do against you. 90% of all interracial crimes are black-on-white. Go back to Africa and feel ‘empowered’ there. No one wants you here.”

Another review read, “Cheap and terrible product, and probably dindu nuffin,” ending with the racial slur that’s derived from “a bastardization of the phrase ‘didn't do nothing,’ a plea for innocence often used in reference to unarmed black men killed by police,” used to mock black people during numerous protests in 2014 and 2015.

Additionally, numerous reviews associated the products with the coronavirus, while some complained about the quality of the Honey Pot’s hair products ー which do not in fact exist.
Luckily, a flood of support from the Black social media community has since rallied around the black-woman owned company to counteract those reviews.





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