At the beginning of February, social activists and influencers decided to stand against Target after the retailer decided to restructure its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) strategy.

Target said in a statement that it is concluding its three-year DEI goals and its Racial Equity Action and Change (REACH) Initiatives to accelerate action in key areas, implement changes to drive growth and stay in step with the evolving external landscape.

African American community members were not receptive when they heard about this change. That was when social justice leaders resulted in a nationwide boycott and labeling Target as being “canceled.” 

The term occurs when a person, organization, group of people, or company is ostracized by another group of people who try to weaken it financially and reputation-wise. Other companies making similar decisions, like Walmart and McDonald’s, in January, are also in this category. 

Ernest Owens, the author of “The Case for Cancel Culture: How This Democratic Tool Works to Liberate Us All,” said that Target was once an ally to the Black community because of its relationships with Black-owned businesses, offering them the opportunity to sell their products in its stores and other DEI-related initiatives that have recently ended.

“During the Black Lives Matter protests, there was a social and cultural shift, and then a federal push to do more DEI-type work,” Owens said. “That was a trend, but we have seen a federal shift in decentering DEI, defunding DEI, pulling away from it, and that has reverberated into corporations doing the same.” 

Like with any boycott, Target will face an economic impact, so does this decision make sense in the long run?

The McKinsey Institute for Black Economic Mobility reports that companies have overlooked Black Americans as a priority demographic. Their research proposes that they spend around $835 billion annually, about 10 percent of overall consumption. 

Owens says that the Black consumer is a loyal patron of Target, paying billions in goods and services each year, and affecting the store’s bottom line will be the only way Target will listen. 

“People have to understand that when a company says that they’re not going to support DEI, it can trickle down to so many other levels of safety beyond just your initiatives,” Owens said. “That says that it creates an environment that devalues the people that go to that store that benefits from DEI.”

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A celebration of life for the man who died during an encampment cleanup on Jan. 16 will be held near the location where he passed away.

On Feb. 3, the family and friends of Cornelius Taylor will say their final goodbyes at his funeral at Ebenezer Baptist Church at 11 a.m.

The church is a short proximity from where a City of Atlanta construction vehicle swept him underneath it. The vehicle was there as part of an effort to clear an encampment of unhoused people on Old Wheat Street in the historic Auburn Avenue neighborhood. 

A spokesperson from the Atlanta Department of Public Works said that they are aware of the “tragic incident” involving the vehicle and Taylor.

Atlanta mayor Andre Dickens said that his heart goes out to Taylor’s family, and the city is working hard to provide safety to the unhoused.

“We’re looking into that incident further and getting more information about how we can be safer and make sure that accidents like that don’t ever happen again where someone could lose their life by a vehicle and being hit by a vehicle,” Dickens said. 

Taylor’s family and others, including Atlanta City Councilmember District 5 Liliana Bakhtiari, are asking for changes to be made to prevent this from happening again. 

“You don’t sweep encampments; you house them,” Bakhtiari said during a city council meeting on Jan. 17. “Cornelius Taylor deserved to be housed. Housing is a human right.”

During the meeting, Bakhitari also presented a resolution calling for a moratorium on clearing encampments until procedures can be reviewed and updated to ensure the safety of Atlanta’s unhoused residents. 

The councilmember also proposed legislation to provide $1 million toward a case management program to provide more outreach and city assistance for unsheltered people.

According to the Atlanta Mission, over 7,000 people were served at their facilities last year, and an estimated half a million people meet the definition of homelessness nationwide.

Taylor’s family has created a funeral and burial fund with the Willie A. Watkins Funeral Home Finance Department. They can be reached at 404-758-1731.

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The data analysis company FICO wrapped up its semester-long contest with Morehouse College computer science students to encourage a more diverse future in data science. They taught students how to use  AI software to design detection models banks could use to fight fraud. 

To promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in data science, The FICO Educational Analytics Challenge was created for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) students to give real-world scenarios in financial fraud detection featuring anomalies and features in a real-time fraud detection model. 

The judges named the team “FinPaid” as the winners of the challenge. Their team captain, Mark Ross, a junior Computer Science major from Atlanta, said the competition involved learning how to build a predictive fraud detection model from start to finish. The executives and analysts taught the students the Python programming language needed to build their models. 

A fourth-year student from Chicago and captain of team “Data Wizards,” Julius Jones was inspired by what he learned from competing in the challenge. He said he wanted to learn more about fraud analysis so he could be ready when he graduates. 

Scott Zoldi, Chief Analytics Officer for FICO, enjoyed the enthusiasm of the students and their professors in preparing them for a role in the tech industry.

“It’s great to be here and to have that relationship so that we can empower and actually accelerate the graduates of those programs being effective on day one so that they’re well aligned with no impedance match between what industry needs and what they’re learning,” Zoldi said. 

He helped create the competition to ensure that all voices are heard ethically, responsibly, and safely when developing the detection models.

“FICO is impacting the lives of students, helping to build a strong representation of diversity across the data workforce for generations to come,” said Alfred Watkins, Chair of the Computer Science Department at Morehouse.

Zoldi said it’s important to get more people of color working in data science. If the people working on these problems don’t come from different backgrounds, the solutions might not be fair for everyone. Having people of color on data science teams helps find and fix biases in the data, making things more accurate and helpful across the board. It also brings new ideas and ways of thinking, which leads to better and more creative solutions.

It’s also important to get younger folks involved. People ages 18 to 35 are among the largest groups to be victims of credit card and cyber fraud. Zoldi believes that having the students at Morehouse and other HBCUs learn more about credit fraud will motivate them to prevent it.

“We try to inspire [the students] around how fraud is a really important problem for them to solve; what sort of science and math do you need to leverage, such as machine learning and behavior analytics, moreover how to make sure you can operationalize it, which is one of the most significant sorts of challenges,” Zoldi said. 

According to the “2024 fraud and statistics report” from Security.org, 52 million American credit card holders have experienced credit card fraud, which has cost over $5 billion in unauthorized purchases. 

Additionally, the “2024 Consumer Cyber Readiness Report” from the Cyber Civil Defense Initiative says that people of color are targeted more than their white counterparts. It also mentioned that 14 percent of Black consumers and 13 percent of Latino consumers had experienced financial loss as a result of cyber-attacks and scams. 

When developing fraud detection models, Zoldi said he wants to collaborate more with HBCUs teaching data science to ensure that the scientists who create them are members of their communities. To that end, FICO plans to host the competition at other HBCUs in the spring semester. 

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During Thanksgiving break, what started as a pre-performance warmup ended in a social media video that went viral for the Clark Atlanta University Choir’s Philharmonic Society ensemble.

Co-choir director Reggie Gibson didn’t know that one of his students was recording the warmup to add content for their social media platforms, which captured the choir’s vocal excellence instead.

“We were warming up for a performance for the Gospel Nutcracker, and we decided to use the song as a part of the warmup, just to go through some vocal and breathing exercises,” Gibson said. “I had originally stopped them earlier because we were warming up, and they said, ‘let’s keep going.’ That’s when we kept going.”

The video shows the choir singing midway through “Even Me” by Dr. Doris Wilson. Soloists and sophomore music major Marcia Bibbins finished an arousing run. Her choirmates had a resounding reaction, causing Warr and Kevin Te’onta Jackson to stand up, with Jackson gesturing to throw his laptop at Bibbins in elation.

It was then posted to their small group of followers, which stirred thousands of likes, reposts, stories, and other reactions, reaching almost 100,000 views on Instagram and 7.6 million on TikTok.

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A post shared by CAU Choirs ❤️🎼🎤 (@cauchoirs)

“I’ve been watching this for over 33 minutes,” one follower said.

“THERE! My shoe is THRONE!” another follower commented, adding a red high-heeled shoe emoji from another follower.

“I’m convinced this is what heaven sounds like,” and others like it were a few of the comments left on the choir’s Instagram page.

When they returned from break, all focus was on prepping for their annual holiday concert on Sun., Dec. 8. Talia Warr — the choir member who recorded the moment — showed him how many views the post had received.

“Talia stopped me after practice and said, ‘Mr. Gibson, look at this,” Gibson said. “I was looking, and I think at the time it was only 750 views, and it constantly grew and grew. I was seeing [the impressions] and checking it, and one minute it was a couple hundred thousand, and then it got to the first million and then two million.”

Gibson was excited to see the post grow in engagements and that people see the hard work they have been doing in rehearsals.

“As the magic was happening, their responses were so organic — comical, yet organic,” Gibson said. “I think that’s what captivated its originality because of their responses. They didn’t know it was going to happen.”

Gibson said the ensemble will recreate that magic at their holiday-inspired concert this weekend. He describes the show, titled “From Manger to Majesty,” as featuring a diverse selection of holiday classics, spirituals, and classical arrangements demonstrating the full gamut of vocal and choral music.

He also explains how he leads the choir with discipline and direction.

“We focus a lot on the difference between ‘good’ and ‘great’ and the extra work we put in,” Gibson said. “My motto is ‘be great on purpose,’ and recently, we adopted while being great on purpose, we want to be great ‘in’ purpose. They are vastly talented, but we want to put in that extra work on the little things that allow for them to sound amazing each and every time.”

Gibson hopes that the Philharmonic Society can go on tour next semester. The goal is to showcase the graduating seniors and upperclassmen and use the tour as a recruitment tool to enroll in CAU and maybe even their choir.

He welcomes all high school directors or students considering attending CAU and wanting to join the choir.

The concert, which is free to the public, will be on Sunday at 3 p.m. at Central United Methodist Church on Martin Luther King, Jr. Dblic.

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Spelman College announced that its president, Dr. Helene Gayle, will not return after taking a leave of absence in October. 

Interim President Roz Brewer recently provided  a video statement announcing the new developments.

“I joined the trustees in extending my gratitude to Dr. Gayle for her service to this amazing institution,” Brewer said.

She did not give a reason for Gayle’s decision to resign.

Gayle became Spelman’s 11th president in 2022 after its previous president, Mary Schmidt Campbell, retired. During Gayle’s tenure, she developed an ambitious strategic plan and capital campaign fund to raise the all-female school’s endowment to over $1 billion. 

She also helped Spelman maintain its 18th straight number-one ranking by U.S. News and World Report as the Best Historically Black College and University.

Brewer has been interim president of the institution for over 30 days and said that she has been on a listening tour gathering input on how to shape Spelman’s future.A former student, Brewer is the former CEO of Walgreen’s Boots Alliance and is Spelman’s Board Chair Emerita.  

“Spelman has given so much to me over the years to have the opportunity to once again give back fills me with joy,” Brewer said in the statement. 

In the video, she also emphasizes that the school is “financially sound.”

“My goal is to ensure we continue to prosper and thrive,” Brewer said. “There’s so much to look forward to, from new curriculum to updated infrastructure and technology, all designed to enhance academic and operational excellence for now and in the future.”

Brewer has agreed to remain interim president as Spelman prepares to launch a national search for its new leader.

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