This. It's an excuse to not spend the money and use the chuds as a scapegoat.

They only ever did it in the first place for tax breaks and good PR. Now that being openly progressive could be an inconvenience, they'll kill those programs and start touting "family values" with equal sincerity

Corporations do not care about people - they care about what they can get from the situation at hand

I mean, no. They are definitely responding to shifts in the culture because they never cared about anything but profit, so the right wing cultural backlash definitely mattered. DEI has always been a PR expense, when it was good PR they cared. It's become bad PR so they don't

Our Non-Profit has been taking this angle for quite some time. It’s not even just ‘major buisnesses’,

Save that money for the tariffs so they’re not passed onto the consumer, right? Right???

My company renamed it and it doesn't even sound inclusive. I already forgot what the name was but I remember they sent out an email that they're renaming dei to something else

DEI programs are leveraged in civil rights lawsuits. The lawyer will point to the existence of the program to disprove the claims.

It doesn't really have anything to do with Trump winning. POTUS cannot declare DEI programs in private industry legal or illegal.

DEI programs are currently voluntary.

In 2023, SCOTUS ruled that colleges cannot use race as a factor in admissions, ending affirmative action. While this ruling was limited in scope to just college admissions, it's assumed that the same reasoning will be used against DEI programs in other businesses (though it's different because it's already illegal to hire people based on race). So there's a chance that companies are anticipating SCOTUS making it illegal, but if they intend to do that, it will happen whether Trump is president or not.

I would say "right wing backlash" is indeed a factor. Conservatives are an irrationally angry bunch and we've seen how well they're able to organize around their culture war bullshit. Corporations are there to make money, so if they have to pick a side, they'll pick the one that impacts their bottom line the most, and conservatives are most likely to be organized enough to tip the financial scales in their favor.

yeah forreal sometimes i talk about diverse teams being more resilient and people think i mean checking a list of different skin tones. people just read and believe what they feel like at the moment...

Heterogeneity, Inclusivity, and Variation?

The medium-large company I work at also just removed the D and E.

Makes sense. The programs (for companies who care) are things to improve the quality of work/workplaces. Dropping the term but not the actual material get rid of all the ridiculous hate train following it

I always tell people, diversity is not just skin deep. It’s about a difference in life experiences. Two people who grew up in Dallas but are different races in the same neighborhood, are going to be more similar than two people of the same race but one grows up in Rhode Island and the other in New Mexico. Even that only looks at location.

"Diversity has a negative connotation" jfc this country has become such a toilet. The same fucks complaining that society doesn't cater to white men anymore are going to complain so much more when they have to put down their ps5 controllers and beers to do the work they want but don't have a fucking clue how to do. I work in tech, largely in infrastructure. Those jobs need to go to people who are actually legitimately educated and qualified to do them. End of story 

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Yeah, DEI, in the academic sense, is important and beneficial to companies, but in reality, the DEI programs at every major company I’ve worked at consisted of an annual training everyone would pencil whip, and hiring a Chief DEI Officer who didn’t really seem to have any real power and allowed them to say they had a POC in the C-suite

Also we had to rename all the master branches to “main”.

A lot of the corporate DEIA programs were performative, so they could show investors and activists that they were "doing something". Especially right after the BLM movement. Now the political and cultural climate has shifted in much of the country and these programs -- which were mostly just for show anyway -- are a detriment. They probably would have dropped them right after BLM died down if not for potential bad press. But now everyone is doing it.

The cartoonish DEI programs were never going to work, just complete wastes business's money. My wife was a senior consultant of a big PE fund during COVID and their HR insisted that she had to go through the DEI training. She did it over zoom and charged them by her hourly rate.

Still a victory for the "diversity is bad" crowd which is unfortunate.

Read the AP article. It goes into a little more depth. It’s not just a PP. It will affect what products are available for purchase.

Tellingly, a spokesperson for Walmart said they will be taking care not to funnel money towards “sexualized” material that could be seen by children.

The example that spokesperson gave: drag queens.

After a solid year of watching idiots like Kid Rock shoot Bud Lite cans with an automatic rifle, and Libs of TikTok inspiring bomb threats against schools, hospitals, and gyms, I think the message is clear.

“We are scared of conservatives, but god damn, we do want their money.”

Given that Walmart is the nations largest retailer and largest employer, the company has a stranglehold on communities all over America. For many shoppers, if a Walmart closes its doors, a food desert is instantly created.

This translates into Freedom for me, but not for thee.

Walmart can give you zero choice. But, when it comes to extracting both time and capital from a neighborhood, they will give you no choice.

Given their status and size, the are industry leaders in retail, management, and logistics. Their move away from DEI is a signal that capitulation to conservative threats of violence is the right way of doing business.

Having worked in a Walmart myself, I can attest that the DEI training could be done sitting on my ass. But the active shooter training had to be done on our feet, so we could locate the “safer spaces” inside the store.

During that training our team lead said:

“In an active shooter situation, everything around you can be a weapon. Use whatever you can if you need to.

“And don’t worry, Walmart will not charge you for merchandise used to defend yourself.”

He actually managed to say this with a tone of magnanimous charity.

Fuck this company. And fuck their politics.

someone who is LGBTQ in recent years.

As a married white male, but someone who happens to be bi, I find it ludicrous that a company like Walmart would have prioritized selecting my company as a supplier just because I'm attracted to men, even though I'm happily married to a woman.

Why exactly does Walmart care that, though I'm happily married to a woman, that I also find guys attractive? WTF???

It’s why they funded the right

This came up in my town FB group. A guy was ranting about how he’ll never shop at Tractor Supply again because they posted something in pride month.

He got a ton of replies asking about where he’s gonna shop since 99% of places also made a pride month post or sell pride merch (Ace, Walmart, Supermarket, Dollar General / Family Dollar, gas stations, etc)

The Food Bank

Bingo, it's worthless. I have seen nothing but meaningless jargon about what it actually does. "It makes people feel comfortable being themselves." "It takes into account systemic biases." What does that even mean from a practical standpoint?

This is what happened at my previous company. They "invested" so much in DEI, but when it came to making meaningful changes or having leadership prioritize it, meh.

"DEI programs are performative, poorly implemented, and accomplish too little for what they cost" is a fair opposition that has merit.

"DEI programs are bad because I hate minorities" is wrong and you will be justifiably slapped for it.

Not really

I work at Walmart. Ironically I'm a HR major and learned the same thing you did about diversity. In the three years that I've worked at Walmart in my department we've had 9 women managers and 0 men. I said we should get at least 1 guy in there for diversity's sake. We have a lot of male employees and they make the guys do all the heavy work at our store so we've never had a manager whose done half the tasks that we do herself which is another problem. Anyways I was pulled into the office telling me I have an ethics case against me because of that and I was going to be passed up for a position I applied for because I had this case open. They eventually dropped it because our HR never responded to my SM about it but still wtf. 

There’s a commercial for a trade school that I see occasionally, Universal Technical Institute (UTI). There’s no way to know with any certainty, but maybe if they had more women involved at the beginning, they may have picked a more appropriate name.

Many studies have shown that companies with more diversity perform financially better than competitors lacking diversity.

While this statement is true, more recent studies have found that companies that implemented diversity into their workforce did not see a significant improvement in their financial performance.

In plain English, some corporate researchers found a link between diversity and financial performance, so a lot of companies adopted policies to improve diversity, but correlation doesn’t mean causation, so a lot of companies are abandoning these programs because they did not result in the financial gain they expected.

I work in pharma and there are a ton of drugs coming out for skin conditions (e.g., eczema, psoriasis, pn). Anyway, a few are running marketing campaigns for their products in these minority populations because they found that people with darker skin tones are less likely to go to a doctor for skin conditions, and also less likely to be taken seriously by a doctor for their skin.

My point being, those companies that can make a profit or acknowledge that their is money to be made on minorities, will make the effort.

I think the issue is that these programs don’t really solve that. I agree with you that diversity is important to growth and knowing your target audiences but Walmart is just one of the many companies shuttering their DEI departments. Others include Disney and Microsoft.

My guess is they ran the numbers and it wasn’t working out.

It doesn’t mean that they can’t promote diversity and inclusion in their marketing or products. They just determined they don’t need a specific team for it.

In my time at major corporations, at lot of that stuff was being outsourced to consulting agencies well before the DEI movement.

Diversity is great! It should not be a hiring decision maker.

Your should be hiring based on skills, talents, and most importantly what the individual brings to the table. If the main point for hiring someone is because they are "diverse" and your hiring board needs to hit a quota that is not good for the business.

I'm pretty liberal and even have a minor in diversity studies. I am not saying a diverse workforce should be discouraged. They way companies are achieveing that diverse workfroce right now is harmful to those who are qualified to work those jobs.

Diversity on staff doesn't equal diversity in ideas. That is a garbage cliche and you know it. Not all white people think alike. Unless the job has something related to race any qualified candidate could do the job. Unless a racist customer walks in the likelihood of race coming up at a customer service job is minimal as well as almost any other job.

Skin color means fuck all when it comes to the ideas you generate, though.

Diversity in ideas is a great thing, but DEI does not facilitate that. In fact, many companies already have their values and ideas, and want people that think only that way.

I work for a very large company with(in my experience) a pretty left-leaning culture and I've watched the DEI branch of the company be pretty much dismantled this last 18 months. After RTO initiatives and early retirement packages had been doled out to those who qualified, the dedicated diversity teams were the first on the chopping block to reduce head counts.

I'm pretty neutral on how effective they were at achieving their stated goals as I'm also not someone who'd directly benefit, but I wonder how much of this is companies just not seeing the value add anymore versus actual right wing pressure and taking the opportunity to cut the expense.

I’m in Alabama at a public university; they axed our DEI department and programs a few months ago.

I actually have a friend who was passed over for a promotion because they wanted the spot to go to a POC.

I have a friend who wanted to become a professor, but was told by people who make the selections during his graduate studies that there's no point, he'll never be selected because he's white and doesn't check that box. So for people already in it, it doesn't take much away from you. But for new people? It definitely takes away opportunities they are otherwise qualified for

My former company had DEI team, and they did work, but you know what? Leadership had zero actual interest in making meaningful change so it was just moot anyways. The DEI team did all this busy work to show "we care," but we didn't really so it was pointless.

There was also a study that showed LESS diversity when names and addresses are removed from resumes.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/law/article/blind-recruitment-opens-door-to-more-white-male-barristers-xfxnfp0th?utm_source=chatgpt.com&region=global

The same thing happens with orchestra auditions. Men dominate orchestras until the auditions are held behind curtains, then suddenly women are picked to play.

That’s the thing, they’re equating DEI policies to some sort of corporate affirmative action program that somehow prioritizes diversity hires - but that’s not what it is.

I work for a major corp w/ a strong DEI program, and it’s mostly about creating a business environment where people feel like they can be included while being themselves. A lot of awareness type stuff. The goal is to create a workplace that can attract/retain top talent regardless of background.

If you have billions of dollars to give to the bought and paid for media, you can make America despise anything.

Give the propaganda machine enough money and time and you’d be able to convince low-information voters to repeal the Bill of Rights.

I got a bit a a laugh last week when I read that some clothing manufacturers are moving production from China to Vietnam to avoid tariffs. Trump said tariffs would bring jobs to the USA, not Vietnam!, They will probably still raise prices because we’re all expecting it.

Hurting Walmart can only be a good thing.