By Manzanita Miller
For at least a decade mainstream culture has been obsessively preoccupied with forwarding a distinctly left-wing “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) agenda, and that agenda has heavily permeated the business world.
While encouraging a diverse workforce sounds good in theory, the reality is DEI programs were used to discriminate against individuals based on their race and sex, mitigate merit-based mobility, and push radical views on gender that a majority of Americans simply do not wish to be bombarded with at the workplace.
In the wake of a cultural shift invoked by President Donald Trump’s election that has resulted in a series of executive orders reasserting constitutional rights and rolling back DEI, businesses are beginning to “de-woke” themselves, much to the chagrin of radical activists.
From Target to McDonald’s, Walmart, and Amazon, American companies are rolling back DEI initiatives, arguably in a self-preserving fashion given the political climate, but nonetheless a significant marker of the cultural shift we are in the midst of.
Businesses went radically woke, and frankly weird, in the first place because the entirety of western culture elevated woke ideals and it served their profit-margins to pay fealty to left-wing principles. In addition, many companies became infiltrated by proponents of radical left-wing ideals and further advanced the DEI agenda from within.
Let’s not forget when odd videos of Microsoft meeting introductions circulated online a few years ago. Tech presenters at the company were apparently introducing themselves to audiences by describing their ethnicity, sex, and their physical features such as hair color. Allegedly, the oddly descriptive introductions were intended to include blind individuals, but that does not explain why presenters needed to include their race, gender or sexuality.
That was in 2022. But woke corporate culture seems to have reached a peak somewhere around the tail-end of President Biden’s term. We are now in the midst of a cultural shift that is actively deemphasizing woke-business culture for the first time in a decade or more.
What is interesting is while the rollback of affirmative-action DEI programs is incensing the radical left, if you actually read the approach U.S. companies are taking, it isn’t some draconian return to the 1950’s where groups of Americans find themselves second-class citizens.
Instead, American companies are scaling-down practices that specifically elevated minority groups – whether racial minorities or others – over everyone else and they are recommitting to the last part in the “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” ideology, which is simply “inclusion”.
Last Friday, retailers faced an economic “blackout” over DEI rollbacks, with an activist group called The People’s Union USA encouraging a boycott of Target and other retailers. Apparently, more boycotts are planned against companies such as Amazon, Nestle, Target, Walmart, McDonald’s and General Mills in coming days.
McDonald’s is under fire from activists after scaling back its focus on the affirmative-action side of DEI, and instead committing to the concept of inclusion as a whole, which you would think liberals would be OK with.
McDonald’s announced in January that it is rolling back affirmative-action initiatives, including no longer setting “aspirational representation goals” for minority representation, and removing a Supply Chain “Commitment to DEI pledge”, essentially returning to decisions based on merit.
Instead, McDonald’s is committing to something virtually anyone in a civil modern society should be OK with, their own “Golden Rule” focused on, “treating everyone with dignity, fairness and respect, always”. Still, McDonald’s is being targeted by activists for its rollbacks.
Leftists are also up-in-arms because Walmart said late last year that it will no longer be considering race and gender when determining who to hire. The company is also daring to “review” corporate grants to LGBTQ Pride events.
So essentially, Walmart is saying they will be following the law and allowing individuals to rise up the ranks based on merit, while simultaneously considering withdrawing funds to promote an LGBTQ agenda. But the left is chanting “not in our America” and ominously referencing the Handmaid’s Tale.
Similar to Walmart, Lowe’s caught flak from leftists when it announced it would no longer sponsor LGBTQ Pride events. Oh, the horror.
In an equally upsetting move, the retailor-giant Amazon, whose website previously focused on its commitment to LGBTQ issues, has returned to simply promoting a diverse and inclusive work environment.
As The Washington Post recently reported, the Policy Positions section on Amazon’s website, which previously mentioned providing “gender transition benefits” for transgender employees, has been changed. The company also removed reference to “LGBTQ+ people” on the same page.
In place of a fixation on niche gender issues, that section of Amazon’s website now states the company is “committed to creating a diverse and inclusive company that helps us build the best range of products and services for our broad customer base”, which sounds pretty reasonable.
What is incredibly telling about the activist left’s interpretation of these DEI rollbacks, is that for the most part the left is angry that LGBTQ initiatives are not being purposefully forced into the spotlight in corporate culture anymore, and that racist and sexist practices are being removed from hiring practices.
In other words, companies are taking baby steps toward not discriminating against employees based on their race and gender and scaling back direct and blatant promotion of niche sexual identities.
What this exposes, blatantly, is that the woke ideology was never actually about “inclusion”. It was focused on promoting a radical agenda that punishes certain individuals for not falling into the proper minority group, while elevating fringe lifestyles at the expense of everyone else. Companies are not ending an effort toward “inclusion”, if anything they might actually be living up to it for the first time since DEI became a thing.
Manzanita Miller is the senior political analyst at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
