Summary
Walmart is scaling back its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts amid conservative backlash and changing cultural pressures.
The company removed LGBTQ-themed items, stopped sharing data with advocacy groups, and phased out supplier diversity programs and its Center for Racial Equity, created in 2020.
Walmart also rebranded its diversity roles, though it will continue funding events like Pride parades under stricter guidelines.
Activists opposing DEI policies, like Robby Starbuck, have praised these changes.
This decision was no doubt motivated by the exact same question that made them put that merchandise up in the first place: “what will result in us earning more profit?”
I’d like to see hard data on whether or not being “anti-woke” generates more profit. I’ve never seen evidence that it does.
It’s the perfect excuse to cut back on funding expenditures and increase cronyism, and that’s all the justification that they need.
Have corpos ever needed an excuse for that? This seems more like thinking that Americans in general will reward them for being “anti-woke.”
No, but having it be justified by a portion of the population with violent tendencies makes it easy to avoid getting in trouble with the law for doing. You say that you’re getting rid of worker safety programs and bringing back child labor, and people start asking questions. You say that the children yearn for the mines but the woke won’t let them, and half the country will start punching elementary teachers for not letting kids get Black Lung.
Basically, it’s a combo of the two. They get to do the things that they want to do anyway, and they get support from a group of people trying to destroy regulations simply for doing it.