(Headline USA) Walmart’s sweeping rollback of its diversity policies is the strongest indication yet of a profound shift taking hold at U.S. companies that are re-evaluating the legal and political risks associated with discriminatory hiring and advancement practices based exclusively on identity politics.
Walmart confirmed to the Associated Press that it would better monitor its third-party marketplace items to make sure they don’t feature sexual and transgender products aimed at minors.
Among other changes, Walmart said it would no longer give priority treatment to suppliers owned by women or minorities, and it will not renew a five-year commitment for a so-called racial equity center.
The company also will stop participating in the Human Rights Campaign’s annual benchmark index that measures workplace inclusion for LGBT employees.
The changes announced by the world’s biggest retailer on Monday followed a pressure campaign by anti-woke activist Robby Starbuck, who has claimed victory in forcing several corporations that cater to conservative clienteles to retreat from their overtly leftist policies.
Several of those companies have subsequently announced that they were pulling back their initiatives, including Ford, Harley–Davidson, Lowe’s and Tractor Supply.
However, a Walmart spokesperson insisted some of the changes were already in progress and not the result of conversations that it had with Starbuck.
The movement is, in large part, a backlash to the corporate trend toward controversial environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices, which were driven by threats by major investment companies, including BlackRock and Vanguard, to divest in those who refused to genuflect to their extortionist demands. It peaked with the wave of cancel culture that followed the 2020 George Floyd riots.
The retreat from such programs began in earnest following the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 2023 decision overturning affirmative action with a pair of cases brought by the equal-protection advocacy group Students for Fair Admissions. It built its case around admissions practices at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina that, among other things, discriminated against Asian–American students.
However, it crystalized with the recent re-election of former President Donald Trump, whose administration is certain to make dismantling diversity, equity and inclusion programs a priority. Trump’s incoming deputy chief of policy will be his longtime adviser Stephen Miller, whose America First Legal has aggressively challenged corporate DEI policies.
“There has been a lot of reassessment of risk looking at programs that could be deemed to constitute reverse discrimination,” said Allan Schweyer, principal researcher at the Human Capital Center at the Conference Board. “This is another domino to fall, and it is a rather large domino.”
Schweyer said the biggest trigger for companies making such changes is simply a reassessment of their legal risk exposure as conservative groups have secured a string of court victories targeting companies, nonprofits, and even the Biden administration.
Most recently, the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty won a victory in a case against the U.S. Department of Transportation over its use of a program that gives priority to minority-owned businesses when it awards contracts.
“We have a legal landscape within the entire federal government, all three branches—the U.S. Supreme Court, the Congress and the President—are all now firmly pointed in the direction towards equality of individuals and individualized treatment of all Americans, instead of diversity, equity and inclusion treating people as members of racial groups,” said Dan Lennington, a deputy counsel at the Wisconsin Institute.
Lennington said his organization says it has identified more than 60 programs in the federal government that it considers discriminatory.
The Trump administration is also likely to take direct aim at DEI initiatives through executive orders and other policies that affect private companies, especially federal contractors.
“The impact of the election on DEI policies is huge,” said Jason Schwartz, co-chair of the Labor & Employment Practice Group at law firm Gibson Dunn. “It can’t be overstated.”
With Miller returning to the White House, rolling back DEI initiatives is likely to be a priority, Schwartz said.
“Companies are trying to strike the right balance to make clear they’ve got an inclusive workplace where everyone is welcome, and they want to get the best talent, while at the same time trying not to alienate various parts of their employees and customer base who might feel one way or the other,” Schwartz said. “It’s a virtually impossible dilemma.”
That situation, however, is largely self-inflicted for organizations that previously saw virtue-signaling their woke values as a sort of workaround, allowing them to continue engaging in exploitative, anti-consumer practices without fearing a shakedown from leftist agitators who made up in political influence what they lacked in popular support.
A recent survey by Pew Research Center showed that support for DEI policies was on the decline. The share of workers who said focusing on workplace diversity was mostly a good thing fell to 52% in the October survey, compared to 56% in a similar survey in February 2023. Rachel Minkin, a research associate at Pew, called it a small but significant shift in short amount of time.
However—not everyone is pleased with the trend. Organizations that have profitted immensely from workshops and consulting contracts that promote arbitrary and unproven DEI best practices are likely to lose out as the pendulum swings back to normal.
Walmart says its U.S. businesses sourced more than $13 billion in goods and services from “diverse” suppliers in fiscal year 2024.
“This is inconsistent with the Walmart I know,” fumed Marc Morial, CEO of the National Urban League, which has worked with Walmart on DEI efforts in the past.
He called the company’s pullback from DEI “stunning” and “unexpected.”
Morial claimed DEI policies were how organizations ensured compliance with federal anti-discrimination laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Any suggestion of favoritism or preferential treatment “is really defamatory against what DEI represents,” he whined.
Morial warned that Walmart would see “a strong message” to the decision, but that left-wing activists were “first very interested in dialogue” with Walmart executives.
There will be more companies pulling back from their DEI policies, but among those whose politics have become too firmly entrenched in the corporate culture, there may also be some lingering resistance, provided they can continue to get away with preserving the status-quo.
“There are vastly more companies that are sticking with DEI,” claimed David Glasgow, executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at New York University.
“The only reason you don’t hear about it is most of them are doing it by stealth,” Glasgow admitted. “They’re putting their heads down and doing DEI work and hoping not to attract attention.”
Some—including BlackRock itself—are banking on the belieft that a superficial rebranding will placate their detractors and keep them at bay until corporate globalists are able to regroup.
Glasgow advised organizations to stick to their radical values, consumers and other plebian stakeholders be damned, because attitudes toward the topic could change again in the span of four years.
“It’s going to leave them looking a little bit weak if there’s a kind of flip-flopping, depending on whichever direction the political winds are blowing,” he warned.
He also dangled the threat of leftist lawsuits and punitive consequences when the other side regained power for those who strayed from the hive.
“Really think carefully about the risks in all directions on this topic,” Glasgow said.
The Women’s Business Enterprise National Council, a nonprofit that last year named Walmart one of America’s top corporation for women-owned enterprises, said it was still evaluating the impact of Walmart’s news.
It was hoping the company’s announcement reflected a more superficial shift than a sincere intention to comply with the latest legal demands, and that Walmart could instead find technical loopholes to circumvent the spirit of the law.
Pamela Prince–Eason, the president and CEO of the organization, said Walmart should continue to drive contracts to women-owned suppliers even if the company has no explicit dollar goals.
“I suspect Walmart will continue to have one of the most inclusive supply chains in the World,” Prince–Eason wrote. “Any retailer’s ability to serve the communities they operate in will continue to value understanding their customers, (many of which are women), in order to better provide products and services desired and no one understands customers better than Walmart.”
RaShawn “Shawnie” Hawkins, senior director of the HRC Foundation’s Workplace Equality Program, said companies that “abandon” their commitments workplace inclusion policies were “shirking their responsibility to their employees, consumers, and shareholders.”
Hawkins said the buying power of LGBT customers was powerful and insisted that the index would have record participation of more than 1,400 companies in 2025.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
