We’ll Miss DEI When It’s Gone

As millions took to the streets in June of 2020 to protest racial injustice following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon decided that it was time for his company to take a stand. 

“We want to ensure continued internal movement for Black, African American, and other diverse associates through the talent pipeline,” he wrote in a statement. “We will be focused on listening, learning and elevating the voices of our Black and African American associates, ensuring that we drive changes that will lead to creating a Walmart where everyone feels included, valued, and has the equal opportunity for growth.”

The statement, titled “Advancing Our Work on Racial Equity,” was published on June 12, 2020. It was hardly unique—there were dozens of similar statements from companies like Walmart released throughout the summer of 2020, nearly all of which involved the adoption of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion—or DEI—frameworks. 

Walmart donated $5 million to North Carolina A&T, a historically Black university, via their “Equity in Education Initiative.” The company launched a “Supplier Inclusion Advisory Council” and created “Shared Value Networks.” And it implemented diversity training at all levels of the company. The crown jewel of Walmart’s DEI commitment was the Center for Racial Equity, a nonprofit Walmart launched in 2020 with a $100 million investment. 

A year later, McMillon took a victory lap. “To date, 95% of our officers have participated in two-day racial equity workshops,” he wrote on the first anniversary of Floyd’s death. “We’ve partnered with McKinsey & Co. to deliver one of the most comprehensive studies on Race in the Workplace… we must continue to address systemic racism and the structural inequities that are rooted in this nation’s history of slavery and that persist today.”

McMillon is still Walmart’s CEO. But he’s done celebrating his company’s progress on diversity and inclusion efforts. Last month, Walmart became the largest company to announce massive cuts to all of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives launched in the wake of Floyd’s murder. The 700 billion dollar retailer joins Ford, Boeing, Harley-Davidson, Nissan, and others in retreating from such efforts  after Trump’s victory in November. 

Walmart will no longer participate in the corporate equality index, will stop selling some LGBTQ marketed books and other items, and will phase out supplier diversity initiatives, which are meant to offer help to women, veterans, people of color and the LGBTQ community. On top of all of that, Walmart will eliminate “diversity” from its corporate lexicon entirely, changing titles like “chief diversity officer” to “chief belonging officer.” 

“We’ve been on a journey and know we aren’t perfect, but every decision comes from a place of wanting to foster a sense of belonging, to open doors to opportunities for all our associates, customers and suppliers and to be a Walmart for everyone,” the company said in a statement announcing the transition to “chief belonging officer.” 

This is a significant shift from a company whose own CEO was effusively proclaiming that Black lives mattered less than five years ago. It is also a reflection of a larger reactionary shift: Companies are no longer even making overtures to diversity. Instead, they’re retreating from politics altogether—and, in doing so, handing a huge victory to the right. 

The DEI push that took root in corporate and collegiate America at the start of the decade sprouted from good intentions. Another wave of Black American extrajudicial slaughter—George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmad Arbery—moved many white Americans to think about race, police, and protest in ways they hadn’t before. The rise of DEI sprang from the recognition that there was a real need to correct long systemic harms and destructive cultural norms that specifically harmed Black people.

Good intentions, however, do not necessarily lead to good results. The recognition that structural change was necessary often led to flawed, insufficient programs that offered cosmetic fixes—and a vague sense that something was being done—rather than the difficult work of making the country more equal and just. Not only that, but these programs may have doomed the movement for racial equality from the start. 

Corporations, Democrats, and universities alike quickly skewed too far away from clear, accessible language and policies and favored vapid, overly symbolic actions. DEI programs were intended to correct longstanding problems, but too often were safe and insufficient. Not only that, they were often of a piece of larger symbolic gestures,  like Democratic politicians taking a knee in Kente cloth in the Capitol, making people recite Native American land acknowledgments before events, forcing employees to go through unengaging check-box “racial bias” training, or reading “antiracist” books by gurus like Robin DiAngelo and Ibrahim X. Kendi. 

While some real progress was undoubtedly made, and some Black people belatedly  received opportunities that they had long deserved, DEI in the corporate world was predominantly gestural rather than corrective And yet, the very existence of these gestures and programs—even those that made little difference at all—immediately made them a target for culture warriors on the right. People like former New York Times editor Bari Weiss and conservative activist Christopher Rufo immediately set their sights on “DEI hires” as a means of blocking any form of progress in corporate and political institutions and, by extension, of ensuring that existing, unequal power structures remained entrenched. Over the last half decade, they’ve been remarkably successful at attacking the DEI initiatives because, for companies like Walmart, those initiatives often weren’t that serious to begin with. 

Walmart never really cared that much about racial justice, and there is a raft of lawsuits to prove that; the company’s larger aim is to protect its status as one of the country’s most powerful and profitable corporations, not to build a better or more just Walmart (or, for matter, a better or more just America). For that company and their competitors these efforts were always predominently about ensuring that they wouldn’t be targeted by activists or critics. Making heartfelt statements and pledging $100 million to a racial equity center are positive optics and awarding grants and implementing racial justice workshops allows companies to maintain good public standing while also retaining talent. But there has been little evidence to suggest that those policies have brought about real, lasting change.

The result is a near total reversal of all of the nominal progress that had been made in the wake of Floyd’s murder. But corporations don’t deserve all of the blame. Democrats, both for structural and political reasons, have also failed to advance much meaningful legislation on racial justice issues over the last half decade. There were, to be fair, attempts to advance real and reasonable policy but they all stalled or failed. The George Floyd Act, which would have ended qualified immunity for police officers, created a national police misconduct database, and banned chokeholds, has been in congressional limbo more or less from its inception—talks between Republicans and Democrats collapsed in September of 2021 and have never restarted. During the 2020 election, racial justice and police reform were galvanizing issues for Democrats even before Floyd’s murder: Both rarely came up during the 2024 election. Even if Democrats were to make legislative progress on these issues—an unlikely prospect given that Republicans currently boast a trifecta—they would likely be blocked by conservative judges. 

And so, corporate progress has been the most likely and visible avenue for change—and, at the moment, corporations are signaling that they want to steer away from anything that could prove controversial, particularly if it aligns with liberal priorities. Walmart’s retreat from DEI is a lesson in what corporate social responsibility actually is: Political statements designed not to offer meaningful change but to placate consumers and employees and, perhaps above all, avoid bad press. Five years ago, the statements and shifts offered by Walmart were designed to keep the company from being made a target by liberal activists. Now that conservative activists have targeted DEI measures, they’re retreating. 

In a political climate defined by conflict and inertia, corporations making minor, symbolic changes were also celebrated. But Democrats and activists alike too often confused symbolic progress with actual progress, allowing a successful movement to curdle. As my colleague Alex Shephard wrote back in 2018: “If that branding’s working, it’s not because corporations are filling a void left by politicians, but because our standards for meaningful action are so low.” At the same time, when those efforts were successful, they made companies a target for conservative activists, who have made significant progress in demonizing DEI since 2020. 

The DEI programs that are currently being abandoned were never enough. But they were something to build off of—the start of something, rather than the end. They were, however, often treated as an end in and of themselves. The inability to make these programs both material and digestible to most Americans is why they failed—it’s also, relatedly, why they’ve become such a potent Republican talking point. 

Now Democratic leaders have all but abandoned police reform and companies are throwing out diversity initiatives because Trump is going to be president again and the general sense is that the country has shifted to the right—in part because of fumbling on issues like diversity. Trump, meanwhile, is expected to go fully scorched earth against anything that could be considered remotely DEI adjacent, including important institutions like the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.  

DEI was insufficient and deeply flawed, but what’s coming will surely be far worse. After George Floyd’s death, the country took a small step forward. Now we may be taking 10 steps back.