Fearing conservative boycotts, retail giant Walmart has joined other major corporations, including Toyota Motor and Ford Motor, in rolling back diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
According to the Associated Press, Walmart will be pulling out of the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index, and will no longer give priority treatment to suppliers based on race or gender.
In addition, Walmart has chosen not to renew a five-year commitment to a racial equity center established in the wake of the death of George Floyd and the subsequent riots.
In a statement released on Nov. 25, the company wrote, “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 new direction comes after many conservative groups have pressured companies to either limit or abandon their DEI efforts, and after the decisive victory of Donald Trump in the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
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Trump has said that he will be making Joe Biden’s “woke takeover” of Washington a priority of his second term.
One of Trump’s top advisors, Stephen Miller, has harnessed the influence of his America First Legal group to take companies using DEI initiatives to court.
He has also used his group to sue organizations with programs focused on aiding Americans belonging to minority groups.
Some of the companies Miller has sued include CrowdStrike, IBM, Hello Alice, and New York University. Other companies that have been sued by similar groups include Pfizer and Morgan Stanely.
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Online influencer takes credit
A popular conservative online influencer, Robby Starbuck, has taken credit for the change in direction, saying his actions convinced Walmart to make the decision to roll back their DEI initiatives.
In a lengthy post to X, Starbuck wrote that last week he “told execs at @Walmart that I was doing a story on wokeness there. Instead we had productive conversations to find solutions.”
Starbuck said that Walmart will no longer participate in the HRC’s “woke Corporate Equality Index,” and will monitor its product offerings to identify and remove “inappropriate sexual and / or transgender products marketed to children.”
He also says that Walmart will be reviewing all “funding of Pride, and other events, to avoid funding inappropriate sexualized content targeting kids.”
“Remember, Walmart is the #1 employer in America with over 1.6 Million Employees and they have a market cap of nearly $800B. This won’t just have a massive effect for their employees who will have a neutral workplace without feeling that divisive issues are being injected but it will also extend to their many suppliers,” Starbuck wrote.
Starbuck says that with the help of his online peers his efforts have helped influence corporate policy at a number of companies, including Tractor Supply, John Deere, Harley Davidson, Polaris and Indian Motorcycle, among others.
In September, Starbuck told the Financial Times, “The situation these companies are facing is a very different new world where I have a direct line to a sizable portion of their customers. These customers are engaged, and they now understand something very important” their wallets are a weapon.”
