Listen carefully and you will catch the screeching of brakes being slammed on the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion movement – otherwise known as DEI – across corporate America.
The latest company to put the skids on DEI is the Ford Motor company.
Earlier this week, the US car maker told employees that after taking a ‘fresh look’ at its DEI policies over the last year, it had decided to pull the plug on most of them.
Signing off: Ford is the latest company to put the skids on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
The change of heart came via an internal email to staff when Ford’s chief executive, Jim Farley, told them it will no longer take part in an annual survey from an LGBTQ advocacy group – the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index – even though it has always had perfect scores.
As well as stopping quotas for minority dealerships and suppliers, he wrote that Ford will also be making changes to corporate sponsorships. That is going to upset some interesting rainbow-coloured lobbying groups.
As Farley added: ‘We are mindful that our employees and customers hold a wide range of beliefs.’
Yet only four years ago, after George Floyd’s murder in 2020, Ford was in the vanguard of DEI, publicly stating: ‘We are not interested in superficial actions. This is our moment to lead from the front and fully commit to creating the fair, just and inclusive culture that our employees deserve.’
Which is why Ford’s decision to take a backseat is such a big swing away from movement. It is one of the country’s oldest and most venerated companies, employing 177,000 across the US.
The fact that it is brave enough to challenge the current orthodoxy, which has swept like wildfire through corporations and institutions, says much about the changing zeitgeist.
But it is not the only one. A few days ago, Milwaukee-based Harley-Davidson announced on the X social media site that it had halted all ‘DEI function’ in April.
The historic motorcycle manufacturer is also pulling out of the Human Rights Campaign’s scoring index, and is scrapping any ‘socially motivated content’ from its employee training materials.
True to its origins, Harley-Davidson is not hanging about.
It has scrapped all hiring quotas and no longer has ‘supplier diversity spend goals’, which translated from corporate DEI gobbledegook means that it has suspended goals to spend the company’s money across businesses which are operated by those from diverse backgrounds.
A ND that gets to the nub of the matter, doesn’t it? It is what makes the entire DEI fashion such a nonsense, and a dangerous nonsense at that, as what is happening is that rather than uniting people, the movement ends up dividing them by identities or characteristics. Or whatever other difference the DEI people come up with.
Everyone is diverse. In fact, the word comes from the Latin diversus, meaning various. It is also why the diversity movement is fizzling out because the concept simply doesn’t stack up, either economically, socially or culturally.
Ford and Harley-Davidson are not the only high-profile companies which are going into reverse. They follow on from agricultural machinery maker John Deere & Co and Tractor Supply, which also both scrapped their diversity programmes earlier in the summer.
Others which have scratched their programmes include home improvement chain Lowe’s and Brown-Forman, the Kentucky based giant US drinks company and maker of Jack Daniels whisky.
So what’s changed and why now? One reason is the sheer impracticality of running DEI policies since they don’t add up.
Another is the successful campaigning of conservative activist Robby Starbuck, who has been leading the charge against DEI ever since a Supreme Court decision earlier this year which upended affirmative action in US colleges.
A former Hollywood music video director, Starbuck has been running a one-man crusade – mainly on X where he has attracted half a million followers – targeting big corporates. His argument is pretty straightforward: stay neutral, and stay away from ideological issues.
Investors appear to agree. The share prices of all the companies which have pulled out of DEI have barely budged, rather confirming that their mad-cap rush to become super-trendy by adopting the DEI fad was but a mirage.
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