“We’ve officially run out of doors on this meme,” Robby Starbuck recently posted on X. “Are you tired of winning yet?”
The image shows Starbuck as the Grim Reaper visiting household names like John Deere, Harley Davidson, and Jack Daniels, illustrating Mr. Starbuck’s campaign against the brands’ ill-advised commitment to so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
Starting with an online exposé of Tractor Supply’s DEI practices this summer, Starbuck has provoked a largely consumer-based reaction so powerful that Lowe’s even preempted his revelations with major concessions, including the retailer’s announcement that it is ending its participation with the far-left Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index.
At the heart of Starbuck’s success is the sudden decline of the DEI industry—which figures to take another major hit when Daily Wire podcast host Matt Walsh debuts his “Am I Racist” film lampooning DEI early this fall.
Why has DEI fallen on such hard times that major companies are willing to take drastic measures to avoid wearing the label? After all, just a few years ago, in 2020, companies, schools, government agencies, and others were flocking to adopt the terminology and underlying ideology.
One of the first major indicators that the public perception of DEI had shifted was during the fallout of then-Harvard President Claudine Gay’s disastrous congressional testimony in late 2023. Installed to her post earlier that year, Gay came under increased scrutiny when billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman criticized her poor performance and alleged that her main qualification was her alignment with the school’s DEI initiative.
Meanwhile, the criticism of Democratic Presidential candidate Kamala Harris as a “DEI hire” in her current role as Vice President is rooted in President Joe Biden’s 2019 campaign promise to choose a woman as vice president—someone he also described beforehand as a person “of color and/or a different gender.”
Though President Biden and the media consistently touted the diversity of his cabinet, starting with the Vice President throughout much of his term, the media has downplayed the issue in an attempt to downplay the association between Vice President Harris and DEI created by President Biden’s previous statements. The shift has been as jarring as it has been unanimous among major outlets.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic ruling in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Harvard has played a major role in reshaping the thinking on DEI. Prohibiting the consideration of race or racial quotas in college admissions, the decision—while not binding in employment situations—has created serious legal risk for corporations around analogous Title VII concerns.
This has sent a clear enough message to corporations that many (including Lowe’s, as it cited in its response to Starbuck) are reorienting their hiring and human resources departments in accordance with the ruling’s clear implications.
Microsoft is another major company pulling back on DEI-related initiatives, as the New York Post reports: “The Big Tech giant disbanded the DEI team at the beginning of the month due to ‘changing business needs,’ according to a July 1 email obtained by Business Insider.”
As PragerU points out, DoorDash, Lyft, Wayfair, Zoom, and Snapchat are all making similar changes.
Along with a recent sea change in the culture, a scholarly report published in 2024 at Econ Journal Watch has cast significant doubt on the common assertion that widespread DEI executive hiring policies lead to positive business outcomes.
Reviewing a series of highly relied-upon McKinsey studies dating back to 2015, the authors wrote that they were unable to “quasi-replicate” McKinsey’s conclusions and cautioned company leaders against further reliance on the studies.
Still, there is much work to be done to disentangle corporations from DEI policies—many of which were hastily adopted during the civil unrest of 2020. As the 2024 Viewpoint Diversity Score Business Index found, 91% of the 85 largest tech and finance companies are known to promote divisive concepts associated with radical ideas like Critical Race Theory under the banner of DEI.
As EEOC Commissioner Andrea Lucas wrote just after the Harvard ruling, companies are well-served to take the Supreme Court’s warning that, like discrimination in college admissions, discrimination in employment very likely violates constitutionally protected freedoms.
Companies can make significant progress by adopting alternatives like Carol Swain’s “Real Unity Training Solutions,” which educates businesses, churches, non-profits, and school boards about how to foster organizational unity around shared values and mission, and a respect for the dignity of every individual.”
DEI policies fail to provide equal treatment to or respect for individuals. And they’ve often been used to suppress real diversity by shutting down speech and imposing a divisive, top-down agenda.
Rejecting DEI policies will actually do more to advance diversity in corporate America. On top of that, it’s just good business.