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Listen closely and you’ll hear the screeching brakes coming on the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, also known as DEI, movement in corporate America.
The latest company to put the brakes on DEI is Ford Motor Company.
Earlier this week, the American automaker told its employees that after “taking a fresh look” at its DEI policies over the past year, it had decided to eliminate most of them.
The about-face came via an internal email to staff when Ford CEO Jim Farley told them it would no longer participate in an annual survey by an LGBTQ advocacy group (the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index), despite consistently having perfect scores.
In addition to eliminating quotas for minority-owned dealers and suppliers, he wrote, Ford will also make changes to corporate sponsorships, which is going to upset some very interesting lobby groups.
Farewell: Ford is the latest company to put the brakes on diversity, equity and inclusion
As Farley added: “We recognize that our employees and customers have a wide range of beliefs.”
Yet just four years ago, following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, Ford was at the forefront of DEI, publicly declaring, “We are not interested in superficial actions. This is our moment to lead from the front and fully commit to creating the just, equitable and inclusive culture our employees deserve.”
So Ford’s decision to step down is a big shift. It is one of the country’s oldest and most revered companies, employing 177,000 people across the United States.
The fact that he has the courage to challenge the current orthodoxy, which has spread like wildfire among corporations and institutions, says much about the changing spirit of the times.
But it’s not alone. A few days ago, Milwaukee-based Harley-Davidson announced on social media network X that it had discontinued all “DEI” functions in April.
The long-standing motorcycle manufacturer is also withdrawing from the Human Rights Campaign’s index and removing any “socially motivated content” from its employee training materials.
True to its origins, Harley-Davidson does not sit back and do nothing.
It has eliminated all hiring quotas and no longer has “supplier diversity spending targets,” which translated from corporate DEI mumbo jumbo means it has suspended targets for spending company money on businesses operated by people from diverse backgrounds.
An ND that gets to the heart of the matter, right? It’s what makes the whole DEI movement nonsense, and a dangerous nonsense, because what’s happening is that instead of bringing people together, the movement ends up dividing them by identities or characteristics. Or any other difference that DEI supporters can think of.
We are all diverse. In fact, the word comes from the Latin word diversus, meaning various. That is also why the diversity movement is dying out, because the concept simply makes no sense – economically, socially or culturally.
Ford and Harley-Davidson are not the only high-profile companies backtracking. They follow the lead of farm equipment maker John Deere & Co and Tractor Supply, which also abandoned their diversity programs earlier this summer.
Other companies that have cancelled their programmes include home goods chain Lowe’s and Brown-Forman, the US beverage giant based in Kentucky and maker of Jack Daniels whiskey.
What has changed and why now? One reason is the sheer impracticality of implementing DEI policies, as they are pointless. Another is the successful campaign of conservative activist Robby Starbuck, who has spearheaded the anti-DEI campaign since the Supreme Court issued a decision earlier this year ending affirmative action at American universities.
Starbuck, a former Hollywood music video director, has been waging a one-man crusade (mostly on X, where he has attracted half a million followers) targeting big corporations. His argument is simple enough: stay neutral and steer clear of ideological issues.
Investors seem to agree. The stock prices of all the companies that have pulled out of DEI have barely budged, confirming that their mad dash to become super-hip by embracing the DEI fad was nothing more than a mirage.
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