Another major company is pulling back on diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
Conservative activist Robby Starbuck announced on social media that Walmart is “ending their woke policies,” following in the footsteps of Caterpillar, Jack Daniel’s, Harley-Davidson, Tractor Supply, and John Deere, all targeted by Starbuck who has been on a mission to expose and reverse the DEI schemes at various corporations.
“Last week I told execs at @Walmart that I was doing a story on wokeness there. Instead we had productive conversations to find solutions,” Starbuck wrote Monday.
In a video accompanying his post, he explained that in his investigations of various companies, he is not pressing for his own views to be adopted but is advocating for “corporate neutrality.” Walmart is the world’s largest retailer and employs 1.6 million workers in the U.S., according to a Daily Mail report.
MASSIVE news: Walmart is ending their woke policies. I can now exclusively tell you what’s changing and how it happened.
Last week I told execs at @Walmart that I was doing a story on wokeness there. Instead we had productive conversations to find solutions.
Below are the… pic.twitter.com/BD02xJQ0X2
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) November 25, 2024
The company’s agreed-to changes “will send shockwaves throughout corporate America,” according to Starbuck who listed some of the ways the ‘woke’ policies are being rolled back.
Walmart will reportedly stop using the terms “DEI'”and “Latinx” in official communication, will no longer participate in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index which measures workplace inclusion for LGBTQ+ employees. The company will also review “all funding of Pride, and other events, to avoid funding inappropriate sexualized content targeting kids,” according to Starbuck, a former music video director, who grew up in California after his parents fled communist Cuba, and has been on an unrelenting mission to eradicate toxic DEI campaigns at various companies.
He added that Walmart will be monitoring its third-party marketplace to “avoid funding inappropriate sexualized content targeting kids.”
The Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer will not extend a racial equity center established “through a five-year, $100 million philanthropic commitment from the company with a mandate to: ‘address the root causes of gaps in outcomes experienced by Black and African American people in education, health, finance and criminal justice systems,'” Daily Mail explained.
Walmart said it would evaluate “supplier diversity programs and ensure they do not provide preferential treatment and benefits to suppliers based on diversity. We don’t have quotas and won’t going forward. Financing eligibility will no longer be predicated on providing certain demographic data.”
In addition, racial equity training through the Racial Equity Institute will be discontinued and the focus now will be on “Belonging for ALL associates and customers.”
“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 noted. “We’ve now changed policy at companies worth over $2 Trillion dollars, with many millions of employees who have better workplace environments as a result. I’m happy to have secured these changes before Christmas when shoppers have very few large retail brands they can spend money with who aren’t pushing woke policies.”
“Companies like Amazon and Target should be very nervous that their top competitor dropped woke policies first,” he wrote. “Companies can clearly see that America wants normalcy back. The era of wokeness is dying right in front of our eyes. The landscape of corporate America is quickly shifting to sanity and neutrality. We are now the trend, not the anomaly.”
Billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk reacted to the report in a post on X, writing, “The tide has turned.”
The tide has turned https://t.co/Vya9HO6W3x
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 26, 2024
