this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2026
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508
US firms that kept DEI policies despite ‘go woke, go broke’ threats thrived (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 1 day ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world
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Companies that kept policies did just as well financially, even after Trump’s executive order, as those that didn’t

Conservative backlash was supposed to put an end to the diversity, inclusion and equity (DEI) movement as companies were warned “go woke, go broke”.

In January 2025, Donald Trump delivered a death knell, ending DEI within the federal government with executive orders and threatening to target companies that still supported it. Companies including Google, Goldman Sachs, McDonald’s and Walmart that had embraced DEI years earlier fell into line and announced an end to their policies.

But new research published on Friday and shared exclusively with the Guardian found that companies that resisted the pressure and kept their DEI practices, including Costco, Apple and Delta Air Lines, performed just as well as their competitors who pulled back.

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[–] grayclouds@lemmy.world 4 points 18 hours ago

DEI is what companies use to pacify wronged employees who belong to minority groups. "We're not discriminating against you because we have this corporate slop to point at" kind of deal. In my experience anyway. The backlash against DEI just makes it look more legitimate as an anti-discrimination effort.

The company is going to fuck people over whether said people are pro or anti DEI. They just want your labor and your money.

[–] Bwaz@lemmy.world 4 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Haven't shopped Target since. Shop Costco regularly.

[–] turtlesareneat@piefed.ca 21 points 1 day ago (5 children)

Folks here's the deal. Corporations have an obligation to the shareholder over everyone else. Costco doesn't give a shit about consumers. Costco cares about nurturing and communicating their brand, which is all about being pro-consumer.

Target doesn't give a shit about you. Apple doesn't give a shit about you. Nike. Whatever brand you love, it doesn't love you back. Unless you're a shareholder and you want a very specific thing.

Corporations that kept DEI had their internal prognosticators tell them "it'll blow over and be better for us if we stay the course." That's it. Never in any meeting did someone utter the words "It's the right thing to do, that's why."

Corporations that tossed DEI made a different calculation.

That's it.

So celebrate that our side currently has a very good market segment in all these corporations, but don't celebrate anything else.

[–] protogen420@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 5 hours ago

DEI since the start also was completely just "lets look like we care about it", I wouldn't be suprised if it is completely utterly innefective at achieving the stated goal of promoting inclusion

[–] unknownman@lemmy.zip 2 points 18 hours ago

This is the truth.

[–] vithigar@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 day ago

Costco doesn't give a shit about consumers. Costco cares about nurturing and communicating their brand, which is all about being pro-consumer.

You're not strictly wrong, and I understand that corporations are not anyone's friends, but the line between these two distinctions is vanishingly thin.

[–] cloudshouter@lemmy.zip 8 points 1 day ago

None of the people who hated DEI/affirmative action could ever tell me what it actually is. None of the people who say “let the market decide” understand or recognize that there are serious financial benefits to diversity based practices.

[–] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Yep. It's the same reason why corporations generally support women in the workplace, too. It's an amoral calculation about more consumption.

But I'm pretty sure I saw that corps also came down on racial equality in the Civil Rights era because it was better for business, they figured. Again, not necessarily a moral choice.

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 8 points 1 day ago

Call their bluff, every time. They're always bluffing, they're liars, it's a MAGA core characteristic.

[–] Gork@sopuli.xyz 105 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I will never ever set foot in a Target again when they completely abandoned their commitment to DEI.

[–] vladmech@lemmy.world 25 points 1 day ago

Haven’t been in one since Jan 2025 when they let ICE use their back parking lots to stage in my city.

[–] sudoer777@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

For cheap furnature the only alternative I'm aware of though is IKEA and they're a BDS target which is probably worse

[–] ZC3rr0r@piefed.ca 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

For what it's worth, IKEA is no longer on the list: https://bdsmovement.net/tags/ikea

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[–] HazardousBanjo@lemmy.world 70 points 1 day ago (1 children)

No corporation is pro-working class.

That being said, some are certainly worse than others.

I will forever remain a loyal Costco member if they keep up their pro-consumer practices, including keeping their DEI programs.

[–] SabinStargem@lemmy.today 17 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If we ignore the (good) morality of DEI, there is plenty of pragmatic value in having it: You get to hire the best people for the job, and work with a wider variety of customers.

Woke is good and practical.

[–] huey_m@piefed.social 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

This was a big argument for diversity requirements in universities in the first place (aside from trying to undo historical wrongs) : in brain work especially, having a diverse group of very different cultural experiences can provide valuable insights and ways of thinking and approaching problems that a more mono cultural institution might miss. In my experience this is true. There really is value in ensuring your human brain inputs aren't all the same leading to the same brain work outputs.

[–] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I still laugh that Odyssey made so much fucking money. And still is making money. So far it has grossed over a billion. This, after so many conservatives told us that it was going to fail bigly because "woke".

Somehow, I feel this is another thing (like Gamergate or Obama winning 2 terms, or them losing the stupid culture war over gay marriage, etc.) that will break the brains of conservatives and they will mete out their backlash later on normal Americans for it...

Anyway, imagine people not choosing their entertainment based on a movie being "woke" or not....just because something like Star Wars The Acolyte sucked ballz and was "woke" doesn't mean people were rejecting it because it's "woke", and that's where the conservative culture warriors go so wrong on culture-war bullshit.

Same goes for companies that bent the knee - or not - when it came to the wishes of the most hateful people in the country. I'm not surprised at all to learn that a company not being "woke" didn't really matter to consumers and they were not really rewarded for getting rid of DEI or whatever, and that those that didn't get rid of it were not punished.

I'm sure quite a few Qnut types think that everyone in America is going to just start showering non-DEI companies with cash, but that's not how it works, LOL.

[–] nonfuinoncuro@lemmy.zip 3 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

wait wat why was odyssey supposed to be woke?

[–] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 1 points 14 hours ago

What the other poster said, I think. The right were and are having meltdowns over it.

Elon has claimed he's making his own AI-generated version that is appropriately "historic". You know, for a myth.

These people are stupid and crazy.

[–] overcast5348@lemmy.world 2 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

Didn't you see that Elliot and Lupita had roles in the movie and appeared on screen for a few minutes? That's woke - to some people.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 points 1 day ago

actually conservative gave it so much free press thats why people went to watch it, not for its accuracy, but for the novelty to piss cons off.

[–] vala@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

performed just as well as their competitors who pulled back.

Takeaway: no one cares.

[–] OwOarchist@pawb.social 1 points 1 day ago

Takeaway: all the corps are raking in shittons of money as they price gouge us on everything, and "woke" or the lack of it doesn't change that.

[–] Jaysyn@lemmy.world 30 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

The correct saying is, "Go Fash, Lose Cash."

Apple absolutely shouldn't be in this list. They are basically working for ICE at this point.

[–] sudoer777@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Also they're a shit company for so many other reasons

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[–] kestrel7_7@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I’ve just been saying “go woke or go broke” for a little while now.

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[–] mechoman444@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The issue here isn’t necessarily DEI itself. The fact that some companies performed better after implementing DEI programs and policies doesn’t necessarily mean they performed better simply because they became more inclusive. I think what may have actually happened is that these companies changed their hiring methods and policies in ways that reduced nepotism, cronyism, and other forms of favoritism, creating a more merit-based hiring system. And of course, that can translate into better profits because you’re hiring the best-qualified employees rather than your cousin, brother, sister, or some guy who happens to look like you.

[–] DebraBucket@lemmy.world 23 points 1 day ago (2 children)

because you’re hiring the best-qualified employees rather than your cousin, brother, sister, or some guy who happens to look like you

That was the whole point of DEI. Data showed that diverse companies were more profitable. Addressing bias (like nepotism), especially unconscious bias (“I trust this guy more ~because he looks like me~”) was a primary initiative in DEI. The other was to encourage people who don’t normally speak up (either because they never get hired or because the environment is less psychologically safe for people like them) to do so and challenge group think. It was never meant to be”lower the bar”, but it was meant to force critical thinking around what the bar is.

[–] onlyhalfminotaur@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That's way too nuanced for anti-DEI folks to understand.

[–] OwOarchist@pawb.social 2 points 1 day ago

The instructions on a shampoo bottle are way too nuanced for anti-DEI folks to understand.

[–] mechoman444@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I know the other guy thinks I'm not nuanced enough to understand this, but the issue is that you guys aren't actually understanding the distinction I'm making.

The side effect of DEI was, in many cases, a push toward combating nepotism, cronyism, and arbitrary hiring practices in favor of hiring based on merit. And frankly, that should have been the goal from the beginning. The DEI framework wasn't necessarily required to accomplish that.

If you simply eliminate or curtail nepotism, cronyism, favoritism, and other arbitrary barriers to employment, you are already creating many of the outcomes people associate with DEI: a broader pool of candidates, more equal opportunity, and greater emphasis on qualifications rather than who someone knows or what social group they belong to.

That's where I think the problem ultimately becomes one of semantics and framing. It's similar to what George Carlin was getting at with examples like "shell shock" becoming "post-traumatic stress disorder": sometimes we change the terminology and then end up arguing about the terminology rather than the underlying phenomenon.

By calling the entire project "DEI", diversity, equity, and inclusion, the debate became about the meaning and implications of those words instead of focusing on the actual institutional problems we should be addressing.

And we keep doing this for some reason. We give a perfectly straightforward objective a politically loaded name, and then everyone spends their time fighting over the nomenclature instead of fixing the underlying problem.

Combating nepotism is a great idea. Calling it DEI was, in my opinion, a terrible idea.

The better approach would have been to focus on transparent hiring, equal opportunity, eliminating nepotism and cronyism, and selecting people based on their qualifications and ability to do the job. Those principles naturally produce a more diverse workforce when the old barriers to entry are removed.

And that's the part I think gets lost in the argument: the goal shouldn't be "including people into the workforce." People don't need to be artificially included if the system isn't artificially excluding them in the first place.

Remove the arbitrary barriers, judge people on their qualifications, and let the resulting workforce be whatever it naturally becomes. That's a much easier principle to defend than turning the entire discussion into a fight over what DEI does or doesn't mean.

[–] MrShankles@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

everyone spends their time fighting over the nomenclature instead of fixing the underlying problem

Well said. What you're describing reminds me of something I read long ago: essentially, auditioning for a position in an orchestra. But the person played from behind a curtain, so that the listeners/judges wouldn't have bias. Simple, effective, and you get the most talented players in your ensemble

How to implement best practices, without giving it a label that malicious ass hats can manipulate

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[–] DebraBucket@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The side effect of DEI was, in many cases, a push toward combating nepotism, cronyism, and arbitrary hiring practices in favor of hiring based on merit.

That was not a side effect, that was the intent. I worked on DEI initiatives. Nepotism, managers higher their friends instead of the most qualified candidate was part of those conversations, they were raised by the employees we talked to. All those things are forms of bias.

The DEI framework wasn't necessarily required to accomplish that.

Intentionally addressing bias isn’t necessary to combat people who have a bias against those who are not their friends or family?

By calling the entire project "DEI", diversity, equity, and inclusion, the debate became about the meaning and implications of those words instead of focusing on the actual institutional problems we should be addressing.

That’s literally what you’re doing though. You are claiming the problem is how we named it, and arguing if we had only referred to it as something else, it would not have been a problem.

It’s easy to complain about the efforts trying to address a problem, it’s harder to actually put forth that effort.

Also, if a political group wants to demonize something, it doesn’t matter what you name it, they will demonize it. You had states legalizing Civil Unions instead of Marriages for same-sex couples: they STILL demonized the relationships. People like you were saying “the name Marriage is the problem, just call it something else”. We clearly see now that the name was never the problem.

[–] mechoman444@lemmy.world 1 points 23 hours ago

I actually come across this argument fairly often when engaging with people on platforms like this: “No, actually, I was directly involved with forming/inventing the very thing you're against.” It's a remarkably convenient argument.

But let's give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you were, in fact, involved in forming some kind of DEI policy at the company level. You may very well have personally said, “We're doing this to combat nepotism by design.” I'll give you that.

But that's not what DEI, broadly speaking, was intended to accomplish. I literally cannot find anything indicating that combating nepotism was the defining purpose of DEI. As far as I can tell, the stated purpose of DEI was to address discrimination based on race, sex, disability, and other characteristics and to increase inclusion and representation in the workplace.

Now, here's where I think there is an important distinction. Some of the mechanisms used by DEI initiatives, such as standardized hiring processes, broader recruiting pools, structured interviews, and more objective qualification criteria, can absolutely have the unintended or secondary effect of reducing nepotism, cronyism, and favoritism.

I fully admit there is a connection there, and I would even argue that reducing those practices can be a significant benefit to society. But what something is intended to accomplish, how it accomplishes it, and what ultimately happens as a result are three different things.

A policy can have an outcome that wasn't its primary objective. If DEI hiring practices happened to reduce nepotism by forcing companies to rely less on personal connections and more on standardized qualifications, that's an observable outcome. It doesn't mean combating nepotism was the original purpose of DEI.

And that's where the “I helped create it, so I know what it was for” argument falls apart. Even if you personally designed a particular corporate DEI program with anti-nepotism objectives in mind, your individual intentions don't establish the universal purpose of DEI as a concept. You could have designed your program differently from other organizations.

What could have happened and what did happen are also completely different questions. I have no idea what would have happened if these companies had implemented the exact same anti-nepotism and merit-based hiring reforms under a different, less politically charged name. Maybe the outcomes would have been similar. Maybe they wouldn't have. That's a counterfactual, and we can't simply treat it as established fact.

You can sit here and yell at windmills until the cows come home, but changing the terminology doesn't change the underlying distinction: intent is not outcome, and correlation is not purpose.

And finally, the constant comparison to gay marriage doesn't really work. DEI and gay marriage are two completely different issues involving different historical circumstances, different policy mechanisms, and different desired outcomes. Whatever similarities exist in the political controversy surrounding them don't establish that the two issues will, or should, follow the same trajectory.

[–] Meron35@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Go nazi declare bankruptcy

Redpilled, Get killed

Go fash lose cash

Lick boot, lose loot

Go right eat shite

All incel, no braincells

Nazi salute, go destitute

ADL, common L

Ku Klux, lose bucks

Apartheid, all downside

[–] uberdroog@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago (5 children)

Its is weird because I know people who work are target and a few who have been there for going on 30 years and their stories tend to be positive and describe a very inclusive environment. I mean compared to other companies in that market...

[–] Folstar@lemmus.org 29 points 1 day ago (3 children)

For decades, Target was a fairly progressive and forward thinking company (by big company standards). That was why it was such a kick in the dick when Target dropped DEI.

The whole situation was kind of weird since the CEO, Brian Cornell, who had been a vocal supporter of DEI and Target was wildly successful with him at the helm, seemed to lament the decision to end DEI... so who made that choice? The leader who pushed DEI and made us profitable was somehow overruled and it cost the company a shitload of money so now the CEO has to be replaced. What? What the fuck is going on a Target HQ?

[–] ultranaut@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago

It was all bullshit the entire time, the public lamentation over the decision is kayfabe. Target never actually supported anything except making more money, as soon as they thought they could make money being against DEI they jumped ship. It was just a very effective marketing campaign where they faked support because it benefited them financially.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 points 1 day ago

investors probably? he dint resist hard enough. or hes secretly greedy.

[–] UnspecificGravity@piefed.social 14 points 1 day ago

Target is one of the most DELIBERATELY evil retail corporations on earth. They have an entire surveilance and forensic side business developed specifically to coordinate with law enforcement throughout the community, not just inside their stores.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-08-25/how-target-tgt-police-surveilled-black-neighbors-in-inner-cities

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2011/10/21/target-forensics-lab

https://www.minnpost.com/glean/2021/08/targets-funding-of-neighborhood-surveillance-systems-under-scrutiny/

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[–] Godofdirt@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Costco just does the bare minimum of ethical behavior and is somehow one of the most ethical companies in America

[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 day ago

Lmao the same Apple that sucked up to the Trump admin?

[–] dudeface@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Where I work is pretty woke still, I don’t know why someone cares much about what their workmates are or want to be

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