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Walmart joins the growing list of corporations retreating from diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, in response to mounting pressure from conservative activists.
The big-box retailer, which is the nation’s largest private employer with about 1.6 million workers, revealed on Monday its decision to scale back various diversity programs.
Walmart will cease selling certain LGBTQ-related items on its website and will not renew its commitment to the Center for Racial Equity. This nonprofit organization, established by the retail giant in 2020, following nationwide protests triggered by George Floyd’s death, was initially supported by a $100 million, five-year pledge to combat systemic racism.
Additionally, Walmart will no longer provide data to the Human Rights Campaign and similar organizations that monitor corporate LGBTQ policies. The company has also gradually discontinued its supplier diversity initiatives, which previously offered favorable financing terms to underserved groups, including women, people of color, veterans and LGBTQ.
Moreover, Walmart has shifted away from using the term “DEI” in various company materials, job titles and employee groups. As part of this change, the company has renamed its former “chief diversity officer” position to “chief belonging officer.”
“We are willing to change alongside our associates and customers who represent all of America,” Walmart said in a statement this week. “We’ve been on a journey and know we aren’t perfect, but every decision comes from a place of wanting to foster a sense of belonging, to open doors to opportunities for all our associates, customers and suppliers and to be a Walmart for everyone.”
Several major corporations, including Ford, Lowe’s, Boeing and Harley-Davidson, have scaled back their DEI and environmental, social and governance programs in response to external pressures.
The Society for Human Resource Management, the world’s largest human resources organization with about 340,000 members, recently announced that it will get rid of the word “equity” from its DEI strategy.
“We’re going to lead with inclusion, because we need a world where inclusion is front and center,” SHRM CEO Johnny C. Taylor Jr. wrote in a LinkedIn post. “And that means inclusion for all, not some people. Everyone has a right to feel that they belong in the workplace and that they are included.”
While these programs have created valuable opportunities for historically underrepresented groups and reversing them could hinder progress in addressing systemic inequalities within the workplace, concerns have arisen about the unintended consequences.
In a landmark case, Asian American students, represented by Students for Fair Admissions, sued Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, alleging that affirmative action policies discriminated against them in college admissions.
The lawsuit claimed that these universities imposed a “soft quota” system that artificially limited Asian American admissions despite their strong academic performances. This legal challenge, which reached the United States Supreme Court, ultimately led to the end of race-based affirmative action in college admissions in 2023.
The Shift From DEI To MEI
A new approach to hiring and workplace diversity is gaining traction across corporate America, challenging long-standing DEI initiatives. This emerging movement advocates for a system dubbed “Merit, Excellence, and Intelligence,” which emphasizes selecting candidates based solely on their qualifications, abilities and intelligence. Proponents argue that MEI offers a more equitable and effective method for building high-performing teams, moving away from demographic considerations to focus exclusively on individual merit.
Alexandr Wang, CEO of Scale AI, a cloud-based data training and validation solutions company primarily for machine learning and artificial intelligence applications, announced in June that he was codifying his startup’s MEI hiring policy, which has garnered praise from tech leaders like Elon Musk, but has also sparked debate about the role of diversity in hiring practices.
In a company blog post, Wang wrote, “We hire only the best person for the job, we seek out and demand excellence, and we unapologetically prefer people who are very smart. That’s why this is the time to codify a hiring principle that I consider crucial to our success: Scale is a meritocracy, and we must always remain one.” He added, “We treat everyone as an individual. We do not unfairly stereotype, tokenize, or otherwise treat anyone as a member of a demographic group rather than as an individual.”
Wang argued that meritocracy and diversity are not diametrically opposed, stating, “There is a mistaken belief that meritocracy somehow conflicts with diversity. I strongly disagree. No group has a monopoly on excellence. A hiring process based on merit will naturally yield a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and ideas. Achieving this requires casting a wide net for talent and then objectively selecting the best, without bias in any direction. We will not pick winners and losers based on someone being the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ race, gender, and so on. It should be needless to say, and yet it needs saying: doing so would be racist and sexist, not to mention illegal.”
While traditional DEI practices often aim to increase representation of historically underrepresented groups, MEI focuses solely on individual qualifications without explicit diversity targets.
Scale AI has achieved significant success, with an anticipated annual recurring revenue of $1.4 billion by the conclusion of 2024 and a year-on-year growth rate of 200%.
Source: Forbes
