While this is true, I feel like bad news should be paired with good whenever possible, so: some companies are not just defending, but expanding, their DEI initiatives.
One surprising company on this whitelist is Deutsche Bank. This is surprising because for many years they were Trump's bankers.That they're openly saying "nope, we're keeping those policies, thankyaverymuch" in open defiance of him says quite a lot. Abercrombie & Fitch, Nike, Dollar Tree, Macys, and Tiffany and Co have all hired (or are in the process of seeking to hire) a DEI consultant since the beginning of 2025. The NFL has put out a statement saying they're continuing their DEI program "because it makes the NFL better" (direct quote from Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner). Ulta has opened a DEI program for the first time, and I know we all hate Adobe (I get it, I do, I also hate Adobe), they've actually donated to DEI initiatives this month. And Costco's shareholders voted by a 98%-to-2% margin to retain their DEI programs and practices. The last thing I would say is this, and I'm addressing this to Gen Z and Gen Alpha: before you were adults (or in Alpha's case, before you were born), we had this thing called "affirmative action." What was affirmative action? It was literally just another name for DEI. It's the exact same thing. Conservatives used the phrase as a scare tactic for decades....and the sky didn't fall. And eventually people started going "psh. Yeah, yeah, affirmative action, what-the-fuck-ever, what's for dinner?" They couldn't scare people with it anymore. Companies also couldn't pretend it was still an up-and-coming thing, so they relabeled it. All by itself, that's not a bad thing (I, too, prefer that companies hire on the basis of skill rather than demographic!). It's just that it gave conservatives a new label to latch onto. We already won this battle once. Yes, it's pretty bleak. But I promise, this isn't the end. I know because I saw the dying gasps of "oh no, affirmative action! [scary music]" in the early 2000s. In order to dismantle workplace equality initiatives, so much shit would have to be repealed, and much of it doesn't use the DEI buzzword, which means our current crop of fascist idiots will forget to look for it. This is a bump in the road, not the end of the trail. Keep fighting. "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
@prismatic-bell I really value your approach of "Okay yes that's shit but here's the good" and as I was doom scrolling through the original post I was even thinking "okay but what's the other side look like" and then I got to your addition - I think it's really important to not give in to the defeatism of "oh the bullies are winning" - because the only thing the bullies are is loud. Not to minimize that there are bad things moving, but there are very good people actively resisting. It's not over, not by a longshot.
Also - this line from costco actually gave me more hope than there rest of the post, and that's significant because the post was very positive overall:
And Costco's shareholders voted by a 98%-to-2% margin to retain their DEI programs and practices.
Because that's not... just the CEO being "woke" or leftist or just understanding that DEI benefits EVERYONE, that's the SHAREHOLDERS saying that. That's the people with the money and the power in the company, the ones who want to see the profits who are agreeing with a near-unanimous vote that yes this is important.
"The Shareholders" was not a group of people I expected to be voting that way, much less that hard.
Thank you. I think it's important to acknowledge, for precisely doomscrolling reasons. I've actually thought about starting a side blog for exactly this.
