After major corporations such as John Deere and Ford backtracked from DEI, the biggest backtracking has come from the world’s biggest private employer, Walmart. The retailer, which has 2.1 million employees on payroll worldwide, announced in late November it was dropping several initiatives related to race, sex, and sexual orientation.
Jerry Bowyer, a veteran political activist who leads Bowyer Research, tells AFN the rollback at Walmart marked a “huge” win for opponents of DEI and its twisted reasoning, which is to discriminate against some to help others in the name of diversity and equality.
“This is another inflection point,” Bowyer insists. “It's like the walls of Jericho are falling, and it's really an amazing thing to see."
In its announcement, which came on Nov. 25, Walmart said it would no longer prioritize women-owned and minority-owned businesses for suppliers for its stores.
Walmart also announced it would no longer cooperate with Human Rights Campaign, the gay-rights lobbying group, and its controversial corporate score card. The so-called “Corporate Equality Index” is used by HRC to demand major corporations follow its list of demands, such as “transgender-inclusive benefits,” or else be scored poorly by the bullying LGBT activists.
Participation from the world’s biggest employer is a huge and vital victory for the gay-rights group, which gave Walmart a perfect score of 100 in 2023. A year later, however, Walmart has now announced it will do a better job of watching online sales for LGBT-related items marketed to minors.
According to Bowyer, who is familiar with corporations and their inner workings, any reversal of policy often sets off a “preference cascade” in retail and manufacturing. That is when other corporate executives follow suit after they watch a competitor change direction.
In the case of HRC, that means corporations might end their friendly communications and brace for a stream of bullying accusations. That new stance could possibly end or slow down generous donations, too, such as Walmart’s half-million donation to a gay-rights group, PFLAG.
Those non-profits might still demand a corporate donation, and Walmart might comply, but the November announcement said the corporation will better monitor grant applications for sexualized content that is unsuitable for children.
Starbuck waged a one-man war
A year of remarkable backtracking by corporations can amazingly be attributed to one person, Robby Starbuck. Aided by his X account, and unhappy corporate insiders and their tips, the Tennessee-based political activist reached out to top corporate executives and bluntly asked them to end their DEI policies.
After the announcement by Walmart, Starbuck called it the “biggest win yet for our movement to end wokeness in corporate America.”
As 2024 comes to an end, Starbuck has used his tips and the reach of social media to demand big changes at Ford, Toyota, Harley-Davidson, Lowe’s, Tractor Supply, and now Walmart.
“2024 was the beginning of the end for DEI,” Starbuck wrote in a Dec. 29 post on X.
In his own reply to Starbuck, also posted to X, Bowyer warned Starbuck that people who suggest “it’s all over” for DEI should know many corporate executives he has personally met with have not changed their views. About one-third of those executives showed an “appalling lack of respect for political neutrality and religious liberty and viewpoint diversity.”
Starbuck, replying to Bowyer’s warning, said Bowyer is “correct” that DEI is not dead yet, and to believe so makes people complacent.
“It’s very much an active front in an ideological war for the soul of America,” Starbuck wrote. “We have a long fight ahead so be ready to confront a lot of DEI in 2025 as we dismantle this insanity.”
