STRUCK BY: The Death of DEI

Published 3 months ago • 1 min read

Dozens of companies have rolled back their DEI initiatives this year - including Target, Amazon, Meta, and just this week, Google. Each company has cited slightly different reasons, but most of the cuts have been viewed by employees and the media alike as related to the Trump administration’s anti-DEI stance and its stated goal of dismantling DEI.

It’s confusing (and for me, sad) to see these companies dropping their DEI programs so soon after making such sweeping commitments to them. And to their employees. Why would they fold in advance to a new presidential administration? Well, maybe they were never too keen on the programs to begin with.

This is where things start feeling like RTO 2.0. Executives never wanted work from home in the first place - it happened because it had to. Now while DEI initiatives weren’t required to stop a deadly pandemic from spreading, they were critically important for companies as their employees demanded them during and after 2020’s racial reckoning. Now that there’s an excuse to get rid of DEI programs, and a perceived need to cut budgets - executives can toss those programs that they never really backed anyway.

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