That’s it. No more accolades for progressive aesthetics, no more corporations at Pride, no more “support ethical businesses.” We need to be absolutely clear who we can rely on and who we can’t.
Trump’s war on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) has sent ripples through US government, businesses and the global capitalist class. He has ordered federal agencies, public services, and US businesses to cut any and all DEI practices on threat of being defunded or prosecuted for “discrimination.” His authority to do this is being challenged. Schools and educational institutions in the US, for example, are launching a lawsuit. However, even as these challenges are put forward, many individuals and organisations — including dozens of US businesses — are already complying.
Do you remember “Fearless Girl”? In 2017 the famous Wall Street “Charging Bull” statue — representing corporate “prosperity and strength” — was joined by a strappy little child in pig-tails, facing down the animal with her hands on her hips. This stupid sculpture was supposed to represent the impact of women in corporate leadership. It was erected by State Street Global Enterprises, a company that has been known for championing equal leadership opportunities in the corporate world, expecting boards in major indexes to be 30% female and S&P 500 companies to have at least one racial minority director. This is already a project that we have very little stake in — we want to strip the power of board rooms, not put more women and minorities in them. But even this corporate gesture at feminism and equality was, as it turns out, very shallow. Within a month of Trump’s executive order these requirements had been dropped. No word on whether they are planning to scrap the statue.
How about when conservatives were losing their mind about progressive Millers Lite commercials? Like the Women’s History Month commercial that called out the objectification of women in beer advertising. The conservatives needn’t have worried, as it turns out. Miller’s parent company, Coors, responded to Trump’s order as early as 4 September, when they took steps such as shifting DEI training initiatives to focus on “business objectives” and announcing they would stop participating in external diversity surveys. Target, which had already curbed its Pride merchandise in response to Right wing backlash, will also be winding back DEI initiatives, “in step with the evolving external landscape.” Other companies that have ditched diversity include Uber, Pepsi, Google, Meta, Amazon and McDonalds.
Calls to ditch these companies for more “ethical” businesses is missing the point. The point is that we can’t trust corporations. Coors had previously been awarded a “perfect 100” from the Human Rights Campaign for its LGBTQ policies. In fact, many of the companies now ditching DEI were formerly lauded as progressive. For those who have been paying attention, Zuckerburg’s embrace of Trump-style machismo isn’t as abrupt as it may seem; but even Meta used to style itself as progressive. Sherly Sandberg, former Chief Operating Officer at Facebook, was literally the author of Lean In.
The impact of this is being felt globally. Pride in Canada lost funding as several corporate sponsors who do business in the US pulled out of the festival. This is a grim illustration of the chilling effect which Trump’s moves could have internationally. It is also a reaffirmation of what many queer activists have been saying for decades: corporations don’t belong at Pride in the first place. Pride should be an opportunity to build grassroots, community support with and among the queer community, not a PR opportunity for brands. The silver lining of this moment is that it is shattering the illusion that accolades — gold stars, rainbow ticks, “perfect 100”s — are a reliable way to identify our allies or an effective means of holding businesses to account.
This isn’t to say that we have nothing to lose from the rollbacks of DEI. Along with hollow acts of branding and ineffective managerial initiatives, rollbacks on DEI will involve rollbacks of real protections for workers. All of these attacks have the potential to significantly weaken the rights of workers from marginalised backgrounds, impacting a wide range of groups from women, to racial minorities, LGBTQ people and disabled people. They could re-entrench discrimination and systemic barriers in employment, and create a more hostile workplace environment. As one example: in the US, the body charged with enforcing anti-discrimination laws in the workplace have been ordered to stop processing LGBTQ+ related claims. All of this also has serious implications for workers’ freedom of speech, as certain words and phrases that suggest attention to inequality and affirmative action are flagged for censorship.
With painful predictability, Winston Peters is jumping on the anti-DEI bandwagon, proposing legislation to remove DEI provisions from New Zealand public service. This is on top of the coalition government’s current agenda of cutting back “race-based policies”, meaning initiatives targeted to improve outcomes for Māori.
The answer to these attacks is to build our own strength to defend our rights in the workplace. Corporations can afford to drop progressive initiatives when it is no longer convenient to them. As the people directly impacted by them, we don’t have this luxury. As we are seeing, “equity” initiatives from above mean little without organising from below to back them up. Workers’ power, and especially our power to take industrial action against unfair or unsafe working conditions, is our best defence. More than this, organising together for our rights, from below, is also the best way for us to reaffirm our solidarity and commitment to justice and equality.
Image credit: “Queer Liberation Not Rainbow Capitalism” by Aloyisius is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
