Posted on 09/08/2024 5:20:00 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Last month, Brown-Forman Corporation, the parent company of Jack Daniels, announced that it would scale back the diversity, equity, and inclusion policies that critics say violate nondiscrimination law. Specifically, the company stated that it would no longer pursue “quantitative workforce and supplier diversity ambitions,” effectively ending efforts to engineer a specific corporate demography via racial and gender quotas.
Compensation will now be tied strictly to business performance, the company added, rather than to metrics that incentivize discrimination. Brown-Forman also pledged to review all training programs to ensure they align with the firm’s “evolved strategy,” signaling a potential departure from the more aggressive DEI training methods commonplace in corporate America.
Two days earlier, Harley-Davidson made a similar pivot. The motorcycle giant announced the end of its “supplier diversity goals,” according to which it had considered suppliers’ race when allocating contracts. Harley also dissolved its “DEI function” and vowed that future workforce training would be directly related to business needs, devoid of what it termed “socially motivated content.”
The growing number of corporations pledging to abandon “antiracist” policies and to restore the primacy of profit-seeking is encouraging. Only time will tell if their statements are sincere. While we wait to find out, it’s worth considering another detail of this reversal: Why now?
The efforts of activists and journalists like Robby Starbuck and my colleague Christopher Rufo have played an important role in these developments. Their work has exposed discriminatory corporate policies and raised public awareness to a critical mass.
A more cynical interpretation, however, may help explain these decisions, too. Corporate decisionmakers may be pulling back from “woke” initiatives because they care more about legal exposure than they do about ideology.
Courts are ever-more willing to hold executives responsible for racial discrimination. In a little-noted consensus, at least eight of the 13 U.S. Courts of Appeals—all those taking a position on the issue so far—have agreed that the individuals who participate in racial contracting discrimination are liable for the harms caused, even if a lawyer signed off on the practice. Since the 1970s, that liability has extended to directors who vote for discriminatory policies.
State actions have had the same effect. State laws across the country hold officers and directors personally liable for knowing violations of the law, regardless of whether those decisionmakers thought that law-breaking would be profitable. Plus, an open letter from 13 state attorneys general, published in July 2023, reminded corporate America that DEI-inspired discrimination is illegal. And state laws generally bar corporations and insurers from covering the damages awarded to plaintiffs for intentional law violations. In other words, personal liability for racial discrimination threatens to be really personal.
American law increasingly holds corporate officials personally liable for their companies’ discriminatory actions, as I elaborate in a new law review article. For years, business schools and corporate summits have been obsessed with DEI, despite the legal risks that such policies entail. Now, as corporate leaders become more aware of the potential personal consequences for racial discrimination, they are reconsidering their positions. They seem to get that they are, quite literally, on the hook.
As this awareness spreads, it will become harder for holdouts to deny that they’ve knowingly violated the law. Thus, corporate decisionmakers should consider the mounting risks of declining to challenge their “woke” institutional investors.
Those managers may like to hear about environmental, social, and governance initiatives, for example, but corporate leaders should ask themselves whether it’s worth betting their own savings and homes on the legitimacy of ESG-related requests. It isn’t.
Executives of corporations beholden to DEI should pivot accordingly—while they still can.
Those managers may like to hear about environmental, social, and governance initiatives, for example, but corporate leaders should ask themselves whether it’s worth betting their own savings and homes on the legitimacy of ESG-related requests. It isn’t.
Executives of corporations beholden to DEI should pivot accordingly—while they still can.
They just put on another mask.
I’ll believe it when I stop seeing blacks in every commercial.
If they are that stupid, then how did they ever attain to the level of “executive?” Never mind.
That and a lot of backlash from large stockholders.
My city’s school district is putting out feelers to start busing again because the schools have too many black chlidren or almost completely black district schools.
Throughout the hagiographical newspaper narrative nary a word is spoken why little white children are not “learning” alongside the blacks. Subjecting children to the current race flogging narrative that whites are inherently evil and racist and have caused all suffering in the world is not an inducement to learning.
Besides which, the violence in those schools has teachers scared. That information did make it into the newspapers narrative.
Woke is discriminatory by design. It pressures companies to hire based on politics instead of competency.
In the hospital I worked in for 25 years we had a few gays both male and female. Most of them did their job well in a professional manner. Their were a few malcontents as in all hospitals. Most of the malcontents were straight.
The best nurse I worked with was gay. I liked working with her because she always did her job correctly and quickly.
Woke is discriminatory by design. It pressures companies to hire based on politics instead of competency.
Companies always want to avoid controversy. And the Left gets to decide just what is “controversial”, it gives them The “Heckler’s Veto”.
IMO-—IF YOU ARE SMART enough to be CEO of a SUCCESSFUL entity-—YOU SHOULD ALREADY KNOW that MERIT IS WHAT MADE THAT HAPPEN -—
NOT D E I.
I’ll believe it when I stop seeing blacks in every commercial.
Black people buy stuff too. If it bothers you that much cut the cord, go to streaming, and get an adblocker.
Oh, right.
We’re supposed to believe they suddenly give a 💩.
SNORT.
I’m still betting that most of them are still doing it. They just changed the names.
Trust but verify.
It isn’t just that black people buy stuff.
Duh.
It’s that corporate America seems to think that blacks are more brand conscious and brand loyal.
Whether that’s true or not...
It’s certainly what big biz is hoping.
Big Biz also seems to think that blacks are dumb enough to buy stuff just because it’s being advertised by someone with a similar skin color.
I wouldn’t pin the success of my business model on that.
Or Advertisers see black people as easy marks.
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