By Valerie Richardson - The Washington Times - Monday, June 24, 2024

There may no longer be a place at the Walt Disney Company for guys like Dopey, Sneezy, Doc, Peter Pan, Woody or Buzz Lightyear.

Michael Giordano, Disney’s senior vice president for business affairs, said in an undercover video that the entertainment giant makes hiring and advancement decisions based on race, specifically excluding White males from roles and promotions.

“According to these videotapes, Disney blatantly discriminates against Whites — White men in particular,” said James O’Keefe, founder of the O’Keefe Media Group, which conducted the undercover sting investigation.

The video shows Mr. Giordano giving a behind-the-scenes look at Disney’s leftward lurch in hidden-camera conversations at restaurants with undercover investigators that he met through a dating app. He did not realize he was being filmed.

At Disney, he said, “they’re very careful about messaging because they don’t want to get sued for discrimination in either direction. But certainly there have been times where, you know, there’s no way we’re hiring a White male.”

The message isn’t simply unspoken. “There are times when it’s spoken,” he said. Asked how the message is conveyed, he said it could be as blatant as, “There’s no way we’re hiring a White male for this role.”

Mr. Giordano said the company is “very careful about how they message that to agents,” using “buzzwords” and “code words.”

“They might say something like, we’re not looking at the usual suspects for this job,” he said. “So it’s not like a legally actionable thing. But everybody knows what it means.”

Even Mr. Giordano has been affected by the company’s race-based policies. “As far as they’re concerned, I’m a White male,” he said. “And that’s not who they’re looking to promote at the moment.”

The executive, who has spent 11 years with the company, said he has been told by his friends in the human-resources division that “Look, nobody else is going to tell you this, Mike, but they’re not considering any White males for this job. They’re just not.”

Mr. Giordano also said that a person described as “half-Black” was passed over for a promotion because he didn’t look Black enough.

“We wanted to hire somebody in the department a few years ago now who was half-Black, but didn’t, like, appear half-Black,” Mr. Giordano said. “There was a creative executive who was like, ‘We’re not, like, that’s not, that’s not what we wanted.’ They wanted somebody in meetings who would appear a certain way, and he wasn’t going to bring that to the meeting.”

Mr. Giordano also said he could foresee litigation. “It’s kind of feels like where at some point there’s going to be a lawsuit,” he said.

He wasn’t the only one. Sen. Mike Lee, Utah Republican, said that “Disney’s lawyers will be busy. Very busy. Because this Disney exec admitted to hiring (and not hiring) on the basis of race.”

“As it turns out, that’s against the law,” Mr. Lee said on X. “In fact, it has been for the last 60 years.”

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, owner of X, declared: “This is messed up.”

The Washington Times has reached out to the Walt Disney Company for comment.

Mr. Giordano refused to comment when confronted by Mr. O’Keefe in a video released Friday, walking instead to his car and driving off.

“You don’t have authority to put me on tape,” he told Mr. O’Keefe, who replied, “I will put you on tape and I do have that authority under the First Amendment.”

Mr. O’Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas, launched OMG in March 2023 after being forced out by the Project Veritas board. He was sued by the board last year over alleged overspending of donor funds, which he denies.

• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.

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