Walmart dumps DEI programs amid conservative backlash: ‘Biggest win yet’

The world’s biggest retailer isn’t such a fan of DEI efforts any more.

Walmart will be cutting back its “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs and other forms of what conservatives deride as corporate wokeness.

Activist Robby Starbuck, who already had run successful DEI-shaming campaigns against such corporate giants as Tractor Supply, Ford and Harley Davidson, claimed his biggest scalp Monday.

He posted on social media that after telling Walmart executives that he was planning “a story on wokeness there” timed to the massive Black Friday shopping weekend, the company caved and “we had productive conversations to find solutions.”

Among the changes to which America’s largest private employer agreed, according to Mr. Starbuck, are curbing staff DEI training, not participating in the Human Rights Campaign’s gay-friendliness annual index, and reviewing involvement in Pride and other sexually-themed events.

Walmart also agreed to stop using the terms “DEI” and “Latinx” in official communication, to review its marketplace for sexually inappropriate products being marketed as gay material, and no longer consider diversity efforts among its contractors and suppliers.

“We will evaluate supplier diversity programs and ensure they do not provide preferential treatment and benefits to suppliers based on diversity. We don’t have quotas and won’t going forward. Financing eligibility will no longer be predicated on providing certain demographic data,” Mr. Starbuck wrote on X, apparently citing communications with Walmart.

Bloomberg News wrote Monday that it had essentially confirmed Mr. Starbuck’s claims with Walmart itself.

Mr. Starbuck congratulated Walmart for its new direction.

“I have to give their executives major credit because this will send shockwaves throughout corporate America. This is the biggest win yet for our movement to end wokeness in corporate America,” he said, going on to note Walmart’s sheer size and breadth in the American landscape.

But he warned other corporate giants.

“We’ve now changed policy at companies worth over $2 Trillion,” he wrote. “Companies like Amazon and Target should be very nervous that their top competitor dropped woke policies first. I think Target specifically will suffer serious sales problems as a result and Walmart will benefit.”