Summary

Walmart is scaling back its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts amid conservative backlash and changing cultural pressures.

The company removed LGBTQ-themed items, stopped sharing data with advocacy groups, and phased out supplier diversity programs and its Center for Racial Equity, created in 2020.

Walmart also rebranded its diversity roles, though it will continue funding events like Pride parades under stricter guidelines.

Activists opposing DEI policies, like Robby Starbuck, have praised these changes.

  • TheTechnician27@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Walmart isn’t my friend? It isn’t a friend of the working class? A friend of marginalized groups? Wow, I’m just so shocked that it only pretends to be these things for prof-- Just kidding, fuck Walmart. Arguably in the top 5 worst extant companies to ever come out of the US and a parasite on communities everywhere. Needs to be boycotted as much as practicable.

  • StopTouchingYourPhone@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Thanks for the heads up OP. Everyone reading probably knows someone who works there or has worked there themselves. Everything they do sets a weighty precedent for workers, to put it mildly.

    its former chief diversity officer role is now called the chief belonging officer

    … these petty assholes.

    I wish this news bit had at least mentioned Walmart’s White Christian fundamentalist roots. Or how they destroy local businesses and source overseas for their ‘free market,’ their anti-union activism, low wages, shit healthcare options, well-documented sexism and racism in the workplace, etc. In 2020, Walmart president and CEO Doug McMillon was an advisor to Trump. Walmart’s political spending in 2024 alone should’ve been at least a footnote. Context matters so much.

  • Hideakikarate@sh.itjust.works
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    8 months ago

    I was in one recently and one of the workers was wearing a rainbow cape with the Walmart star thing on it. I thought it was neat. Now I worry for this person.

    • Zahille7@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Unrelated, but I was shopping in a local Walmart a couple years ago, and they had one of their employees (who I assume was either a choir kid in high school or in a choir program at college) singing close to the front of the store. He sounded really good, I just thought it was weird Walmart was doing that. I think it was for some fundraiser or something.

    • Seleni@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Really, that’s what these businesses are good for: a barometer of social pressures and cultural views.

      A poll can be twisted whichever way, pundits on TV can say whatever they want, but at the end of the day a company will do what makes it the most money. It’s the truest measure of what the majority of society thinks.

      So if being LGBTQ friendly gets them more money, they will, and if being nasty to LGBTQ people gets them more money, they’ll do that.

      Them pulling LGBTQ stuff back is far more a condemnation of society than of the company.

    • ImADifferentBird@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      8 months ago

      I’ve been avoiding them for decades now. What they do to labor, what they do to suppliers, now this. And to top it all off, it’s just a really unpleasant place to shop.

  • FabledAepitaph@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    If I weren’t already not shopping at Walmart, I would be excited to begin not shopping at Walmart in response to this. Can’t win 'em all.

    • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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      8 months ago

      The Walmarts near me pushed all the local businesses out like 2 or 3 decades ago, but now they are shutting some of the stores down… so now the closest Walmart is like an hour away.

      Luckily some of the business is returning, but for every useful business that opens, another vape shop opens.

  • GHiLA@sh.itjust.works
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    8 months ago

    I still got my Frog and Toad shirt before they were pulled off the shelf.

    They so were. Come on.