It’s official: DEI is dead. An executive order ordered the term and associated practices purged across the federal government, which means companies angling for federal contracts are tossing any references to “diversity, equity, and inclusion” down the memory hole, as well. But the Trump administration is just accelerating an existing trend. From Meta to McDonalds, Tractor Supply to Target, corporations have been slashing diversity programs since their heyday circa 2021, with references to DEI in earnings calls plummeting a breathtaking 82%.

Liberal activists are calling for a 40-day national boycott of Target to protest its DEI rollback, with Jaylani Hussein of CAIR telling shoppers, “If you were moved to do something good after the murder of George Floyd, it is time for you to stand up and boycott Target.” Major companies publicly abandoning their commitments to racial equity only adds to the sense of hopelessness many left-leaning Americans feel given the onslaught of reactionary federal policies since Trump took office.

There’s a lot to be horrified about. It’s enough to make a person feel paralyzed, which is the whole point. As Steve Bannon explained during Trump’s first term:

“All we have to do is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done, bang, bang, bang. These guys will never — will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity.”

Corporate DEI rollbacks look like more shit flooding the proverbial zone. It’s not just reactionary politicians that are promoting ethno-chauvinist heteropatriarchy but the place where you work or buy your groceries. This is in addition to the legal erasure of trans people by presidential fiat, the mustering of military force against migrants, the threatened invasions of Gaza, Panama, and/or Greenland…

There’s a lot of bad things to fight against, but friends, I have some Good News. Corporations abandoning diversity, equity, and inclusion doesn’t have to be one of them.

DEI in theory and practice

I want to be clear: multinational corporations funding diversity programs was probably better than multinational corporations not funding diversity programs. There are kids in conservative suburbs who were going to get exposed to pro-Black and LGBTQ-affirming in the aisles of Target or literally nowhere because, sadly, we live in hell.

So if boycotting Target is important for you, your mom, your childhood friend, or your second-favorite coworker, thank you for doing the thing. But here’s the thing—politicians, executives, and tHouGht lEadERs from across the political spectrum have a vested interest in systematically exaggerating what corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion policies actually promised. The right exaggerates DEI because they want a bogeyman to fight against, stoking fears that companies changing their logos for Pride month are about to send American kids off to the FEMA-administered child grooming concentration camps. But liberals also radically oversell corporations’ DEI commitments for equally self-interested reasons.

It might be helpful here to break down what some of these DEI commitments actually were. For Target, the major corporation that may have make the most substantial public commitment to diversity efforts, this entailed:

Forming a committee of senior executives, only half of whom were Black, to begin to study making a plan to improve the Target experience for Black customers and workers;
$10 million to support “long-standing partners” like the Urban League, which is neither a particularly progressive or cash-strapped organization, and;
Sourcing $2 billion in products from Black-owned businesses through this year.

This all seems, on the balance, like a good thing. But it’s not exactly transformative change. Remember that Target only developed such a pronounced racial consciousness after George Floyd protesters torched and looted their stores, which were specifically targeted because Target has also donated huge amounts of money to law enforcement. As security engineer Ian Coldwater explained:

“Target HQ is in Minneapolis. Lake St. Target, which got looted tonight, is literally Target’s experimental site for loss prevention & surveillance policies geared toward poor people. Very few people in the neighborhood like that Target. It’s also why Lake Street Target is so consistently awful in different ways to all the other ones, it’s engineered to be that way.”

To this day, Target’s anti-shoplifting video forensics department is so sophisticated they train the actual police. The company’s DEI commitment evidently didn’t extend to dismantling their mini-surveillance state. Since hourly Target workers are 57% people of color (though most managers are white), it seems to me that one of the most impactful actions the company could have taken for racial justice would have been supporting unionization drives, instituting across-the-board wage increases for its workers… hell, providing a free monthly pizza party for all employees. But none of those were part of Target’s DEI efforts, either, because Target’s diversity plans boiled down to buying products from Black capitalists, giving tax-deductible donations to loaded, reformist Black nonprofits, and forming a committee of highly-paid executives to conduct further planning.

It’s kind of sad that this is supposed to be the ceiling for our imagination concerning liberation and racial justice, but it’s downright offensive that it’s painted as some sort of victory for George Floyd: a man who was neither upper-management at the Urban League nor an entrepreneur who might have his products purchased for sale in Target retail stores but was rather a man murdered by the police in the city that Target’s invested in transforming into an over-policed techno-dystopia.

Beyond DEI and evil

So while corporate capitulation to malignant, reactionary right-wing politics isn’t grand, I’m not sure it’s as significant as we’re led to believe. Target supporting Black businesses was nice while it lasted, but they were funding surveillance tech and law enforcement the whole time. The money they generously donated to charities advancing racial justice was extracted from a low-wage workforce of color. They loudly crowed about supporting DEI policies to honor the memory of George Floyd while pursuing policies that would have murdered him again a thousand times over. With or without Black business collaborations and Pride displays, these people are our enemies.

Sad though not entirely surprising that Brian C. Cornell won’t be the MLK of our generation, but what can ya do

There is a lot to mourn and/or organize about. But capitalist DEI isn’t one of those things. The far-right is flooding the zone with all manner of evil, reactionary bullshit. We need to pick our battles if we’re going to win.

This post has been syndicated from In Struggle, where it was published under this address.