The Diversity Backlash: How Corporate America is Quietly Restructuring DEI Programs

Even now, job postings on Walmart’s career website still ask candidates to support the company’s “diversity, equity & inclusion” policies. There are still sections devoted to Hispanic, Black, and women-owned products, as well as a landing page honoring products from LGBTQIA+ founded businesses. All of this occurred months after Walmart made headlines across the country when it declared it was completely abandoning DEI. The announcement was genuine. It turns out that the retreat was much more difficult.

This is the story that is currently unfolding throughout Corporate America—quietly, cautiously, and with an institutional anxiety that renders press releases seemingly pointless. Businesses are announcing rollbacks while assuring investors that nothing significant has changed. While essentially maintaining the underlying programs, they are renaming departments, softening language, and substituting “belonging” for “diversity” in internal communications. It’s more of a careful, legal, and concerned repackaging than a dismantling.

These businesses are under a lot of pressure. General counsels at Fortune 500 companies were rushing to audit their own hiring practices after the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling overturning affirmative action in college admissions. Businesses that rely on federal contracts have been shaken by President Trump’s executive orders, which instruct federal agencies to identify organizations involved in what his administration refers to as “illegal DEI.” Influencer Robby Starbuck and other conservative activist groups have publicly put pressure on brands, threatening to call out any rollback they deem “surface level.” There is real political and legal pressure, which is altering behavior. But not always in the ways that the loudest critics seem to prefer.

Observing all of this, it seems like many of these businesses are attempting to simultaneously convey two distinct messages to two audiences with completely different expectations. One helpful example is Lowe’s. The company received significant conservative media attention last summer when it announced a reorganization of its employee resource groups and withdrew from some external DEI surveys and sponsorships. Then, during its December investor day, a senior HR executive proudly described the senior leadership team as one of the most diverse in the Fortune 500 while standing in front of shareholders and emphasizing that those were the only changes made. One announcement, two very different target audiences.

The Trump executive orders haven’t significantly altered employment law, according to Jonathan Segal, a partner at the law firm Duane Morris who counsels businesses on employment law. This is probably surprising to those outside the legal community. “You can do almost everything you were doing before with modest changes,” he said to Bloomberg. The directives seem broad. Contrary to what the rhetoric implies, the real legal environment changed less significantly. This could explain why the majority of DEI-adjacent programs are still in operation, albeit under different names, with softer branding, and with lawyers more closely involved in the language, according to interviews with over two dozen senior staff members at large US companies.

The most noticeable alterations are mostly cosmetic, though they do have some effects. Many annual reports no longer include specific demographic representation targets. These days, some Chief Diversity Officers run initiatives with different names and hold different titles. While most continue to operate, employee resource groups—affinity groups based on race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, and similar characteristics—are subject to new spending restrictions and scrutiny in some businesses. With the modified disclaimer that anyone can theoretically apply, internship and mentorship programs intended to nurture talent from underrepresented groups are largely still in place. Companies like Molson Coors, Ford, Deloitte, McDonald’s, and Boeing have not significantly altered their recruitment strategies with historically Black colleges and universities.

Some of what is being presented as a retreat might actually be a correction. After George Floyd’s murder in 2020 prompted corporate America to respond with broad language and ambitious hiring pledges that frequently only yielded incremental results, many executives privately admit that some DEI programs overreached. The rainbow logos during Pride month, the unconscious bias trainings that felt more like liability management than real culture change, and the diversity goals published in annual reports without any corresponding accountability structure were all part of the programs’ performative quality, according to critics at the time. Whether the current reckoning is creating something more resilient or merely something more covertly defended is still up for debate.

In the meantime, these companies’ employees are observing. According to the Conference Board’s 2024 survey, 58% of US employees think their company makes the right amount of effort toward DEI, while 21% believe it still falls short. 56% of Black respondents and nearly half of women stated they would not work for a company that does not take DEI seriously. These figures do not reflect a workforce that is calling for reductions. They describe a workforce that, despite what the press releases claim, will become aware if the programs are discontinued.

Corporate America appears to be realizing that DEI was never merely a political position. It was imperfectly and unevenly woven into how businesses manage their legal exposure, hire and retain talent, and uphold their reputations with consumers who care about these things. It turns out to be much more difficult than a press release implies to unwind it cleanly, if that’s even what anyone truly wants. The word might be evolving. For the most part, the work is still ongoing.