Walmart, the largest corporate employer in the United States with a workforce of 1.6 million, announced it will abandon itsdiversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)initiatives, including:Cancelling its Center for Racial Equity, a five-year, $100 million philanthropic commitment the company made in 2020 to address the root causes of gaps in outcomes of African Americans in education, health, criminal justice, and other areasEnding racial training programs for staffNo longer giving priority in programs designed to increase supplier diversity regarding the number of suppliers that are at least 51% owned or managed by a woman, minority, veteran, or someone who is LGBTQ+ Dive deeper every day Join our newsletter for thought-provoking commentary that goes beyond the surface of LGBTQ+ issues Subscribe to our Newsletter today Removing lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender products marketed to children.Withdrawing from thegay rights indexconducted by theHuman Rights Campaign, acorporate report card ensuring equity of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people Related Trans activists hold dance party in a Capitol womens restroom in protest of bathroom ban Eight activists entered the restroom and had a dance party. Walmart represents the largest corporation that willno longer participatein the Corporate Equality Index and abandon other DEIinitiatives due to growing right-wing backlash, which was further emboldened when the U.S. Supreme Courtoutlawed affirmative actionin college admissions. As with most social change efforts, opposing forces have launched a fierce and sustained backlash to turn back progress.Walmarts reversal on civil and human rights concerns in the workplace is not coincidental. In advance of Donald Trump overtaking the Oval Office in January, increased pressure will in all likelihood come to bear on progressive corporate management initiatives from the incoming administration and from the 51% of the electorate who voted for it.From the moment Trump descended the golden escalator in the summer of 2015 to announce his run for ruler in his First Reich, he has twisted the acronym for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion into DIE, as in the death of a diverse, equitable, and inclusive society. In September 2020 while still in the Oval Office, Trump signed an executive order banningDEIprograms in government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and other institutions that held or applied for federal contracts. The stated purpose of the order was to combat offensive and anti-American race and sex stereotyping.And in his ruthless campaign to turn Florida into the place where WOKE goes to die, for example, Governor Ron DeSantis (R) launched a frontal assault on issues ofDEIinitiatives. Several Republicans in Congress have referred to Kamala Harris, the first woman and first person of African and South Asian heritage to lead a major political party for president, as merely a DEIhire. Elon Musk Trumps pick to co-chair his new so-called Department of Government Efficiency is an outspoken critic ofDEIprograms and is no friend of organized labor.He shouted from the rooftops into his high-volume microphone on his X platform about his disdain forDEIefforts by promoting a tweet arguing that graduates from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have IQs nearing borderline intellectual impairment. This comes on the heels of the billionaire broadcasting a tweet asserting that Jews push hatred against whites.Musk promoted the post of a popular user called @eyeslasho, which argued that theUnited Airlines programof hiring traditionally underrepresented employees such as people of color, women, LGBTQ+ people, and others, some from HBCUs, is dangerous because graduates from HBCUs are not intelligent, and, therefore, not qualified to fly a plane. The mean IQ of grads from two of those United Airline HBCU partners is about 85 to 90, based on the average SATs at those schools. (The SAT correlates reasonably well with IQ.), @eyeslashowrote. The HBCU IQ averages are within 10 points of the threshold for what is considered borderline intellectual impairment.Musk added: It will take an airplane crashing and killing hundreds of people for them to change this crazy policy of DIE. DEI is pro-AmericanWe hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -Declaration of IndependenceWhat is more pro-American and patriotic than programs and people who are attempting to bring about the promise of our founding documents?As we all know, however, no matter how progressive some corporate managers and their board of directors are, it still all relies on the bottom line. So, in good times and bad, corporate leaders place their toes in the political waters to test the temperature.They found warmer streams during the Biden/Harris years to sendDEIlife rafts for their employees and vendors to float upon at their jobs. With the cold front of ultra conservatives turning the waters to ice, however, these once supple agile rafts have capsized and sunk to the bottom, as corporate officials have committed them to the junk pile for burning. Corporate cooptation in a neo-liberal ageAs a political activist and student of progressive movements, I understand the actions people have undertaken in their impetus for radical liberatory change as opposed to mere reform, accomodation, or assimilation within an overridingly oppressive social structure. When we consider the phrase, Keep your eyes on the prize, I now wonder what we consider precisely as the prizes we are working toward?Are we, for example, working under the vision of the Gay Liberation Front, which began in 1969 as a radical project for social transformation and dismantling of the economic and social structures we considered inherently oppressive?Or are we working to reform the current social system in order to assimilate?Or is it none of the above?I am sure each of us will have a different answer.Looking back over the years, as our visibility of progressive peoples has increased, as our place within the culture has become somewhat more assured, much certainly has been gained, but also, something very precious has been lost.For some, that early excitement though by no means ability to fully restructure the culture seems now to lay dormant in many sectors of our communities. In our current so-called neoliberal age, emphasis is placed on privatization, global capital, reduced governmental oversight and deregulation of the corporate sector, attacks on labor organizing, and competition.We are living in an environment in which property rights hold precedence over human rights. In this environment, we are witnessing a cultural war waged by the political, corporate, and theocratic right, a war to turn back all the gains progressive people have made over.In our queer communities, for example, the Pride marches of the past have morphed into parades and festivals funded on a base of major corporate sponsorship and capitalist consumption. Parade contingents now include large canvas banners affixed with familiar logos of national and local banks, insurance, soft drink, beer, and real estate companies. Ironically, some of these same companies refused to hire out members of our communities not so long ago, but seeing how our business has improved their economic bottom line, we are now happily welcomed, or, at least, we were.Along the parade routes and at rally sites, companies and individuals display and sell their wares, from internet and phone company subscriptions to rainbow-colored everything imaginable.Merchants and artisans misappropriate the pink triangle the Nazi patch gay men were forced to wear on their clothing when incarcerated in concentration camps to fashion glimmering pink Rhinestone jewelry worn as glamorous fashion accessories. I call this form of consumerism the tchotchetization of a movement (tchotchke in Yiddish means knick knacks, small objects, etc.).The pink triangle originally a symbol of ultimate oppression was deployed by LGBTQ+ people in the 1970s as a mark of solidarity in the AIDS movement, an emblem of resistance in mobilizing against the intransigence of governmental, societal, and corporate inaction. But today it is simply as an accoutrement of vanity.Corporations have had a leading role in recent years in promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace, and hopefully they will continue to do so. They must be encouraged and thanked for their efforts. The costs of corporate involvement, however, within progressive movements and communities include the ever-present potential for cooptation of the prize, transforming the goal of personal and collective liberation into mere reform and maintenance of the capitalist status quo.Today, the United States stands as the most culturally and religiously diverse country in the world. This diversity poses great challenges and great opportunities. The way we meet these challenges will determine whether we remain on the abyss of our history or whether we can truly achieve our promise of becoming a shining beacon to the world.When deployed effectively, DEI initiatives can give us the opportunity to shine to our outer limits of our potential. Progressive people cannot depend on the government or on corporations to do the work of liberation.This work is our responsibility and our joy. 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