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Boeing decided last week that it could afford to lose some of its DEI staff as the company continues to struggle.

Boeing reportedly dismantled its global diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) department as part of an overhaul of its operations ordered by the company’s new top executive — becoming the latest major company to ditch the controversial initiative…

Sara Liang Bowen, a company vice president who was put in charge of the now-defunct DEI unit, left the company on Thursday.

“The team achieved so much — sometimes imperfectly, never easily — and dreamed of doing much more still,” Bowen wrote in a farewell post on LinkedIn.

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Boeing’s decisions mirrors that of several other big companies who have backed away from DEI this year after being targeted online by Robby Starbuck. And in this case, Starbuck claimed Boeing’s change was a preemptive strike as he’d already contacted them to say he’d done research and was planning to make a video about the company.

So it looks like Boeing caved before they became a story. Today, CNBC reports that lots of corporate retailers are worried about DEI blowback which could be coming their way this holiday season.

Companies are bracing for blowback related to policies around diversity, equity and inclusion and are hoping to avoid alienating customers who may deem the brands too woke – or not woke enough. Some are tapping outside advisors for advice on how to avoid criticism, while others are opting out of public events on the topic as backlash against equity and inclusion programs grows in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election. 

CNBC spoke with a number of retail industry insiders, strategists and staffers who spoke on the condition of anonymity to do so candidly.

“There’s a clear sentiment in the retail community that nobody wants to get Tractor Supply’d,” said one retail industry insider, referring to that company’s decision to walk back a series of DEI initiatives after conservative activist Robby Starbuck criticized the policies online.

“Retailers left to their own devices would like to be very proactive on DEI,” said the person. “But now they don’t want any of their views to be public because they want to be able to sell stuff to everybody, and it’s become such a stupid political issue.” 

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Many of these companies would love to keep up the wokeness but only if they can do it in secret. But some companies are following the path blazed by universities who have also been facing a DEI backlash. Instead of ending DEI programs, as some state have required schools to do, the schools are simply rebranding the efforts. I’ve written about this trend here, here and here. Simply put, some companies would rather lie about DEI than listen to their customers.

Corporate executives don’t talk about diversity, equity and inclusion like they used to.

And for good reason: Companies don’t want to be the next target of conservatives on X, in the courtroom or during their annual meetings…

So now companies are trying to retool the message — by dropping the E.

A majority of executives recently surveyed by the Conference Board said “equity” is the most triggering term of the three, and the one they’re looking to rebrand. Mostly, because equity invokes “reverse discrimination” fears, that white workers will be displaced or passed on because there are programs designed to help minorities and women—who have long actually been discriminated against because of their race, ethnicity or gender—advance their careers.

Equity is hard to spin because it’s not a word most people are familiar with. Most people are familiar with equality and DEI proponents sometimes pretend that equity is just a synonym, but it’s not. Equity means equality of outcome. It’s a concept based on the idea that the success of racial groups should match their demographics in society. And differences are assumed to be the result of systemic racism rather than individual performance. This makes equity a tough sell even when it is explained in more detail. By contrast, diversity and inclusion are words most people are familiar with and are generally things they support. The question is how you achieve diversity and inclusion. If the answer is equity, then many Americans are going to reject it.

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But again, the executives “dropping the E” aren’t really interested in dropping equity, they are interested in hiding the ball. They want to keep pursuing DEI, just as they have been, by rebranding to avoid the backlash. This is the same strategy they went with when the topic was critical race theory. Rather than admit CRT had made its way into public schools, the left/media just lied and claimed CRT was a topic only being taught in law schools. Progressives knew this wasn’t true but it was easier to lie than to defend CRT. 

So here we go again. They’ll rebrand and maybe remove the word equity from their position papers but the goals will be the same, i.e. branding any group differences a result of white supremacy and setting aside merit in favor of a subtle (or not so subtle) form of affirmative action based on race.