Corporate America's DEI agenda: Fortune 100 companies adopt 'diversity, equity and inclusion' regime

The chief business of Amercan business seems to be managing racial and sexual politics through DEI programs – short for diversity, equity and inclusion.

Christopher F. Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Sign up for his newsletter here. 

I have surveyed the programming of every Fortune 100 company and have confirmed that all of them have now adopted so-called DEI programs. These initiatives are no longer limited to high-technology firms in the coastal enclaves; they have spread to traditionally conservative sectors such as agriculture, manufacturing, insurance, and oil and gas. The result is clear: every major corporation in the United States has submitted to DEI ideology and begun to make it a permanent part of their legal and human resources bureaucracies. 

No doubt some of these programs are benign. Many companies adopt DEI policies out of pressure to conform. Other companies, however, use diversity, equity and inclusion to promote the most virulent strands of critical race theory and gender ideology. I have documented many examples: Bank of America teaching employees that the United States is a system of "white supremacy"; Walmart telling workers they are guilty of "internalized racial superiority"; Lockheed Martin forcing executives to deconstruct their "white male privilege"; and Disney promising to abolish the words "boys" and "girls" in its theme parks and inject "queerness" into its children’s programming.