Sure, no problem.
The Coca-Cola Company, meanwhile, has undergone its own, quite public, journey on diversity initiatives. In September 2020, they hired Bradley Gayton as general counsel. He outlined new diversity initiatives compelling all law firms the company contracts with to establish clear diversity and accountability metrics via an open letter in January 2021. This set an important precedent since it ultimately puts pressure on law firms to hire and develop a more diverse workforce. For instance, 30% of the billable hours must go directly to diverse attorneys, of which half must be Black lawyers. As a result, law firms are forced to rethink hiring, retention, and promotion strategies, making a diverse workforce a requirement instead of an aspiration. And Gayton’s strategic targeting of Black lawyers paved the way for them to receive the necessary professional development, substantive assignments, and networking opportunities that would increase their chances for promotion and advancement.
While Coca-Cola was initially lauded for this bold diversity objective, it soon faced backlash from dissenters who argued that these new diversity goals were discriminatory. This led the initiative to come to an abrupt pause following the unexpected resignation of Gayton in April 2021. There was strong pushback from company shareholders who believed the initiative was violating the fiduciary responsibilities of the board since they feared potential lawsuits in violation of Title VII and IX of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, as well as the American Disabilities Act. Given the outside pressures and internal pushback, The Coca-Cola Company recently confirmed that this diversity initiative has never gone into effect, and it will not move forward.
What can organizations do to determine if their DEI initiatives are mere scaffolds or performative solidarity — or whether they’re actually positioned to put racial and gender equity at the center of the company’s core values and move the needle on change. Leaving DEI scaffolds in place can...
hbr.org
The ultimate point is that neither AA or DEI, which are concepts that have been around since the civil rights movement but simply with different names, have made a huge impact on the makeup of corporate America. Or political America for that matter.
The somewhat more reasonable people who disagree with DEI realize that a lot of it probably is just toothless virtue signaling from an unchanging white male power structure, and they'll sinply roll their eyes at the occasional mandatory meeting or chief diversity officer appointment (who isn't given any real power.) The unreasonable ones make those highlighted statements like yours and blade's above, call literally everything they disagree with woke, and then vote for demagogue politicians who wink and nod to the White Genocide crowd while simultaneously trying to prevent students from learning the history of slavery and Jim Crow in this country.
www.cnbc.com
