Farm equipment maker John Deere says it will no longer sponsor “social or cultural awareness” events, becoming the latest major U.S. company to distance itself from diversity and inclusion measures after being targeted by conservative backlash.
In a statement posted Tuesday to social media platform X, John Deere also said it would audit all training materials “to ensure the absence of socially-motivated messages” in compliance with federal and local laws. It did not specify what those messages would include.
The move from the company known on Wall Street as Deere & Co. arrives just weeks after rural retailer Tractor Supply ended an array of its corporate diversity and climate efforts. Both announcements came after backlash piled up online from conservative activists opposed to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, sponsorship of LGBTQ+ Pride events and climate advocacy.
I was suspecting that! Again, using one critic’s study against one that promotes DEI, and calling it a day, is not good. More research is needed when there are other supporting papers out there; but the point here is that there is a huge difference on declaring DEI as bogus as the spin from right wing sources puts it, when the very same authors of the study are not really against DEI. Just that the economical case for businesses is not recommended by them, but even they acknowledge that there are benefits for our society at large.
Now, even more dubious conclusions do come from research that the right-wing corporations have been abusing in the past, Just as they did against the science about tobacco causing cancer, phosphates causing river pollution, DDT being harmful, Climate change, Critical race theory, etc.
Both companies know their customer base. It’s telling that John Deere did this right after Tractor Supply Co. Both companies primarily serve rural communities, folks who own large plots of land to be worked with heavy equipment. These communities are heavily conservative, tied in to the anti- woke paranoia. It’s not like Tractor Supply or John Deere have a large customer base of apartment renters in big city downtowns.
So of course they cater to the reactionary negative feedback.
But I bet you never hear whining about how how they were targeted by “cancel culture”. Except that’s exactly what it is.
"Waaah, you support LGBT pride events - I’ll never buy from you again! "
“Waaah, you are taking climate change as a real thing, I’ll never buy from you again!”
More MAGA backlash striking out at corporate America for not catering to their malicious agenda.
I can certainly see how John Deere would prefer the current buzz among its customer base to be something along the lines of “Hey, John Deere is taking a stand against all that liberal woke stuff!” rather than “Hey, John Deere is moving more American jobs to Mexico!”
I think the anti-woke attitude is more of a smokescreen. Their customers don’t like DEI because it’s woke, so they declare they are getting rid of “social and cultural awareness” and any “socially motivated messages”. However, they are legally bound by anti-descrimination laws, so actual policies are not likely to change.
I say not likely, because that wasn’t the case at colleges here in Texas. Once DEI came under scrutiny and the legislature had it DEI offices closed on colleges, suddenly there was an epic scandal about the widely promoted hiring of a Black woman getting her job offer gutted. But that led to a blow up that got the college president to resign.
Anyway, I’m guessing the announcement is a cosmetic approach to satisfy the cancel culture fanatics.
According to this substack, the reason behind both John Deere and Tractor Supply Co was a single conspiracy theorist called Robby Starbuck who actively promotes the usual string of right wing conspiracy theories and also has engaged in targeted boycott campaigns against both companies who have caved to appease his gullible fans.
Take the credibility of the assertions for what it is but it does match other instances where single rightwing conspiracists have prompted widespread corporate caving that was then blown up into a larger trend by the mainstream media.
I’ve spent most of my career working for consulting firms similar to McKinsey and you are absolutely correct. They put out “studies” all the time (often by teams of consultants as “busy work” while they are on the bench (not billing clients). These are marketing materials, not academic papers. It should be assumed the main purpose of a McKinsey study on DEI is to sell DEI-related consulting services.
Generally speaking, DEI is presumably driven by a desire to improve the workplace for everyone. And done properly, it probably can and does. I don’t think many work places benefit from an environment where people have to put up with sexual harassment or intentionally excluded from projects or promotions for reasons unrelated to job performance.
That said, I think it can be taken too far. I also think DEI has become a bit of a cottage industry that sort of insists upon itself.
I also wonder if a lot of firms that promote DEI are disingenuous about it. Like it is just a sort of “virtual signaling” to the marketplace. A firm like Mckinsey is largely relationship-driven. Ivy League consultants selling services to their Ivy League (and often former-Mckinsey) C-level peers. So I wonder what benefit, if any, they get from any true diversity?
There may be a bit of virtue signaling in promoting their emphasis on DEI. But is that different than promoting they have a great benefits plan, or they will pay for college tuition?
I don’t want to put words into @msmith537’s mouth, but I believe they’re referring to those who emphasize the company’s committment to diversity, equity, and inclusion but don’t actually make any changes in those regards. i.e. A lot of firms that promote DEI are disingenuous about it. For some firms, they just check a box and that’s it for their DEI efforts. Of course employees can see through the baloney.
The evidence shows that it is the astroturfing of the right that is going too far, and then right wing governors make more harm than good by enforcing what in the end is just prejudice by other name.
And the reason why I mention about more corroboration from more studies is that what McKinsey said is not the only one:
Most women, minorities and the disabled see the value of workplaces that do mind DEI:
Most workers have some experience with DEI measures at their workplace. About six-in-ten (61%) say their company or organization has policies that ensure fairness in hiring, pay or promotions, and 52% say they have trainings or meetings on DEI at work. Smaller shares say their workplace has a staff member who promotes DEI (33%), that their workplace offers salary transparency (30%), and that it has affinity groups or employee resource groups based on a shared identity (26%). Majorities of those who have access to these measures say each has had a positive impact where they work.
The reason why one should dismiss many of the opponents of DEI comes when one notices what they propose as a solution: Using just merit actually does increase the bias already present in the current environment, here one has to notice that MEI is not really opposed to DEI, biases do crop up more when DEI is ignored.
But what Wang gets wrong is his suggestion that a hiring manager can be truly objective in selecting the candidate with the most “outstanding talent” for the job. No one is entirely free from harboring any biases.
“People that think that we‘re over the hill when it comes to diversity and inclusion, both from a racial as well as gender perspective, are delusional,” says Lisa Simon, chief economist at people analytics platform Revelio Labs*.* “We’re not in a moment where you can get rid of all these policies and hope they will continue. As soon as you remove these things, people go back to hiring people that look like them.”
Publicly prioritizing meritocracy also can lead to bias against certain groups. Academic research published in Administrative Science Quarterly in 2010 found that when organizations promote meritocracy as part of their culture, managers inadvertently begin showing bias toward men over equally performing women during performance evaluations.
Yes, sometimes good worker-centric policies when actually implemented can be used as windrow dressing by bad companies. That’s not a reason to discount the policy as ineffective.
That’s like saying baseball is a bad sport because some people can’t hit the ball.
We have to establish what we’re even talking about here.
DEI proponents don’t get to just say that diversity is desirable, therefore DEI is desirable. DEI is a whole collection of real-world practices which may or may not do anything to benefit the workplace.
It does not follow that taking sexual harassment training courses reduces sexual harassment. It might be the case (though the evidence suggests otherwise). But it can’t be assumed.
So there’s a motte-and-bailey thing going on. There is the hoped-for outcome, which is easy to defend because of course diversity, equity, and inclusion are good in the abstract. But then there is the actual practice of DEI, where you have to ask if training courses work at all (or perhaps have negative effect). Or if it’s actually okay to discriminate against white and Asian people. Or if speech should be suppressed if it could be viewed as exclusionary. Etc. These things are much harder to defend.
There’s nothing “virtual” about it. If you want a high ESG rating, you’d better embrace a bunch of DEI practices. But with that high ESG rating, you have access to a larger pool of investment–S&P and other put out lists of ESG-friendly stocks, and have indices of companies with high scores. Some investors look out for these specifically. So there’s a direct benefit to your stock.
