Victoria’s Secret has become one of the latest corporations to roll back their previously instated Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, replacing them with goals focusing on “inclusion and belonging,” as reported by Bloomberg. The company has since joined an ever-growing list of corporate pushback on DEI initiatives, focusing largely on axing the term diversity itself.
The beginning of these DEI rollbacks aligns with Nov. 5, 2024, the day that marked a guaranteed return of the Trump administration to office. The Trump administration had been hostile towards DEI initiatives since their first term, and these same policies followed closely into their second. Early into his second term, President Donald Trump released an executive order eliminating DEI programs within the federal government. His descriptions of DEI as “illegal” and “discriminatory” within the order seemingly intensified corporate anxieties about their own DEI programs.
The growing lineup of corporations abandoning DEI initiatives began with some of the largest corporations in the world. Walmart upended its DEI initiatives in late November 2024, removing its staff racial equity training programs and allowing its half-decade-long philanthropic commitment to a racial equity center to expire. While the upending of Walmart’s DEI initiatives began prior to Trump taking office, President Trump’s second term had been solidified following his victory in the 2024 election only two weeks prior to Walmart’s announcement. McDonald’s soon followed, vowing in a statement released on Jan. 6 to retire “aspirational representation goals” and their “Supply Chain’s Mutual Commitment to DEI pledge” — despite remaining adamant on emphasizing company inclusion.
However, replacing the terms diversity and equity within the umbrella of inclusion allows companies to forego programs originally intended to make workplaces more accessible to various minorities. By simply using the word inclusion, corporations give themselves an easily accessible — and vague — excuse for losing these initiatives.
Since then, companies including,but not limited to, Meta, Amazon, Target and Google have pushed back on DEI, similarly cutting back on their DEI programs while working to remove the term diversity from their corporate language.
However, for many corporations, DEI rollbacks come as a complete turnaround from previous excitement about inclusivity initiatives. The rescinding of corporate DEI initiatives reflects corporate emphasis on profit over all else, as it serves as yet another reflection of simply following the market trends. DEI has become a corporate marketing tool rather than an attempt at workplace equity. This corporate hypocrisy thereby abuses the very groups companies claim to protect.
Target is a notable offender of this as — in a statement released in August 2020 — they had previously pledged to “advance racial equity” throughout the company shortly after George Floyd’s murder. Their fight for diversity in the workforce was so strong that the Executive Leadership Council, an organization committed to building inclusivity within business leadership, honored Target in 2022 for its “outstanding commitment to achieving Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).” Target CEO Brian Cornell happily accepted the award, the same voice that had argued for the integration of DEI initiatives both in the workforce and through the products they sold. However on Jan. 24, Target made clear that they planned to conclude many of their DEI programs by dissolving their Racial Equity Action and Change (REACH) initiatives and halting their use of external diversity-focused surveys.
The company’s waning interest in its diversity initiatives has thus led to public outrage, escalating into a 40-day-long boycott of the Target chain by some consumers. Their call to action against Target was largely fueled by the abrupt conclusion of past promises to uplift minority communities through diversity initiatives. Rollbacks on promises for equity have become proof of the betrayed loyalty that protesters expected from the company.
While much outcry has focused on Target’s broken promises, this recent shift towards an irreverence to diversity programs has highlighted the hypocrisy of corporate America. Target is not alone in its insincerity on topics of inclusion, as many corporations began to strengthen their DEI initiatives alongside Target in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. These initiatives were short-lived, with them now defunded by corporations like McDonald’s, Walmart and Target despite only being instituted barely 5 years prior.
A common thread between these corporations has been the timeline between their adoption of diversity programs and their abandonment of them. DEI initiatives only seemed to matter when diversity and equity programs would increase public approval of their companies — and therefore, their products.
In 2020 corporate America, the Black Lives Matter movement became something of a “corporate mantra,” as CNN’s Chauncey Alcorn described. The moment became synonymous with increases in revenue. However, as soon as corporations have begun feeling political pushback against diversity terminology, the very same initiatives they applauded have begun trickling out.
In short, corporations valued the profit that DEI brought rather than the equitable promise. Many corporations chose performative activism in hopes of performing just well enough to increase both revenue and consumer loyalty. However, when anxiety around prospective profits with the changing times forced them to make their own loyalties clear, the minority consumer came last.
It seems as though corporations never truly cared about the proper implementation and upkeep of diversity initiatives in the first place. Alternatively, they may have failed to plan diversity initiatives that ensure longevity that transcends political turmoil and pushback.
The eventual abandonment of DEI proved to be a betrayal between corporation and consumer, one that could have been avoided if corporations had adopted initiatives with the right causes in mind. Loyalty should never be one-sided, and corporations need to be held accountable to represent their consumers in alignment with their own promises.
DEI programs hold immense potential as true markers for change rather than as performative symbolism — it’s just up to those in charge to uphold them properly.
Layla Asgarian Nahavandi is an Opinion Staff Writer. She can be reached at lasgaria@uci.edu.
Edited by Isabella Ehring and Joshua Gonzales