The triumph of Donald Trump and the defeat of a Democratic party beholden to identity politics has prompted many to conclude that woke ideology is dead. The problem here is that people have been writing this obituary for some years now, ever since the ideology reached its apex of insanity in the summer of 2020. Still, it has refused to die.
Corporations have come to realise that feigning voguish positions on social matters is not good for business
However, the hyper-liberal dogma does now display tangible signs of retreat in one area: the business sector. If woke is not quite dead yet, then its opportunist capitalist offshoot, does at least seem moribund.
Walmart, the world’s biggest retailer, which employs 2.1 million people, is to phase out some of its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, and will no longer consider race and gender policies when granting supplier contracts. Walmart has also agreed to review support for Pride events and withdraw from rankings by the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT advocacy group. The retailer states: ‘We are willing to change alongside our associates and customers who represent all of America’. That ‘all’ in this statement is significant.
Elon Musk, in reaction to the news, pronounced victoriously on X that: ‘The tide has turned’. That might be premature, but there are indications that the tide is, at least, turning. The HBO network, owned by Warner Bros and currently working on a TV revival of the Harry Potter books, announced it would stand by its author JK Rowling, despite her opinions on the transgender issue: ‘JK Rowling has a right to express her personal views. We will remain focused on the development of the new series, which will only benefit from her involvement.’
Boeing announced last month that it has dismantled its global DEI department. Toyota Motor Corp is also reportedly reviewing its DEI policies. Harley-Davidson revealed in summer that it has not had a DEI programme since April. And Starbucks has said that it will no longer tie executive pay to DEI goals.
It appears that corporations have come to realise that adopting fashionable internal policies or feigning external voguish positions on social matters is no longer good for business.
They have good reason to be apprehensive, what with recent corporate misadventures. Bud Light was boycotted last year following a promotion featuring a transgender influencer. And Disney’s wholesale embrace of identity politics has coincided with a series of box-office flops.
The furore generated this autumn by Boots and Jaguar adverts might suggest that the corporate world is still in thrall to doomed diversity initiatives and wokery. But the fierce reaction to both suggests that the market appeal and toleration of hyper-liberal posturing has reached saturation point. What made Jaguar’s rebrand stand out so sorely was just how passée and derivative it was. This kind of advert, with its banal cliches, has been staple corporate mush for years. While we just about tolerated this fare with Virgin Atlantic’s comparable effort in 2022, the public seems to have lost its patience in 2024. Like Bud Light’s, Jaguar’s effort might turn out to be a cautionary tale.
This apparent drift from obsessing over diversity in the corporate sector could herald the shape of things to come. We should heed the behaviour of capitalists for judging a shift in cultural moods for the same reason we should trust bookmakers when placing bets on politics: ultimately, they have no principles or convictions. They care foremost about money.
That’s why so many corporations jumped on the woke bandwagon in the first place, proudly and with utter insincerity waving their pride flags and telling us how much black lives mattered. And now, unlike public institutions or government bodies that have a far greater degree of insulation and protection, they literally can’t afford to pose and annoy the people they serve.
But don’t be lured into believing that woke and DEI is dead. While the ideology may be fading in the private sector, it remains entrenched in state institutions, as witnessed continually in museums with their copious ‘trigger warnings’, in universities where free speech is still imperilled, and especially in schools, where gender ideology and the axiom of ‘white privilege’ are both taught as fact.
News stories remind us how woke has become even more doctrinal and intolerant when enforced by the state. This week in Canada, the township of Emo, Ontario was ordered by the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal to fork out $10,000 (£8,000) after the town didn’t make an official proclamation for pride month in 2020. In the public sector, wokery has become tacitly normalised. Woke is not at an end. But if the change of corporate temper is something to go by, we could be seeing the beginning of the end.
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