Rebekah Valentine, writing for IGN:

Microsoft is reportedly shuttering a major diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) team, according to an internal email sent by the team’s leader to a significant number of Microsoft staff last week….

Color me surprised. In 2020, many companies—like Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Apple— implemented (or significantly expanded) DEI programs and racial equity initiatives under protest—literally.

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the subsequent protests against police brutality, corporations were feeling significant pressure from their Black employees (and customers) to demonstrate their commitment to racial justice. Few of these companies actually wanted change; they just didn’t want to appear callous and uncaring. Many of my friends and DEI colleagues had no doubt at the time that these shows of commitment would be temporary, and would go away as soon as the pressure eased, or they were given an out.

Well…

• June, 2023: The Supreme Court rules to end affirmative action in college admissions.
• July, 2023: Fortune 100 companies were warned (paywall; Apple News+) by thirteen Republican state attorneys general about “the legal consequences for using race as a factor in hiring and employment practices” and that “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs could be a form of discrimination.”
• August, 2023: The same people who successfully sued to end affirmative action in college admissions also sued an organization which awarded grants to Black women small-business owners for discriminating against non-Black women. (As of June, 2024 that program is now on hold following an appeals court ruling that says the program is “substantially likely to violate… equal rights under the law” clauses.)
• Also August 2023: A lawsuit accuses law firms of discriminating against white candidates (paywall; Apple News+).
• This week came another lawsuit, accusing Northwestern Law School of hiring discrimination against “a trio of unnamed professors tenured at unspecified law schools who say they are ‘able and ready to apply’ for a job… [b]ut they have not done so, allegedly because they are ‘unable to compete on an equal basis with faculty candidates who are women, racial minorities, homosexuals, or individuals who engage in gender-nonconforming behavior or identify with a gender that departs from their biological sex.’”

I’m sure all of these lawsuits are mere coincidence, not coordination.

The email from the former Microsoft employee, as quoted by IGN, said:

Unofficially in my opinion, not specific to Microsoft alone, but Project 2025 looms and true systems change work associated with DEI programs everywhere are no longer business critical or smart as they were in 2020. Hence the purposeful and strategic 3-5 year shelf life of many company’s inclusion commitments post the murder of George Floyd are being reevaluated. And the way I see it, the timing was impeccable so businesses everywhere could reevaluate the path forward should their U.S. federal contracts be at risk if the work continues on its face.

Of course Project 2025 is a part of this discussion; it’s effectively a polemic from and about “aggrieved white men”. Corporate America, in addition to their innate dislike of DEI programs, is still mostly run by white men, and is anticipating a far-right administration that’s deeply allergic to diversity and equity in general. As my good friend Ron Lue-Sang wrote to me,

My usual cynicism about corporate commitments to DEI led me to forget that these companies are planning for a Project 2025 future where DEI programs aren’t just labeled as unnecessary, they’d be totally seen as counterproductive with regards to currying favor with the federal government.

Is there any real surprise, then that Google and Meta started cutting programs throughout 2023? Now Microsoft. Will Apple be next?

Update: John Deere also “rolls back DEI policies.”

It was always just lip service. Companies never really bought into the progressive ideals. They just wanted to shut up Black folk.