America’s largest private employer, Walmart, is the latest name to join a list of US businesses and institutions rethinking programs to bolster minority groups as support for progressive policies erodes.
Walmart said it will phase out the terms “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI) and “Latinx,” end supplier diversity programs, shutter a racial equity center and pull out of a prominent gay rights index.
The announcement comes in the wake of similar moves by a string of prestige brands — from Ford, John Deere and Lowe’s to Harley-Davidson and Jack Daniel’s — reflecting a backlash against so-called political correctness in American public life.
The rightward shift is credited in part for populist Donald Trump’s White House comeback and for laying the groundwork for a 2023 Supreme Court ruling ending affirmative action in college admissions.
DEI initiatives aim to right historical discrimination but conservatives have long criticized them as unfairly targeting white …