The great un-wokening of America appears to be progressing at an unrelenting pace.
Last week, Boeing became the latest big company to ditch its so-called DEI Department, a group of corporate bureaucrats who performed the useless and illegal function of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in hiring.
It’s a fancy way of imposing racial and gender-based quotas in the workplace as opposed to merit, which in Boeing’s case nearly put it out of business.
Boeing’s decision followed similar moves by John Deere, Harley Davidson and Jack Daniels.
Wall Street firms, I am told, are also scrubbing their corporate policies of anything that seems to smack of preferences after a SCOTUS ruling that struck down affirmative action in college admissions that can be used as fodder for lawsuits against preferences in hiring.
BlackRock is ditching Environmental Social Governance investing that forced oil companies to invest in inefficient windmills because its clients hate it and it led to higher gas prices.
Kamala Harris — once the queen of woke, the BLM-loving politician of the ages — has chosen to run a presidential campaign not on grievance but on joy.
The question for me isn’t why. That’s something I fully addressed in my book: “Go Woke Go Broke; The Inside Story of the Radicalization of Corporate America.”
Americans aren’t woke. The bigger issue is whether we are seeing a moment or the real dismantling of woke in the public sphere
My guess is the former.
Yes, I keep receiving emails from the liberal and sometimes woke Yale management Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld on how all these former CEOs he knows support the woke Kamala Harris over the very unwoke Donald Trump in Tuesday’s election.
Notice how they’re all “former,” and not people like Jeff Bezos, Jamie Dimon, Tim Cook and many more still in the business who are choosing neutrality for fear of a consumer backlash.
Call it what it is: Idiotic!
Sorry, Professor, America hates all things woke — whether it’s a trans woman activist half-naked giggling in a bubble bath hawking Bud Lite, or employees from working-class backgrounds being forced to admit to their “white privilege” during mandatory corporate diversity training performed by elitists from the Ivy League.
They don’t want to have to pay more for gas because BlackRock thinks it’s swell to charge extra fees for ESG portfolios.
Sonnenfeld, as I wrote in my book, led a CEO effort to publicly denounce — culminating in a two-page New York Times ad, no less — as discriminatory a 2021 voting law in Georgia that they believed created roadblocks to a fair election. Yet, black voter turnout increased in its aftermath.
Yes, woke is also idiotic.
But that doesn’t mean it’s dead. The tools of wokeness will remain in the vast administrative state if Kamala Harris, Joe Biden’s current VP and now the Dem nominee, is able to gloss over her far-left progressivism and become president.
Recall her support of all things DEI and her demands that “we” as a country “have to stay woke. Like everybody needs to be woke.”
You can chalk that up to the word salad of a simpleton, but if that simpleton gets elected, it will likely be funneled as policy through the various agencies that regulate corporate America — the Federal Trade Commission, Securities and Exchange Commission, etc. — in more direct ways than it was under Joe Biden, who once boasted that during his presidency, DEI “starts at the top with the vice president.”
I’m afraid wokeness, particularly in a corporate setting, isn’t dead. It’s still hidden inside a party that claims to represent half the voting public and may, come Tuesday, remain in control of the White House.
Solid journalist
Journalism was once a profession that Americans trusted, even revered. We actually enjoyed going to the movies to watch inked-stained wretches practice their craft and do good.
One of my favorites is a so-called film noir that hit the theaters in 1948, “Call Northside 777.” It starred Jimmy Stewart as the dogged reporter P.J. McNeal, who chased a story and proved the innocence of a man jailed for murder.
Last week, a journalist named Ellie Terrett channeled her inner P.J. McNeal. Her dogged reporting for Fox Business about innocent crypto executive Tigran Gambaryan exposed the miscarriage of justice surrounding his arrest and galvanized public support for his release from a notorious Nigerian prison.
Full disclosure: Ellie is my TV producer at Fox, but she has become one of the best at unearthing scoops in the burgeoning crypto business.
One of those scoops involved Gambaryan, an exec at crypto-exchange Binance who was jailed on trumped-up charges of money laundering and tax evasion shortly after landing in the country.
Her reporting sparked a lobbying campaign for Gambaryan’s release by crypto bigwigs, law enforcement officials and apparently the Biden administration.
Gambaryan was released last week, reunited with family and friends after eight months of incarceration.
“I appreciate Fox News and other media for covering my story and keeping my name alive,” he said after being freed.
P.J. McNeal would be proud of Ellie.