McDonald’s just joined a growing number of large corporations abandoning diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Companies went woke, some went broke, and now DEI is going up in smoke.

Previously, McDonald’s made headlines for its commitment to diversity in its hiring, leadership, franchisees, and suppliers. They heralded all of their achievements to date, noting, “We are immensely proud of these accomplishments, but we are not satisfied.”

Now, in light of the Supreme Court’s decision to end affirmative action, the leading fast-food giant is retiring some of its efforts so as not to run afoul of the law.

What happened

In an email to staff and suppliers, McDonald’s senior leadership called it quits on its DEI programs and efforts. No more racial or gender quotas in hiring, leadership, or suppliers. DEI staff roles appear to undergo a makeover.

Specifically:

  • We are retiring setting aspirational representation goals and instead keeping our focus on continuing to embed inclusion practices that grow our business into our everyday process and operations.  
  • We are pausing external surveys to focus on the work we are doing internally to grow the business. 
  • We are retiring Supply Chain’s Mutual Commitment to DEI pledge in favor of a more integrated discussion with suppliers about inclusion as it relates to business performance.
  • We are evolving how we refer to our diversity team, which will now be the Global Inclusion Team. This name change is more fitting for McDonald’s in light of our inclusion value and better aligns with this team’s work.   

Conservative woke crusader Robby Starbuck announced this as another win for his efforts to expose the wokeness in corporations: “We’ve now changed policy at companies worth well over $2.3 trillion, with many millions of employees who have better workplace environments as a result.”

Whether McDonald’s was responding to Starbuck or trends in corporate America and society, this is a good step and one that other companies are taking.

Corporate America has been scaling back their DEI efforts and staff for the past two years. Just check out this list of companies that made big public announcements.

Here are 13 other companies that have scaled back DEI: 

Clearly, several retail industries are leading in eliminating DEI programming: construction, automobiles, and alcohol. This is just the start.

DEI staffers get dumped

Corporations have been retreating from DEI for several years. After George Floyd’s death in 2020, companies made billions of dollars of financial commitments to social justice causes and began a hiring spree of diversity, equity, and inclusion officers to oversee programs, hiring changes, and other measures.

The hiring bonanza created lucrative opportunities for individuals to earn salaries of $90,000 to $120,000 or more. Often these DEI staff were charged with pursuing abstract goals or aimed to advance ideological ends such as racial diversity, gender equity, climate change, and gender ideology. They employed blunt tools such as mandates, quotas, bias training, and PR campaigns to fix cultural and society problems that may or may not have even existed. The results were brutal backlashes from staff and customers.

By 2022, corporations began to slash those jobs, realizing they were not improving corporate culture or addressing specific issues—if there were any. The Washington Post reported in early 2024:

DEI jobs peaked in early 2023 before falling 5 percent that year and shrinking by 8 percent so far in 2024, according to Revelio Labs data shared with The Washington Post. The attrition rate for DEI roles has been about double that of non-DEI jobs, says Revelio, which tracks workforce dynamics.

Inc. reported last year as well that companies including Zoom, Snap, Meta, Tesla, DoorDash, Lyft, Home Depot, and Wayfair cut DEI teams amid wider layoff plans.

Some staff have been laid off and others have been redistributed to other departments, such as human resources. Unfortunately, the damage has been done to brands such as BudLight which inspired a boycott after insulting its customer base by using trans activist Dylan Mulvaney as the face of its beer.

Bottom line

DEI is a failed experiment based on the faulty premise that specific social outcomes could be engineered by treating people differently based on race and gender.

Expanding opportunity for all Americans should be the societal goal, not advancing some groups by holding back others.