As millions poured into city streets to protest racial injustice in May 2020, corporations vowed to do their part, offering billions in financial commitments and drawing up ambitious goals to make their workforces look more like America. 

Four years after George Floyd died under a white officer's knee, what was supposed to be a watershed moment in the workplace has been waylaid by conservative activists waging aggressive campaigns against diversity, equity and inclusion in statehouses and courthouses across the country, diversity, equity and inclusion advocates say.

Fueled by last year's Supreme Court ruling that ended affirmative action in college admissions, Diversity, equity and inclusion critics claim women and people of color are being handed jobs and promotions at the expense of more qualified and deserving candidates. They also argue that any program that excludes white people is just as illegal as a program that excludes Black people. Those allegations have opened the legal floodgates to discrimination claims by white people.

“DEI is just a polite way of rewarding certain groups and punishing other groups on the basis of their ancestry,” conservative activist Christopher Rufo – who spearheaded Claudine Gay’s ouster as Harvard's president – recently told the Daily Signal. “I think we’re steadily making progress on that. The fight is still in its beginning stages, but we’re in a better position now than we were a year ago.”

The "anti-woke" backlash has unnerved business leaders who find themselves navigating shifting terrain.

Publicly, most say they remain as dedicated to diversity as ever. But privately, they are rethinking the promises they made, scrutinizing investments in diversity, equity and inclusion that have not paid off and backing away from initiatives like hiring targets that conservatives claim are illegal quotas, says Johnny C. Taylor Jr., CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management.

The volatile political climate "is going to discourage some of the more aggressive actions that people took post-George Floyd," Taylor said. "At the time, there were a lot of aggressive statements and actions taken that now people are rightly saying they are not sure about."

Diversity, equity and inclusion programs under scrutiny as backlash grows

In his annual letter to shareholders last month, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said his company was being more cautious and adapting “as the laws evolve.”

“We will scour our programs, our words and our actions to make sure they comply,” he wrote. 

JPMorgan Chase is not alone.

Diversity policies and programs rushed into existence amid the nation’s racial reckoning in 2020 and 2021 are increasingly under the microscope. Fellowships and internships that once were open only to historically underrepresented groups are now increasingly open to everyone.

Many of these changes have come in the face of mounting legal challenges to diversity programs and policies.

Internet giant Amazon.com has fended off two lawsuits against grant programs for minorities. Pfizer and Starbucks have prevailed in similar legal challenges. On Tuesday a federal judge in Ohio dismissed a lawsuit alleging financial tech firm Hello Alice engaged in racial discrimination when it launched a grant program supporting Black business owners.

But corporations want to avoid the firing line if they can. A growing number have dropped mentions of diversity goals in shareholder reports. Some even list diversity, equity and inclusion as a “risk factor.”

Two men fought for jobs in a factory:50 years later, the nation is still divided.

Black workers made small gains since Floyd's murder

The retreat has sparked fears that the anti-diversity, equity and inclusion campaign could set back the small gains in the workforce and corporate leadership made over the last four years. 

Historic advantages have helped white people – men especially –  dominate the business world, creating yawning gaps in status, pay and wealth. A USA TODAY investigation of the nation’s largest companies found that the top ranks are predominantly white and male, while women and people of color are concentrated at the lowest levels with less pay, fewer perks and little opportunity for advancement.

Today, Black directors hold 12% of board seats at S&P 500 companies, up from 9.5% at the end of 2020, but that growth has recently leveled off, according to data from data research firm DiversIQ. White men and women hold 75% of board seats.

The number of Black executives running S&P 500 companies has doubled since 2016, but Black CEOs still account for 8 out of 505 of those leadership positions while white men – 399 of them – dominate the top job and white women hold 39.

Porter Braswell, who has spent the last decade helping corporate America hire diverse talent, says targeted efforts to level the corporate playing field are still necessary and most employers know it. Those abandoning the work now were never serious about it in the first place, he said.

“What we are seeing now is that people who were never about this work continue not to be about it,” said Braswell, who now runs 2045, a membership network to accelerate the careers of people of color and aid in their retention. “The only thing that is changing is the branding of DEI but the end goal and the work remain the same. We are building better products and better workplaces. You can’t cancel that.” 

Companies that vowed change deny backtracking

The critics of diversity, equity and inclusion may be getting louder, but corporations say that does not mean they are backtracking on commitments.

In his letter to shareholders, JPMorgan Chase's Dimon said diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives help his company make smarter decisions and achieve better financial results. 

Eighty percent of large employers surveyed last year by Bridge Partners’ Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Barometer said they had an established program. Of those that didn’t, 17% were planning one. Nearly three-quarters of executives said they planned to expand their initiatives while just 2% said they would cut back or eliminate them.

A survey from employment law firm Littler Mendelson had similar findings: 91% of executives said they are still prioritizing diversity, equity and inclusion and 57% said they had expanded their efforts.

“Yes, the era of performative diversity, equity, and inclusion – where companies made big promises about investments and representation – is over,” said Joelle Emerson, co-founder and CEO of diversity strategy and consulting firm Paradigm. 

Rather than make splashy proclamations, they are taking a data-driven approach to diversity efforts, devising systems and processes so that people from all backgrounds have a fair opportunity to thrive, she said.

More organizations are committed to diversity now than they were before 2020, according to Emerson. Today 63% of companies have a dedicated diversity, equity and inclusion budget and 57% have a strategy in place, up from 54% and 51% six months ago, according to Paradigm data.

“While the anti-diversity rhetoric has had an overall chilling effect and certainly gave companies who never really valued diversity, equity, and inclusion cover to pull back on their efforts, we’re actually seeing most companies are continuing their work, just less vocally,” Emerson said.

The bottom line, according to Dimon: “Our initiatives make us a more inclusive company.”

Diversity, equity and inclusion out in 2024, inclusion is in

Inclusion is the operative term going forward, the Society for Human Resource Management's Taylor said.

Taylor now prefers “IED” to “DEI” to put the spotlight on inclusion and changed the name of his group’s annual DEI conference to “Inclusion 2024.”

“Without a doubt, there are conversations everywhere now about: What do we call this? Do we change the term because DEI has such a negative connotation and do the same work but just call it something else?” he said.

The answer for Taylor is no. Call it a refocus, not a rebrand, he says. Terms like “inclusion” or “belonging” stress initiatives that benefit everyone, not just certain demographic groups.

Mentions of “DEI” and “diversity” in reports from Fortune 100 companies fell 22% while “belonging” jumped 59%, according to a new report from corporate reputation insights firm Gravity Research.

“For the last two or three decades, the work was led by diversity,” he said. “Now that we have achieved some real progress, we are not going to exclude diversity, but we are going to prioritize inclusion.”