DEI Giant Abandons Diversity Statements For Hiring, Promotion Decisions After Listening To Faculty
'Potential to limit viewpoints'
Ford becomes latest company to reject DEI initiatives — Human Rights Campaign resorts to name-calling after slew of losses
The Ford Motor Company walked back some DEI initiatives following pushback from conservatives. The Human Rights Campaign — America’s largest LGBTQ political lobbying organization — reacted to Ford's new direction by slinging insults after suffering its latest repudiation by a major company.
On Thursday, filmmaker and conservative consumer activist Robby Starbuck shared an internal memo from Ford CEO Jim Farley to employees regarding a pullback of commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
'What we want to do with this campaign is just make workplaces about work again with no divisive political or social issues.'
"For more than a century, Ford has been a pioneer in providing opportunities to people around the world of all races, genders, and backgrounds," the memo began. "Our people are our greatest strength, and the diverse experiences, perspectives, and talents of our team have enabled Ford to create some of the most iconic vehicles in history and afford millions of people the freedom of mobility."
"We are mindful that our employees and customers hold a wide range of beliefs, and the external and legal environment related to political and social issues continues to evolve," Farley said in the memo.
The automaker giant noted that the company has evolved in the past year, and Ford has "taken a fresh look at our policies and practices to ensure they support our values, drive business results, and take into account the current landscape."
Included in the new policy changes, Ford proclaimed that employee resource groups must now focus efforts on "networking, mentorship, personal and professional development, and community service."
Ford Motor Co. stressed that it "does not utilize hiring quotas or tie compensation to the achievement of specific diversity goals."
The carmaker also declared that it will not use quotas for minority dealerships or suppliers.
Farley continued, "Ford remains deeply committed to fostering a safe and inclusive workplace and building a team that leverages diverse perspectives, backgrounds, and thinking styles to craft the best products, services, and experiences for our customers."
"As a global company, we will continue to put our effort and resources into taking care of our customers, our team, and our communities versus publicly commenting on the many polarizing issues of the day," the memo read.
Of the car company's philanthropic endeavors, Ford noted that it would focus on "areas where we can make the biggest positive difference for the most people, including education for the future of work, entrepreneurship, and essential services, such as our support of and volunteer work with Team Rubicon, the veteran-led group dedicated to disaster recovery."
Ford Motor Company announced that it would no longer participate in the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index and various other "best places to work" lists.
The Human Rights Campaign responded by hinting at a boycott targeting Ford and stooped to name-calling against Starbuck.
"Today, Ford ABANDONED its values and commitments to an inclusive workplace, cowering to MAGA weirdo Robby Starbuck," the Human Rights Campaign said. "With the LGBTQ+ community wielding $1.4 TRILLION in spending power and 30% of Gen Z identifying as LGBTQ+, we won’t forget this shortsighted decision and its impact."
Ford had a perfect 100 score on the HRC's Corporate Equity Index in 2023 and declared the automaker to be a "leader in LGBTQ+ workplace inclusion."
The HRC bills its so-called Corporate Equity Index as "the national benchmarking tool on corporate policies, practices, and benefits pertinent to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer employees."
The Human Rights Campaign was described as having a "leading role in Democratic Party politics and left-leaning activism" by InfluenceWatch — an organization that provides "accurate descriptions of all of the various influencers of public policy issues."
Regarding the memo, Ford told USA Today, "The communication to our global employees speaks for itself. We have nothing further to add."
Starbuck declared, "We are winning, and one by one we WILL bring sanity back to corporate America."
"What we want to do with this campaign is just make workplaces about work again with no divisive political or social issues," Starbuck added. "Some on the left may see sponsorship of a pride event as supporting a community but others see children being exposed to sexual content and find it wildly inappropriate for a workplace to sponsor. As a consumer, I can’t in good faith support a company that explicitly funds things that I’m morally opposed to."
Ford is the latest major company to rein back DEI commitments.
As Blaze News previously reported, Harley-Davidson rejected DEI commitments and also said it would no longer participate in the HRC's woke index.
Last month, Tractor Supply declared that it would no longer submit data to the Human Rights Campaign and would remove DEI positions and ditch its carbon emissions goals.
Also in July, farm equipment manufacturer John Deere announced it would no longer sponsor “social or cultural awareness” events and would audit all training materials "to ensure the absence of socially-motivated messages" following a campaign organized by Starbuck.
Starbuck then took aim at exposing DEI commitments at Jack Daniel's and its parent company — Brown-Forman. Last week, Brown-Forman proclaimed that it would no longer participate in the HRC's Corporate Equality Index social credit system and would end "quantitative workforce and supplier diversity ambitions" and ensure company goals are exclusively tied to productivity and not DEI initiatives.
This week, home improvement behemoth Lowe's discontinued some of its diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments and dropped out of surveys for the Human Rights Campaign.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
NASA's DEI training under fire for linking 'objectivity' and 'individualism' to white supremacy
A diversity, equity, and inclusion training video posted online allegedly showed a NASA engineer expressing guilt over not being equally welcoming to all races.
The video begins with the supposed engineer discussing her desire to "create spaces where people can be all they want to be."
The woman then said she regretted not making her projects as inclusive as possible.
'All of these things can really limit the way we go about doing our work.'
"And in doing this work of examining my own intentions and my own actions and their impact, I can see that there's so much more that I could have done to make the projects I've led equally welcoming to black, indigenous, and people of color as the white people they have engaged."
"I feel a lot of shame and regret about that," the woman continued. "So I'm looking forward to today's event and to this whole series as steps in my personal and professional journey to make my work more anti-racist and therefore more effective in reaching my aspiration," she added.
The video then cuts to a slide in a lesson plan with the heading "white supremacy culture," which focuses on words and phrases such as "fear of open conflict," "objectivity," and even "individualism."
A person leading the discussion is heard saying how these terms are more important to white people and, as such, are a product of white supremacy.
"All of these things can really limit the way we go about doing our work, and they can really limit the way we are able to connect with communities that come from different cultural backgrounds that don't value these things the same way that white supremacy culture values them."
The date of the unearthed video, posted by Tenet Media, is unknown but reflects other lesson plans revealed by the Wall Street Journal in 2022.
The outlet pointed to NASA training regarding "allyship," which described the term "African American" as making black people feel excluded as if the word meant "other."
The lesson plan went on to claim that being "colorblind and gender-neutral" is limiting.
"Over the years, we have been taught to act as if we are colorblind and gender-neutral and that no differences exist between people. But these efforts actually limit us," the lesson claimed.
The slideshows were pointed out by an X user, who noted one of the training modules included a 45-minute session (requiring 50% attendance) regarding "unconscious bias & micro-messages" and "equity & privilege."
NASA is entrenched in some of the most extensive diversity training of any government entity. Each sector of NASA seems to have its own DEI mission statement on top of an exhausting amount of planning and resources.
NASA's Astrophysics Science Division, for example, published a breakdown of its demographics in 2022 to promote equity and inclusion.
The results showed that the majority of the division is still male (64%) and white (54.1%). The second-highest demographic is actually "foreign national" at 12.2%, while "Asian" was third-highest with 10.2% representation.
The space agency's dedication to diversity has, of course, not helped its latest mission on the Boeing spacecraft known as the Starliner. The vessel has been in space for about 12 weeks after what was supposed to be an eight-day mission.
After weeks of delaying announcements about how crew members might return home, NASA finally admitted that it will rely on SpaceX's Crew Dragon to bring them home no earlier than February 2025.
While crew members learned they would be spending at least an extra nine months in space, Boeing announced that its Starliner spacecraft would be returning to Earth in an uncrewed mission.
— (@)
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
Today's top stories
www.theblaze.com
freebeacon.com