Wall Street is ditching wokeness but expect it to remain in government if Kamala Harris wins
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. Sorry, Professor, America hates all things woke — whether it’s a trans woman acti...