In the two years following George Floyd’s murder, nearly 1,400 Fortune 1000 companies pledged a total of $340 billion toward fighting racial injustice, according to a 2023 analysis by the McKinsey Institute for Black Economic Mobility.

About 40% of companies made statements in support of racial justice, while 30% made external commitments to promote racial equity in economic opportunities.

But today, dozens and dozens of companies are dropping diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives they loudly launched five years ago.

“The bottom line is, it’s been proven that they care more about dollars than lives,” said Todd Belcore, co-founder and executive director of Social Change. “It’s never been more clear than now, as soon as the issue of our lives and fragility of our access to human rights is no longer in the limelight, and it’s no longer marketable, it’s no longer a priority.”

President Donald Trump has signed several executive orders at the start of his term, one of which targets federal funding for DEI initiatives, claiming the programs are “illegal” practices.

“There’s always room for growth with respect to education, with respect to employment advances and just other opportunities, like becoming a homeowner or being able to safely matriculate through workplaces without the fear of not having the same opportunities as others,” said Rev. Dr. Waltrina Middleton, executive director of Community Renewal Society. “When you think of the long-standing history in this country, there remains a great need for us to close those gaps, and now, even more than ever, we see the importance of having those those systematic structures in place so that we can ensure that we don’t go back to segregation, we don’t go back to the normalization and legalization of systems that minoritize and oppress others.”

Walmart’s five-year $100 million commitment created its Center for Racial Equity with a mandate to “address the root causes of gaps in outcomes experienced by Black and African American people in education, health, finance and criminal justice systems.”

However, last November, Walmart released a statement announcing changes in its policy including no longer using the term “DEI” in job titles and communications, opting instead to begin using the word “belonging.”

Several other companies like Ford, Harley-Davidson, Lowe’s, Starbucks, McDonald’s and Target have also eliminated DEI initiatives.

While the uptick in DEI abandonment seems recent, the retaliation gained momentum in June 2023, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to abolish affirmative action commitments in colleges, setting a legal precedent to oppose DEI practices in the workplace as well as higher education.

“It is under vociferous attack, and those attacks began before the election of the 47th president,” said Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League. “Began several years ago with really a concerted campaign to undermine the commitments that had been made, the financial commitments and commitments to racial justice.”

The National Urban League released a report — “George Floyd Five Years Later: Was It a Moment or a Movement?” — analyzing the way the government, institutions, advocates and businesses respond to racial injustice.

Floyd’s murder reignited the fight against racial injustice but some advocates say there has not been much result in change.

“This is what the legacy of George Floyd has been: It has been a failed experiment in community-building across America,” said Xavier Ramey, chief executive officer of Justice Informed. “The reality is that pain shouldn’t be a classroom, but unfortunately, it is, and part of that is because people moderate and live their lives in such a way where they would rather move because there’s a consequence for not moving and move because there’s an incentive for it. And if that’s the case in human terms, then we are more accelerated by and incentivized by people being hurt than we are by people being helped.”

Community members and organizers immediately responded to corporations’ DEI rollbacks with a range of boycotts and encouraged community members to withhold their dollars at stores complying with the Trump administration. Target’s sales at stores dropped 3.8% last quarter.

“Target had some pretty good programs to guarantee some placement of Black products, some real consideration for our businesses that are no longer in place and that’s a real blow,” Belcore said. “That’s why it’s so much more important that if people aren’t caring about our lives, we shouldn’t care about their business and we should make sure that we are doubling down and tripling down any efforts to support those who support us and prioritize spending.”

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