Some black-owned businesses are blowing the whistle on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, telling Reuters that the initiatives have not been effective in helping out black people and other minority business owners.
Black business owners are now saying that they have not benefited much from diversity efforts intended to help them, and are largely unfazed by the Trump administration rolling back DEI programs nationwide, Reuters reported on Tuesday. The report comes amid President Donald Trump’s ongoing efforts to crack down on DEI initiatives in the U.S., including in universities and across the federal government.
“DEI isn’t for us,” one black business owner, Casey Cooper, told Reuters. “It looks good on paper, but that money doesn’t go to us anyway.”
President of the National Association of Minority Contractors Wendell Stemley told Reuters that there was a false narrative surrounding the effectiveness of DEI efforts aimed at helping minority contractors.
“People want you to believe that, oh, the government got this big minority business program to give Blacks these multitude of contracts,” Stemley told the outlet. “That’s just not the way it works.”
On the first day of his second term, Trump signed an executive order to dismantle “wasteful” and “radical” DEI programs throughout the federal government, saying that the Biden-Harris administration “forced illegal and immoral discrimination programs” into “virtually all aspects” of the U.S. government. The president signed a separate executive order on Jan. 22 that terminated “radical DEI preferencing in federal contracting” and directed federal agencies to “relentlessly combat private sector discrimination.”
The Biden-Harris administration led a massive push to implement diversity programs nationwide during former President Joe Biden’s sole term, including shelling out millions in grants for K-12 school programs promoting DEI, and spending tens of millions on DEI-related expenses at government agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services. While on the campaign trail, Trump pledged to eliminate “woke” policies in the federal government.
Notably, many major corporations have begun rolling back their DEI efforts in the past year amid growing backlash from consumers and investors, including Boeing, Walmart, Lowe’s and Ford Motors. Still, some businesses, such as Costco, have clung onto diversity initiatives.
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