McDonald’s sign in Middletown (Delaware, Eastern United States) on July 26, 2019 (AFP / JIM WATSON)
McDonald’s announced Monday that it would reverse some of its diversity practices, becoming the latest American organization to move in this direction after a Supreme Court ruling putting an end to affirmative action measures in university admissions.
Ford, Jack Daniel’s and Walmart supermarkets have already announced drastically reducing their diversity programs in the face of “anti-woke” lobbying, Walmart having even abandoned the acronym DEI, for “diversity, equality and inclusion”, in its communication.
Among the changes announced by the fast food giant in its press release, it plans to abandon asking suppliers to commit to respecting certain DEI objectives and the end of external surveys measuring their compliance, while its committee of diversity will be renamed the “global inclusion team”.
McDonald’s will instead move towards “a more integrated discussion with suppliers on inclusion, he said in this press release.
The restaurateur also announced the end of “establishing ambitious representation goals”, in favor of “maintaining our goal of integrating the inclusion practices that grow our business into our daily processes and operations “.
The text emphasizes, however, that “McDonald’s position” and its “commitment to inclusion are firm”.
This shift comes against a backdrop of the “anti-woke” offensive by American conservatives, reinforced by the Supreme Court’s decision in 2023 to abolish affirmative action programs at universities, one of the achievements of the fight for civil rights of the 1960s.
Conservative groups have used this decision to launch numerous legal proceedings against companies or public institutions to stop their programs aimed at ending historic discrimination against minorities.
They accuse these programs of consisting of a “flaunt of virtue” and an “apology of political correctness” and claim that they particularly disadvantage white men.
The adoption of these programs had progressed after the immense wave of anti-racist protest which followed the death in 2020 of George Floyd, an African-American killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis.
Aged 35, activist Robby Starbuck, an outspoken defender of Trump, has begun a veritable crusade against right-thinking and boasts of having made Ford or Harley-Davidson bend.
