The United States has been in a massive political and economic upheaval against the imagined forces of “DEI” and “Woke” recently, a largely one-sided battle that’s mostly just made planes fall out of the sky. Major companies have been racing to strike down initiatives aimed at more equitable hiring, as shows of deference towards our eugenicist political leaders, but it turns out regular people don’t actually want those policies reversed — in fact, when given the opportunity, they’ll vote to uphold DEI initiatives themselves.
Shareholders on a John Deere investor call “overwhelmingly” shot down a resolution aimed at killing DEI initiatives today, according to Reuters. As usual, when decisions are left up to regular people rather than CEOs, the people vote for Woke:
During a webcast of its annual meeting, executives with the farm equipment maker said only 1.3% of votes cast were in support of a resolution calling on the company to report on racial and gender hiring statistics “to prove it does not practice discrimination.”
The resolution was filed by the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative-leaning Washington think tank that has opposed many corporate diversity efforts. Two other resolutions aimed at restricting social action by Deere won similarly low levels of support.
…
But many investors and executives see DEI efforts as necessary to address underrepresentation of certain populations in management roles. On Tuesday, Apple investors voted in defense of the company’s DEI policies, as did Costco investors in January.
Deere shareholders back DEI
The National Legal and Policy Center is a conservative group that hosts a “whistleblower” hotline for reporting diversity, equity, and inclusion practices in workplaces. Equitable hiring isn’t illegal (yet), so it’s unclear what whistleblower protections the NLPC thinks its informants qualify for, but this is a group that asks website visitors, in all seriousness, whether Oreos are “grooming” kids with “gender ideology.” The seriousness of the group that once reported corruption on both sides of the aisle appears to have vanished.
As always, DEI practices are a bogeyman invented by the precious few people who actually have any animosity towards them. Normal people, when given the opportunity to speak up on the efforts, generally either don’t care or are in favor of DEI. John Deere’s management may have canceled the company’s support of pride parades, but 98.7 percent of company’s shareholders seem unable to care less.
