The Activist Pushing Companies to Ditch Their Diversity Policies
It took three weeks of tweets from conservative activist Robby Starbuck for Tractor Supply to scrap its diversity and inclusion program. Tractor-maker Deere folded even faster.
“Our next company we go after will be shorter than that,” Starbuck said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.
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From his home office outside of Nashville, Tenn., decorated with a massive American flag, Starbuck, who is known for making music videos and the footage that airs in movie theaters before the show that tells viewers to keep quiet and turn off their cellphones, recently decided to build a social-media operation to voice his objections to corporate culture.
Starbuck, 35, has launched campaigns to stoke outrage about what he calls companies’ “woke” diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Many of his 500,000 followers on X have joined in, including retweets from Elon Musk, building a chorus of criticism that, in part, caused Tractor Supply and Deere to abandon some of their efforts aimed at supporting workers from underrepresented backgrounds.
Tractor Supply, a rural retailer that sells animal feed and workwear, said on X after weeks of pressure on social-media from Starbuck and others: “We have heard from customers that we have disappointed them. We have taken this feedback to heart.”
Deere said last month that it has never had diversity quotas, that it would make sure there are no “socially motivated messages” in its training materials unless required, and that it wouldn’t participate in or support “social or cultural awareness parades, festivals, or events.”
Starbuck doesn’t plan to stop anytime soon. His moves capitalize on a growing anxiety inside corporations about coming under attack for taking public stances on hot-button issues, especially as DEI initiatives have started to fall out of favor. Giving in to Starbuck could alienate employees and customers. Not responding might intensify the conflict and lead to a boycott.
He says the workplace should be politically neutral, and has at least four other companies that he plans to go after, he said, but declined to name them. His latest target is motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson.
“Everybody should just go to work, do their job, go home,” he said. “You want to be an activist in your personal time? That’s your business.”
A Cuban-American, Starbuck says he does it because he’s a dad, and he doesn’t want his three young children to think they got a job because they are Latino when they get old enough to work. He has a fourth child on the way.
Starbuck grew up in Temecula, Calif., with three siblings and his mom, who immigrated to the U.S. from Cuba. He said he took college classes at a local community college in his senior year of high school, and then started recording musician’s live performances. Musicians would post the videos on their webpages, and others would ask him to do the same, leading him to eventually start a production company in Hollywood.
He says he always voted Republican, but a shift happened about seven years ago when he became more socially conservative. “I started to have a yearning for God in my life,” he said.
He became uncomfortable with sexual innuendo and jokes sprinkled in TV shows, movies and commercials his children were watching. Six years ago, Starbuck, his wife, Landon, and three children moved out of Calabasas, Calif., and headed for Tennessee, where they live outside Nashville in a house with a farm. Part of the home’s decor: a giant black-and-white photo of a lion’s face that Starbuck said was a gift. “They said it reminded them of my spirit.”
“We had fully understood we did not fit in that world,” he said about California and Hollywood. “Our values and our ideology were so far apart from that industry that it was like we just have to trust God and start over.”
In Tennessee, he has advocated for upholding a state ban on gender-affirming care for transgender children, as well as a law that would allow the death penalty for people convicted of child rape.
Musk, the billionaire who owns X and has more than 190 million followers, has replied to Starbuck’s posts more than 45 times this year.
“Doesn’t sound super compatible with their customers,” Musk said in response to a tweet by Starbuck about Harley-Davidson’s DEI policy.
“He’s just my friend on X,” Starbuck said of Musk. “I’m grateful he reads the stuff that I’m putting out there.”
Starbuck unsuccessfully tried to run for Congress in Tennessee in 2022. He doesn’t plan to run for office again in the near future.
“I’m accomplishing so much outside,” he said, “why would I tie myself up?”
In February, Starbuck released the documentary, “The War On Children,” which he sells for up to $15 on his site. He plans to produce more documentaries, he said.
It features Starbuck and his wife interviewing people on the same topics he regularly rails against online. Footage of news headlines, including some from far-right outlets like the Gateway Pundit, are spliced in between. Musk, in a post on X, said the documentary is worth watching.
“Why is it that our kids today are faced with Pride flags everywhere they go, no matter what, at every company?” Starbuck asks one interview subject in the film.
In another segment, Starbuck cites the example of boycotts against Bud Light and Target as models for would-be consumer activists. “Use your money as a weapon,” Landon Starbuck says.
After Bud Light sent a personalized can to a transgender influencer last year, consumers boycotted the brand, leading to a monthslong sales decline. Once the top-selling beer in America, Bud Light has now fallen to the No. 3 spot behind Modelo Especial and Michelob Ultra, recent sales data show.
Target’s sales took a hit last summer after it faced criticism over how it handled Gay Pride month displays.
Starbuck pays his two full-time employees, who edit videos and conduct research on the companies he tweets about, using money he makes from the $5 a month he charges subscribers on X for bonus videos and other content. He declined to say how much annual revenue he makes from his documentary and X subscriptions.
Veteran corporate executives say companies need to be prepared for this kind of scrutiny. Making everyone happy may not be an option.
Kelley Johnson, a former chief diversity officer at JCPenney, said companies should be proactive about adding a DEI component to their businesses—in case they are targeted by activists—and should be conscious of the risks associated with cutting such programs. “Ultimately, the question is this: Who do we lose in the process if we decide to end our DEI efforts? What market segment, what employees might we lose?” said Johnson, who now runs Keirus, a consulting firm focused on cultural transformation.
In his campaign against Harley-Davidson, which he launched in a July 23 X post, Starbuck said the company has supported LGBTQ+ causes and shown “a total commitment to DEI policies.”
Harley-Davidson declined to comment.
Starbuck says he’s “nowhere close to running out of companies, but I really hope I do, because that means that we’ve forced sanity in the workplace.”
Some remain skeptical about his long-term influence, if only because the demographics in the U.S. are shifting, and many large companies must reach a broad base of consumers.
“He’s got a megaphone right now, and a platform, and he’s had some wins, so he’s a necessary annoyance that we have to deal with,” said Jim Fielding, a former CEO of retailer Claire’s Stores and a former president of Disney Stores, who wrote a book on his life as a queer executive. “But I hope people running these companies have courage in their convictions.”
Write to Joseph Pisani at joseph.pisani@wsj.com and Chip Cutter at chip.cutter@wsj.com