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Walmart (WMT) is scaling back some of its diversity initiatives, becoming one of the most prominent companies yet to make such an about-face as activist pressure mounts.
The world's largest retail chain told Yahoo Finance that it would cease using the acronym DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), no longer participate in a corporate equality rating system created by the Human Rights Campaign, and end its $100 million Center for Racial Equity that was scheduled to be sunsetted in 2025.
The company will also remove from its available merchandise all sexual and transgender products marketed to children, review its supplier diversity program to ensure that no preferences are made based on race, and stop using the term "LatinX" in official communications to refer to people of Latin American cultural or ethnic identities.
A spokesman for Walmart said the changes did not come about suddenly.
"We’ve been on a journey and know we aren’t perfect, but every decision comes from a place of wanting to foster a sense of belonging, to open doors to opportunities for all our associates, customers and suppliers and to be a Walmart for everyone," the company said in a statement.
Similar changes discarding DEI initiatives have been picking up momentum at other major US corporations in recent months as critics target what they describe as "woke" policies.
Home improvement giant Lowe’s (LOW), rural retailer Tractor Supply (TSCO), and tractor maker John Deere (DE) also announced retreats from DEI policies last summer. Harley-Davidson (HOG), Jack Daniel’s maker Brown-Forman (BF-A), Polaris (PII), and its motorcycle subsidiary, Indian Motorcycle, are among the other recent pullbacks.
Conservative activist Robby Starbuck has said many of these discarded diversity initiatives happened after he communicated plans to "expose" woke policies.
He did so again on Monday with Walmart, saying in a post on X that he told executives at the retailer that he was "doing a story on wokeness there" and that he and Walmart "had productive conversations to find solutions."
Citing the company's changes, he added that "this is the biggest win yet for our movement to end wokeness in corporate America."
A US Supreme Court ruling last year has been cited as a factor in corporate decisions to alter diversity policies.