In protest of President Trump’s targeting of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, consumers have united for a 24-hour economic blackout on Friday, February 28.
Yahoo Finance explains what grassroots organization The People’s Union USA hopes to achieve as they highlight the power of consumer choices.
The initiative particularly encourages consumers to support local businesses over large retail chains. To dive deeper into this, Shari Dunn, a consultant focusing on systemic DEI joins Wealth host Brad Smith to discuss the unified boycott.
Earlier this week, Citigroup (C) and PepsiCo (PEP) became the latest companies to roll back their corporate DEI initiatives, while Apple (AAPL) shareholders voted to reject a proposal to scrap its DEI program.
“The goal is for consumers — specifically consumers of color, other minoritized groups, people who are impacted by these anti-DEI measures — to say, ‘Hey, we can hear you, and we can see, and we are consumers and we are employees, and we want to be represented in both spaces. And, if we’re not, [then] we’re going to use our economic power,'” the author of Qualified: How Competency Checking and Race Collide at Work explains.
University of Michigan professor Marcus Collins makes the case for why corporate DEI rollbacks will ultimately end up hurting Black creators in the influencer economy.
Dunn cites the 1950s Montgomery bus boycott and emphasizes the power of collective economic influence: “If those folks can organize their pennies, we can not spend online at Amazon for a day.”
REVOLT CEO Detavio Samuels characterized “being anti-DEI” as also being “anti-business” in an interview with Yahoo Finance.
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This post was written by Josh Lynch
