The Journal. - One Man’s Campaign Against DEI

Episode Date: August 14, 2024

In the past three months, Robby Starbuck has fueled social-media attacks that have led to two companies rolling back their diversity initiatives. He is part of a larger movement that is pushing back against diversity, equity and inclusion policies at companies. WSJ’s Chip Cutter reports.  Further Listening: -Conservatives Come for ESG  Further Reading: -The Activist Pushing Companies to Ditch Their Diversity Policies  -Diversity Goals Are Disappearing From Companies’ Annual Reports  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In June, a video posted on X drew a lot of attention. Tractor Supply is a retail chain based in Tennessee. It sells farm supplies, pet and animal feed, stuff like that. But the man in the video wasn't talking about tractors or fertilizer. Instead, he was calling out the company's corporate policies. I want to say that I take no pleasure in doing this. I am a Tennessean. I do not want to hurt a Tennessee company.

But conservatives deserve to know that this is where their money's going and it gets worse. He went on to give a seven-minute longlong breakdown of Tractor Supply's policies around diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI. Oh, and look, they have a DEI Inclusion Council. In fact, they're so committed to DEI that they release yearly reports on how many more minorities they're hiring that year. The man who posted the video is named Robbie Starbuck,

and he took viewers on a tour of what he calls Tractor Supply's woke initiatives. Tractor Supply is doing such a good job of being woke that the human rights campaign has given them an A grade. The video went viral and now has 2.8 million views. And it was followed by a slew of other posts from Robbie criticizing tractor supply and its DEI initiatives. Our colleague Chip Cutter was following the drama. So the campaign just went for a couple of weeks, but that was enough for tractor supply to pull back here and then post what was a really stunning and unusual statement where it just starts listing all that it's going to do to change

and what it's not going to support and what it will support. They say that they will eliminate DEI roles within the company, they retire their DEI goals, they'd stop sponsoring what they call non-business activities like pride festivals and voting campaigns. It was such a sharp turnaround. Tractor Supply has also said that it would stop submitting data to the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy group,

withdraw its carbon emissions goals, and stop sponsoring Pride events. The company posted on X, quote, we've heard from customers that we have disappointed them. We have taken this feedback to heart. It was a big win for what basically amounted to a one-man effort. And tractor supply was just the beginning for Robbie Starbuck. Now, he's pledging to keep going and bring down DEI around the corporate world.

Here's someone that I think a lot of executives, for example, weren't really aware of. They didn't know who Ravi Starbuck was. But now they're seeing that he's getting results, and that's starting to freak them out. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Wednesday, August 14.

Coming up on the show, the DEI backlash in corporate America. Make your nights unforgettable with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation and when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance. Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamx.

Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. I want to zoom out and start with the concept of DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Can you define the term? Yeah, well, I mean, really what it comes down to is trying to ensure that people from underrepresented groups, underrepresented backgrounds can have a real chance and that they're able to be promoted and hired and to sort of have the same outcomes as others. It's really trying to correct for sort of decades of imbalances here. When we think about just sort of the

racism, sexism, whatever it might be that persists throughout society, corporate America for a long time was able to ignore that, but in more recent decades, of course, has tried to correct for that. DEI policy varies a lot across companies. Generally, policies try to support the hiring and advancement of women, people

of color, and other historically underrepresented groups in the workplace. But it can also include supporting things like pride events, diverse executive boards, marketing to customers from a range of backgrounds, and training employees to advocate for themselves. The goal was to make companies more diverse, which could also be good for their bottom line. And so when would you say DEI initiatives really took off? It certainly started happening before the pandemic, but the murder of George Floyd was, I think, a key moment where even companies that had not embraced DEI had started to say, we need to do something here. So you saw just a flood of notes from CEOs, you saw town halls, you had executives just talking about

how they had failed their own workplaces, how they hadn't done enough to promote DEI initiatives within the company. And so you saw major companies speaking out in a way that they really had not before. you saw major companies speaking out in a way that they really had not before. But the backlash to DEI was almost as sudden as its rise. DEI has recently been caught up in the culture wars, part of a broader reaction against ideas like critical race theory and LGBTQ inclusion.

This is happening in corporate America, but it's also happening in schools and in government. Who were some of the first people to publicly start talking about pushing back against DEI? It's really, it's a whole cast of characters. So it's everyone from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who of course pushed back against Disney and a really public case that I think spooked a number of companies.

I mean, I think it was political leaders on the right who had sort of started to question DE&I initiatives. And then we started to see some consumer boycotts. I think what happened with Bud Light was a really prominent example, where after Bud Light sent a can to a transgender influencer and then had a real consumer backlash to that. For more than two decades, Bud Light was America's top selling beer before being dethroned by Modelo back in May. Now, this came after a boycott of Bud Light and its parent company, Anheuser-Busch, by

some consumers. That was a wake-up call inside corporate America where many companies felt, OK, we don't want to have a boycott against us. Maybe we should think more critically about all of this. So this stuff builds. I mean, it's not just one person speaking out. It was a growing sort of movement and pushback against this. And as the pushback grew, Robbie Starbuck saw a chance to air his own concerns about DEI.

Before we jump into all of the work that you're doing, just tell us a little bit about yourself. Could you tell us your name and how old are you, where are you from? Robbie Starbuck and I'm 35. I come from a family. My mom came here, fled communism in Cuba with my grandparents, great grandparents, and they were the biggest influence on my life.

Robbie grew up in California with his three siblings and his mom. After high school, he got into recording live music performances. He later started his own video production company and moved to the Los Angeles area. Eventually, he left because he thought the politics of Hollywood were too liberal. I lived in California for a long time, but then about six years ago-ish, my wife and

I decided to buy a farm, move to Tennessee, raise our kids here. We've got three kids, three dogs, two cats, two bunnies, cattle, chickens. We have a full house, a very full house. It's the best decision we've ever made as a family was leaving that world and creating our own, you know, sort of destiny here in Tennessee. Recently, Robbie started to become more vocal about his political opinions, especially with posts on X against gender-affirming care for minors. Some of his posts caught the eye of Elon Musk,

who reposted them, bringing Robbie more attention. Do you consider yourself an activist? Begrudgingly. Like, I would have never wanted to describe myself as an activist because, frankly, I just don't like the way the term sounds. But there's no escaping the reality that, like, okay, I fit the dictionary definition of it at this point.

So let's talk about the work that you're doing, specifically around DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion. What does that term mean to you? It certainly doesn't mean diversity or inclusion. It really means something more along the lines of division, exclusion. And so for me, I can't think of anything more poisonous

as an ideology to feed children because it pits us into these categories of either being an oppressor or being oppressed. And I think it's all based off of immutable characteristics things none of us can change our skin color being one of them or our sex and you know these are these qualities that were born with and should never really play a role in our judgment of another person in

Terms of whether or not they should advance in a job, be hired for a job or anything along those lines. And our existing anti-discrimination laws make that explicitly clear. And so then as a father, there's a whole other perspective. I don't want my kids thinking when they get a job one day that they were able to check the Latino box. So am I a DEI hire?

I don't want that question to go through their mind. I want them to know they achieved what they achieved in life based on merit. Robbie said he posted his initial video about Tractor Supply after he got a tip from someone who worked there. Tractor Supply quickly rolled back its DEI policies. After that, Robbie turned his attention to another brand. All right, y'all, it's time to expose John Deere. As many of you know,

we had a very big win recently with Tractor Supply where we got them to drop all their woke policies. Well, I regret to inform you that John Deere, another company that relies on conservative customers, has also gone woke. This page you see behind me is their personal pronoun policy. They encourage employees to... So within a few weeks, he turns his attention to Deere. So he starts posting photos that he says show people at Deere holding pride flags, he starts calling out individual employees by name. Deere doesn't go as far as Tractor Supply, but it does walk back some of its efforts.

So it says it will no longer support social or cultural awareness parades, festival or events. It puts out a public statement saying it never had diversity quotas, but it would make sure there are no socially motivated messages in its training materials and less required. So it's a bit of a walk back, but not as far as tractor supply went. And it doesn't fully satisfy Robbie Starbuck

because the company says that it's still committed to diversity initiatives. Robbie said he's not satisfied with John Deere's response, and he's continued to criticize the company. But at the same time, he's moved on to his next target, again, against another famous American brand. But that target hasn't backed down yet. That's next. Thousands of bikers descend on Sturgis, South Dakota for the annual motorcycle rally.

Iconic bike brand Harley-Davidson is facing some backlash. A conservative activist named Robbie Starbuck is claiming that the rough and tough American company is going woke and says the new CEO is pushing the company. The next company that Robbie Starbuck aimed his DEI campaign against was Harley Davidson. Here's the video he posted on X. In Harley's words, they are all in

on diversity and inclusion. Let's take a look at what that means. I wonder how many Harley riders are aware that Harley Davidson is a platinum founding member of the LGBT Chamber of Commerce in Wisconsin. This is the same video. That video has almost three million views. I asked Robbie about this latest campaign. Well, it's a different archetype of customer. First of all, it's a very macho brand, right?

And it's probably the brand, if you put all three brands in front of somebody and said, which one would you think would be least woke, you'd point at Harley Davidson probably, because you'd think there's no way bikers are gonna embrace all this stuff. I'm not sure what type of change we're going to extract, but riders deserve to know what they're doing.

And now over the past few days, there's been a wave of media reports about, you know, what we've done done because Harley riders are now aware. So word has spread bikers are not happy. Robby's list of issues against the company include the CEO signing the Action for Diversity and Inclusion Pledge in 2020, and the company hosting various LGBTQ and racial diversity events and trainings. But so far, Harley-Davidson hasn't made any changes to its DEI policies. Here's our colleague Chip again.

Yeah, so Harley-Davidson really is interesting in that they haven't really pulled back in the ways that we've seen from other companies. And I think a lot of advisors to companies are watching this too, because if we see an example where a company just sort of ignores what Robbie Starbuck is saying and ends up being fine, that their sales don't take a huge hit, this is going to take out a lot of the momentum that he has. COLLEEN O'BRIEN HINES Harley Davidson seems aware of the pressure

campaign. According to Bloomberg News, the company recently sent an internal memo to its employees. In the memo, Harley Davidson said that it had already launched a review earlier in the year to look at its stakeholder and outreach activities. Let's say Harley-Davidson doesn't or some future company that you target also doesn't back down. What's the move there? Do you just move on to a different company or do you just keep putting pressure until

they give in? I've been described as a dog with a bone. You know, I'm not going to let go of it. Even half measures are really not good enough for me, but I will be the greatest champion of a company that does the right thing because I think that ultimately it's part of the path back to sanity for our country as a whole. I would just say, you know, we're ascendant right now, this movement, and I do believe we're winning and that even people who have maybe misgivings about this, but

they see where things are headed. I think in the long run, they're going to thank us for this because the world that it is intended to produce and I think will produce is one where all of our kids have a shot, a fair shot. Robbie has also posted things on X that are considered racist and homophobic, including defending the Great Replacement Theory, which is a far-right conspiracy theory that claims elites are trying to actively replace white people with non-white people. And he said that displaying pride flags at a children's soccer game is, quote, grooming. Robbie says he doesn't care what one's race or gender or sexual preferences look like. said that displaying pride flags at a children's soccer game is, quote, grooming.

Robbie says he doesn't care what one's race or gender or sexual preferences look like. But he says it isn't a corporation's place to engage with those identities. It's remarkable, though, that, like, one person was able to sort of start the ball rolling on this in this like really public and seemingly effective way. What is it about Starbucks' approach that you think is so effective? I think partly he's picking his companies fairly wisely, right? He's going after companies where he thinks he's going to get a welcome audience for what he's saying. And I think, you know, we certainly have seen other conservative activists take legal action

against companies, you know, to push back. This certainly happened after the Supreme Court's affirmative action ruling. But I just think the way that he has effectively used social media to get results super quickly from companies is significant and is why a lot of people have started sort of watching what he's doing. is why a lot of people have started sort of watching what he's doing. How would you describe the moment we're in when it comes to DEI? I think it does feel a little bit like DEI is on its back foot. I mean, it's not that people don't care about these issues and realize that DEI, what DEI

is advocating for, are important and meaningful and still need to sort of be addressed. But I think there's just such fear right now that, you know, saying the wrong thing or that companies could be targeted, even in my conversations with executives, a lot of them don't even want to use the word diversity. They don't want to say DEI out loud, even if they might speak about these policies more generally. Chipp says most companies haven't publicly rolled back

their DEI policies. But because of the broader anti-DEI movement, Chip says most companies haven't publicly rolled back their DEI policies. But because of the broader anti-DEI movement, Chip says some have quietly scrubbed the term out of their annual reports, laid off chief diversity officers, and gotten rid of their diversity goals. I was asking diversity advisors, how would you respond if Robbie Starbuck came after your company? And I expected a lot of them to say, like, oh, just hold firm, don't give in, that just would give them more ammo.

But that's not what they said. They said that companies would have to really think hard about what they're doing. Do their diversity initiatives support their business results? If they do, it's a lot easier to say, here's why we're doing this and that we plan to continue doing so. And I think they also are realizing this is a super complicated moment for companies, for executives, just given the cultural landscape right now.

And so a lot of them said, like, you'd have to just really think about this and think about how you respond. It's not an automatic, of course we just keep doing it, we don't make any changes. Things are getting really tricky. That's all for today, Wednesday, August 14th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. If you like our show, follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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