Tractor Supply Company — A Small Win for Fairness to All
A step in removing all forms of encoded bias
Three days ago, Tractor Supply Company (TSC) announced the elimination of their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) department and the goals that they previously aimed to achieve through that department. In a statement posted on their website, TSC listed five specific changes that would be made to their operations. The fourth is listed as follows:
Eliminate DEI roles and retire our current DEI goals while still ensuring a respectful environment.
This was the result of a campaign spearheaded by conservative activist and former congressional candidate Robby Starbuck, who called on his followers to voice their disapproval to TSC’s corporate office and take their business elsewhere until the company changed its course.
As someone who is passionately opposed to the identity-based initiatives that many organizations in the US have adopted, I am gratified to see this development. I have mixed feelings on Starbuck’s other points — for example, I disagree with condemning TSC for acknowledging and celebrating Pride Month. But I do strongly believe that getting rid of DEI departments is a step in the right direction for our nation’s moral integrity.
I realize that DEI initiatives vary in their exact nature across different organizations. Based on what I’ve observed overall, however, DEI is not so much about removing biases or correcting past injustices. Rather, it is more about broadly attempting to equalize social disparities between certain groups. Under this principle, people are sorted by their race, gender and other traits into “haves” and “have nots.” Whether or not a person was ever actually discriminated against, and whether or not they or their families were ever involved in or affected by slavery and segregation, their identity is considered in decisions related to hiring, promotion, funding and other business operations.
Some of the DEI-based goals to which TSC had committed itself are named in the following passage of a news release published on their website in 2021:
· Double the number of stores where Team Members mirror the communities it serves,
· Increase People of Color at the manager level and above by 50%,
· Increase spending with diverse suppliers by 35% and
· Increase commitment to funding programs and education for Black and African Americans by 30%.
The company planned to reach these targets over a period of five years. In a previous article, I noted a similar list of diversity goals set down in a report published the same year by Facebook:
Over the past two years, we set three goals to increase representation in our workforce over five years.
1. Double the number of women employees globally and double the number of Black and Hispanic employees in the US.
2. …By 2024, our goal is to have at least 50% of our workforce comprised of women globally, and underrepresented minorities, people with two or more ethnicities, people with disabilities and veterans in the US.
3. Increase the number of US-based leaders (Director-level employees and above) who are people of color by 30%.
I further stated that this type of undertaking is a mistake because it does not focus on preventing bias and discrimination. Rather, the focus is placed on corrective goals that disfavor “non-diverse” candidates and treat individual circumstances as secondary.
Diversity, equity and inclusion are all wonderful concepts. The diversity of our backgrounds makes us all the more beautiful as humans. We should most certainly do what we can to help those who have been dealt significant setbacks in their lives. And as a freedom-loving society based in tolerance and acceptance, we absolutely do want to be inclusive of others.
The problem with DEI is that as a practice, its ideas are based on a broad view of people as being either marginalized or privileged according to their background. This view determines what people ultimately do or do not deserve based on intrinsic traits. Consequently, it separates them into different levels of favorability in business-related decisions.
As Americans, most of us, like myself, sympathize with those who have been affected by racism, sexism, anti-gay prejudice and other types of bias and intolerance. But what we need to remember, and what’s too often ignored in social justice activism, is that one’s identity does not inherently determine their welfare. This is why business initiatives that favor people by intrinsic traits are wrong.
Fortunately there have been a number of recent victories against this sort of identity-focused worldview. Besides TSC’s elimination of its DEI program, there was the court ruling against Novant Health in 2021 for terminating a white male employee for the purpose of increasing its workforce diversity. Last year, the Supreme Court ruled against affirmative action in higher education. Several federal courts across the country blocked President Biden’s race-based debt relief plan for American farmers. This month, Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences ended its four-year old requirement for job applicants to submit a diversity and inclusion statement.
I commend TSC for taking the action that they did, and I hope that other businesses and organizations will soon follow suit. Our world can become only better by putting aside our judgment of others as being more or less fortunate based on race, gender and other such characteristics.