Over the past few days and months, many U.S. companies, including Amazon, McDonald’s, Walmart, Ford, John Deere, and Meta (the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp), Announce End of their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) program. They will scale back initiatives aimed at promoting fair treatment and “full” participation of employees, particularly those from minority groups (i.e. gender, racial, LGBTQ, Aboriginal and disability groups).

These corporate initiatives, adopted over the past decade and a half and intensified by protests across the United States in 2020 following police brutality and the killing of George Floyd, involve incorporating DEI into hiring practices and supplier selection. , most commonly through “unconscious bias” training for employees.

The ostensible reason for the changing attitude in DEI businesses is that, as Amazon puts it, now “Outdated”. But we shouldn’t be fooled; there’s a noteworthy business logic behind it.

The timing of a series of announcements from major companies betrays their calculations: DEI is no longer good for their brands. Faced with growing resistance from U.S. conservatives to corporate efforts to attract minorities, it’s clear to companies like Meta and Amazon that the incoming Trump regime heralds the end of an era of social “progressivism.”

Therefore, eliminating DEI is not only a way to repair relations with Trump, who has been harshly critical of fairness, but also to adjust corporate marketing strategies to adapt to the joining of right-wing conservatism in the United States. “Wokeism” is definitely out of date.

Eliminating DEI would also be a cost-saving measure for businesses: It is estimated that U.S. businesses would spend approx. $8 billion An annual equity initiative.

But the inescapable conclusion to draw from this capriciousness of the company is that there was never any principled commitment to equity in the first place. Enterprises adopt DEI not to solve the problem of social inequality, but to build a brand, that is, to shape the corporate image in order to sell more products. It’s over now.

However, we are not surprised that DEI has a short shelf life. Let us not forget that corporate capitalism is built on socioeconomic inequality – a hierarchy between a small shareholder elite that owns and controls productive assets and a vast salaried workforce that today is largely made up of the Global South. of sweatshop workers who are the vital foundation of strong brand companies. above.

DEI is therefore a way to humanize corporate inequality. Inclusion of minorities under the guise of “equality” is often tokenistic, providing the illusion of creating greater equality. But it didn’t and it didn’t.

Some analysts decry corporate DEI for spawning a multibillion-dollar “diversity industry” of research, trainers, and “diversity czars” while doing nothing to address inequality. The corporate equity agenda has thus been accused of being an exercise in window dressing—an ideological cloak—that might make us feel better, but does so by simply integrating minorities into the workforce and management (mainly in Northern Hemisphere countries) to deceive us. ), we are reducing inequality.

In fact, the opposite is true: Wealth and income inequality in general have increased dramatically around the world over the past two decades, especially in the United States.

So, if equity is nothing more than branding or corporate cover-up for inequality, what can we expect now that DEI has been abandoned? We see an answer in Meta’s recent announcement: In addition to getting rid of DEI, it Abolish fact-checking on all its platforms.

Instead, a “community annotation” system similar to the one used by

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the idea is to return to “free expression” despite the move away from fact-checking, hate speech since X was taken over by Elon Musk , sexual and racial abuse, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia have surged on the platform.

Therefore, the end of DEI, like the abandonment of fact-checking, will further mitigate the inequality (and inequality) that corporate capitalism is built on. If DEI humanizes this inequality, its abandonment will make it even more naked: corporations will now hesitate to continue engaging in hiring and procurement practices that privilege the already privileged.

Wokeism is outdated. Prejudice prevails. At the same time, inequality continues unabated.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.