In an internal memo, Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser indicated the bank would rename its DEI team and make other changes due to Trump’s anti-DEI policies.
According to Business Insider, in an internal memo to staff members, Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser indicated that the bank would rename its diversity, equity, and inclusion team and make several other changes in light of the growing hostility to DEI from the Trump Administration.
Per Fraser’s memo, the “diversity, equity, and inclusion and talent management” team will now be referred to as “talent management and engagement,” the memo also notes that the bank will ax “aspirational representation goals except as required by local law,” and will also no longer require job candidates or panels of interviewers to be diverse.
At the time that their three-year action plan was unveiled, Fraser said in a press release, “We are meeting the challenge of helping close the racial wealth gap with urgency. In just one year since launching Action for Racial Equity, we have already invested $1 billion into initiatives expanding economic opportunity for communities of color. There is still more work to be done to advance anti-racist practices both within our firm and across the industry, and we look forward to continuing to evolve our approach to driving diversity, equity and inclusion for our colleagues, clients and communities.”
According to Forbes, Citigroup joins Pepsi, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Coca-Cola, Goldman Sachs, Disney, Deloitte, PBS, Google, Intel, PayPal, Chipotle, Comcast, General Motors, Amazon, Amtrak, The Smithsonian Institution, Target, Meta, and McDonald’s among other companies and government contracted entities to either walk back aspects of or end their prior commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion due to pressure from the Trump Administration, many of whom committed multi-billion dollar pledges to assist in fostering diversity.
According to a Simon Blanchette, a lecturer at Canada’s McGill University and an expert in organizational theory, the corporate whiplash on DEI, while inspired by the Trump Administration’s clear animus regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion is also an example of what Blanchette called “diversitywashing” in an op-ed for The Conversation.
This, he argued, is what occurs when companies, like Citigroup and the others, declare support for social causes but retreat when there is public or political pressure.
As Blanchette writes, “When corporations roll back these initiatives in response to political pressures, it signals to the world their commitment to EDI was merely a strategic move to improve their brand image during a period when social justice was a trending topic.”
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Source: Black Enterprise
