The troubled aerospace manufacturer Boeing has become the latest major company to dismantle its entire diversity department.
According to a report from Bloomberg, the remaining staff from Boeing’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion office will be folded into human department.
Sara Liang Bowen, the Boeing vice president who led the department, departed the company on Thursday, writing in a post on LinkedIn:
Our team strived every day to support the evolving brilliance and creativity of our workforce. The team achieved so much – sometimes imperfectly, never easily – and dreamed of doing much more still.
All of it has been worth it. Because behind every effort there has been a person: An unheard voice, an idea waiting to bloom. The people make the company what it is, and it’s the people who will restore it to a state of trusted excellence.
Meanwhile, Boeing said in a statement that it “remains committed to recruiting and retaining top talent and creating an inclusive work environment where every teammate around the world can perform at their best while supporting the company’s mission.”
The company added that it will still prohibit discriminatory hiring practices and install “a merit-based performance system with procedures aimed at encouraging an equality of opportunity, not of outcomes.”
Boeing, which has recently been plagued by numerous safety issues that are threatening the very future of the organization, is merely the latest in a long line of companies to scrap DEI initiatives, which effectively seek to discriminate against white men in favor of women and minority gorups.
Back in August, Harley Davidson confirmed it had dismantled its diversity department in April 2024 and is no longer pursuing “supplier diversity spend goals.”
We remain committed to listening to all members of our community as we continue on our journey together as one Harley-Davidson. United We Ride. pic.twitter.com/0feGYhTUMh
— Harley-Davidson (@harleydavidson) August 19, 2024
Last month, the automobile giant Toyota similarly announced that it was scaling back its diversity initatives and would no longer sponsor pride events and would “narrow our community activities to align with STEM education and workforce readiness.”
Toyota latest to scrap DEI policies, giving anti-woke activist another win https://t.co/cBhxUZN97H pic.twitter.com/TADpcr0XAz
— New York Post (@nypost) October 4, 2024
Both moves were partly credited to the conservative activist Robby Starbuck after he led a successful pressure campaign against the prevalence of racist and discriminatory DEI practices.
