Walmart scraps DEI grift... er... programs (11-26-2024--Hour1)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetekalendershow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:28] Oh, what a day. Walmart, the world's largest retailer. It's where, you know, they roll back the savings, they roll back the prices. Well, today they are rolling back DEI. They're rolling back their diversity, equity and inclusion policies. As the Associated Press reports, joining a growing list of major corporations that have done the same after coming to the United States.

[00:00:58] under attack by conservative activists. See, because imposing DEI is an attack. It is radical. Oh, no, sorry. It's not an attack. Sorry. Not radical. Fighting back against DEI imposition. That's the attack. That's the radical stuff.

[00:01:25] The changes confirmed by Walmart yesterday are sweeping and include everything from not renewing a five-year commitment for an equity racial center.

[00:01:43] I'm sorry. Equity racial center or the ERC or the ERC. They set that up in 2020. Now, it was only a five-year commitment.

[00:01:55] So they set it up in 2020, 21, 22, 23, 24. So they got their five years and now they're not going to renew it. Maybe they've solved racial inequity. Right? Do you ever consider that Associated Press? Huh?

[00:02:13] They set it up in 2020. Do you remember why? The equity racial center? Do you remember why they set it up and why it would have been in 2020?

[00:02:23] Well, if you guessed St. George Floyd, you are correct. Yes. The police killing of George Floyd. Sorry. St. George Floyd.

[00:02:32] They also are going to pull out of a prominent gay rights index. Ew. And when it comes to race or gender, Walmart won't be giving priority treatment to suppliers.

[00:02:46] So they're not going to discriminate against people based on their race or ethnicity or their sex.

[00:02:55] No more discrimination under the pretext of DEI.

[00:03:02] Walmart's moves underscore the increasing pressure faced by corporate America as it continues to navigate the fallout from the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in June of 2023, ending affirmative action in college admissions.

[00:03:18] Emboldened by that decision, conservative groups have filed lawsuits.

[00:03:24] How dare you use the courts, conservatives?

[00:03:34] They're making similar arguments about corporations.

[00:03:37] They're targeting workplace initiatives such as diversity programs and hiring practices that prioritize historically marginalized groups.

[00:03:46] Separately, conservative political commentator and activist Robbie Starbuck, no relation to the coffee chain, has been going after corporate DEI policies, calling out individual companies on the social media platform X or Twitter.

[00:04:03] Several of those companies have subsequently announced that they are pulling back their initiatives, including Ford, Harley Davidson, Lowe's and tractor supply.

[00:04:18] Do you.

[00:04:20] Do you see a common theme in those businesses?

[00:04:25] Is there is there is there is there some sort of similarity between Ford, Harley Davidson, Lowe's and tractor supply?

[00:04:40] Yeah, I can't I can't see one either.

[00:04:43] Walmart employs one point six million workers in the U.S.

[00:04:46] It is the largest one now to do so.

[00:04:48] Well, it's actually, I think, the largest retailer in America.

[00:04:53] Now, Walmart says it will better monitor its third party marketplace items to make sure that they don't feature sexual and transgender products aimed at minors.

[00:05:08] Remember this one?

[00:05:11] The was it the chest binders and the the the swimsuits with the the tuck feature, the the tuck suits or whatever those things were called.

[00:05:22] It's like the chest binding does the top.

[00:05:25] If you're a girl and you don't you know, you don't want your your boobs, you you wear the chest binder and just like smushes your chest flat.

[00:05:33] Make it look like you got actually.

[00:05:36] Isn't it like the man girdle, the myrtle?

[00:05:39] Isn't that really tight T-shirts will do that for you, too, guys.

[00:05:43] Anyway, there's the tuck swimsuit, which kind of does the same thing.

[00:05:49] But for boys below the belt, they're also going to review grants to pride events.

[00:06:01] Why?

[00:06:02] Well, they want to make sure that Walmart is not financially supporting sexualized content that may be unsuitable for kids, a.k.a. bigotry.

[00:06:16] How dare you, Walmart, not allowing us to set up our our BDSM tent right next to yours?

[00:06:26] I mean.

[00:06:29] It is a shame that we are at this place.

[00:06:32] I have said this for years.

[00:06:33] This was a fight in Charlotte 20 years ago when Pat McCrory, as he would do as mayor, anybody that came to town, any kind of a convention or, you know, parade or anything like that.

[00:06:47] And, you know, the mayor's office would.

[00:06:50] Would write a letter.

[00:06:51] Hey, welcome to the Queen City.

[00:06:53] Welcome to Charlotte.

[00:06:54] You know, glad you're here.

[00:06:55] We're an awesome city.

[00:06:57] Make sure you come back.

[00:06:59] Thanks for your business.

[00:07:00] That kind of stuff.

[00:07:01] And then he wrote his office, sent out one to the Pride parade.

[00:07:08] And a whole bunch of Republicans got mad at him because there were pictures and videos that were being taken at the Charlotte Pride parade.

[00:07:21] Of sexualized content.

[00:07:23] Men with butt chaps.

[00:07:26] That's not what it said.

[00:07:27] It's like it's a pant.

[00:07:28] It's a pair of pants.

[00:07:30] Missing.

[00:07:31] The butt covering.

[00:07:33] And so they would be out there grinding on kids and teaching them how to do strip teases and such.

[00:07:39] Right.

[00:07:40] And I said at the time, as a lowercase l libertarian, I don't care if a bunch of people want to parade down the street and say, I prefer to sleep with these people.

[00:07:52] Not my that is not my jam.

[00:07:55] I am not going to be parading down the street saying I like to sleep with women.

[00:07:59] Like, I'm not I'm not going to do that.

[00:08:02] But they want to do a parade and they got the permits as long as you are not engaging in lewd and lascivious conduct.

[00:08:12] Which I would have a problem if it were straight.

[00:08:15] I would not want, you know, strip clubs to be marching down the streets doing lap dances for people on the streets.

[00:08:24] Oh, that makes you a prude.

[00:08:26] No, it doesn't.

[00:08:27] I just want to protect kids that might be walking by or like, hey, let's go to the rainbow parade.

[00:08:34] And they go to the parade and then they're seeing all of the sexual content like.

[00:08:39] Guys, gals, you got to be better than that.

[00:08:41] You can't be, you know, you can't you can't be simulating sex acts when the kids are in the audience.

[00:08:47] There's a reason why we put ratings on movies.

[00:08:53] PG, PG-13, R.

[00:08:56] What was the other one?

[00:08:58] NC-17.

[00:08:58] You don't really hear about that one anymore.

[00:09:01] For some reason, that one just kind of went away.

[00:09:05] Yeah, you don't like if you're a parent, you use these ratings so you know what's appropriate for my kid at that age, which is, by the way, the same thing going on with the books.

[00:09:16] Nobody is banning books.

[00:09:18] They're saying curate the books.

[00:09:21] Use some kind of a ratings system.

[00:09:24] And oh, my gosh, we can't do that.

[00:09:27] You have to be able to go into the library and see some gay cartoon porn.

[00:09:33] If you're in fourth grade.

[00:09:36] Or else you're a bigot.

[00:09:39] Also, Walmart will no longer consider race and gender as a litmus test to improve diversity when it offers supplier contracts.

[00:09:49] In other words, discriminate.

[00:09:51] They're not going to discriminate against people based on the color of their skin.

[00:09:56] Again, that's what Walmart is now agreeing to do.

[00:09:59] And I'm sure it's got nothing to do with the election.

[00:10:05] A Walmart spokesperson said some of its policy changes have been in progress for a while.

[00:10:11] For example, it has been moving away from using the word DEI in job titles and communications and started using the word belonging.

[00:10:21] Rather than inclusion.

[00:10:22] See, because that sends the message that we're the in group and you're the out group.

[00:10:27] And by including you in, we're like giving permission to join our club.

[00:10:31] But that's not really what it should be about.

[00:10:33] It should be about belonging.

[00:10:38] So diversity, equity and belonging.

[00:10:43] Or DEB.

[00:10:46] Belonging.

[00:10:46] So it doesn't actually sound like they are dismantling these systems.

[00:10:50] It sounds like they're doing a rebrand and they're going to kind of lay low for a while.

[00:10:55] They say it also started to make changes in the supplier program in the aftermath of the Supreme Court affirmative action ruling.

[00:11:03] Some have been urging companies to stick with their DEI policies.

[00:11:07] Last month, a group of Democrats in Congress appealed to the leaders of the Fortune 1000 companies saying that DEI efforts give everybody a fair chance at achieving the American dream.

[00:11:18] So here's a question.

[00:11:20] What if DEI doesn't actually work?

[00:11:25] Have you all thought about that?

[00:11:27] What if it doesn't work?

[00:11:28] All the proponents of DEI, what if it actually induces animosity?

[00:11:36] What if it does the exact opposite of what you are saying it does or hoping it does?

[00:11:43] Funny you should ask.

[00:11:45] I have a study.

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[00:12:49] Let's head over to the phones and talk with Dale.

[00:12:52] Hello, Dale.

[00:12:53] Welcome to the show.

[00:12:55] Hey, Pete.

[00:12:56] Thanks for taking my call.

[00:12:57] Yes, sir.

[00:12:57] I appreciate it.

[00:12:58] First time caller.

[00:12:59] Welcome.

[00:13:00] I try to listen to you as often as I get to, but I feel like you do an outstanding job there.

[00:13:06] Thanks.

[00:13:06] I appreciate it.

[00:13:07] Welcome.

[00:13:08] So I just wanted to make a comment about the Walmart trying to sort of walk back on the DEI stuff and all that.

[00:13:16] I thought before the election, I was always of the opinion that if the election went the way that it has,

[00:13:23] that we would start to see some of these companies and such corporations sort of walk back on this stuff.

[00:13:29] And I can't remember if you had said it or Brett Witterbull or I couldn't remember, but I'd heard that after the election.

[00:13:38] But I had always felt before the election that that would happen.

[00:13:42] Well, I mean, to think that this is strictly a response to the Supreme Court's affirmative action ruling, I think is I don't think that's the whole story.

[00:13:53] I think part of it is, in fact, the election results.

[00:13:58] I mean, what, roughly 80 million people voted for Trump and that's 80 million voters or shoppers, I should say.

[00:14:06] Right.

[00:14:07] Those are those are people who go to Walmart.

[00:14:09] And I mean, not all of them, but those are all potential customers.

[00:14:13] And if they have sent a message saying we don't approve of this woke mind virus infiltrating everything and every aspect of our of our lives,

[00:14:26] then I got to believe that Walmart took notice.

[00:14:31] And I think some of the pressure campaigns against these other companies probably helped them make that decision, too.

[00:14:38] Yeah, I agree 100 percent.

[00:14:40] And I do feel like we're going to start seeing it's more of a snowball effect.

[00:14:44] We're going to start seeing more companies start to and it is not going to be, you know, in the media and stuff like that.

[00:14:51] It's going to be people like you bringing it out to everyone's attention that these people are starting to walk back on this.

[00:14:57] But again, thanks for taking my call, man.

[00:14:59] I appreciate it.

[00:15:00] And you do an outstanding job.

[00:15:01] Thanks, brother.

[00:15:02] I appreciate it.

[00:15:02] Thanks for the call.

[00:15:04] And Dale mentioned there the snowball effect.

[00:15:08] Also, the preference cascade.

[00:15:10] Right.

[00:15:11] Where people think they're alone.

[00:15:13] Rush Limbaugh talked about this when he first started radio.

[00:15:16] And after the Fairness Doctrine was scrapped under the Reagan administration, people started, you know, were listening to Rush do his show.

[00:15:25] And they realized that they're not alone, that other people thought the same things that they did.

[00:15:30] And that creates a preference cascade.

[00:15:34] And people then are emboldened and encouraged.

[00:15:38] They're more secure.

[00:15:40] They're like, oh, OK, I'm not the only one.

[00:15:42] And when Trump comes in the way he comes in with that election victory and the Republican gains, it sends the signal that there is a lot of people that have a preference for normality.

[00:15:56] All right.

[00:15:57] Hey, real quick.

[00:15:58] If you would like to get your product or service in front of about 10,000 people multiple times a day, send me an email at Pete at the Pete Calendar Show dot com and ask me about advertising.

[00:16:09] It's super affordable.

[00:16:10] It's baked into this podcast forever.

[00:16:12] And podcasts have a higher conversion rate than other social media platforms, making it the best bang for your buck.

[00:16:18] Send me a message.

[00:16:19] Pete at the Pete Calendar Show dot com and I can show you how it works.

[00:16:23] Run the numbers with you.

[00:16:23] Again, that's Pete at the Pete Calendar Show dot com.

[00:16:28] All right.

[00:16:29] So hang on.

[00:16:29] There was a little bit of confusion earlier where I mentioned if you wear the tight T-shirts as a dude, if you wear the tight T-shirt, like it'll.

[00:16:38] It's like a myrtle, like a man girdle, you know, and Russ says, no, the really tight T-shirts on guys doesn't hide anything or slim you down.

[00:16:48] They just make you look like a busted can of biscuits.

[00:16:51] Now, that is true, which is why I was OK.

[00:16:54] I was unclear.

[00:16:55] This is completely my fault.

[00:16:56] I'm not saying you wear the really tight T-shirt and that's it.

[00:17:00] I'm saying you wear the really tight T-shirt under another shirt.

[00:17:06] That's what makes it the myrtle.

[00:17:09] OK, yeah, sorry about that.

[00:17:11] That's my fault.

[00:17:12] I left it unclear.

[00:17:15] So Walmart.

[00:17:18] Walmart going to abandon its DEI policies.

[00:17:22] It is cutting ties with the HRC, the human rights campaign that had its gay rights index.

[00:17:32] Ed Morrissey, but this was interesting because he actually has some experience before he was at hot air dot com, before he launched that whole thing.

[00:17:40] He apparently did deals and he did deals with Walmart.

[00:17:48] And he says here.

[00:17:51] It's impossible to overestimate Walmart's arrogance with suppliers and regulators.

[00:17:57] They don't do anything that would cut into their bottom line and they enforce contracts like no one's business.

[00:18:03] I used to work for a company that sold security related materials to Walmart and they had a no nonsense take it or leave it attitude when it came to negotiation.

[00:18:13] And fair play to them for that.

[00:18:15] Right.

[00:18:16] The scale of that business was enormous, even if the margins were razor thin.

[00:18:21] So if Walmart's policies regarding the HRC index were at all defensible to the general public, Walmart would have told these activists like Robbie Starbuck to go pound sand.

[00:18:34] Right.

[00:18:36] Robbie Starbuck is going to claim a scalp here.

[00:18:38] Not saying he shouldn't.

[00:18:41] He said, you know, Walmart's the number one employer in America with over one point six million employees.

[00:18:46] And, you know, he's doing a victory lap because he had threatened Walmart.

[00:18:50] He said, we're going to come after you over your DEI stuff.

[00:18:54] He says, like, yeah, we've now changed policies at companies worth more than two trillion dollars with many millions of employees who will have a better workplace environment as a result.

[00:19:05] Again, not I'm not denying Robbie Starbuck any of his his accolades here.

[00:19:11] But to Ed Morrissey's point, Walmart obviously looked at this and said.

[00:19:17] We don't want to keep doing this.

[00:19:19] And it wasn't because of Robbie Starbuck.

[00:19:23] If their policies were at all defensible, they would have defended them and continued them.

[00:19:28] The fact that they caved demonstrates that Walmart itself knows what their customers would think about these DEI policies and discrimination tactics.

[00:19:40] And that's why they bail.

[00:19:42] Now.

[00:19:43] What if DEI doesn't work?

[00:19:46] All you leftists who think, you know, so much more than you do about the way people think and and what types of programs work and how we go about doing the work.

[00:19:58] You know, dismantling structural racism and all of that stuff.

[00:20:02] What if you're wrong?

[00:20:03] What if DEI actually promotes more bad behavior?

[00:20:08] What if it creates racial animus?

[00:20:11] Well, a new study found that DEI materials have a wide range of negative consequences, including psychological harm, increased hostility and my favorite.

[00:20:26] Greater agreement with extreme authoritarian rhetoric, such as.

[00:20:33] Adapted Adolf Hitler quotes.

[00:20:38] Think about what that means.

[00:20:40] If you get exposed to DEI stuff, you become more comfortable with Hitler quotes.

[00:20:48] You agree with more Hitler quotes.

[00:20:53] Both the New York Times and Bloomberg.

[00:20:56] We're writing stories on this research, on the findings of this latest study at a Rutgers, but they killed the stories.

[00:21:05] They spiked the stories before publication.

[00:21:08] And they cited editorial decisions.

[00:21:12] The Network Contagion Research Institute, or NCRI, and Rutgers University Social Perception Lab released the study called Instructing Animosity.

[00:21:23] How DEI Pedagogy, which means a Method of Teaching, How DEI Pedagogy Produces the Hostile Attribution Bias.

[00:21:34] The study looked at whether the themes and materials that are common in DEI trainings foster inclusion or exacerbate conflicts,

[00:21:44] and whether such materials promote empathy or increase hostility towards groups labeled as oppressors.

[00:21:51] The study had three different experiments, one focused on race, one focused on religion, and the last one on caste, or economic status, the caste system.

[00:22:05] In other words, DEI doesn't work unless you are trying to make people mad at each other.

[00:22:17] Although proponents of DEI trainings claim that they are designed to educate individuals about biases and to reduce discrimination,

[00:22:24] the study found that participants that were primed with DEI materials were more likely, not less,

[00:22:32] to perceive prejudice where none existed and were more willing to punish the perceived perpetrators.

[00:22:40] In one experiment, the DEI materials made people more willing to agree with Hitler quotes when they swapped out the word Jew with the word Brahmin,

[00:22:51] which is the highest caste in the Indian caste system.

[00:22:58] Participants exposed to the DEI content were markedly more likely to endorse Hitler's demonization statements,

[00:23:04] agreeing that Brahmins are parasites, viruses, and the devil personified.

[00:23:11] Those are direct quotes.

[00:23:13] These findings suggest that exposure to anti-oppressive narratives can increase the endorsement of the type of demonization and scapegoating characteristic of authoritarianism.

[00:23:28] The very ones who have been claiming to be the defenders of the democracy and opponents of authoritarianism,

[00:23:36] this is the crap that they fill their brains with, and it makes them more authoritarian, which really does explain a lot.

[00:23:44] So this study that was done by the Network Contagion Research Institute, or NCRI,

[00:23:50] along with Rutgers University's Social Perception Lab, there are two elements to the story.

[00:23:55] One is the study and what it found.

[00:23:57] The other is the media spikage of the story.

[00:24:02] So first, I'm just going to kind of give you some more detail about the study,

[00:24:06] and I'm going to have to carry this over into the next hour.

[00:24:09] I mean, I'm not mad about it.

[00:24:11] I'm just saying it's...

[00:24:11] So how did they do the study?

[00:24:14] Well, they exposed the different groups that they were having participate, the people, the subjects.

[00:24:22] They exposed them to an essay that combined material from Ibram X.

[00:24:29] Kendi's book, How to Be an Anti-Racist, which, by the way, remember,

[00:24:33] Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools hired this jackass to come in and speak to all of their top leaders

[00:24:40] and administrators and on a Zoom call to talk about his book that they had read over the course of like a year.

[00:24:48] Think about that.

[00:24:51] And think about what the study found.

[00:24:54] Once you get exposed to this dumbassery, you become more...

[00:24:59] You have more animosity towards different racial groups.

[00:25:04] It breaks your brain.

[00:25:08] And also Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility book.

[00:25:11] So they gave people snippets of these two authors.

[00:25:17] And the result showed that participants that had been primed with Kendi and DiAngelo materials

[00:25:24] perceived more discrimination from the admissions officer despite the absence of any racial identification and evidence of discrimination.

[00:25:34] So they became more suspicious.

[00:25:36] They saw discrimination when there wasn't any there because they had built this fake application process to be non-discriminatory.

[00:25:44] But once people read the works of Kendi and DiAngelo, then they ascribed a motive to their failure.

[00:25:54] Or in this case, they gave two examples, you know, people with different names that applied for a job.

[00:26:01] This one got it.

[00:26:02] This one didn't.

[00:26:02] Why do you think?

[00:26:03] And the people that had been exposed to this kind of poison, this DEI CRT garbage, they ascribed motive.

[00:26:12] And they said it was discrimination.

[00:26:13] Those participants also believed that the admissions officer was more unfair to the applicant, that they had caused more harm to the applicant and had committed more microaggressions.

[00:26:31] In addition to imputing bias without any evidence, the participants who read Kendi and DiAngelo were also more willing to support punishment against this fictitional admissions officer.

[00:26:48] Educational materials from some of the most well-published and well-known DEI scholars not only failed to positively enhance interracial attitudes,

[00:26:59] they provoked baseless suspicion and encouraged punitive attitudes.

[00:27:08] If any of this sounds familiar, it's because it is.

[00:27:13] We already knew this.

[00:27:15] This study was done, a similar study I should say, was done by Harvard like a decade ago.

[00:27:21] We already knew that this crap was poison.

[00:27:24] We already knew what it induced in people.

[00:27:27] Yet the left pursues it.

[00:27:34] Same result when they were doing a test instead of race, they went with Islamophobia.

[00:27:40] And they found that people who were exposed to anti-Islamophobia training materials rated a, in this case it wasn't a college admission, it was a trial.

[00:27:51] And they had one guy who had a name that was Ahmed Akhtar and another one named George Green.

[00:28:00] And when the Muslim sound and named guy, when he got convicted, they said, oh, then that means that's anti-Islamophobia or that's anti-Islam.

[00:28:14] The results suggest that anti-Islamophobia training may cause individuals to assume unfair treatment of Muslim people,

[00:28:26] even when no evidence of bias or unfairness is actually present.

[00:28:31] This effect highlights a broader issue.

[00:28:35] DEI narratives that focus heavily on victimization and systemic oppression can foster unwarranted distrust and suspicions of institutions and alter subjective assessments of events.

[00:28:51] If that sounds familiar, well, if you've been listening to this program for, you know, a couple of years, first off, thank you.

[00:29:00] But also, you've heard me talk about TIV, T-I-V, Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood.

[00:29:07] This idea that you're the perpetual victim.

[00:29:11] Once you adopt this kind of a mindset, you don't ever break out of it.

[00:29:16] This should be avoided at all costs.

[00:29:19] It is the thing that will hold you back.

[00:29:20] It will ruin relationships.

[00:29:22] It will make you view everybody as a villain in your own little passion play narrative.

[00:29:30] You should avoid it.

[00:29:32] T-I-V.

[00:29:32] On a personal level, it also works at a societal level as well.

[00:29:37] And it is poison.

[00:29:39] T-I-V.

[00:29:40] Also, they've known about this for years.

[00:29:43] All right, that'll do it for this episode.

[00:29:45] Thank you so much for listening.

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[00:29:49] And the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast.

[00:29:52] So if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here.

[00:29:55] You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepcalendarshow.com.

[00:30:00] Again, thank you so much for listening.

[00:30:02] And don't break anything while I'm gone.