A group of Costco shareholders, likely emboldened by the Supreme Court’s continued assault on the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, called on the company’s board to “conduct an evaluation and publish a report” on the risks involved in maintaining their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) program, which these shareholders called “illegal discrimination” against employees who are “white, Asian, male or straight.”
The Costco board responded with a recommendation to vote against this proposal:
Our Board has considered this proposal and believes that our commitment to an enterprise rooted in respect and inclusion is appropriate and necessary. The report requested by this proposal would not provide meaningful additional information to our shareholders, and the Board thus unanimously recommends a vote AGAINST this proposal.
Our success at Costco Wholesale has been built on service to our critical stakeholders: employees, members, and suppliers. Our efforts around diversity, equity and inclusion follow our code of ethics:
For our employees, these efforts are built around inclusion – having all of our employees feel valued and respected. Our efforts at diversity, equity and inclusion remind and reinforce with everyone at our Company the importance of creating opportunities for all. We believe that these efforts enhance our capacity to attract and retain employees who will help our business succeed. This capacity is critical because we owe our success to our now over 300,000 employees around the globe.
But then came the good part.
The proponent professes concern about legal and financial risks to the Company and its shareholders associated with the diversity initiatives. The supporting statement demonstrates that it is the proponent and others that are responsible for inflicting burdens on companies with their challenges to longstanding diversity programs. The proponent’s broader agenda is not reducing risk for the Company but abolition of diversity initiatives.
In other words, we are not the problem. We are not costing our company time and money.
You are.
Costco’s DEI program includes a chief diversity officer and a supplier program focusing on expanding with small and diverse businesses. It donates to organizations like the Thurgood Marshall College Fund that serve minorities and underrepresented groups.
The result?
Costco says its DEI efforts help the company attract and retain a wide range of employees and improve merchandise and services in stores. Costco also said its members want to interact with a diverse employee base.
“Among other things, a diverse group of employees helps bring originality and creativity to our merchandise offerings, promoting the ‘treasure hunt’ that our customers value,” Costco said in its proxy statement to investors. “We believe (and member feedback shows) that many of our members like to see themselves reflected in the people in our warehouses with whom they interact.”
Hooray for Costco. Also, hooray for me — a member and shareholder.
All of this also brings me to a thought I’ve had circling my brain for almost a decade:
It’s astounding how fragile, frail, and frightened a certain segment of Americans have become.
Some people actually believe that DEI programs are a threat to their financial security.
After centuries of slavery, violence, oppression, segregation, discrimination, and racism against black and brown people — much of which still is happening today — a minority but loud segment of Americans — mostly men, I suspect — are apparently afraid that programs designed to improve diversity in an organization, increase equity amongst its people, and ensure that their organization is representative and inclusive somehow discriminates against them and hurts their chances to compete in this world.
As if those centuries of economic advantages earned through racism, bigotry, and violence don’t still exist today.
For example:
In 2022, the median wealth of a white household was $285,000.
The median wealth of a black household was $44,900.
This is the result of one thing:
Historical, institutional, and ongoing racism, sexism, and bigotry in this world.
When one family can accumulate and pass on generational wealth in the form of money, college tuition, perpetual safety nets, and land while another family was unable to accumulate generational wealth for centuries because their ancestors were enslaved, lynched, murdered, raped, beaten, uneducated, oppressed by Jim Crow laws, denied basic civil rights, and suffered constant and ongoing discrimination, you need to be pretty small and pathetic to think that a company’s DEI program is somehow holding white people back.
Just think:
Depending on your age, you’re great-great-great grandparents were likely alive when slavery was legal in this country. Depending on who your family is and where they lived, your great-great-great grandparents could have enslaved people or operated businesses that benefited from the institution of slavery.
Those people would’ve been your grandparents’ grandparents’ grandparents.
That’s not so long ago. Just 160 years ago. Just two or three lifetimes ago.
If you’re black, it’s possible — even likely — that your grandparents’ grandparents’ grandparents were enslaved themselves.
But you need not go back that far. The grandparents or great-grandparents of many black families grew up before the Civil Rights movement when Jim Crow laws legalized segregation and discrimination, and organized violence against black people was still firmly in place in many places of this country.
That’s also not so long ago.
Your grandparents or great-grandparents were likely alive when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball.
The first black Supreme Court justice was appointed just four years before I was born.
The first female black Supreme Court justice was appointed two years ago. Does anyone except a racist and sexist really believe that until Justice Jackson ascended to the bench in 2022, no black woman was qualified to hold this post?
As of 2024, there have been over 2,000 members of the United States Senate.
Twelve have been black.
That’s .006 percent of all Senators. Six-thousandth of a percent.
Augusta National Golf Club — where the Masters is played and Tiger Woods won five championships — admitted its first black member in 1990. Until then, it was a whites-only golf club. Had Tiger Woods been born one decade earlier, he wouldn’t have been permitted to compete in the Masters.
In 1990, a major PGA golf tournament — perhaps the most prestigious — was played at a segregated golf club.
Given all this and so much more, these Costco shareholders and many others like them think a DEI program — deemed by the company to increase profits— will somehow keep them from achieving the American dream.
Fragile, frail, and frightened.
Unwilling to acknowledge the not-so-distant past. Unable to recognize the structural, economic, and historical advantages they still benefit from today.
Probably racist, too, but isn’t that what all racists and bigots are at their core?
Afraid that they can’t compete absent the historical advantages that their white skin once afforded them.
I’m happy to see that Costco isn’t bending to the whims of people who can’t or won’t recognize the realities of this world and is doing what is right and profitable for the company.
We need more of this backbone in the world today.
