The list grows longer every day. Companies that had fully committed to improving diversity among their workforce and suppliers have abandoned ship, unwilling to anger vocal members of their customer base who oppose such measures.
Recently, Jack Daniel, the Lynchburg, Tennessee company whose Black Label Tennessee Whiskey is the world’s best-selling whiskey, announced that it would abandon all DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) goals. Robby Starbuck, a conservative activist from Franklin, Tennessee who campaigns against “wokeness in corporate America,” took credit for the turnaround, posting the email from the company’s executive leadership team on X (formerly Twitter).
“We are now forcing billion-dollar organizations to change their policies without even posting, simply for fear that they will be the next company we expose,” Starbuck wrote. “We are winning, and one by one we will make American business whole again.”
I’ve gotten a lot of messages from people like Starbuck, people who believe that diversity efforts are detrimental to business and our country as a whole. They believe that DEI has created divisions among us and that avoiding diversity initiatives will somehow unite us.
They want to build a better country and believe that the means to achieve this are to continue to marginalize large parts of the population.
Black men have historically been overlooked for jobs they would be qualified for
As I recently noted when discussing the real meaning and impact of “black jobs,” black Americans—particularly black men—are disproportionately hit by unemployment rates and, when they do have jobs, are more likely to be in low-wage jobs.
Addressing these disparities was the original intent of Affirmative Action programs that later evolved into the DEI initiatives currently under attack. And while I can admit that their implementation has been far from flawless, I believe that the good far outweighs the bad.
Humans are creatures of habit. We do what makes us comfortable, which in many cases is what we have done in the past. We avoid the new and the uncertain, even when we are told that the new can be useful. We are inherently risk-averse, and we cling to fallacies and illogic to justify our aversion.
That’s why, in 1987, some 40 years after Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s modern color barrier by joining the Brooklyn Dodgers, Dodgers manager Al Campanis appeared on an episode of ABC’s “Nightline” and explained that it was perfectly normal to have zero black managers and general managers in the league.
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“I do believe that they may not have some of the qualities to be, let’s say, a field manager or maybe a general manager,” Campanis said. “I’m not saying all, but they’re certainly short. How many quarterbacks do you have? How many pitchers do you have that are black? Same thing.”
His vision was clear: Black men possessed the athletic qualities to become successful and respected baseball players, but they lacked the inner qualities to rise to leadership positions in the sport.
When given the chance to clarify or retract his statements, Campanis repeated it again: “Why aren’t black men or black people good swimmers? Because they don’t have the buoyancy.”
The response to DEI is based on fear and inadequacy
Less than a year later, Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder, a Las Vegas sports commentator and bookmaker, made equally disturbing statements about employment opportunities for blacks in the NFL.
When asked about the progress of black people in the lead-up to Martin Luther King’s birthday, particularly in professional sports, Snyder responded, “If [Black people] if they take over the coaching like everybody wants, then there will be nothing left for the whites. I mean, all the players are black. The only thing the whites have control over is the coaching jobs.”
Those in the anti-DEI crowd argue that everything should be based on merit, that it’s unfair to intentionally hire people from certain groups based on their identities. But Campanis and Snyder’s comments aren’t about merit or competition. They reveal a deep sense of fear and inadequacy, and, as Snyder made explicit, a need to maintain control.
Those anti-DEI types? They’d probably also argue that much has changed since the late 80s, that the blatant ignorance of Campanis and Snyder is no longer present in the modern workforce. They’d say that any disparity in employment, promotion, or pay can be attributed to individual factors, that if black candidates were better educated or better qualified, they would be hired, promoted, and paid at the same rates as their white counterparts.
But the data also contradicts this. Multiple reports have shown that white workers consistently have better job prospects than black and Latino workers, even when education and skill levels are equal.
Jack Daniel’s mentor was black, and so were many on his staff
In an essay for Time.com , Fawn Weaver, founder and CEO of premium whiskey brand Uncle Nearest, implored those who oppose modern iterations of DEI—and who, I presume, applaud their recent rollbacks—to present a viable, alternative path to an equal workforce. “Maybe some of the current programs aren’t the answer, but then what is?” she wrote. “If we can’t answer that, dismantling what we have will only take us back to a time when inequality was the rule of the land.”
Weaver was right to ask this question. Her company is named after Nearest Green, the black man who taught Jack Daniel everything he knew and became Jack Daniel’s first master distiller, helping launch the iconic brand. According to Weaver, Green was one of many black employees at Jack Daniel because Daniel “hired based on merit, not race, and attracted African Americans from surrounding cities.”
Although Weaver failed to mention whether Daniels employees were paid fairly, the result of Daniels’ progressive hiring practices was a team that was half-black, despite the racial politics of the 19and19th century Jim Crow movement in the South and Lynchburg’s 20% black population.
But the Jack Daniel staff was and remains an anomaly. And while critics charge that Affirmative Action and DEI initiatives unfairly discredit unqualified candidates, it’s rare for a company or industry to embody the diversity of Jack Daniel’s early operation without an external incentive to do so.
Put another way, the “anti-woke” conservatives who work to dismantle diversity efforts in industry and society argue that hiring decisions should be based on merit. But when merit is assumed to be the only qualifying factor, workforces become overwhelmingly white.
It is hypocritical to shout and then impose your will on others
With the presidential election less than two months away, Americans on both sides of the political spectrum recognize that our country is at a critical crossroads.
There is considerable disagreement about how to navigate that intersection, or how we got to this point in the first place. But one thing is certain: a refusal to acknowledge and address the needs of everyone in society — even those with differing views — will not make things better. It will only make them worse.
Starbuck didn’t always live just south of Nashville. Before moving to Tennessee in 2019, he was in Hollywood, directing movie videos. By his own account, he was blacklisted for his conservative views and forced to make a career change. The long-term result is a man who prides himself on destroying well-intentioned efforts to support the careers of others.
Seems a bit hypocritical to me.
Andrea Williams is an opinion columnist for The Tennessean and curator of the Black Tennessee Voices initiative. She has an extensive background in country music, sports, race and society. Email her at adwilliams@tennessean.com or follow her on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @AndreaWillWrite.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Jack Daniel’s Dropped DEI Programs, Giving in to Fear and Hypocrisy
