CatholicVote calls on Catholics to thank Walmart CEO after retailer ends ‘woke’ policies

CV NEWS FEED // Multi-billion-dollar retailer Walmart announced this week that it is ending many of its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

CatholicVote President Brian Burch praised the move and called on American Catholics to express their gratitude by emailing the retail giant’s President and CEO Doug McMillon at Doug.McMillon@walmart.com.

“Despite what its promoters claim, the DEI agenda is just cynical, divisive, and an excuse to discriminate and exclude Americans,” Burch said.

“Catholics hold that all persons have equal dignity as children of God,” he emphasized. “It’s time for all corporations to reject progressive schemes that divide Americans and pit us against each other.”

“We just want groceries without the politics,” the CatholicVote president added. “Thank you for standing up for unity and common sense, Walmart!”

Walmart is the largest private-sector employer in the United States and is the entity that employs the second-highest number of people in the country after only the federal government.

Conservative activist, filmmaker, and former music video director Robby Starbuck announced the news of Walmart’s decision on X (formerly Twitter) earlier this week.

“Walmart is ending their woke policies,” he wrote in the Monday post. 

Starbuck noted that he had a week earlier told the corporation’s executives that he was compiling “a story on wokeness there.”

“Instead we had productive conversations to find solutions,” the activist indicated.

“I have to give their executives major credit because this will send shockwaves throughout corporate America,” Starbuck continued. “This is the biggest win yet for our movement to end wokeness in corporate America.”

He stated Walmart had told him it “will no longer participate in” the deeply controversial Corporate Equality Index program – an initiative of the far-left pro-LGBTQ activist group Human Rights Campaign (HRC).

Starbuck also said that Walmart will monitor its “marketplace to identify and remove inappropriate sexual and / or transgender products marketed to children.” The company will also “review all funding of Pride … to avoid funding inappropriate sexualized content targeting kids.”

Starbuck reported Walmart additionally told him it “will not extend the Racial Equity Center which was established in 2020 as a special five-year initiative” and “will evaluate supplier diversity programs and ensure they do not provide preferential treatment and benefits to suppliers based on diversity.”

Walmart also committed to maintaining its absence of racial or ethnic quotas and emphasized that “financing eligibility will no longer be predicated on providing certain demographic data.” 

>> RELATED: BOEING DITCHES DEI POLICIES <<

In addition, Walmart vowed to stop using the widely panned term “Latinx” – which according to a September Pew Research Center survey is opposed by three-quarters of Hispanic and Latino Americans who have heard of the term.

“Walmart will discontinue racial equity training through the Racial Equity Institute,” Starbuck further noted. “Walmart will discontinue the use of DEI as a term while ensuring a respectful and supportive environment.”

Starbuck is well known as one of the foremost voices raising public awareness about controversial corporate DEI initiatives. 

The activist has previously played a role in several companies ending or scaling back their divisive far-left workplace policies, widely characterized as “woke.” These corporations include Boeing, Ford, Harley Davidson, Jack Daniel’s, Lowes, and Stanley Black and Decker.

“We’ve now changed policy at companies worth over $2 Trillion dollars, with many millions of employees who have better workplace environments as a result,” Starbuck’s post continued:

I’m happy to have secured these changes before Christmas when shoppers have very few large retail brands they can spend money with who aren’t pushing woke policies. Companies like Amazon and Target should be very nervous that their top competitor dropped woke policies first. 

>> RELATED: FORD KILLS DEI IN THE WORKPLACE <<

Starbuck predicted that major Walmart competitor Target, which has made many headlines over the past couple of years for its embrace of the LGBTQ movement, “specifically will suffer serious sales problems as a result and Walmart will benefit.”

“Companies can clearly see that America wants normalcy back,” Starbuck concluded. “The era of wokeness is dying right in front of our eyes. … We are now the trend, not the anomaly. We are winning and one by one we WILL bring sanity back to corporate America.”

Readers can email Walmart CEO Doug McMillon at Doug.McMillon@walmart.com.