Let’s be clear: Walmart needs Black America a heck of a lot more than Black America needs Walmart.
Wielding roughly $1.8 trillion in spending power this year, Black folks’ economic clout is undeniable. We get to choose where we spend our hard-earned cash during the holiday shopping season and beyond. But Walmart — one of many companies that made lofty promises about fighting systemic racism after George Floyd’s murder — just pulled the plug on its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Now, three weeks after Donald Trump’s election, they claim they want to be “a Walmart for everyone.” And the anti-woke bros on the right are trading high-fives, claiming they forced the retail giant to abandon its DEI initiatives.
It’s not that Black folks thought the post-George-Floyd-murder racial reckoning would last forever. Our ancestors lived through Reconstruction, so we know better. But back on June 12, 2020, just days after Floyd’s murder, Walmart’s CEO Doug McMillon emoted in a blog post about how the company’s goal was “to help replace the structures of systemic racism, and build in their place frameworks of equity and justice that solidify our commitment to the belief that, without question, Black Lives Matter.”
McMillon pledged to examine every aspect of Walmart to ensure the company was prejudice-free. He waxed poetic about a conversation he had with a Black woman employee about racial microaggressions. He pledged $100 million to a Center for Racial Equity that would “address the root causes of gaps in outcomes experienced by Black and African American people in education, health, finance and criminal justice systems.”
The Center for Racial Equity? Closing. Racial equity training for employees? No. Using the phrase “DEI” in corporate communications? Axed. Walmart now says it wants to foster “a sense of belonging.” Apparently, as journalist Judd Legum quipped on Bluesky, “Walmart has solved racism.”
Right-wing anti-DEI activists like Robby Starbuck claim they pressured the company into ditching its “woke” policies. Starbuck regularly posts lines like “It’s a fact that DEI is antiwhite,” and “DEI IS racism and deserves to die.”
Walmart touts itself as Black America’s biggest private employer and has long been a retail giant in the Black community. A 2023 analysis by Collage Group identified Walmart as our favorite brand, due to the company’s investments “in Black enrichment, and taking a stance on social matters.”
But here’s the other side of the coin: Research revealed that Walmart stores in Black and Latino neighborhoods consistently get worse reviews for service quality. Walmart’s been hit with multiple discrimination lawsuits. Remember that $17.5 million class-action lawsuit? The 2009 one where Walmart settled claims it discriminated against Black folks trying to get truck driving jobs? Just two years ago, an Oregon jury ordered Walmart to pay $4.4 million to a Black man after a white Walmart employee racially profiled and harassed him in a store.
A quick internet search nets plenty of other examples of people suing Walmart over shopping while Black experiences, Black employees suing for being passed over for promotions, and Black employees suing because they were being called racial slurs in the workplace. Let’s call Walmart’s abandoning DEI efforts what it is: a slap in the face to the Black folks who’ve kept their registers ringing for decades.
But here’s the kicker: Walmart, like every other company, runs on dollars. And Black dollars matter — a lot. If Black shoppers took their spending power elsewhere, the fallout for Walmart would be seismic.
Which begs a simple question: Should Black America keep shopping at Walmart when it seems Walmart might have forgotten who helps keep its lights on?
A company that caves to racist attacks coded as “anti-woke” does not respect Black America. It doesn’t deserve our loyalty. Because loyalty isn’t free — and $1.8 trillion in purchasing power can go a long way somewhere else.
Liz Courquet-Lesaulnier is the managing director of Word In Black. She writes on racial justice, gender equality, education, health, and culture.