This morning I saw this on Instapundit:
Remember when everyone went after Ron DeSantis for fighting Disney when they tried to interfere in the Parental Rights in Education bill?
Well today Disney officially dropped DEI, telling execs to focus on "business outcomes" instead. Complete and utter victory for DeSantis.
— Ian Miller (@ianmSC) February 11, 2025
I thought “That’s all well and good, but have they changed the official policy on their website?”
Turns out they have.
Here’s a Wayback Machine archive snapshot from December 19, 2024:
And here’s the snapshot I took today:
They’ve literally dropped the “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.”
The internal changes evidently go even further.
Amid President Donald Trump’s frontal assault on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, Disney has scaled back and restated its DEI efforts, aligning them more directly with “business goals and company values.”
The tweaks, discussed in an internal memo, are less dramatic than DEI shifts at other major companies from Meta to Amazon to Google but meant to stem potential backlash after one of Trump’s first acts in office was to shut down federal DEI initiatives and put employees on leave. Federal contractors and grantees are also under scrutiny. PBS, funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, said this week it is closing an office dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts amid Trump’s flurry of executive orders.
Disney is also updating disclaimers that run before certain titles on its streaming services that currently warn viewers of “negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures.” In a forthcoming change, the tag will read, “This program is presented as originally created and may contain stereotypes or negative depictions,” and be included in the Details section.
The memo today from Disney’s HR chief Sonia Coleman aimed to provide “an update on how our values are embedded in our leader compensation programs, specifically our Other Performance Factors (OPFs), as well as share some of the work that has been underway to evolve our talent strategy consistent with these values.”
The language does not mention diversity but focuses on belonging. It does not mention equity, but does call for an environment where everyone can excel.
Changes include replacing a Diversity & Inclusion metric with a Talent Strategy factor in executive compensation planning to assess how leaders uphold company values, incorporate different perspectives to drive business success, cultivate an environment where all employees can thrive, and sustain a robust pipeline to ensure long-term organizational strength.
“This new factor represents an evolution of important concepts in the former Diversity & Inclusion OPF and will be used alongside our other two OPFs, Storytelling & Creativity and Synergy,” the memo said.
While this may fall short of the full-throated denunciation of DEI we’d like all like Disney to issue, it does seem like a pretty significant sea change for the Mouse House. It also shows that Disney no longer fears the wrath of online social justice warrior activists.
DEI meant discrimination based on race and the whole panoply of radical leftwing victimhood identity causes, from transexism to #BlackLivesMatter. And it’s proven deeply unpopular with ordinary “normie” Americans, who have stopped attending woke Disney movies in droves. Now that corporate America is stepping off the social justice train, how long will the Democratic Party keep letting their radical fringe tail continue to wag the dog without ideological reinforcement from major corporations?
Now that Disney is abandoning wokeness, I feel free to see such forthcoming Disney films as…
Um. Yeah. That pipeline still needs to be flushed out. Maybe they’ll have something worth watching in 2026.
Still: Progress! And Ron DeSantis can indeed declare victory.
Now all Disney Chairman Bob Iger has to do is fire Kathleen Kennedy…
Tags: Amazon, Bob Iger, DEI, Democrats, Disney, Facebook, Google, Media Watch, Ron DeSantis, Social Justice Warriors, Sonia Coleman
Nobody should believe anything has changed just because they edited their internet pages. Action, not words.
To quote Cancerman: “I’d rather read the worst book ever written than watch the best movie ever made.”
Let Disney and Hollywood die.
Sure sounds like they’re striving for a workforce that reflects the global audience. Add in renaming ‘Diversity & Inclusion’ to ‘Talent Strategy’ and all I’m seeing is that Iger is only interested in camouflaging his current policies.
And if he’s not changing his practices, the art produced is unlikely to improve.