Op-ed views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author.
Throughout my life I have developed a deep appreciation for words. I’ve especially enjoyed anagrams, which are a word, phrase, or name formed by rearranging the letters of another. For example, the word “evil” can have the letters rearranged and become the word, “live.” In my ESL classroom, I allow students to play Scrabble and Boggle to help students have fun learning new words.
Recently, I was working on an article about woke acronyms DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) and ESG (environmental social governance, which have become multi-billion dollar industries. Wokeness seems to embrace the use of acronyms, and it occurred to me that if you put the words DEI and ESG together you can form the word, “sieged,” which is a very accurate description of how this shift in American cultural values has taken hold of America, in particular: corporate America.
We have all seen the DEI lie, which is promoted by individuals obsessed with identity politics who take three reasonable words about fairness and used them to discriminate, exclude and use identity as a weapon against those THEY deem to have unfair advantages. They see merit as something that is evil, and revel in creating classes of new victims who make claims of being marginalized. Their constant whining and threats to cancel people and companies who don’t give in to their demands has led to countless corporations, whose executives would do well to find spine donors, bowing to the will of the woke. The creation of DEI offices with woke university trained DEI officers whose job it is to exclude anyone who has demonstrated, through merit, that they deserve opportunities, and instead hire those who fit “identity qualifications” is the antithesis of what made America an economic world leader.
It is these kind of harmful policies that disgusts anyone who believes that employing the best and brightest is the only way to achieve success. It is what happens when the president of the United States says, “The next person to fill this job position will be a (fill in the gender, race etc.)” instead of saying, “I’m going to hire the best person for the job.” Does anyone really believe that White House Press Secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre is even semi-competent at her job? The president’s cabinet is also a freak show of DEI hires, who were hired because of identity politics, which is a major reason why the country is in the state it is in socially and economically.
Most people, not in corporate America, aren’t familiar with the term ESG, which is a relative newcomer to the world of wokeness. It had its first mainstream mention in 2004 in the United Nations Global Compact Initiative titled: “Who Cares Wins” report. ESG are goals that have been created, like DEI, to make the world “a better place,” but if one looks closely it is merely woke capitalism, that has a socialist agenda, which will lead to ruination. Is it any surprise that it originated from the United Nations; a failed organization that promotes globalism and lacks any real power to promote a better world?
Companies used to be measured on things like profitability, which was the major factor in why people would choose to invest in that company or not. However, “profits” have become a dirty word to those who believe that the role of a company is not to give a good return on investment to its investors, but it is the duty of the company to take a “holistic” (the same word used by college admissions officers to exclude excellent students from attending their universities) view of its role to shape the world to be a “better” place. The problem here is that companies, unlike the federal government, cannot run deficits after deficit because this leads to bankruptcy and that benefits no one, other than unemployed wokesters who can collect federal unemployment checks while they sit home in their parents’ basements playing video games.
Under the rules of ESG, there is a bigger picture to someone investing in a company to make money. ESG (like DEI) proponents don’t label investors as “stockholders.” No, they are “stakeholders” and this widens the pool to include employees, customers and suppliers. The pattern of changing the wording doesn’t change the facts, and the woke would do well to learn that people can discern chocolate from excrement even if it is put in a pretty package.
Throughout American history, there have been numerous attempts to change conditions for workers, customers and companies. Anti-trust legislation, the rise of labor unions and child labor laws have been a few improvements that have led to better conditions for Americans and the result has been that the American economy has been one of the greatest economies in the world for over a century. However, none of these movements has lacked the basic understanding that for a company to be innovative it requires it to be profitable. One need only look at the losses of companies that have suffered record losses as they exemplified the phrase, “Go Woke Go Broke”: Disney, Bud Light, Pepsi, Gillette and Coca Cola to name a few.
“Sieged” businesses are between a rock and a hard place because of the pressure and threat of cancellation, while doing what is necessary (governance) to stay in business and create incentive for investors to invest in their companies. Sieged business and universities have spent several years virtue signaling (a public expression that demonstrates moral correctness about a particular issue) to show they can be the “most” diverse, inclusive, equitable, socially responsive and environmentally friendly, regardless of whether they truly believe it or not, so that the average American has become fed up with the hypocrisy when companies like Coca Cola tell Caucasian employees to “act less white,” or when privileged actors fly around in private jets, but lecture people about being environmentally responsible.
As more consumers vote economically, the CEO’s of sieged companies need to show backbone and end policies that are merely cosmetic but impact their bottom lines adversely. Most people will eventually see the hypocrisy, which is the signature of what wokeness is all about, and their rejection of it will have painful consequences for those who fail to understand this simple principle which will lead to their extinction.