DEI Comes to Halt … in Hollywood?

It’s not Disney. But it’s just down the road.

Over the last several months, corporate America has reversed several years of putting DEI at the core of business plans, thanks in large part to grassroots activism led by Robby Starbuck. After Donald Trump’s clear victory in November, that began to accelerate, even before Trump’s EO put an end to all DEI initiatives in federal government and contracting. After Trump took office, the financial sector and Big Tech began falling in line, too.

And now liberation from discrimination has found its way to Hollywood. Paramount Global, one of the remaining major entertainment conglomerates after a generation of consolidation, renounced DEI yesterday:

Paramount Global told its employees this week that it’s ending numerous diversity, equity and inclusion policies, according to a memo obtained by CNBC.

In the memo sent to employees Wednesday, Paramount said it would comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order banning the practice in the federal government and demanding that agencies investigate private companies over their DEI programs.

Co-CEOs George Cheeks, Chris McCarthy and Brian Robbins cited the executive order in the memo, as well as the Supreme Court and federal mandates, as the impetus for the media giant’s policy changes.

Among the changes, the company said it “will no longer set or use aspirational numerical goals related to the race, ethnicity, sex or gender of hires.” Paramount also said it ended its policy of collecting such stats for its U.S. job applicants on forms and career pages, except in the markets where it’s legally required to do so.

NBC gives Trump the win here. Surprisingly, so does Variety. There could be a reason for that, though:

In a separate broadside launched at Comcast and NBCUniversal, Brendan Carr, the Trump-appointed FCC chairman, this month notified Roberts that the agency’s Enforcement Bureau was opening an investigation into the company over diversity, equity and inclusion practices. Carr said he was “concerned” that Comcast and NBCU are “promoting invidious forms of DEI that do not comply with FCC regulations & civil rights laws.” Comcast, in response, said it would cooperate with the FCC probe and that, “For decades, our company has been built on a foundation of integrity and respect for all of our employees and customers.”

One might imagine the initial reaction from Comcast in a scene from My Cousin Vinny:

Indeed Trump was and is, and his appointees are ruthlessly dismantling discriminatory conduct wherever the federal writ runs. Paramount Global may worry that the FCC will come after CBS in the same way that they came after Comcast via NBC’s broadcast licenses. Clearly they want to get ahead of the curve. 

That does raise the question about Disney too, though. Disney owns ABC, which relies on FCC licensing just as CBS and NBC do. Has Carr turned his attention in Disney’s direction? Or does Carr believe that his letter to Comcast over discriminatory practices will be enough of a signal pour encourager les autres?

However, one has to equally consider whether these companies really want to keep their DEI policies at all. The corporate abandonment has been so quick, starting so well before Trump’s victory, that the threat of enforcement may just be a handy PR fig leaf to mollify radical-progressive activists pushing DEI. It has turned out to be highly unpopular, incredibly divisive, and all but impossible to manage in the multiplicity of “identity” groups that have to be considered with every move. 

Considering the wave of renunciations over the past year, it’s tough to credit this to Trump entirely, or even mainly. The Supreme Court’s overturning of affirmative action in college admissions may have been a warning signal, but it didn’t really apply to private-sector businesses in any firm sense. Executives may have finally realized just how unpopular DEI had become, not to mention expensive to manage, and have been looking for rationalizations to exit the fad.

Americans want fairness and equal opportunity, not quotas and victim-claim caste systems. Corporate leaders have finally gotten that message … even in Hollywood.