It might be a busy latter part of the year for the Bud Light boycotters.
The momentum from the group's successful campaign against the Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD) -) beer brand after it supposedly "went woke" -- even though Bud Light has had multiple pro-LGBTQ advertisements and initiatives in the past -- is to carry their political activism to a new target.
Best Buy (BBY) -), the national electronics retail chain, now has a target on its back after O'Keefe Media Group published pictures of an application for a minority management program.
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One of the requirements for the program is that the applicant identify as Black, Latino, Hispanic, Asian or Pacific Islander. White people were excluded from applying for the minority management program, and this sent some of them wild on social media.
It's time to Bud Light Best Buy https://t.co/5T0NbnZ7A4
— Kingsley Cortes (@KingsleyCortes) August 9, 2023
Is @BestBuy a racist company?
— Storm Warning Mom✨️ (@StormWarningMom) August 9, 2023
By the looks of their management training program, the answer is an overwhelming YES.
Time to give them the Bud Light treatment. #BoycottBestBuy
Best Buy did not immediately return a request for comment.
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Workplace diversity training has been around since at least the 1960s following the introduction of equal employment laws and affirmative action. Before then, employers could deny minority applicants and face no legal recourse.
After the 60's, the number of diversity programs increased, and so did the number of discrimination lawsuits as people who previously had no legal recourse against discrimination were suddenly armed with the power of the courts.
But the issue of lack of racial diversity in managerial positions has persisted.
Between 2003 and 2014, the number of Hispanics who were managers at U.S. commercial banks rose from 4.7% to 5.7%, according to the Harvard Business Review.
The percentage of white women representation dropped from 39% to 35%, and for black men representation dropped to 2.3% from 2.5%. HBR had a theory as to why
"Firms have long relied on diversity training to reduce bias on the job... yet laboratory studies show that this kind of force-feeding can activate bias rather than stamp it out. As social scientists have found, people often rebel against rules to assert their autonomy," the 2016 study stated.
White people made up 77% of the U.S. workforce in 2021, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while Hispanic or Latin people make up 18% of the workforce (Latin or Hispanic can be of any race, nearly 9 in 10 identify as white), Black people make up 13% and Asian people make up 7%.
But despite the fact that 1 in 6 Fortune 500 companies publish annual diversity, equity and inclusion reports, just six of them have black CEOs.
Thousands of large U.S businesses have diversity training and minority management training programs. So it might be a busy few months for the boycotters as they sift through all of the companies and products they need to abstain from in order to make sure minority management train programs are a relic of the past.
