Brown-Forman Corp., the company that makes the iconic Jack Daniels whiskey, has reportedly decided to terminate Jack Daniels’ diversity, equity and inclusion program after a boycott was threatened.
On Wednesday, the Jack Daniels company issued a letter from its Executive Leadership Team. They announced, “[W]e launched our diversity and inclusion strategy in 2019. Since then, the world has evolved, our business has changed, and the legal and external landscape has shifted dramatically, particularly within the United States. With these new dynamics at play, we must adjust our work to ensure it continues to drive business results while appropriately recognizing the current environment in which we find ourselves.”
The letter added that the company would be “removing our quantitative workforce and supplier diversity ambitions; ending participation in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index survey; and reviewing training programs for consistency with an evolved strategy,” as conservative activist Robby Starbuck, who had planned to launch a boycott, reported.
Starbuck revealed that the letter came from a “screenshot of one of the multiple folders we have on them. Overall we had well over 15GB of files, photos and videos.”
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Big news: The next company we were set to expose was @JackDaniels_US.
They must have been tipped off by us going through employee LinkedIn pages.
They just preemptively announced that they’ll be making these changes:
• Ending participation in the @HRC’s Corporate Equality… pic.twitter.com/0O1DkkIKrO
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) August 22, 2024
On Monday, motorcycle giant Harley-Davidson announced that it was backing away from diversity, equity, and inclusion policies after facing criticism from conservative customers in the last few months.
In an open letter to the public, Harley-Davidson said it was no longer implementing DEI policies and would enact strict protocols for future corporate sponsorships and affiliations. The announcement comes as other companies like Tractor Supply have moved away from DEI after conservative customers spoke out.
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“We are saddened by the negativity on social media over the last few weeks, designed to divide the Harley-Davidson community. As a Company, we take this issue very seriously, and it is our responsibility to respond with clarity, action, and facts,” the company said.
The company said it no longer had a DEI office and would no longer be participating in the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) scoring program going forward.
The changes at the company took place after the company received sharp criticism from conservatives back in July when Starbuck highlighted many of the company’s LGBT-focused initiatives, including training employees to be “allies” and promoting the work of Critical Race Theory proponents.
Leif Le Mahieu contributed to this article.
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