When we commemorate July 4, 1776, we’re not just remembering the early American fight for freedom; … More
When the Declaration of Independence proclaimed on July 4, 1776, that “all men are created equal,” enslaved Americans were not part of the celebrations. It would take nearly a century before people forced into slavery in Galveston, Texas, received word that they had been liberated, the starting point of a long struggle for true equality and freedom. This week’s Independence Day celebrations invite us to reflect on how far we’ve come toward fulfilling our nation’s founding promises — and how far we have yet to go, particularly on Black American economic progress. The numbers tell a sobering story, particularly about economic leadership: in 2025, only eight Black Americans lead Fortune 500 companies. Now, the recent corporate retreat from diversity initiatives threatens to undermine the progress that has been made.
The irony is particularly sharp during a week when we celebrate the ideals of liberty and equality. Corporate America made bold promises about diversity and inclusion in recent years, yet many companies are now quietly abandoning those commitments. Current debate presents a false choice between abandoning diversity efforts entirely or defending every aspect of existing programs without question. Both extremes miss the mark. The real challenge is not whether to pursue workplace diversity—the business and moral case for that is clear—but how to do it effectively, fairly, without discrimination, and in ways that build rather than divide our communities.
It wasn’t until 1987 — 211 years after the Declaration of Independence — that the first African American, Clifton Wharton, became the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, TIAA. Reflecting on his experience in a 2016 PBS NewsHour interview, Wharton pointed to the issue of “institutional racism” that can be “built into the psyche of a people.” He observed that, “collectively, there’s a problem.”
Today, there are only eight Black Fortune 500 CEOs and there have only been 19 in our history. Black Americans are particularly under-represented in the financial sector and big tech, two industries that are driving the U.S. economy. Only 1.9% of finance executives are Black men, and 1.5% are Black women. According to Professor Josh Lerner of Harvard Business School, very few of the private equity funds that back young businesses are owned by Black founders and partners. In the tech sector, Black individuals hold only about 4% of senior executive positions.
Mindful of these and related challenges, in recent years a number of Fortune 500 corporate executives expressed a commitment to promoting diversity in their companies. In 2020, for example, Verizon’s CEO Hans Vestberg asserted that his company was “fiercely committed to diversity and inclusion across all spectrums because it makes us and the world better.” Last year Verizon was a silver sponsor of the Juneteenth Music Festival in Denver and other celebrations around the country.
Lately, Verizon is singing a very different tune. Last month, the company assured Brendan Carr, the current chair of the Federal Communications Commission, that Verizon was “ending DEI-related policies …effective immediately.” It removed “diversity and inclusion” from the company’s website and agreed to end “workforce diversity” goals. Mr. Vestberg’s 2020 endorsement of diversity was scrubbed from Verizon’s website.
A Verizon spokesperson said that “while our practices may evolve, we are committed to the core principles that have made us successful – an inclusive culture based on trust, care, and excellence which enables us to provide market leading services to all of our customers.” The spokesperson added that Verizon celebrated Juneteenth internally “in the same way that it’s been recognized over the past couple of years.” Time will tell whether Verizon has changed its public profile simply to meet the political moment or whether it is no longer a company “fiercely committed to diversity and inclusion.”
For Verizon and others, the public-facing corporate retreat from DEI issues reflects in part the Trump administration’s unrelenting assault on diversity. On his first day in office, the president signed an executive order excising DEI from all federal contracts and agencies. The next day he issued a second executive order urging the private sector to do the same. The rationale for these sweeping actions was the president’s assertion that diversity programs “undermine our national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system.”
Like so many polarizing issues facing our country, the battle over diversity offers little room for thoughtful discussion or serious debate on the best ways forward. On one side, critics like Elon Musk have charged that, “DEI is just another word for racism.” Bill Ackman, the founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, wrote a 4000-word denunciation of DEI programs in January. He charged that DEI is an “inherently…racist and illegal movement in its implementation even if it purports to work on behalf of the so-called oppressed.” Few of these critics work to guarantee that the U.S. will devote significantly greater resources to improving educational opportunities for young people from underserved communities, especially Black and Latino youth, who are struggling to gain a foothold on the path to the American dream.
On the other side, some proponents of DEI programs have been resistant to debating its current model, and the reality that some of these programs have been poorly designed or inadequately implemented. Proponents also have been reluctant to grapple with the fact that some diversity initiatives have placed individuals into roles where they did not succeed, often because they had not had access to the same educational or professional opportunities as their more affluent white peers. They also have not acknowledged that as more women and underrepresented minority candidates are hired or accepted into colleges, inevitably this reduces the number of spots that go to white men.
Some legal analysts say that the Supreme Court’s recent, unanimous Ames v. Ohio decision, which held that minority and majority groups should be held to the same legal standard in discrimination cases, could result in more reverse discrimination and put further pressure on companies to scale back DEI initiatives. Previously, more than half of Federal courts required that majority-group complaints meet a higher standard for evidence than minority-group complaints.
This polarized debate, while highlighting real implementation challenges, has also obscured a central truth that should guide our path forward. It is that most diversity initiatives have created greater opportunities for women and minorities to compete and succeed and that this is good — not just for our society, but for the bottom line as well. As McKinsey & Co. found in their 2023 study, “companies with diverse leadership teams continue to be associated with higher financial returns… leadership diversity is also convincingly associated with holistic growth ambitions, greater social impact, and more satisfied workforces.” Dartmouth Professor Paul Argenti echoes this assessment stating, “companies with diverse leadership consistently outperform their homogeneous counterparts in innovation, risk management and financial returns.” But supporters of these beneficial initiatives also need to be responsive to the needs of those, including white men without a college degree, who are struggling to adapt to this rapidly changing landscape. Their understandable fears and anxieties drive much of the opposition to diversity initiatives and are often rooted in real economic anxiety and a sense that the rules of advancement have changed without clear explanation.
The corporate retreat from diversity initiatives—exemplified by companies like Verizon—reflects more than just political calculation. It reveals how polarized rhetoric has made thoughtful discussion nearly impossible. When diversity programs are characterized as either essential justice work or reverse racism, many companies choose the path of least resistance: abandoning the effort entirely. But this represents a failure of leadership and imagination. The challenge is not to choose between diversity and merit, but to design programs that advance both goals simultaneously. They should include three elements:
First, companies need to explicitly commit to promoting greater diversity as a priority by identifying and adopting a series of best practices that are consistent with the law. These could include actively promoting a diverse workforce of qualified employees from different backgrounds as well as work to remove barriers that have historically led to unequal outcomes. In an April 2024 Harvard Business Review article, strategist Lily Zheng laid out some concrete steps companies can take, such as linking inclusive leadership to promotion criteria and performance evaluations; breaking down organization-wide DEI goals into team-specific goals; making investments in pay-equity audits and ombuds offices, and more.
Second, companies need to promote an inclusive workplace, which means recognizing the diversity in people’s backgrounds, identities, and beliefs, and making each of them feel respected and valued. This requires companies to make inclusion an explicit priority and apply it at all levels of their enterprises.
Finally, these efforts need to stress fairness. As Zheng has written, fairness in the workplace means “how people’s experiences differ regarding pay, promotion, resources, opportunities, discipline, learning and feedback.” Companies need to be internally transparent about how and why these decisions are made.
When we commemorate July 4, 1776, we’re not just remembering the early American fight for freedom; we’re honoring the ongoing struggle for equality. Real change requires sustained commitment and the courage to keep working toward fairness even when the political winds shift. The economic freedom that comes from genuine opportunity — the chance to compete fairly for leadership roles, to build wealth, to achieve the American dream — still remains elusive for too many Black Americans.
The question is not whether diversity is worth pursuing, but whether we have the courage to pursue it thoughtfully, fairly, and persistently.
