A US federal agency responsible for workplace equity is engaged in a standoff with Nike. The reason? The company racially discriminated against white people, she suspects.
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What is at stake?
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency responsible for enforcing laws against workplace discrimination, last week requested court intervention to force Nike to provide information relating to allegations of discrimination against white workers. Some requests date back to 2018, specifies the EEOC on its site. The American clothing and sports equipment group, for its part, claims to have responded to the agency’s requests, according to the New York Times.
What is Nike being accused of?
Nike has a mission of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility within its ranks. The EEOC notably suspects the company with annual turnover of several billion US dollars of having offered mentoring or skills development activities according to the racial affiliation of its employees and of having used data linked to ethnicity to establish the remuneration of its executives. The company has also publicly committed to having at least 30% of executives from ethnic minorities.
Why is this problematic?
The civil rights law makes it possible to redress past practices of exclusion and segregation, within certain guidelines. “The ban on racial discrimination in hiring is blind to skin color,” said EEOC President Andrea Lucas in a statement on the investigation against Nike. In the United States, it is illegal to establish hiring quotas based on ethnicity, gender, or religion. “But there is a difference between a target and a quota; companies can have goals, can say it’s important to diversify their teams more without it being a quota,” says Adia Harvey Wingfield, a sociology professor at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
Is the investigation unusual?
Yes. The EEOC was born in 1965, in the wake of the black civil rights movement in the United States and the law against discrimination. This would be the first time the EEOC has drawn a direct link between diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies – programs in the Trump administration’s crosshairs – and discrimination against white people. “The EEOC has done a 180-degree turn from the traditional use of its powers, which targeted companies suspected of violating the civil rights law,” says Robin Stryker, a distinguished professor at Purdue University in Indiana. An “anti-equality, anti-equity” movement has existed at least since the late 1970s, she adds. It has experienced a resurgence in popularity among a segment of Americans in recent years. It is also unusual for the agency to launch an investigation without there having been an employee complaint. Mme Lucas opened it during Joe Biden’s term, when she was the only Republican member of the EEOC board.
Has Nike had problems with the administration?
The world-famous company has taken a stand on social issues. In 2018, she attracted criticism, notably from Donald Trump, by making former footballer Colin Kaepernick a standard bearer. The athlete is the first NFL player to kneel on the ground during the national anthem, launching a movement to denounce racism and police brutality against black people. Nike also launched a campaign after the death of George Floyd in 2020. Mme Wingfield fears the consequences of the EEOC’s exit. “I can imagine smaller companies, who don’t have the same kinds of resources or don’t want to take the risk of legal action, conforming to what they think is the administration’s vision and making sure they don’t engage in diversity practices,” she says.
Why are DEI programs in the crosshairs?
The law against discrimination protects everyone and does not only target minorities, notes Mme Stryker. “But this administration’s insistence that diversity, equity and inclusion programs discriminate against white people, and particularly white men, when we look at the empirical data, is unfounded,” she emphasizes. Presidential executive orders against DEI policies have little basis in law, notes Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He notes that public positions by major corporations following Floyd’s death and mismanaged DEI programs have raised a backlash among conservatives. The offensive is part of a political strategy, he believes.
With information from New York Times
