BlackRock Announces It Will Begin Internal Review Of DEI Policies, But Says It Is Committed To "Our Connected And Inclusive Culture"
Financial management firm BlackRock announced it will being an internal review of the company’s DEI policies and is making changes to a number of its policies due to “significant changes to the U.S. Legal and policy environment related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion”
In a memo titled “Committing to our connected and inclusive culture” written by BlackRock management including Larry Fink, Rob Capito, and Caroline Heller and shared to social media by Fox Business Correspondent Charles Gasparino, the trio declared, “Recently, there have been a number of significant changes to the U.S. legal and policy environment related to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) that apply to many companies, including BlackRock. In light of this, we are conducting an ongoing review of our global practices and announcing several changes today.”
The first of those changes is letting their “aspirational workforce representation goal expire in 2024 with no current plans to renew them.
With this change, the management team added, “We will continue welcoming diverse talent from around the world, but we are not requiring managers to interview a diverse slate of candidates for open positions.”
Next, it announced that it plans to combine its Talent Management and DEI team into a new Talent Culture team which will be led by Nick Avery and Michelle Gadsden-Williams. Gadsden-Williams was previously the Managing Director & Global Head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at BlackRock.
As the trio concluded the email, it declared, “Our connected and inclusive culture is imperative to achieving our commercial objectives and delivering performance for our clients. As the law changes, we will adapt. However, our culture is our competitive advantage and remains proudly One BlackRock.”
Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock has been roundly criticized for using his firm’s financial power to spread the immoral ideology of DEI throughout corporate America and elsewhere specifically for comments he made during the New York Times’ DealBook conference in 2017.
He said at the time, “Well, behaviors are going to have change. And this is one thing that we’re asking companies. You have to force behaviors. And at BlackRock we are forcing behaviors. 54% of the incoming class are women. We added four more points in terms of diverse employment this year. And what we are doing internally is if you don’t achieve these levels of impact your compensation could be impacted. You have to force behaviors. And if you don’t force behaviors whether it’s gender, or race, or just any way you want to say the composition of your team, you’re going to be impacted.”
He continued, “And that’s not just recruiting. It’s development as Ken said. And ultimately, it’s still gonna take time, but I am just as much shocked as Ken is that we have not seen more opportunities and we’re going to have force change.”
By 2022, Fink was already walking away from the DEI label attempting to spin it as “stakeholder capitalism.”
He said during another New York Times’ DealBook conference, “Stakeholder capitalism [is] you were responding to the needs of your stakeholders and your doing it for the beneficial interests of your shareholders. Let’s be clear, the shareholders are the primary stakeholder. But to achieve the long-term interests of your shareholders and that’s what I’m focused on. Not any short-term thing, but the long-term thing. To create that durable profitability you have to be focused on all your stakeholders, your clients, your employees.”
Next, he stated, “You’re right, there’s a lot of noise and it really does fill the airwaves and it fills up the times on the airways about the attacks from some states to me specifically and to the firm. … The reality is the majority, the unheard, unspoken majority really like what we are doing, what we are saying. I’m not happy with the narrative because it fills the airwaves and we have to spend a lot of time-. To be clear I spend a lot more time in Washington and states. I’m trying to correct the narrative because in most cases the narrative is not based on facts, it’s based on somebody else’s view on the facts.”
Given Fink’s insistence that the behavior had to be forced and how he had previously attempted to relabel his DEI efforts as stakeholder capitalism alongside this new email indicating the company is still committed to inclusivity, it seems quite difficult to imagine that BlackRock is abandoning DEI at-large. Rather it is likely the company is attempting to obfuscate its policies in order to not draw the attention of Donald Trump’s administration, which has made it clear that these DEI policies are immoral as well as illegal and will be seeking potential regulatory actions as well as lawsuits against those pushing it.
To that point President Trump signed an executive order titled “Ending Illegal Discrimination And Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.”
The order states “critical and influential institutions of American society, including the Federal Government, major corporations, financial institutions, the medical industry, large commercial airlines, law enforcement agencies, and institutions of higher education have adopted and actively use dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences under the guise of so-called ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI) or ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ (DEIA) that can violate the civil-rights laws of this Nation.”
It notes these “illegal DEI and DEIA policies not only violate the text and spirit of our longstanding Federal civil-rights laws, they also 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.”
In order to eliminate these policies especially in the private sector, President Trump ordered his agency heads to provide him a report that identifies “the most egregious and discriminatory DEI practitioners in each sector of concern” and create a “A plan of specific steps or measures to deter DEI programs or principles that constitute illegal discrimination or preferences.”
Furthermore, he indicated that litigation as well as regulatory action could be taken against companies that engage in these practices.
What do you make of this email from BlackRock management announcing it will conduct an internal review of its DEI policies and it is merging its DEI team with its Talent Management team? What about the fact it is removing the diversity quotas for its hiring managers?
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There will still remain the question of what Blackrock is doing with other companies. They may scale down their own internal DEI practices - or, more realistically, mask them better - but that's just a tiny part of the whole picture.
If they continue to push this corruption in every company where they own a 5-10% stake, nothing will change. And since exerting shareholder influence or control has nothing to do with hiring and similarly regulated practices, there will be no such grounds to pursue them for it. In short: nothing about Blackrock's global rot will change.
"Financial management firm"
That's not how you spell "thieving cunts".