Latest news with #racialEquity
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Walmart Shareholders Fail Racial Equity Audit Proposal for a Third Time
The third time was not the charm for United for Respect Education Fund. The non-profit filed a shareholder proposal asking Walmart to undergo a third-party, independent racial equity audit focused on analyzing the company's impact on Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities. Per the proposal, once completed, Walmart should share the results publicly on its website. More from Sourcing Journal Walmart to Bring Drone Delivery to Five Additional Cities Trump Lashes Out at Walmart, Says Retailer Should 'Eat the Tariffs' Walmart US Nearly Doubled Deliveries Made in Three Hours or Less 'Given its worker demographics and scale, we request Walmart assess its behavior through a racial equity lens to obtain a complete picture of how it contributes to, and could help dismantle, social and economic inequality,' the filers wrote in their proposal. 'A racial equity audit would help Walmart identify, remedy and avoid adverse impacts on nonwhite stakeholders, communities of color and long-term diversified shareholders. Failure to effectively address inequities in its operations exposes stakeholders, including employees, to unacceptable abuses and exposes Walmart to risks that may ultimately affect shareholder long-term value.' According to Walmart's 2024 Mid-Year Belonging Report, people of color make up 51 percent of its U.S. workforce. United for Respect Education Fund filed similar proposals in 2023 and 2024. But this time around, part of the importance for the group and its co-filers was the fact that Walmart, like several other major companies, announced late last year that it would roll back some of its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts in favor of a theme of 'belonging.' Ultimately, the filers' argument proved unsuccessful in swaying shareholders' minds. In 2023, the proposal garnered 18.1 percent of shareholder votes; in 2024, that proportion declined to 15.4 percent. This year, the proposal received 6.9 percent of shareholder votes, according to a vote result announcement from Walmart's Thursday shareholder meeting. That's down 8.5 percentage points from last year. Like in previous years, Walmart recommended shareholders vote against the proposal. 'The Board recommends shareholders vote against these proposals because we already disclose substantial information on our people strategies, providing information about our business rationale, key metrics, progress, Board oversight and approach to continuous improvement based on stakeholder feedback and results,' the company published in its 2025 proxy statement. Ahead of the vote, Bianca Agustin, co-executive director of United for Respect, told Sourcing Journal that the organization had hoped to see at least the same percentage of shareholder votes headed their way as last year. She had also hoped that the proposal would garner one-fifth of all shareholder votes, since many proxy advisers recommend a company open formal dialogue with shareholders proposing a change if their proposition receives at least 20 percent of the total vote. Ultimately, the filers saw neither of those outcomes come to fruition this year. Nonetheless, Agustin said she hoped the proposal would bring attention to Walmart's DEI-related decisioning in recent months. 'We [wanted] to basically give a referendum on Walmart's really, really opaque decision to roll back the DEI initiatives,' she told Sourcing Journal. 'We [wanted] to send a strong message to the company that stakeholders do not agree with their decision, and that…they have a responsibility to lead in this moment of political turmoil and division. Given the demographic of their workforce and the communities they operate in, that responsibility is enhanced for Walmart.' TaNeka Hightower, a Tennessee resident who is currently on medical leave from her role at Walmart, supported the non-profit and its co-filers in re-filing the proposal this year. She said she believes a racial equity audit would help answer questions about pay equity and would provide insight into broader employee concerns about their ability to move up within the company, the treatment they receive from upper management and more. 'If we were to do a racial equity audit, it would really give an insight as to the disparity between Black and Brown workers in comparison to others,' Hightower told Sourcing Journal. 'The people up top that are the ones benefiting from all the profits, while the people that are actually doing the work to get the profits in the store aren't able to live.' Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Forbes
6 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
New York's Challenges In Budgeting For Racial Equity
In 2022, New York City voters added provisions on racial equity to the city charter. But ... More implementation has been slow and halting and required reports not issued. In the November 2022 election, New York voters overwhelmingly approved three amendments to the New York City's charter to 'lay the foundation for achieving racial equity.' But the legally required implementation of the amendments is far behind schedule, and despite its progressive reputation, New York is lagging behind other US cities on comprehensive racial equity policies. New York's charter lays out the city's governing vision, the roles and activities of the Mayor (executive) and City Council (legislative) and establishes standards for city policies. (City courts are mostly governed as part of the state's court system.) In 2021, almost a year after the murder of George Floyd that sparked the Black Lives Matter movement, New York's then-mayor Bill de Blasio appointed a special New York City Racial Justice Commission. The commission was charged with proposing charter amendments to 'root out systemic racism across New York City.' The commission proposed three ballot initiatives, with voters approving them by 70% or more. Underscoring the desire for racial equity, the amendments included a new preamble to the City Charter. It calls out the historic 'violence and systemic inequity that continue to be experienced by marginalized groups.' The preamble says 'collective values' undergirding racial equity created 'duties, obligations, and authorities' that would 'guide the operation of our city government.' The amendments went into law almost immediately, with detailed implementation language written and incorporated into the charter in December of 2022. The new legal requirements require the city to 'undertake a process of citywide and agency planning and reporting with a goal of eliminating racial inequity.' The city's sweeping duties include defining overall city goals and specific strategies, 'throughout the city government's policymaking, operations, and workforce,' including attention to neighborhoods. Performance indicators and revisions to data when necessary also are part of the mandate. All of this is to be specified in a mayoral-issued racial equity plan, with adequate time and feedback from other elected officials and public before it is finalized. And the plan is meant to be coordinated with the city's budget process, along with review by the newly-established independent Commission on Racial Equity (CORE), also created by the charter amendments. To date, Mayor Eric Adams' administration has not issued any racial equity plans, preliminary of otherwise. CORE has been carrying out its own mandated duties, including gathering public input on racial equity priorities, but that process was intended to work with and inform the Mayor's racial equity planning. After missing repeated deadlines for issuing plans to be coordinated with the FY2026 budget process, CORE issued a letter calling on the Mayor to release the preliminary plan 'no later than March 21, 2025.' That call has been echoed by the city's Public Advocate, and the Progressive and the Black, Latino, and Asian Caucuses of the City Council. But as of this writing, there hasn't been a public response, or a racial equity plan, from the Mayor's office. I work on a joint project of the New School's Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy and the Center for Community Uplift at the Brookings Institution. At the Institute, we analyzed the city's public budget documents to look for attention on racial equity by agency, spending, and other measures. We did a word search for the terms 'race,' 'racial,' 'racial equity,' 'Black,' and 'charter.' We found no systematic attention to racial equity in the hundreds of pages in public budget documents we examined. If the city is linking a racial equity strategy to the budget process, as the charter requires, it is not apparent in the publicly available budget documents. Measuring and pursuing equity is challenging, but it can be done. There is a wealth of practice on how to look at equity for specific policies, from a number of institutions. Our joint New School and Brookings project has conducted specific racial equity analyses as a 'proof of concept' on transit subsidies and on wages paid by nonprofits to human service workers, reviewed racial equity efforts around the nation, looked at local land use decisions and racial equity, and documented racial equity analyses and policies from around the country. The Institute also is developing a pilot framework for assessing equity across a city's budget, with special emphasis on transparency and community input from marginalized communities. Budget equity involves a variety of complex technical issues, but must be driven by a set of values. The Institute's founding director Darrick Hamilton has anchored the work in values and guided our work by saying 'we value what we measure and we measure what we value.' One of our key findings is that racial equity is not just issuing new policies or spending plans. It must involve political leadership with adequate resources , guidance, and data to city agencies to examine their existing operations along with real community involvement. Existing programs and continuing spending usually are well over 95% of a city's operating budget, so an effective racial equity strategy must focus on existing programs to have a substantial impact. New York has some promising practices. The Department of City Planning, after urging from community organizations and some elected officials, created an online 'Equitable Development Data Explorer' along with a mapping tool to measure housing displacement risk for specific city neighborhoods. The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene candidly states 'our neighborhoods are segregated by race and wealth,' providing community health profiles with over 50 measures by specific neighborhoods. But compared to some other cities, New York's efforts are piecemeal and uncoordinated. Although several cities (Philadelphia, Washington DC, Portland, Dallas) have strong racial equity analytics and practices, Chicago is perhaps the nation's most comprehensive. In his 2025 Budget Overview, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson foregrounds 'Equity and Engagement,' clearly stating that 'Budget Equity is the process by which all departments account for the progress they are making to advance racial equity.' The city maintains an online 'Chicago Equity Dashboard' with data on key neighborhood indicators, and an online site showing 'Racial Equity Action Plans' for each city agency. Although New York voters spoke strongly in favor of racial equity analysis in coordination with the budget and using it to guide agency management and practices, the city has not met its deadlines. Of course, budget processes and comprehensive management of billions of dollars and many different agencies and policies is difficult and hard work. But the experiences of other large cities, especially Chicago, shows progress can be made. And now all cities must worry about the active hostility to diversity and racial equity coming from the Trump Administration. There will doubtless be many battles around federal funds, mandates, regulations, and court fights around equity in the next few years. That hostility means cities are now the best hope for progress on racial equity. When the city's Racial Justice Commission was charged in 2021 with drafting the ultimately successful ballot measures for racial equity, Darrick Hamilton (named as a commissioner) said 'This city, and this nation, are faced with an unprecedented opportunity to think big.' New York's voter-approved mandate calls for 'a city where the worth, talents, and contributions of all people are valued and recognized' by 'closing of gaps in policy, practice, and allocation of city resources through the prioritization of access, opportunities, and resources to those people and communities with the greatest need.' That indeed presents 'an unprecedented opportunity to think big.' The next few years will show if New York is up to the challenge.
New York Times
21-05-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Trump to Press South Africa's President to Pare Back Racial Equity Laws
President Trump plans to press President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa to roll back the country's racial equity laws and to do more to protect Afrikaners, a white ethnic minority, in a meeting scheduled at the White House on Wednesday, according to a White House official. The meeting comes a little more than a week after the Trump administration welcomed a group of white South Africans to the United States as refugees after they claimed they were persecuted in their home country. Tensions between the two countries have ratcheted up over racial issues, as Mr. Trump's administration has sought to make global his crusade to eradicate policies around diversity and redressing historical inequities. Among the topics Mr. Trump is likely to raise is the alleged discrimination against Afrikaners, according to the official, who spoke about the meeting on the condition of anonymity. Members of the white minority group, descendants of European colonialists who ruled during apartheid, were among those brought to the United States on a U.S.-funded charter plane. Mr. Trump has steadily dismantled the country's refugee system that had provided sanctuary for those fleeing war, famine and natural disasters, but made an exception to accommodate the expedited resettlement of the Afrikaners. In the White House meeting, Mr. Trump may also press for the South African government to condemn an anti-apartheid chant that called for the killing of Afrikaners, which the governing party, the African National Congress, distanced itself from years ago. Mr. Trump, who has also amplified false claims of a 'genocide' of white farmers, is also expected to ask that the government of South Africa classify farm attacks as a priority crime, the official said. He is expected to request that U.S. companies be exempt from a requirement that foreign-owned entities sell equity in their businesses to Black South Africans or others who were locked out of ownership opportunities during apartheid. That requirement is at the center of much of the criticism leveled against South Africa by Elon Musk, who has called it racist and blamed it for preventing him from bringing his satellite internet company, Starlink, to his native country. Since taking office, Mr. Trump has taken aggressive actions against South Africa, citing allegations of racial discrimination against the country's white population. That included cutting off all foreign aid to South Africa for engaging in what he called 'race-based discrimination.' Mr. Trump also expelled South Africa's ambassador after that official accused him of playing into white grievance in America. And Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that he would skip a Group of 20 foreign ministers meeting in South Africa, in part due to its promotion of what he deemed 'D.E.I.,' or diversity, equity and inclusion. Trump administration officials have argued that laws seeking to combat inequity have hurt white South Africans, and that white people in the United States could be similarly disenfranchised by policies aimed at tackling systemic racism. Mr. Trump is also likely to discuss with Mr. Ramaphosa the countries' trade imbalance, and the fact that South Africa's economy has stagnated. Ultimately, the U.S. wants to argue that the country's laws dealing with race threaten to collapse its economy, the White House official said. For his part, Mr. Ramaphosa is expected to try to convince Mr. Trump that the United States has a lot to gain from maintaining close ties with South Africa, the largest economy in Africa. He is expected to present a proposal for a trade deal between the two countries that would include ensuring that the United States gets improved access to South Africa's wealth of critical minerals that are necessary for producing clean energy technology. The South African president is also expected to seek a reset in his relationship with Mr. Musk, the Trump ally who is one of South Africa's loudest critics. The United States is South Africa's second-largest trading partner, but government officials say that many of their policies that upset Mr. Trump are necessary to undo the racial inequality created during apartheid. Like many other South Africans, Mr. Ramaphosa appeared to be angered by Mr. Trump's resettlement program. In the days after the white South Africans left for the United States, Mr. Ramaphosa called their migration a 'cowardly' act. Mr. Trump launched his attacks on South Africa this year after Mr. Ramaphosa signed into law a measure that gives the government the ability to take private property without paying compensation. Although legal experts say uncompensated seizures are subject to strict judicial review and are likely to be rare, Afrikaner community leaders have expressed fears that white farmers will have their land taken from them. Mr. Trump has been railing against South Africa's proposed land reforms since 2018. That year, he proclaimed on social media that he had ordered his secretary of state to 'closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers.' Days before Mr. Trump issued his executive order halting aid to the country, Mr. Ramaphosa defended the recently adopted Expropriation Act, writing in a post on X that it was 'not a confiscation instrument, but a constitutionally mandated legal process.' He said he looked forward to explaining the difference to the Trump administration. Police data doesn't support claims of targeted killings of white farmers. But Christopher Vandome, a senior research fellow with the Africa program at the think tank Chatham House, noted that such claims spoke to a larger fear among Afrikaners in South Africa. Mr. Vandome said that much of the friction over the farm deaths and the land bill was part of a 'sense of victimhood due to the paranoia of always expecting there to be retribution for what happened in the past.' The Trump administration, he said, was using 'a mix of fact and misinterpretation' in its criticism of South Africa's laws underpinned by race. 'This is kind of the Trumpian way,' Mr. Vandome said. 'You mix these things together, so it makes it very, very hard to engage with.'
Reuters
20-05-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Trump likely to confront South Africa's Ramaphosa over equity mandates affecting U.S. firms
WASHINGTON/JOHANNESBURG, May 20 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to raise several issues in a meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday, including seeking an exemption for U.S. companies from laws requiring equity ownership by disadvantaged groups, a White House official told Reuters. The meeting between Trump and Ramaphosa marks a pivotal moment in strained U.S.-South Africa relations, which have soured over diverging positions on racial equity laws and international diplomacy. Trump has taken aim at South Africa during his second term, criticizing its land reform policies and its genocide case against U.S. ally Israel at the International Court of Justice. His administration cut funding to the country in February and, last week, granted refugee status to a group of white South Africans it claims are facing racial discrimination - a claim the South African government strongly denies. The two heads of state are scheduled to meet on Wednesday, and South African officials have been preparing a trade proposal to present to Trump to reset the relationship. The White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the meeting will likely include a request that all U.S. companies be exempt from South Africa's "racial requirements." Under South African law, businesses over a certain size must have a 30% equity stake held by disadvantaged groups, which includes black South Africans. Alternatively, the businesses can spend an equivalent amount on training or other initiatives. Any change to the laws may pose an uphill battle at home for Ramaphosa, as they are largely seen as aligned with the principles of restoring racial justice that Ramaphosa's party fought for. Trump is also expected to address slow economic growth in South Africa and what the official described as the "trade imbalance" and "persecution of Afrikaners," who are descendants of mostly Dutch early settlers and also sometimes called Boers. The South African government "needs to loudly condemn politicians who promote genocidal rhetoric like the 'kill the Boer' chant," the official added. "The government of South Africa needs to classify farm attacks as a priority crime." Trump has said, without evidence, that Afrikaners were being killed and that a genocide was taking place. South Africa refutes the claim that white farmers are victims of a genocide. Murders of white farmers, though sometimes cruel and gruesome, make up about 0.25% of the roughly 20,000 murders in South Africa every year. A court ruled in March that "kill the Boer" is not hate speech but a historical chant from the struggle for liberation from apartheid. The administration's move to grant refugee status to 59 white South Africans, after deeming them victims of racial discrimination, drew criticism from Democrats and stirred confusion in South Africa. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday's meeting was an outreach from Ramaphosa. "He said he wanted to come to Washington. He wanted to reset relations with the United States... If there's a willingness on their side to reset relations, obviously something we'll explore, but we do so with eyes wide open to what they've done so far," he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
CBS News
08-05-2025
- CBS News
Rochester NAACP and community rally in light of recent racial slur caught on video
NCAA and Rochester community gather after a racist attack was caught on video NCAA and Rochester community gather after a racist attack was caught on video NCAA and Rochester community gather after a racist attack was caught on video A disturbing incident at a park in Rochester, Minnesota is getting national attention and drawing criticism from the community. A viral video reignited conversations about racial equity Wednesday as dozens of people packed the Rochester Civic Theatre demanding accountability, justice and real change. The Rochester Branch of the NAACP in collaboration with Barbershop Talk and Rochester Civic Theatre hosted a community townhall. Speakers included faith leaders and elected officials. The video captures Sharmake Omar confronting a woman about calling a child the n-word at Roy Sutherland Playground. Omar said he took the video- to protect himself and to show people the hate that took place at that park. "To see a 5-year-old child called that word was very shocking," Omar said. The woman appears to call Omar the n-word in the video, which was taken late last month, and admits to calling the boy the racial slur. Since that encounter, Omar says he's received death threats had to leave his home after his personal information was leaked. "My life has been turned upside down," Omar said. "It makes me feel good the community is coming together but the damage has been done." Omar says he's frustrated that's happening to him while the woman in the video is profiting. The woman, named Shiloh, accused the boy of stealing from her child's diaper bag, according to the description of an online fundraiser she created. She says she started the fundraiser to protect her family. It has since raised more than $700,000. Omar has since started a fundraiser to help his family relocate and help with the loss of wages because of the death threats he says he has received. The Rochester branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) also created an online fundraiser, which it says was meant to support the boy and his family. That fundraiser, which is no longer active, raised $341,594. "We are demanding accountability demanding charges," said Wale Elegbede, NAACP Rochester President. Crystal Smith was one of the people who packed the theatre Wednesday. She says she wants the city to charge the woman and make things right. "At the end of the day, these kids are our future if we don't show them the right direction, they gonna be in the same seat we sitting in right now," Smith said. The Rochester Police Department has completed an investigation into the video, and findings have been submitted to the city's attorney's office for review.
