NW Democrat-Gazette

Chick-fil-A now gets heat over its inclusion policies

JESUS JIMÉNEZ

Chick- fil-A drew criticism this week from conservatives calling out the fastfood chain for its diversity, equity and inclusion policy and questioning the hiring of an executive to be in charge of such efforts.

The backlash has made Chick-fil-A one of the latest companies to draw public condemnation over “culture war” flash points such as LGBTQ+ rights or seeking fair treatment for racial or ethnic groups that have been historically underrepresented. Several companies and brands have also been at the center of such criticism in recent months, including Bud Light, Target and the

Los Angeles Dodgers. Chickfil-A has drawn controversy in the past, though more typically from the left.

Conservatives rebuked Chick-fil-A, pointing to a corporate policy on its website that details the company’s focus on “ensuring equal access,” “valuing differences,” and “creating a culture of belonging,” under the title, “Committed to being Better at Together.”

Critics also singled out the chain’s hiring of Erick McReynolds to head its diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, but that is also not a new development.

Citing that policy, Wade Miller, an executive director for Center for Renewing America, a conservative think tank, said on Twitter that he could no longer support the company as a customer: “Everything good must come to an end.”

Jeff Clark, a former Justice Department official who was implicated in former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, said on Twitter that Chick-filA’s policy was “disappointing.”

“Chick- fil- A has gone woke,” wrote Ian Miles Cheong, a right-wing critic with 625,000 Twitter followers. Conservative commentator Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA shared a similar sentiment with his 2.2 million followers.

It was unclear why Chickfil-A was drawing criticism now for its diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, since the company has long had such a policy in place. As for McReynolds, company records show that he had been the company’s vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion since at least 2020.

The chain declined to comment.

Chick- fil-A has been in the spotlight in the past over matters of inclusion, but for different reasons and from a different direction.

Chick-fil-A was founded by S. Truett Cathy, a religious man who wanted to have his business closed on Sundays so that his workers could rest and worship if they wanted to do so. The company, which says its corporate purpose is “to glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us,” had aligned itself with conservative causes by donating to groups that tried to prevent the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States.

In 2012, its president and chief operating officer spoke in favor of traditional marriage, inviting protests from advocates for same-sex marriage. The company had also been criticized for closing on Sundays because of religious beliefs.

Under pressure, the company later stopped almost all donations to organizations that opposed equal rights for people based on sexual orientation.

The chain was criticized again in 2019 for making charitable donations to the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, two groups that had been criticized by LGBTQ+ advocates. The company then stopped making donations to those groups.

Corporate companies have had policies that promote diversity, equity and inclusion in some form for decades, largely to avoid discrimination on the basis of race, sex or religion.

Ivuoma Onyeador, a Northwestern University professor whose research examines how people understand discrimination and disparities, said companies have diversity, equity and inclusion policies to ensure that “their employees and customers and clients from marginalized backgrounds are having the same experience as employees, customers and clients from dominant groups or well-represented backgrounds.”

Those policies “signal to employees from marginalized backgrounds, or racial minorities, that the companies care about their experiences,” Onyeador said. “That’s the benefit of having these programs.”

Experts said diversity, equity and inclusion efforts were bolstered after the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor by police in 2020 spurred nationwide protests calling for social justice and police accountability.

“The Floyd moment felt like a shift,” Onyeador said. “The 2020 moment, the Black Lives Matter moment over the last decade, has brought lots of these discussions to the forefront in a particularly unique way.”

Alvin Tillery, the director of the Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy at Northwestern, said protests in the summer of 2020 revealed to corporations that many of their workers, especially younger ones, were “aggressively committed to racial justice.”

“The corporate diversity programs shifted from these kind of benign discussions of recruiting and nonconscious bias to an active discussion of accountability for antiracism and gender equity,” Tillery said.

In an internal report, Chick-fil-A said that in 2020 the commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts “took on special significance for us as we proactively pursued new ways to work against racism, systemic or subtle, throughout the communities we serve.”

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2023-06-02T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-06-02T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://edition.nwaonline.com/article/282724821317068

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