It’s time to ramp up the fight against corporate bias. The next four years will be difference-making ones.

For years, corporate activists have infiltrated the boardrooms and governance structures of America’s biggest companies and brands, destroying their focus on fiduciary duty and politicizing them through a plethora of activist-driven ESG and DEI initiatives. As a proxy analyst, I see the fruits of corporate activism everywhere, from shareholder proposals pressuring brands like Walmart into auditing their “racial equity” to existing corporate policies discriminating against religious and/or conservative employees.

For conservatives interested in doing the work of depoliticizing American businesses, it shouldn’t just be about stopping the current ambitions of ESG activists—it should be about undoing all the gains they’ve made in company culture and policy. And it shouldn’t be simply about decrying companies’ biased decisions, but about working to bring them back to a politically neutral baseline so that such decisions don’t happen again.

Conservatives have been given the massive opportunity of a political environment featuring a president and vice president who are vocally anti-DEI and anti-ESG. As someone in the trenches of the day-to-day fight against ESG activists, the Right should be concentrating its fire on these five areas.

Diminish the power of the Human Rights Campaign

Formed in 1980, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) is one of the most powerful nonprofits actively pushing corporations to advance progressivism through its corporate policies.The HRC’s Corporate Equality Index pressures companies to check a growing and increasingly radical list of boxes to be considered perfectly “inclusive.” To score a perfect 100 on the Index, a business has to implement diversity programs for its suppliers and include similar metrics for its executives, as well as provide gender-affirming care to its employees, including puberty blockers for children.

Far from its stated goal of merely advancing equality, the HRC has become a vehicle for unbridled social activism masquerading as inclusion. This is why many companies that have backed off of corporate wokeness in the recent past, including Tractor Supply and Coors, have severed their ties to the HRC (with the HRC notably smearing and seeking to undermine them in response). Many more businesses should follow suit. If we want to get politics out of business, it’s time to leverage shareholder and customer influence to end corporate partnerships with radical left-wing organizations that seek to replace a business focus with political goals.

2. Continue to shed light on discriminatory DEI programs

Since the death of George Floyd, America’s obsession with race has infected the corporate sphere, with major companies spending millions on programs designed to advance Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Unsurprisingly, many of those programs are now coming under fire: letters from 17 state financial officials and major players in the pro-fiduciary movement urge companies to refocus on fiduciary duty and away from the legal and reputational issues that many DEI programs create. Such scrutiny comes as no surprise—far from merely confronting racial inequalities, major corporations like IBM have been criticized for implementing diversity programs that expressly use racial quotas to achieve their desired goals, with a new study casting serious doubt on whether many diversity programs actually create unity at all.

Whether by explicit quotas based on skin color or training programs that advance modern “antiracist” tenets such as systemic racism or unconscious bias, many DEI programs feature the very same identitarian worldview that Americans roundly rejected at the ballot box. If we’re to decrease focus on social activism and increase focus on business success that lifts up Americans of all colors, the time is now to expose such radical initiatives.

3. Combat ESG’s chronic anti-energy bias

It’s no secret that many modern “sustainability” initiatives are simply running cover for activist agendas that seek divestment from critical sectors of the energy business like oil and gas. This was the driving force behind one of the biggest corporate stories of the year, when Exxon Mobil faced down a challenge from activist shareholders outraged at the concept of an oil and gas company doing business in the oil and gas industry.

Although the challenge failed at Exxon Mobil, such anti-energy stances have succeeded at other companies, to the point where companies like BlackRock, JPMorgan Chase, and Truist Financial are actively restricted from doing business with state entities in West Virginia and Texas due to their anti-energy stances. While a focus on sustainability may sound harmless or even beneficial, state financial officers in red states are seeing the effects that poorly developed net zero initiatives are having on their constituencies. The decidedly more pro-fossil fuel approach of the incoming administration could mean a rethinking of ESG activist-driven “sustainable” initiatives at many companies.

4. Realize how many corporate policies disenfranchise religious/conservative employees—and why

As a proxy analyst who engages with investor relations (IR) teams at many different companies, you’d be surprised at the amount of anti-religious sentiment that (consciously or unconsciously) is baked into corporate policy. I’m talking about everything from corporate gift-matching policies that exclude religious nonprofits to companies that have employee resource groups for sexual and ethnic minorities—but not employees of faith. My colleagues and I are finding a constant theme at many of these companies: no one brought up these issues to them. One IR rep we spoke to recently was surprised at their company’s own restrictions on charity matching for religious nonprofits. Is this a sign of corporate bias? Of course—but it’s also shining a spotlight on our lack of attention to the institutional ground game.

Pro-ESG activists have been working to advance their agenda for years, an agenda that’s resulted not only in countless bad headlines highlighting the excesses of woke capitalism (Target and Bud Light being the most prominent examples) but created policies and objectives that have distracted businesses from their focus on maximizing return. And conservatives have fallen behind in that fight. Our push against shareholder activism and ESG is a mission to remind executives that progressivism is not the only viewpoint held by their shareholders. Pushing back in the spaces that the Left now dominates is a vital step forward.

5. Take control of proxy voting

The latest election is a reminder that leveraging influence works. The same principle applies in corporate America: if you’re a shareholder, you should be thinking seriously about who manages the voting of your shares at the companies you own. For too long, organizations that eschew conservative values to advance their own activist agenda have bafflingly been entrusted with controlling the way financial influence is leveraged on behalf of conservative investors, be they individuals, nonprofits, or educational institutions. It’s why the firm I work for, Bowyer Research, created a set of ESG skeptic proxy voting guidelines. If you wouldn’t let someone who doesn’t share your values fill in your presidential ballot on Election Day, why would you do that with your proxy ballot?

When it comes to corporate America, the battle for influence is often won by the loudest voices. Taken on these terms, the silent majority has lost for years. To fix that, it’s now time to pay heed to our ground game. As the grand strategy for the Right shifts for the next four years, we can’t afford to forget the tactics that can win the battle. Depoliticizing corporate America is a battle worth fighting and winning—for its shareholders, for its customers, and for everyone that the free enterprise system serves.

The post Five Tactics to End Corporate Wokeness appeared first on The American Mind.

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