Tractor Supply slashes its DEI and climate goals after a right-wing pressure campaign
Tractor Supply slashes its DEI and climate goals after a right-wing pressure campaign
Tractor Supply Company, which bills itself as the largest rural lifestyle retailer in the U.S., will eliminate its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) roles, withdraw its carbon emissions goals and stop sponsoring Pride events in response to criticism from conservative activists.
The Fortune 500 company has been nationally recognized as an inclusive and diverse workplace, including last year in Bloomberg’s Gender Equality Index and Newsweek’s inaugural list of America’s Greatest Workplaces for Diversity.
But it recently became the target of conservative ire for that very reason, as the latest in a growing series of retailers to face backlash over — and ultimately walk back — its DEI initiatives.
Robby Starbuck, a music video director and Republican who ran unsuccessfully to represent Tennessee's 5th Congressional District in 2022, launched the campaign against Tractor Supply on X (formerly Twitter) earlier this month.
He wrote on June 6 that it was “time to expose Tractor Supply,” which he said was one of conservatives’ most beloved brands but was at odds with their values. He pointed to its DEI hiring practices, in-office Pride Month decorations, climate change activism and “funding sex changes,” among other complaints.
Those rednecks LITERALLY have nowhere else to go. They were going to go to Tractor Supply anyway. Instead, the company bent the knee at the foot of fascism.
I guess I can go to Rural King but honestly I doubt they're better, but least-harm I suppose. When you live where I do you pretty much can't avoid patronizing businesses like this, unless you can hear through the grapevine about some guy who's selling whatever and is a fan of John Brown. We're out here but we're outnumbered and underground.
Yeah, I hear ya. That was kind of my point. Tractor Supply did not have to buckle. They are literally the only option.
I made the 33 mile trek to Agri Supply today for new pants now that I can't take the 5 mile trek to Tractor Supply. I can get most of my farm supplies from other places* but chicks and medications will be harder to source.
- I mostly do that already. But I have a local feed and seed half a mile away. But clothing was something that TS was better for.
Hope you go broke. Chicken-shit yellow cowards.
They will not.
Their main customers are some of the most stereotypically bigoted people in the entire united states.
Im talkin the type of people that say americans just dont want to work anymore while employing day laborers for a quarter of mininum wage. Im talkin the type of people that think women arent people while paying for their side piece to get an abortion.
Im talking hard r type people.
If tractor supply didnt do this, they would be dead in 6 months.
All those gains that were made in the 2010s? We're at real risk of losing them as corporations try and triangulate their way to maximum revenue.
After Anheueser Busch welched, the right smelled blood in the water.
The progressive left is going to need to fight very hard and make a lot of allies because we're so very close to snapping back to the 1990s, if not the 1950s.
I really don't see that happening. The left is just going to roll over and let conservative theologians stomp thier bellies. This is the end of the great US experiment.
We don't even have a left in USA. We have fascists and neo liberals. Yay us!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Tractor Supply Company, which bills itself as the largest rural lifestyle retailer in the U.S., will eliminate its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) roles, withdraw its carbon emissions goals and stop sponsoring Pride events in response to criticism from conservative activists.
Robby Starbuck, a music video director and Republican who ran unsuccessfully to represent Tennessee's 5th Congressional District in 2022, launched the campaign against Tractor Supply on X (formerly Twitter) earlier this month.
The company also said it would stop sponsoring “nonbusiness activities” like Pride festivals and voting campaigns, and instead continue its focus on “rural America priorities” such as education, animal welfare and veteran causes.
Starbuck praised the outcome as a “massive victory for sanity,” and said in an eight-minute video that this is the “first Fortune 300 company in our lifetimes to go backwards on ESG, DEI and all these woke causes and donations, in record speed.”
“Tractor Supply’s embarrassing capitulation to the petty whims of anti-LGBTQ extremists puts the company out of touch with the vast majority of Americans who support their LGBTQ friends, family, and neighbors,” GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis told The Advocate.
Shaun Harper, a professor of business at the University of Southern California, says because Tractor Supply stores are primarily located in rural communities, “the case-making for DEI should’ve been differently framed and better customized for those cultural contexts.”
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