On Wednesday, CBS Mornings Plus gave a wide berth for National Urban League President Marc Morial to kvetch over Walmart announcing it’d be cutting back on its capitulation to wokeism and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs. Worse yet, CBS failed to show basic ethics by not mentioning Morial is married to CBS Saturday Morning co-host Michelle Miller.
The substance was all you’d come to expect out of the racial activist crowd who behave like mobsters, making veiled threats if they’re not pampered and using hot rhetoric to decry this move as having capitulated to a “hate mob” filled with “anti-racial justice extremists.”
Co-host Adriana Diaz set the table: “[T]he world’s largest retailer says it will no longer give priority treatment to suppliers owned by minorities and women. It will also scale back racial equity trading and review its support for things like pride month and other events.”
After a soundbite from Tuesday’s CBS Mornings of Walmart’s U.S. CEO defending the change, Diaz and co-host Tony Dokoupil brought in Morial as simply “the president and CEO of the National Urban League.”
If this were a conservative organization and they were married to, say, a Fox & Friends co-host, you bet the liberal media defenders would raise hell.
Nonetheless, Diaz read from a letter Morial sent to Walmart, saying this move against wokeness could have “potentially disastrous effects” and was “a hasty and ill-advised capitulation to anti-racial justice extremists” that could lead to the company being rife with “discrimination, racial profiling, and insensitivity.”
Morial added his biggest gripe was, well, all about him: “[A]s a 20-year partner of Walmart, none of us got a head’s up that they were even reevaluating or reconsidering their corporate diversity and equal opportunity initiatives.”
Describing Walmart as “first-class” on issues of “diversity,” Morial fretted Walmart’s looking to “throw all of that away without any careful consultation with their partners, without any serious evaluation of the success of these programs.”
Like a good racial arsonist, he smeared those who believe this corporate liberalism is eye-roll inducing:
I think what they did is succumbed to a smear campaign, to threats, to bullying, and to blackmail by a handful of extremists. We need American business leaders to stand up for American values, and one value of this nation is equal opportunity. That’s all diversity and equity and inclusion is about. It’s about creating a level playing field for all.
Diaz wouldn’t credit Robby Starbuck for having led this charge, so she merely noted this was part of a wider trend in corporate America to which Morial said DEI has “been smeared by a hate mob” discrediting this “positive...image and a positive conversation about an America for all, an America that is open to all.”
Morial had the gall to claim DEI is about meritocracy: “D, E, and I is consistency with meritocracy because what D, E, and I says give those who have merit, but who have been locked out an opportunity, so these two value propositions work together.”
Dokoupil drew Morial’s ire for having the gall to paraphrase Chief Justice John Robert’s belief that “the way to end discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race” and voicing the belief by some Americans that embracing DEI and putting demands on a company “based on...gender or...skin color” is “perpetuating the very racism” they claim to abhor.
“You used the word that is inaccurate. Favoring. D, E, and I does not favor. It opens doors that have been historically closed,” snapped Morial.
Later, the pity party ended with Morial telling Dokoupil he’s demanding a meeting with Walmart executives alongside others “in the civil rights community” because they’d then feel like they could more openly “decide what steps we’ll take or what moves we’ll make.”
This, of course, could be taken to mean boycotts or putting Walmart on blast with cries of racism (click “expand”):
DOKOUPIL: As I understand it, you’re in conversation with — with them. You’ve requested a meeting or have they agreed to a meeting?
MORIAL: I would love to meet with Doug McMillon. Look, I know Doug McMillon. I’ve worked with Doug McMillon. They’ve been historically a strong supporter of equal opportunity, and I think that conversation would help us gain an understanding. I want to have that conversation before I think many of us in the civil rights community decide what steps we’ll take or what moves we’ll make. Once again, I’ve been a partner at the National Urban League with Walmart now for 20 years through multiple CEOs. I’ve watched their journey. I hope they’re not a championship team that’s won with the west coast offense that now says let’s try the signal wing, if you understand.
DOKOUPIL: Yeah.
MORIAL: That what they’ll do is throw away, if you will, 20 years of progress without any real consultation with any of us and without any conversation and they’ve obviously been speaking to those who oppose D, E, and I. I think it’s important that they speak to those of us who promote and support D, E, and I to equal opportunity. That’s what a fair conversation is, not to make these decisions because someone comes to you behind closed doors, makes a lot of threats, suggests that they’re going to run boycotts on you and then you succumb to that pressure. I mean, this is a moment. I wanted to come and talk about this publicly because it is a moment that is so important for this country. We cannot throw away the progress we’ve made.
To see the relevant CBS transcript from November 27, click here.
