'Woke 3.0' Meets a Corporate Sector That Already Moved On From DEI

Democrats swept the midterms, and within days social media had branded the moment "Woke 3.0"—a revival of the political and cultural movement that took hold during the pandemic, particularly after George Floyd's murder. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gave the label unexpected traction in a widely discussed interview in which she distanced herself from that brand of progressivism, saying: "Woke 1 was crazy." The quips about pronouns and anti-AI rhetoric may be unserious, but they land on a workplace question that is anything but: what, if anything, is left of corporate DEI to revive?

The honest answer is: much less than in 2020. That year, corporate America appeared to take diversity, equity, and inclusion seriously. Some of the country's biggest tech employers—Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta among them—did not just speak out about the racial reckoning; they backed their commitments with hundreds of millions of dollars. Many companies hired chief diversity officers for the first time and, on the surface at least, made real investments in DEI talent.

That commitment did not survive contact with a changed political climate. As Fast Company has reported, companies collectively poured roughly $3.8 billion into the post-2020 race reckoning in its first year—then began divesting quietly, and later publicly, as the Trump administration set its sights on the DEI movement and the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action. The takeaway in plain words: the money moved faster going in than it did staying put.

How much of the retreat was structural?

More than executives admitted at the time. As Fast Company reported, many employers moved so hastily to publicly support DEI that they never built structural support for the initiatives or any real way to measure progress. When the climate shifted, deprioritizing was relatively easy. Many DEI leaders, meanwhile, burned out from constantly agitating for change against sustained resistance—a dynamic that produced what the publication called a mass exodus of tech's DEI leadership.

What can a new political moment actually reverse?

Less than the "Woke 3.0" discourse assumes. Trump's executive orders have slashed DEI programs across the federal government and eliminated affirmative action requirements for countless employers who are federal contractors. Since the start of his second term, he has taken steps to compromise the authority and independence of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the agency charged with enforcing anti-discrimination laws.

Under Chair Andrea Lucas, the EEOC has focused intensely on snuffing out DEI programs, targeting private-sector companies like Nike over their diversity efforts and pushing to scrap EEO-1 data collection—a requirement that has forced most employers to disclose workforce demographic data for six decades. None of this can be reversed overnight, or at all until the White House changes hands. Unwinding the damage could take years.

Do companies even want DEI back?

The evidence is thin. Diversity experts and advocates have previously told Fast Company that plenty of companies never stopped the work, even quietly—some renamed it, swapping "DEI" for terms like "belonging." But for others, this was likely never a priority to begin with. That distinction, between companies that rebranded and companies that stopped, is exactly what the election result does not clarify.

Is the AI boom a lifeline or another hurdle?

Probably the latter. With so many companies fixated on AI and its implications for their workforces, a broad, renewed corporate commitment to DEI is hard to imagine. The mechanics are already visible: when employers conduct layoffs, as many have, HR and DEI roles are often the first to go. For DEI practitioners who have fought to be taken seriously all along, the AI boom may simply be the next obstacle—not the next opening.

For all the online euphoria, the election shifted the political weather, not the corporate calculus; whether any "Woke 3.0" reaches the workplace will depend on budget lines and enforcement agencies, not hashtags.

— Olivia Hart