Goldman Sachs and Costco faced comparable political pressure in 2025. The outcomes were not comparable.
Goldman removed diversity considerations for board membership through a negotiated agreement with the National Legal and Policy Center, a right-wing anti-labor organization that has spent years building infrastructure to dismantle corporate equity commitments. The decision reflected coordinated external pressure, not independent business judgment. Costco’s board rejected right-wing shareholder demands that the company report the “risks” of its diversity policies. Shareholders backed Costco’s position with 98 percent of votes.
For Rashad Robinson, social justice leader and Founder and President of Rashad Robinson Advisors (RRA), the gap between those two outcomes is the operating premise of his current work. “Corporate behavior is not inevitable—it’s responsive,” Robinson wrote in his March 2026 newsletter. “And right now, it is responding to the wrong people.”
What the Data Shows
President Trump’s January 20, 2025 executive order eliminating federal diversity, equity, and inclusion programs set off a chain of institutional retreats. The consequences moved quickly across sectors.
Nearly 300,000 Black women exited the labor force in the first half of 2025. Black unemployment reached 8 percent, double the white rate of 3.9 percent. More than 69,000 federal positions were cut by mid-year, many tied to equity work or disproportionately held by Black women. Meta ended its DEI programs. Verizon eliminated all DEI-focused HR roles.
The numbers on corporate hiring tell a consistent story. Among companies that cut DEI initiatives, 57 percent reported hiring declines for historically excluded groups, including a 37 percent drop in hiring women of color and a 33 percent drop for men of color. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission dropped its use of disparate impact investigations, eliminating the legal mechanism most capable of identifying discrimination embedded in ostensibly neutral policies.
Robinson cites the Paycheck Protection Program as a precedent for understanding what absent guardrails produce. When COVID-19 relief moved through the banking system without equity requirements, banks directed money predominantly to white-owned businesses. “When there is nothing in place to ensure fairness, the default is discrimination,” he wrote in NewsOne. Removing DEI policy restores the conditions that produced those unequal outcomes in the first place.
Consumer Power as Accountability
The first tier of Robinson’s three-part framework targets the consumer relationship between corporations and communities. Consumer pressure, in his analysis, has to work in both directions.
The Feb. 28, 2025 Economic Blackout called on Americans to withhold spending from major retailers that had abandoned DEI commitments. The NAACP simultaneously released a Black Consumer Advisory, pointing to the community’s estimated $1.7 trillion in annual buying power as a direct accountability instrument. Costco, which held its commitments, drew consumers practicing a “buy-cott.” The 98 percent shareholder vote backing Costco’s board showed what organized support looks like when it’s present.
Rashad and his team have built campaigns around this logic for years, cultivating relationships with corporate leadership and making the cost of inaction more visible than the cost of holding. “Making change inside of big institutions is hard,” Robinson told Fast Company. The question is whether movements create conditions under which institutions have a financial reason to move.
Who Finances the Backlash
Robinson’s second pressure point targets the financial layer behind corporate behavior. He points to investor Bill Ackman as an example of how anti-DEI arguments accumulate elite credibility. After Harvard President Claudine Gay’s resignation, Ackman described DEI as “inherently racist and illegal.” The rhetoric entered boardroom conversations at major institutions shortly after.
“There is nothing neutral about financing a backlash,” Robinson wrote. Goldman’s agreement with the National Legal and Policy Center arose from coordinated right-wing pressure sustained over years. “Corporate behavior is not inevitable—it’s responsive,” Robinson wrote. “And right now, it is responding to the wrong people.” The same mechanism, he argues, can produce different results when organized support applies pressure from the other direction.
Local Organizing, Local Accountability
The third tier targets the point where accountability becomes concrete. Actors are named. Pressure cannot be routed to a distant institution for deflection.
ICE operations in January 2026 generated outrage that did not stay at the level of national appeals. Residents confronted local businesses and officials with specific demands. “When communities organize where they live, where they shop, and where they work, we can move faster and win more,” Robinson wrote. Local pressure, coordinated and amplified, generates the national signals that shift institutional behavior over time.
Beyond Rollback
Robinson draws a firm line between what happened in 2025 and what he expects in 2026. “Last year was the year of rollbacks,” he wrote. “This year is shaping up to be the year of advancing discrimination.”
Public statements from senior officials about “male standards” and appearance requirements, he argues, are groundwork for policies that actively target marginalized groups, wrapped in the language of governance. “If year one was about canceling programs and intimidating institutions, year two will be about making discrimination look normal and permanent.”
He recently hosted a Freedom Table conversation on NewsOne with NAACP Legal Defense Fund Director-Counsel Janai Nelson, author Michael Harriot, and Global Black Economic Forum CEO Alphonso David to examine how anti-DEI campaigns have moved across institutions and what organized resistance requires.
Through his advisory work at Rashad Robinson Advisors, Robinson works with foundations, nonprofits, and advocacy organizations on building the infrastructure to apply these pressure points systematically. “The attack on DEI is the front door to a much larger assault on the rights, protections, and opportunities that communities have fought for over generations,” he wrote. “The answer is not a single protest or a single election. What we are up against is not just a president or a party; it is a project.”
The Costco vote shows what organized resistance looks like when shareholders and consumers move together. Goldman’s capitulation shows what coordinated anti-equity pressure can accomplish when it operates unopposed.
Susane Privetterry is a tech author at mediatrailspot known for her insightful writing on AI, digital tools, and modern technology trends. She simplifies complex topics, making them accessible and engaging for readers of all levels.
