February 23, 2025
In an internal memo, Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser indicated the bank would rename its DEI team and make other changes due to Trump’s anti-DEI policies.
On Feb. 20, Citigroup walked back some of the diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments made in 2020. Citigroup was one of several United States businesses and banks that attempted to grapple with the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor by adopting diversity, equity, and inclusion goals, but the political climate no longer supports those initiatives.
According to Business Insider, in an internal memo to staff members, Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser indicated that the bank would rename its diversity, equity, and inclusion team and make several other changes in light of the Trump administration’s growing hostility toward DEI.
Per Fraser’s memo, the “diversity, equity, and inclusion and talent management” team will now be referred to as “talent management and engagement. ” The memo also notes that the bank will axe “aspirational representation goals except as required by local law” and will no longer require job candidates or panels of interviewers to be diverse.
By contrast, in September 2020, the bank announced its Action for Racial Equity, which contained specific pledges to increase support for Black Americans and other communities of color, including a pledge to “Advance anti-racist practices in its company and the financial services industry.”
When its three-year action plan was unveiled, Fraser said in a press release, “We are meeting the challenge of helping close the racial wealth gap with urgency. In just one year since launching Action for Racial Equity, we have already invested $1 billion into initiatives expanding economic opportunity for communities of color. There is still more work to be done to advance anti-racist practices both within our firm and across the industry, and we look forward to continuing to evolve our approach to driving diversity, equity and inclusion for our colleagues, clients and communities.”
According to Forbes, Citigroup joins Pepsi, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Coca-Cola, Goldman Sachs, Disney, Deloitte, PBS, Google, Intel, PayPal, Chipotle, Comcast, General Motors, Amazon, Amtrak, The Smithsonian Institution, Target, Meta, and McDonald’s among other companies and government contracted entities to either walk back aspects of or end their prior commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion due to pressure from the Trump administration, many of whom committed multibillion-dollar pledges to assist in fostering diversity.
According to Simon Blanchette, a lecturer at McGill University in Canada and an expert in organizational theory, the corporate whiplash on DEI, while inspired by the Trump administration’s clear animus regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion, is also an example of what Blanchette called “diversitywashing” in an op-ed for The Conversation.
He argued that this occurs when companies like Citigroup and others declare support for social causes but retreat under public or political pressure.
Blanchette writes, “When corporations roll back these initiatives in response to political pressures, it signals to the world their commitment to EDI was merely a strategic move to improve their brand image during a period when social justice was a trending topic.”
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