Williams-Sonoma sued over its racist DEI hiring policies
The racist hiring policies at Williams-Sonoma, beginning with
its board of directors and continuing all the way down
On September 3, 2024 the non-profit first amendment legal firm America First Legal (AFL) filed a complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against the Williams-Sonoma corporation for its extensive DEI racial hiring policies that specifically favor some skin colors over others.
Williams-Sonoma, a kitchenware and home furnishings retailer with brands including Pottery Barn, Pottery Barn Kids, Pottery Barn Teen, West Elm, Williams Sonoma Home, Rejuvenation, Mark and Graham, and GreenRow, proudly represents to the public and its shareholders and investors that race, sex, and national origin are motivating factors in its hiring, employment, and contracting practices.
As outlined in Williams-Sonoma’s 2024 Annual Report, their Equity Action Plan and Equity Action Committee led to “approximately 68.1% of our total workforce identified as female and approximately 41.1% identified as an ethnic minority group.” The company boasts higher management, comprising “56.6% of Vice Presidents and above identified as female.”
Williams-Sonoma’s Equity Action Committee also appears to reward executives for making race, color, sex, or national origin a motivating factor in hiring and other employee practices. The Equity Action Plan tracked and set goals for the diversity of the company, board members, and board nominees. It then designed the “Associate Equity Network Groups” that benefit some workers and disfavor others, specifically white, male, and religious Americans.
In other words, this company demands race and sex be considered as a qualification for a job, regardless of the person’s skills, experience, or talent, and it also demands that whites and men be put on the back of the bus, considered last in all hiring decisions, merely because they are either white or male.
As AFL’s letter [pdf] to the company’s board of directors notes bluntly:
Williams-Sonoma Inc. has affirmatively represented to its shareholders, investors, and the SEC that race, sex, and national origin are motivating factors in its employment and contracting practices. Management has, therefore, admitted to systemically violating federal civil rights laws.
AFL in this letter as well as its complaint to the EEOC [pdf] demands the company immediately cease these discriminatory and illegal DEI policies or face a lawsuit.
AFL, as well as many other non-profit legal firms, could file almost identical letters and complaints for almost every major American corporation, most of which brainlessly adopted extensive DEI programs after the death of George Floyd in 2020 and even now proudly continue these racist programs. In every case these policies discriminate against some people merely because they happen to have the wrong skin color or are the wrong sex. And in every single case these DEI programs violate of every civil rights law passed in the last half century, and in fact were blatently illegal and immoral from the start.
It is still the law, even if some corporate lawyers
are too incompetent to recognize it.
Only now are some companies awaking to this very plain fact, quickly eliminating their DEI programs. Last week I reported on some (Tractor Supply, John Deere, Harley-Davidson, Jack Daniels). Subsequently several more followed (Lowes and Ford).
Many other corporations — like Williams-Somona — continue to stand firm for DEI bigotry, and thus need to be boycotted as well as have lawsuits filed against them. I have also noted how these policies are likely impacting the proper maintenance of airplanes at United and American, as well as the construction of those planes (and spacecraft) at Boeing. And these companies are only a small sampling of the new wave of bigotry that took hold of corporate America in the past decade.
Every single one of these companies needs to get smacked, and smacked hard. AFL’s actions against Williams-Somona show us one way to do it.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in the past two weeks has the mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuses to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
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The racist hiring policies at Williams-Sonoma, beginning with
its board of directors and continuing all the way down
On September 3, 2024 the non-profit first amendment legal firm America First Legal (AFL) filed a complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against the Williams-Sonoma corporation for its extensive DEI racial hiring policies that specifically favor some skin colors over others.
Williams-Sonoma, a kitchenware and home furnishings retailer with brands including Pottery Barn, Pottery Barn Kids, Pottery Barn Teen, West Elm, Williams Sonoma Home, Rejuvenation, Mark and Graham, and GreenRow, proudly represents to the public and its shareholders and investors that race, sex, and national origin are motivating factors in its hiring, employment, and contracting practices.
As outlined in Williams-Sonoma’s 2024 Annual Report, their Equity Action Plan and Equity Action Committee led to “approximately 68.1% of our total workforce identified as female and approximately 41.1% identified as an ethnic minority group.” The company boasts higher management, comprising “56.6% of Vice Presidents and above identified as female.”
Williams-Sonoma’s Equity Action Committee also appears to reward executives for making race, color, sex, or national origin a motivating factor in hiring and other employee practices. The Equity Action Plan tracked and set goals for the diversity of the company, board members, and board nominees. It then designed the “Associate Equity Network Groups” that benefit some workers and disfavor others, specifically white, male, and religious Americans.
In other words, this company demands race and sex be considered as a qualification for a job, regardless of the person’s skills, experience, or talent, and it also demands that whites and men be put on the back of the bus, considered last in all hiring decisions, merely because they are either white or male.
As AFL’s letter [pdf] to the company’s board of directors notes bluntly:
Williams-Sonoma Inc. has affirmatively represented to its shareholders, investors, and the SEC that race, sex, and national origin are motivating factors in its employment and contracting practices. Management has, therefore, admitted to systemically violating federal civil rights laws.
AFL in this letter as well as its complaint to the EEOC [pdf] demands the company immediately cease these discriminatory and illegal DEI policies or face a lawsuit.
AFL, as well as many other non-profit legal firms, could file almost identical letters and complaints for almost every major American corporation, most of which brainlessly adopted extensive DEI programs after the death of George Floyd in 2020 and even now proudly continue these racist programs. In every case these policies discriminate against some people merely because they happen to have the wrong skin color or are the wrong sex. And in every single case these DEI programs violate of every civil rights law passed in the last half century, and in fact were blatently illegal and immoral from the start.
It is still the law, even if some corporate lawyers
are too incompetent to recognize it.
Only now are some companies awaking to this very plain fact, quickly eliminating their DEI programs. Last week I reported on some (Tractor Supply, John Deere, Harley-Davidson, Jack Daniels). Subsequently several more followed (Lowes and Ford).
Many other corporations — like Williams-Somona — continue to stand firm for DEI bigotry, and thus need to be boycotted as well as have lawsuits filed against them. I have also noted how these policies are likely impacting the proper maintenance of airplanes at United and American, as well as the construction of those planes (and spacecraft) at Boeing. And these companies are only a small sampling of the new wave of bigotry that took hold of corporate America in the past decade.
Every single one of these companies needs to get smacked, and smacked hard. AFL’s actions against Williams-Somona show us one way to do it.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in the past two weeks has the mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuses to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
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THANKS, JOE, KAMMY AND DEMOCRATS
“At least our little girl was not gang raped! Or worse, gang raped and murdered! You know in today’s America it is the little things that make it all worthwhile. Be compliant and do what must be done in order to “Bring Change” to the collective. ”
https://www.sigma3ioc.com/post/thanks-joe-kammy-and-democrats
More, Please!!
Any company following such DEI policies should be sued, for discriminating on the basis of race/color/gender/religion/national origin/etc AND, if they are publicly held, for following hiring practices that have the potential to exclude the MOST QUALIFIED candidates in favor of lesser-qualified candidates and therefore negatively impacting workforce performance.
What a waste, any company can hire who they want, got a problem with that then don’t go there.
“any company can hire who they want, got a problem with that then don’t go there.”
a baker can bake any cake he wants in Colorado, got a problem with that then don’t go there.