About This Case Study

In the summer of 2020, after the police killing of George Floyd and the protests that followed, a remarkable number of corporations issued public statements affirming that Black lives matter and pledging donations, diversity targets, and structural change. In the years since, many of the same companies have scaled back or quietly retired the diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments they announced — a retrenchment that accelerated across 2024–2026 amid legal and political pressure. This case study asks learners to place those two moments side by side. Rather than supplying the statements, it asks you to gather them: a 2020 racial-justice statement from a company of your choosing, and that same company's more recent DEI-related statements or actions from 2024–2026. The framing reading is a 2020 Harvard Business Review piece that named the gap this exercise examines.

The unit's tools turn the comparison into an analysis. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva's frames of color-blind racism — abstract liberalism, naturalization, cultural racism, and minimization — give learners a way to name how a statement can speak warmly about fairness and opportunity while avoiding any account of structural racism or any commitment that would cost the firm something. The "woke-washing" critique names the distance between a company's public alignment with racial justice and its unchanged practices in hiring, pay, suppliers, and governance. The analytical move is to read corporate language as data: to code what each statement says and, more importantly, what it omits, and then to ask what — if anything — changed materially between the two moments, and what the change reveals about how durable the 2020 commitments ever were.

Before You Begin

Have ready:

• Erin Dowell and Marlette Jackson, "'Woke-Washing' Your Company Won't Cut It", Harvard Business Review (2020) — the framing reading. (HBR meters its articles; if access is unreliable, work from the definition of woke-washing as the gap between public statement and internal practice.)
• A company of your choosing, and the means to find two things: its 2020 racial-justice statement, and its DEI-related statements or actions from 2024–2026. Company newsrooms, press releases, annual or "impact" reports, and contemporary news coverage are good starting points.
• A note-taking surface — paper, a document, or a shared doc if you are working in a group.

A note on currency and sources: the DEI landscape was shifting quickly through 2024–2026, and some companies have removed their 2020 statements from their own websites. When you find a statement, save a copy or a screenshot with its date and source, since it may not remain available. Treat undated or unattributable material with caution.

Before you read, write down, in a sentence or two each:

• When a company posts a statement supporting a social cause, what would convince you it was more than public relations?
• Can a statement that says all the right things still do the work of changing nothing? How would you tell?

The Exercise

Phase 1: Gather and Summarize (8–10 minutes)

Choose one company and locate the two artifacts: its 2020 racial-justice statement and its DEI-related statements or actions from 2024–2026. Read the framing piece on woke-washing to fix the central distinction in mind. Then, for each artifact, write a short, neutral summary — what the company said, when, and in what form — without yet judging it. If a company made no recent statement but quietly ended programs, note the action itself as your second artifact.

For groups: each member selects a different company and gathers its pair individually; do not compare yet.

Phase 2: Coding the Language (10–12 minutes)

Now read both artifacts closely, treating their wording as evidence. Work through:

1. The 2020 statement. Which of Bonilla-Silva's frames appear — abstract liberalism (the language of equal opportunity, fairness, individual merit), naturalization, cultural racism, or minimization? What concrete commitments, if any, are made? And what is omitted: is there any account of structural racism, or any pledge that would cost the company something measurable?
2. The 2024–2026 statement or action. If the company spoke, how does it justify scaling back — appeals to law, to "merit," to neutrality, to refocusing? Which frames appear now? If the company acted silently, what is accomplished by saying nothing at all?
3. The gap. Set rhetoric against substance. What, if anything, changed materially between the two moments — in hiring, pay, programs, leadership, suppliers — as opposed to in language? Where the record is unclear, note what you would need to know.

For groups: code individually, then reconvene and compare what each company's pair revealed.

Phase 3: Applying the Frame — Woke-Washing and Omission (8–10 minutes)

Bring the unit's concepts to bear on what you have coded. Ask:

• Was the 2020 statement woke-washing from the start — alignment without commitment — or a genuine commitment later abandoned? What in the language and the record helps you tell the difference?
• What does the omission do? When a statement praises fairness while leaving out any account of structural racism or any costly pledge, what work is that silence performing for the company?
• Where does the frame strain? Some companies did make durable changes; some recent rollbacks are responses to legal or regulatory pressure rather than free choices. Does a legally compelled retreat belong in the same analysis as a voluntary one, and how would you mark the difference?

For groups: spend the first half on the first two questions together; spend the second on where the frame strains, drawing on the range of companies the group examined.

Phase 4: Across Companies (optional, 5–7 minutes)

Widen the lens. Compare your company with another — ideally one from a different sector, or one that appears to have held to its commitments against one that reversed them. What patterns hold across cases, and what differences matter? Does the comparison support the woke-washing reading, or reveal companies for which it does not fit?

Closing Reflection

In two or three sentences, complete this thought:

Comparing one company's 2020 and 2024–2026 statements, what the language is doing is best described as __________. The "woke-washing" frame helps me see __________, but it strains where __________.

Write the most precise version you can; the value is in naming exactly what the words accomplish and exactly where the frame reaches its limit.

A Note on Modes

Solo mode. Work through the phases in order, keeping brief notes. The coded comparison from Phase 2 — what each statement says and omits, set against what changed materially — is the central artifact.

Group mode (3–6 people). Designate a timekeeper. Phase 1 works best with each member taking a different company; Phases 2 and 3 gain from comparing across the set, which makes patterns of language and retrenchment visible. If time is short, the closing reflection can be individual writing after the session.

After the Case Study

• For the framework, return to the unit's readings: Eduardo Bonilla-Silva on the frames of color-blind racism, and the Dowell and Jackson piece that named woke-washing.
• The 2020 wave of corporate racial-justice statements and the 2024–2026 retrenchment have been widely documented in business and news reporting; readers pursuing the topic can trace how the same companies described their commitments at each moment, and what independent accounts say actually changed.
• The pattern here — public alignment with a cause unaccompanied by material change — connects to the unit's larger argument that a racial order can be sustained by talk as readily as by silence: saying everything, while changing nothing.