Chick-fil-A was actually Conservative fast food. The boss liked to rail against gay marriage, the company emphasized its own Christian roots and donated to groups that stood up against the rights of homosexuals and trans people. And the corporate color was such a fitting one Make America GreatRed.
But then this happened: A far-right political activist found out that Chick-fil-A had dared to hire a department head for diversity, equality and inclusion. Such managers now exist in almost all major corporations, much to the chagrin of the right-wing in the USA. The diversity managers should, for example, work to ensure that non-white people are not disadvantaged in the application process and that women and men are paid equally, at least that is the idea of the companies. However, the right-wing assume that they will ensure that white men no longer get any opportunities and that all top jobs will be filled with black women or people who wear nail polish and who cannot identify themselves with any of the allegedly only two existing genders.
“Woke” is the Conservatives’ favorite hate word
Diversity and inclusion have become buzzwords, much like Conservatives’ favorite hate word: woke. It stands for facing discrimination with open eyes, i.e. awake. If but conservatives something than woke designate, this resembles a call for a boycott. Against Chick-fil-A, specialist in chicken sandwiches, there is now also weekness– Accusations from the right and a direct call for a boycott – with more than 50,000 approvals on Twitter. Conservative politicians like Ron DeSantis are fueling the mood.
Other brands have also been hit hard by right-wing anger, most notably Bud Light. Sales of the beer belonging to the Anheuser-Busch InBev brewery group have collapsed by 25 percent and the share price has plummeted. Reason for this: Bud Light had started an advertising cooperation with the trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney, about which the right-wingers got so excited that they called for a boycott. Bud Light used to be the beer of the masses, especially the masses to the right of the political center. And the Target retail chain lost around $12 billion in value on the stock exchange because of allegedly violent protests against the new woke Children’s clothing collection, including T-shirts with the imprint “Trans People will always exist”. Marketers analyze that conservatives are particularly outraged when companies they saw as their own suddenly turn out to be not-so-right after all.
Businesses can hardly get it right in the US today. If they stand up for civil rights, the right-wingers will be outraged. If they present themselves as value-conservative, they lose the left-liberal buyers. At Chick-fil-A, it’s mostly the other side that criticizes the company, particularly LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual) rights groups. And then there’s the large demographic that doesn’t care much about diversity management but enjoys eating chicken burgers. A slim majority of Twitter users rejected the call for a boycott of Chick-fil-A.