We are entering a holiday season unlike any other. Across the United States of America, major corporations have quietly abandoned their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) commitments in 2025 — the very commitments they publicly embraced in 2020 when it was popular, profitable, and politically safe to do so.
Today, many of those same companies have walked away from DEI altogether, often without explanation, transparency, or accountability. They have retreated under political pressure, misinformation campaigns, and coordinated attacks designed to roll back decades of progress for marginalized communities.
So for Holiday 2025, we’re walking away from them.
The Gwinnett County Black Chamber of Commerce, Urban Mediamakers, and Black Gwinnett Magazine are joining organizations and community leaders across the country in a unified economic response:
NO DEI, NO BLACK DOLLARS — HOLIDAY 2025.
From Black Friday 2025 through New Year’s Day 2026, we are encouraging our members, partners, families, churches, nonprofits, and community organizations to intentionally redirect holiday spending away from corporations that have eliminated or weakened their DEI commitments.
This is not a symbolic gesture. This is economic self-respect.
Black consumers represent trillions of dollars in buying power nationally. Yet, time and time again, corporations have proven willing to benefit from Black dollars while disengaging from Black people, Black workers, and Black communities when it becomes inconvenient. DEI was never charity — it was a corrective strategy meant to address long-standing inequities in hiring, promotion, contracting, accessibility, and representation. Abandoning it sends a clear message about whose inclusion is optional.
Instead of rewarding corporate retreat, we are choosing to invest where our values are honored.
During this holiday season, we are uplifting and prioritizing:
- Black-owned businesses that circulate dollars back into our communities
- Local small businesses that employ our neighbors and reinvest locally
- Creators, artisans, chefs, designers, filmmakers, and service providers whose work reflects culture, innovation, and resilience
- Corporations that remain genuinely committed to transparent, measurable DEI practices, not performative statements
This movement is also about education and intention. We are urging consumers to ask questions:
Who benefits from my dollars?
Who is being hired, promoted, and protected?
Who shows up when equity is under attack?
Holiday spending is powerful. It is one of the few moments each year when collective consumer behavior can clearly influence corporate decision-making. Redirecting those dollars is a form of peaceful, strategic accountability — one that aligns our money with our morals.
Our closing message is simple and firm:
If a corporation does not see value in diversity, equity, and inclusion, then it should not expect loyalty from the very communities that made its success possible.
This holiday season, we choose intention over impulse.
We choose community over convenience.
We choose accountability over silence.
No DEI. No Black dollars.
