Creatives weigh in on Disney's DEI cancellation

Last week, Disney became one of the big entertainment brands to apparently bow down to Donald Trump's order to cancel diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. It's replacing its Diversity & Inclusion performance ratings with a new Talent Strategy category and it's cancelling its Reimagine Tomorrow initiative, which was designed to promote underrepresented voices.

Ultimately, Disney may not have had much of a choice unless it was prepared for a legal battle. Companies in all sectors are rushing to work out how to comply with Trump's executive order. But will it impact Disney's output? We asked readers for their thoughts on the decision, and you didn't hold back. Here are some of your comments.

Many of the responses that we received in the comments here on the site, on social media or by email, expressed disappointment. "It’s incredible to witness how spineless so many of the US corporations are. Now it would be just the best time to double down on it," one person wrote on Facebook. "To obey Trump and Musk in such ways is to commit self-sabotage. Disney's leaders know better than this, or at least ought to," someone wrote in the comments on this site.

Other people pointed out that DEI initiatives are related to workforce policies, not to the characters in movies or shows. Disney doesn't need to have a DEI policy to write and depict minority characters on screen, some argued. Nor does rewording its DEI policies mean that it will no longer be able to hire creatives from minority backgrounds.

"They aren't getting rid of their DEI policies, they're reorganizing their creative writing teams and renaming them (and their content warnings) to work around the expectation of laxing those initiatives," one person wrote on Facebook.

While it would appear much of Disney's reaction to cancelling and reworking its DEI policies on paper may not affect content, the fear is without a committed push to promote new voices, unheard stories and design characters from minority backgrounds with care, there's little impetus on Disney.

Others questioned how much progress Disney has really made on representations of diversity. "Disney hasn’t been shy about doing the bare minimum for the last couple decades," one person wrote. "It’s only been recently they pushed diversity or any kind of representations of characters of color of their respective countries yet I feel that they do less then most would expect from the world's leading entertainment animation studio."

But another change that Disney has made is the decision to scale back the content advisory warnings it had begun using to flag up negative depictions of minorities in some older films. These will now appear in sleeve notes rather than on screen. Some readers were concerned that this could allow casual racism to slip by unchecked.

Siham Zerkak, senior account director at JVM London, told us by email that he was never a big Disney fan, partly because of the lack of representation and the misrepresentation of minorities in the studio's movies. He notes that while we've had Coco, Encanto, Moana and a Black Ariel, Disney still "massively lacks Muslim representation that's not filled with stereotypes", citing Aladdin as one movie with problematic racial stigmas.

"This misrepresentation of the Middle East and Arabs is not only simplistic, it's also dangerous," Siham says. "Kids are the future of this world, and ensuring that we fill their worlds with true representation of all the communities that make part of our society is of huge importance so they can be aware and learn to embrace different cultures. And this can only be done if we tell authentic stories on screen and behind the screen that truly represent the diverse world we live in."

Disney employees themselves appear to be unhappy about what's being seen as a submission to Trump's policies. The Deadline cited one unnamed insider as saying: "What’s next? Where do we go from here? What do we stand for now, keeping MAGA happy? “This is not what I expected from Bob — I thought he had our back.”

If you have an opinion to add to the discussion, let us know below. You might also want to check out the Disney principles of animation and the controversial theory about why Mickey Mouse wears white gloves.