The governing board appointed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis tasked with overseeing Walt Disney World and its affiliated properties announced plans on Tuesday to gut the district’s use of DEI programs.
“The so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives were advanced during the tenure of the previous board and they were illegal and simply unamerican,” Glenton Gilzean, director of the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, said in a statement. “Our district will no longer participate in any attempt to divide us by race or advance the notion that we are not created equal.”
For context, DEI — which stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion — is a divisive and poisonous ideology that dismisses merit to discriminate based on characteristics such as skin color and sexual preference. Individuals who qualify for a certain position due to their merits but don’t meet the discriminating entity’s goal of being more “diverse” are passed over in favor of those who meet the preferred identitarian standards.
In its Tuesday announcement, the oversight board further revealed an internal investigation into the policies of its predecessor — the Disney-appointed Reedy Creek Improvement District — found that the district “routinely awarded contracts based on racially and gender driven goals to businesses on the basis of their owners’ race and gender” and implemented quotas based on these factors “to ensure that contractors met a certain threshold of diversity.” The use of such policies and the district’s DEI committee will now be terminated, according to the board.
The ongoing dispute between
