CEOs, Woke or Not, Must Deal With Politics
A woman walks past a Nike store in Beijing, March 27.
Photo:
roman pilipey/Shutterstock
Your editorial “The Price of Woke Corporate Politics” (May 20) criticizes as “left leaning” the politically independent business community’s call to end the 47-state partisan efforts at voter suppression and endless recounts which continue six months after the elections. Plus three great enterprises were wrongly vilified. You state “CEOs get paid to lead and protect their brands, not to be led by people who think business should embrace their politics. The woke business trend isn’t healthy for the free-market cause.”
CEOs must, in fact, navigate political winds as part of the strategic context of business in their day jobs. The integrity of the political ground rules of a free society are critical to the free-enterprise system’s functioning. One-time Trump supporter
Steve Schwarzman
has long advised: “We believe in investing where there is the rule of law and not the law of rulers.” Former Trump supporter
Nelson Peltz
confessed on Jan. 7, “I voted for him this past election in November. Today, I’m sorry I did that.” Major Trump supporter and Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone said the denial of President Biden’s win was “a disgrace” and encouraged people to rally around Mr. Biden as president, saying the tantrums of a loser were “not what I signed up for.” Yet Daniel Henninger’s “When CEOs Zoom for Democrats” (Wonder Land, April 15) mocked a forum of 90 major CEOs I led to discuss patriotic efforts at restoring social harmony—derisively calling them “CEO Zoomers.” Few of us were Davos attendees—unlike President Trump. Most were independent or Republican. Would anyone label Journal co-owner James Murdoch, a Zoom forum participant, a “woke CEO?”
Prof. Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld
Yale School of Management
New Haven, Conn.
I am a political exile from communist Cuba, and reading your editorial gave some measure of schadenfreude. A few years ago many of these companies weren’t so “woke” when doing business with the white, male, military dictatorship in Cuba. They completely ignored the dictatorship’s then two-currency system (recently ended) established to drive crucial foreign investment in the military’s tourist apparatus, while maintaining poverty among ordinary Cubans, who are mostly black or brown.
It is no secret the Cuban military favors white, “presentable” Cubans for plum tourism jobs, which gave them access to tourists and tips in the valuable convertible currency. Search “Cuba racism tourism.” Black Cubans are relegated to janitorial and other menial jobs that pay in the worthless currency, with no access to tourists.
While Cubans have been denied basic human, civil, property and voting rights for more than 60 years, not even this blatant racial and economic apartheid could temper the greed of Delta, American Airlines and cruise lines such as Carnival. They should wake up to the fact that such exploitation is why some people distrust capitalism and often hate Americans.
Javier Garcia-Bengochea
Jacksonville, Fla.
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