Signs that wokeness has crested and is receding are everywhere, but patriots must not get complacent. If the left regains power next month and/or in 2028, it will soon enough be 2017 all over again, with restrictions on speech and the enforcement of the leftist agenda upon all of us, whether we want it or not. Still, it is satisfying these days to see how corporations that embraced wokeness wholeheartedly and became its foremost exponents are suffering for having done so.
The athletic footwear and apparel giant Nike is feeling the pinch. With its stock nose-diving to a twelve-year low, Nike’s president and CEO, Elliott Hill, wrote a memo to Nike employees last Thursday that reads like a confession that going woke has not proven to be a good move.
Things have gotten so bad at Nike that Hill, who became Nike’s top dog in October 2024, informed jittery employees that some of them were going to get the axe: “As we change how and where we work, Nike will require fewer roles over time. These decisions are about redirecting investment toward the areas most critical to winning: product innovation, brand storytelling, consumer connection, sport and growth.”
Where has investment been, if it hasn’t been on improving the product, advertising it well, and being attentive to customer preferences? Hill gave a hint of the answer when he said: “Over the past year, we've put sport at the center of everything we do. We're seeing encouraging signs of progress, but we have more work to do to win over the long term. We must get closer to athletes and consumers, make decisions faster, and focus our investments on the areas that create the most value.”
Over the past year, an athletic shoe and clothing company has put sport at the center of everything it does? What was at the center of everything it did before that? OutKick has the answer to that: “Nike chose politics over its core identity, and it's desperately trying to course correct.”
The politics it chose, of course, was far, far left: “In 2019, it tapped Colin Kaepernick as the face of its 30th anniversary ‘Just Do It’ campaign. In the wake of George Floyd's death in 2020, it ran its ‘For Once, Don't Do it’ ad, which included lines like ‘don't pretend there's not a problem in America,’ and ‘Don't turn your back on racism.’” Yes, racism is bad, but the vast majority of the American people are not racist, and don’t want to be beaten over the head with moralizing and hectoring messages when they’re just trying to buy some shoes.
And Nike sunk even lower: “In 2023, it partnered with female-identifying male Dylan Mulvaney to promote women's leggings and sports bras — seemingly unfazed by the backlash Mulvaney's partnership with Bud Light sparked. There was also the ‘Equality’ commercial in 2017 that featured phrases such as ‘the ball should bounce the same for everyone.’" Except, apparently, female athletes who train for years only to have a mediocre male pretending to be a woman beat them. Sometimes, depending on the sport, that beating has been literal.
Nike’s fit of wokeness has coincided with its decline: its stock has fallen 81% since 2021, and the woke decisions continued: “One of its more glaring gaffes within the past couple years is the delay of Caitlin Clark's signature sneaker. As sports writers such as Ethan Strauss and Dan Wetzel have pointed out, Nike didn't drop Clark's shoe until June of this year. Strauss wrote earlier that the company felt like it had to debut A'ja Wilson's sneaker before Clark's despite Wilson ranking fifth in WNBA jersey sales and Clark ranking first.”
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This may actually have been a sports-focused decision, for “although A'ja is almost certainly the best player in the WNBA, nothing moves women's basketball fans (or hoop fans in general?) like anything associated with Caitlin.” However, OutKick notes correctly that “it did reek of identity politics, which has a way of becoming expensive when a company loses sight of what its customers actually want. Nike seems to have realized this, but it took it being knocked out of the S&P 100 for the brass to actually do something about it.”
Whether Hill will actually follow through on his words with genuine deeds to change course remains to be seen. It may be that the woke forces to whom he has been listening will insist that Nike stay the course. In that case, patriots will continue to find good shoes elsewhere.
