Mickey Mouse in Fantasia (1940), Walt Disney Productions

An alleged former Disney employee recently detailed he was laid off from the company because he was white and male.

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DANA WALDEN (CO-CHAIRMAN, DISNEY ENTERTAINMENT, THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY), ROBERT A. IGER (CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY), ALAN BERGMAN (CO-CHAIRMAN, DISNEY ENTERTAINMENT, THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY)

During an interview on Echo Base Network, the anonymous former Disney employee explained, “I’m walking into this exit interview thinking, ‘Oh, I’m probably going to get a director, maybe a VP, at the very least maybe a manager 3 of HR.’ And I walked in and there’s this kid there, 20-years-old, he was an intern three months before this. He just got hired. All he had for me was, ‘Oh, you need to sign here so you get your severance package.’ And I was like, ‘This is the exit interview?’ And he was like, ‘I guess it is.’ So I kind of raised a little bit of hell about that.”


He continued, “He left and came back and said, ‘Okay, ‘we’re going to make a phone call and you can speak to the VP or whatever.’ And I had her on the phone for about 10 minutes and we went over some of the stuff that I wrote down and then at the very end of the conversation she says to me, ‘Well, I want you to come away from this knowing that this has nothing to do with you personally, this has nothing to do with your job performance, obviously.’”

After briefly explaining a number of awards and gifts he had obtained while working at Disney, he asserted, “The message she told me was that you know you’re being let go because you’re white and you’re male.”

“I’m sitting in this cubicle by myself and I’m on this phone conference and that was the end of the conversation. I left, took my ID, turned it in, and that was my last day there,” he detailed.

LONDON, ENGLAND – APRIL 07: (L-R) Daisy Ridley, Kathleen Kennedy and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy attend the studio panel at Star Wars Celebration 2023 attends the studio panel at Star Wars Celebration 2023 in London at ExCel on April 07, 2023 in London, England. (Photo by Jeff Spicer/Jeff Spicer/Getty Images for Disney)

This alleged employee’s testimony comes in the wake of investigative journalist James O’Keefe recording Disney VP Michael Giordano stating the company discriminates in its hiring practices.

Giordano said, “Certainly, there have been times where, you know, there’s no way we’re hiring a white male for this. … There are times when it’s spoken, but…”

When asked how Disney would say it, Giordano said, “‘There’s no way we’re hiring a white male for this role.’ They’d say it like that. They’d be very careful how they’d message that to agents.”

In fact, Giordano shared that he’s unlikely to get promoted because he’s a white male, “Right now, I’m like a half step below being a department head. I have a team under me, but I don’t oversee a whole department. And I’d like to oversee a whole department. Whether that’s at Disney or having to leave for that, so….”

When asked if he thought he would have that opportunity at Disney, he responded, “I’m not sure to be honest with you. I think I’m sort of well prepared for it. I’m well positioned for it. But as far as Disney’s concerned I’m a white male and that’s not who they’re looking to promote at the moment.”

Disney-owned subsidiary ABC Entertainment Inclusion Standards

He went on to note how he believes that him being a white male has a lot to do with him not being promoted, “I’ve been up for jobs internally against people who have less experience than me. And, you know, I haven’t gotten them. … In one or two cases, you know, I was told explicitly that it did [have to do with being white and male]. Yeah.”

“I’ve been at the company for 11 years now so I have friends in HR and I have friends in those divisions,” he relayed. “And they’re like, ‘Look, nobody else is gonna tell you this, Mike. But they’re not considering any white males for this job. They’re just not. Like, that’s not who they want.”

He would reiterate this in another undercover operation, “There have been times where, you now, there’s no way we’re hiring a white male. … There are times when it’s spoken, but…”

When asked how Disney would say it, he answered, “There’s no way we’re hiring a white male for this role. They’d say it like that. They’d be very careful how they message that to agents.”

A screenshot from Disney’s Reimagine Tomorrow Website

Giordano also revealed that the company refused to hire an individual because he did not look black enough, “We had a situation where we wanted to hire somebody in the department a few years ago now, who was half black, but didn’t like appear half black. And there was a creative executive who was like, ‘We’re not, like, that’s not what’s wanted.’ They wanted somebody in meetings who would appear a certain way and he wasn’t gonna bring that to the meeting. This was on the corporate side.”

He also reiterated this in an another operation, “If you’re mixed, right? You don’t look black at all, which sometimes happens then they’re like, ‘Oh, I’m not so sure.’ But if you’re mixed and you can tell somebody’s part black, but they’re not like that black then okay [inaudible] yeah, it’s crazy.”

Bob Iger via New York Times Events YouTube

Another Disney executive Dave Makker, one of the company’s Director of Production Finance was also asked, “So you think [Disney] wouldn’t hire a C-Suite whose not white or Jewish?”

He responded, “In entertainment, no. There’s also a slight glass ceiling for that. I feel like there’s a glass ceiling. It’s not quite like in reach yet. You’re not going to get a CFO really non, I guess, for lack of a word a non-white, non-Jewish.”

On top of this, America First Legal filed an EEOC complaint and requested the commissioner charge The Walt Disney Company due to “illegal employment practices of The Walt Disney Company and its subsidiaries (‘Disney’) in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2.

The complaint specifically asserted, “Disney admits and affirms that it knowingly and intentionally uses race, color, sex, or national origin as motivating factors in its employment practices.”

The organization recently announced on X that they renewed their “request for a civil rights investigation into Disney from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission following new videos emerging about potential discrimination.”

 

What do you make of this alleged Disney employee’s testimony?