A couple of days after President Trump issued an order urging the non-public sector to finish “Unlawful D.E.I. Discrimination and Preferences,” the Rev. Al Sharpton led about 100 people right into a Costco in East Harlem for a so-called buy-cott. The thought was to buy and help the corporate for sustaining its variety, fairness and inclusion insurance policies amid strain from the brand new administration.

However the gesture by the civil rights activist didn’t win common acclaim on the political left. In interviews, self-identified socialists and different leftists frightened that Mr. Sharpton’s motion helped bolster the corporate at a second when it confronted strain from unionized employees, who had threatened to strike starting Feb. 1.

“Al Sharpton making Costco right into a titan of progress that wants mass help days earlier than a possible strike,” Bhaskar Sunkara, the president of the progressive journal The Nation, grumbled on the platform X.

The episode at Costco, which didn’t reply to a request for remark, illustrates an underappreciated stress on the left at a time when Mr. Trump has focused variety initiatives: Some on the left have expressed skepticism of such packages, portraying them as a diversion from attacking financial inequality — and even an impediment to doing so.

“I’m undoubtedly completely satisfied these items is buried for now,” Mr. Sunkara mentioned in an interview. “I hope it doesn’t come again.”

Company-backed initiatives selling variety can take numerous varieties. Starbucks, for example, pledges to “work exhausting to make sure our hiring practices are aggressive, truthful and inclusive” and says it’s “dedicated to persistently reaching one hundred pc gender and race pay fairness.” It additionally gives anti-bias coaching.

However socialists like Mr. Sunkara and others who share his critique say they like activism that focuses on class reasonably than racial or gender and sexual identification. They have an inclination to see labor unions and worker-led organizing as a simpler answer to inequality.

Although deeply suspicious of Mr. Trump, whom they see as attacking D.E.I. insurance policies for political achieve and as a pretext for slashing authorities, these leftists see the flip in opposition to D.E.I. packages as a chance to reorient Democrats in a path that can ship extra beneficial properties for employees and be extra palatable to a majority of voters.

Mr. Sharpton mentioned in a subsequent telephone interview that he favored constructing a coalition of civil rights teams and unions to combat inequality, and that he had scheduled his Costco motion far sufficient forward of the strike deadline that it wouldn’t intrude. He mentioned he would have suspended a second buy-cott had there been a strike involving Costco employees, who introduced a tentative deal to avert a piece stoppage on Feb. 1.

The controversy over variety initiatives even surfaced throughout the current race to guide the Democratic Celebration. At a candidate discussion board earlier than the get together chosen a brand new chairman final weekend, candidates were asked if they might decide to appointing extra transgender individuals to at-large Democratic Nationwide Committee seats, and to creating certain the holders of the seats have been ethnically numerous.

One of many candidates, Faiz Shakir, refused, saying he disagreed with constituting the committee primarily based on individuals’s identities.

In an interview, Mr. Shakir, a former supervisor of Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential marketing campaign, mentioned D.E.I. packages usually served to divide the working class and “soften the precise confrontation with company energy we’d like in society.” Office D.E.I. insurance policies primarily purchase off employees on a budget, he mentioned, including: “You get a penny on your efforts. Slightly trinket right here or there, that ought to mollify you.”

These on the left who’ve studied variety initiatives like antiracism and implicit-bias trainings level out that such packages may not work as marketed. A study of hundreds of employers over three many years means that the helpful results of such coaching are likely to fade inside days and that obligatory coaching may even improve racial resentments.

Whereas some on the left nonetheless help D.E.I., leftist critics argue that these packages are likely to advance the pursuits of corporations reasonably than employees. “D.E.I. is basically a device of administration,” mentioned Jennifer C. Pan, creator of “Promoting Social Justice: Why the Wealthy Love Antiracism,” a ebook to be launched in Might by the publishing home Verso, which characterizes itself as radical.

In her ebook, Ms. Pan cites examples of how employers and anti-union consultants deploy D.E.I. packages as a strategy to undermine union campaigns by defusing strain from employees.

Those that share her view usually cite evidence suggesting that unions are simpler than D.E.I. packages in closing wage gaps between workers of various genders and races by elevating wage flooring and bettering advantages like paid sick depart. In contrast to a labor contract, they word, D.E.I. objectives sometimes don’t impose a direct authorized obligation on corporations.

Different studies have discovered that union membership additionally reduces racial bias, maybe as a result of unions enlist employees of various races to work together to realize shared objectives.

“My perspective is that the one factor that truly enforces D.E.I. is a union contract,” mentioned Kevin Gallagher, a former employee at an Apple retail retailer in Towson, Md., who helped lead a profitable union marketing campaign there and now works as an organizer for the Worldwide Affiliation of Machinists.

Lindsay King, who labored on the identical retailer for nearly 15 years earlier than quitting final month, mentioned that whereas Apple’s variety and inclusion initiatives had some optimistic results — like making shops accessible to workers and clients with disabilities — the union had made extra concrete progress in its current contract negotiation.

Extra politically reasonable defenders of D.E.I. initiatives concede that the packages can fall in need of their said objectives, and say that is typically partly by design. Alvin B. Tillery Jr., co-founder and chief government of the 2040 Technique Group, which advises employers on variety packages, argued that insurance policies like eliminating college-degree necessities for sure jobs have been prone to be simpler in creating alternatives for Black and Latino employees than anti-bias coaching, however that they usually lie exterior the consolation zone of company executives.

“These items don’t occur as a result of they in all probability diminish the quantity of management that older white males have over the company house,” mentioned Mr. Tillery, who considers himself a progressive Democrat.

Nonetheless, he argued, much more modest packages can enhance variety and scale back prejudice — and normally the choice just isn’t that employees will demand and win extra sweeping enhancements to working situations, however that they may obtain no modifications in any respect.

“Most employees are fairly docile within the face of administration,” he mentioned. “Most individuals go away quietly, they don’t set up.”

And a few on the left, whereas skeptical that variety packages make workplaces extra truthful, and distrustful of the companies that begin them, nonetheless discover the concentrate on D.E.I. to be tactically helpful. When corporations that showcase D.E.I. insurance policies, like Starbucks and REI, resist workers’ makes an attempt to unionize, organizers can typically achieve leverage by accusing them of hypocrisy and tarnishing their progressive reputations.

“I don’t suppose corporations have been ever notably honest about this to start with,” mentioned Jaz Brisack, who helped begin the union organizing marketing campaign at Starbucks and now helps run a coaching program for organizers referred to as the Inside Organizer School.

“But when we’re going to have the ability to someway persuade them to do the precise factor, the most effective leverage now we have is buyer opinion.”

(Starbucks and REI have each denied accusations of illegally suppressing union organizing.)

Mx. Brisack, who makes use of gender-neutral pronouns, mentioned they frightened that the rollback of D.E.I. insurance policies might additionally make it simpler for corporations to retaliate in opposition to members of minority teams who converse up about mistreatment at work. “Even when it was hole, no less than corporations weren’t in a position to simply explicitly try this,” Mx. Brisack mentioned, alluding to retaliation.

Mr. Sunkara of The Nation acknowledged that retreating from D.E.I. packages might pose dangers and mentioned he believed that many company D.E.I. initiatives have been well-intentioned efforts by liberal human sources officers and managers “in search of the following civil rights frontier.”

However he mentioned the emphasis on variety was nonetheless dangerous as a result of it pushed employees to dwell on their variations and educated politicians to court docket racial and ethnic teams reasonably than interesting to pursuits that have been extra common.

“What comes subsequent is perhaps worse,” Mr. Sunkara mentioned. “However it has an opportunity to be higher.”