I also wanted to study diversity and inclusion language — how often companies mention it, and what kind of signal it is: vague and aspirational, or naming specific goals for specific groups.
DEI language isn’t the same as policy; it’s a signal, not proof of good conditions for marginalized people. But as a job seeker, it’s the kind of signal that decides whether I apply. So I classified every careers-page chunk into a register — a type of DEI language — with the Claude API, hand-tuning the prompts. Early on it couldn’t tell “we want a diverse workforce” from “we serve a diverse customer base”; the difference matters, and the classifier counts only language about a company’s own workforce.
The chart stacks each company’s registers by year: inclusion language above the line, counter-programming below — apolitical / anti-DEI framing and the “civilizational mission” language best exemplified by Palantir’s many invocations of “the West.”
Hover any year for the actual language.
About “civilizational mission”
One counter-programming category needs its own explanation. The chart marks as civilizational mission the chunks where a careers page frames the employer’s identity around defending or ensuring the future of “the West.” In this corpus that is Palantir’s language, and only recently: “Palantirians deliver mission-critical outcomes for the West’s most important institutions” (2025); “We built Palantir to ensure the future of the West, not to tinker at the margins” (2026). The category requires the explicit invocation — generic defense-industry copy about deterrence, battlefields, or “the world’s most important institutions” does not count, even from the same company. The label is descriptive: it records that this vocabulary appeared on a hiring page, nothing more.
But the vocabulary itself is not neutral, and it would be evasive to present it as if it were. “Defending Western civilization” is a load-bearing phrase in contemporary far-right rhetoric: it is the frame the European Identitarian movement organizes around, the banner of its “Defend Europe” campaigns, and the phrase Rep. Steve King placed in a now-infamous series — “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” — that critics read as saying the quiet part into a bullhorn (the Washington Post’s analysis argued the “Western civilization” defense was itself the tell). Separately, scholars like Kwame Anthony Appiah have argued the concept is a modern political construction, built to draw a line around an “us” — which is precisely what makes it useful as an audience signal.
None of this makes every use of “the West” a dog whistle. Palantir’s CEO has published a bestselling book — The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West — arguing openly for this framing as national-security philosophy, and critics engage it on those terms. But a careers page is an audience-selection device, and the substitution the data shows is meaningful: where peer companies’ hiring pages said “everyone belongs here,” this one now says the future of the West is at stake. Whether a given reader hears earnest defense-tech branding or a civilizational dog-whistle — and those readings are not mutually exclusive — the chart’s claim stays narrow: this language appeared, on these pages, in these years, while the belonging-era vocabulary went away.
Standout language
The chunks that most clearly signal a stance on workplace inclusion, grouped by rhetorical move rather than by raw score.
Explicit inclusion
Named-group or bias-process commitments on careers pages (explicit_demographic / structural_process registers).
“We’re committed to increasing the number of managers from underrepresented communities, because differences in our backgrounds, our identities, and the way we think ultimately make our teams stronger and more innovative.”
Apple · 2023 · Representation in leadership matters.
“We’re focused on increasing our hiring of women and underrepresented communities in technology, tracking our success, and adjusting to ensure a diverse, representative workforce. We’ve achieved pay parity for the past several years and are committed to continuing this practice. But progress goes beyond pay parity. It includes an ongoing commitment to ensuring that we’re equitable in how we develop”
NVIDIA · 2025 · Our Commitment to Progress
“Building a diverse company through the recruitment and retention of women and underrepresented groups”
Salesforce · 2017 · Action on Equal Opportunity
“Third, we are taking a more systemic approach to improve outcomes in workforce representation, and to create an inclusive culture. Our company-wide strategy is anchored in further operationalizing four longstanding commitments: Drive fairness within Google’s processes, as well as in our distribution of resources and opportunity. Endeavor to attract, develop, progress, and retain more underrepresen”
Google · 2018 · 3. Overarching strategy
Belonging language
Worker-experience framing of inclusion — no named groups, no commitments (belonging_culture register).
“We’re continuing to create a culture of inclusion, increasing representation across teams, and holding ourselves accountable at every level. Because belonging takes all of us.”
Apple · 2023 · We belong. Together.
“Our commitment to equal opportunity means cultivating an environment where differences are embraced and building a culture that fosters a sense of belonging.”
Starbucks · 2023 · Inclusion & Diversity
“We believe in hiring the most talented team members and creating an environment where everyone belongs”
Snap · 2025 · Our commitment to belonging
“Be your authentic self. We're dedicated to creating a workplace where everyone belongs. Hear more from the people who work here.”
Meta · 2016 · Authentic Self
Apolitical workplace
Refusal of workplace activism unrelated to mission (mission_focus_apolitical stance) — Coinbase's memo, Basecamp's calm-company policy.
“Our mission is ambitious and important. We don’t engage in social or political activism that is unrelated to our mission while at work. We seek to make the workplace a refuge from division, so we can stay focused on making progress toward the mission. To attract top talent around the world and embrace decentralization, all full-time employees can work remote. Prefer an office? We also offer except”
Coinbase · 2025 · Welcome to Coinbase.
“Representation matters. Our members come from many different backgrounds and cultures, and they want to see a wide variety of stories and people on screen. This diversity is wonderful and it can create real tension since we all have such different views about what’s acceptable — and what’s harmful — on TV. While every show, film or game is different, we approach them with the same set of principle”
Netflix · 2026 · Artistic Expression
“Through the tools that we build, we want to push the world to create better products and services. We try to take a broad view of what our work adds up to and believe in taking seriously the full long-term consequences of what we create. We won’t just climb the profit gradient. While we’re opinionated in determining what to build, we strive for neutrality in deciding who gets access to the results”
Stripe · 2022 · The Stripe service
“Joining our team means working with the most driven crafters who pursue mastery. But growth isn’t just an opportunity, it’s an expectation. With resources to help you, you’ll be pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. Shopify is a platform company singularly focused on creating a world with more entrepreneurs, which we believe causes positive societal effects. While we respect everyone’s right ”
Shopify · 2024 · Constant learning, constant discomfort
Civilizational mission
Explicit West / Western-civilization framing as employer identity — counter-branding to DEI-era copy (civilizational_mission stance).
“We built Palantir to ensure the future of the West, not to tinker at the margins. On the factory floor. In the operating room. Across the battlefield. We build with consequence.”
Palantir · 2026
“We built Palantir to ensure the future of the West, not to tinker at the margins.”
Palantir · 2026
“Palantirians deliver mission-critical outcomes for the West's most important institutions.”
Palantir · 2025
How this was measured
Each careers-page chunk is embedded and classified into a DEI register by an LLM, with manually tuned prompts. The inclusion axis measures topic, not direction — anti-DEI copy (“a refuge from division”) scores high because it borrows belonging vocabulary — so the register classifier, not a single score, is what surfaces the flip. In the chart, a solid baseline tick marks a page that was archived but silent on DEI; a dashed tick marks a year with no archived page at all.
Two honest limits on the counter-programming bars. First, the classifier’s counter categories are calibrated on the known examples (Coinbase’s apolitical memo, Palantir’s civilizational framing), so a company expressing opposition in genuinely novel language could be missed — read the counter counts as a floor, not a census. Second, the “civilizational mission” category is, in this corpus, a single company’s rhetoric: every chunk in it is Palantir’s. It measures a deliberate repositioning of employer branding that displaced DEI-era language — a claim about rhetoric, not about any company’s internal employment practices. Companies mostly retreat from DEI language by deletion and replacement, not announcement, which is why the retreat shows up in this chart as shrinking bars and rising apolitical framing rather than explicit rollback statements.