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I see that Facebook and Instagram and Lowe’s and McDonald’s as well as several other companies are curtailing diversity and equality in their hiring practices.

They suddenly don’t support it anymore, out of fear of retribution from the President. Out of fear that he will cause them to make a bit less than their customary $3 billion this year.

Doing what’s right no longer matters; money rules.

But not always.

In the early 1990s, I worked for a white guy in a small store in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn.

One summer’s night, a nearby real estate office was firebombed because they were showing properties to Black people. It was actually the second time in two months that it was set on fire.

Rather than mind his own business, my boss, took part in a solidarity march through the community, calling for equality and acceptance. He thought it was the right thing to do.

Know what he got on that march? He got pelted with eggs and profanity from angry white residents. His business decreased about 15%. Two employees quit.

He didn’t care.

When it came time to replace the two workers, my boss hired the first two qualified applicants to walk through the door. Hired one to do stock, the other to ring the register. Both Black.

Well, let me tell you: it really blew the roof off the joint. The other employees were angry; they would gossip amongst themselves until the boss walked by, which is when they would get eerily quiet. I saw them commiserating with customers, who actually stopped and stared at the new hires disapprovingly. They were shocked! Some stopped coming in.

He didn’t care.

We were together in aisle 5 one day, cleaning the sticky shampoo shelves, when I asked him why he didn’t seem to mind losing customers.

“They can’t make me be like they want me to be,” he said. “You have to do what’s right. Plus, they’ll probably be back. And if not, I don’t want them anyway. There are more important things than making money,” he said. “Like being able to sleep at night.”

Just then, we heard a woman in aisle 4 asking Steve (the fellow he hired to do stock) if we had a particular item. Steve replied no, but he would be happy to order it, and that it would arrive in the morning.

Just as the boss trained him.

Without a word in response – no thank you, not even an acknowledgment – we heard her footsteps fade as she walked back down the aisle, turn the corner, and walked up our aisle, until she was facing my boss.

She asked him the same question she had just asked Steve..

My boss looked at me, a gleam in his eyes, then at the customer.

“Follow me,” he said to her. “I’ll find out for you.”

He walked her back to the aisle she had just left, and approached Steve.

“Boss,” he said to Steve, “do we carry this item?”

I lost touch with my old boss years ago, but I am certain of two things: that he doesn’t have nearly as much money as he could have. And that he sleeps very well at night.