When Bank of America quietly stripped the word "diversity" out of its early-2025 annual report, conservative America cheered. Wall Street's loudest DEI evangelist had blinked. But before you rush back to that checking account, look at the scoreboard: Bank of America still earns a 75 out of 100 on the BWF Woke Scale — "extremely woke." The language changed. The machine underneath it didn't.
Bank of America's Woke Score: 75/100
Seventy-five is not a rounding error. It plants the Charlotte-based giant firmly in the "extremely woke" tier alongside the household names conservatives have been boycotting for years. The reason is simple: BuyWokeFree doesn't score press releases — it scores infrastructure. Money committed, programs embedded, sponsorships flown, political checks cashed. On every one of those measures, Bank of America built one of the deepest woke operations in American finance, and a softened caption in an SEC filing doesn't unbuild it.
What Bank of America Actually Changed in 2025
The rollback was real — but narrow. As reported by Fortune and Bloomberg in February 2025, Bank of America dropped its "aspirational" workforce diversity goals and cut references to "diversity" in its annual report down to zero, from roughly a dozen the year before. It rebranded its "Diversity and Inclusion" section as "Talent, Inclusion and Opportunity" and eased requirements that hiring managers interview diverse candidate slates. CEO Brian Moynihan's own framing gave the game away: the bank, he indicated, still "has diversity and inclusion" — it just stopped putting it in writing. That's not a retreat. That's a paint job.
Why the Score Is Still 75: The Six-Criteria Breakdown
BWF grades every brand across six research-based dimensions. Here's where Bank of America still lights up on five of the six — rebrand and all:
- ESG: The bank still publishes annual Sustainability Reports under its "Responsible Growth" framework. The ESG apparatus is fully intact.
- DEI spending: Bank of America committed a staggering $1.25 billion to "advance racial equality and economic opportunity." Renaming a report section doesn't claw that money back.
- Pride: It still runs Pride Month campaigns and maintains LGBTQ+ employee programs. The rainbow marketing survived the purge.
- HRC Corporate Equality Index: The bank still participates in the Human Rights Campaign's CEI — it simply never earned the perfect 100, which is the main reason it lands at 75 instead of higher.
- Political giving: Its corporate PAC funneled roughly $490,000 to federal candidates in the 2023–2024 cycle.
- CEO activism: Moynihan personally chairs the company's Global Diversity & Inclusion Council and co-chairs the globalist Council for Inclusive Capitalism.
Five of six criteria still lit. The only box BofA gave ground on — the HRC's perfect score — is the one it never fully checked to begin with.
The Debanking Question Conservatives Actually Care About
For many on the right, the woke score only tells half the story. Bank of America has faced repeated allegations that it closed or froze the accounts of religious and conservative-aligned customers — claims the bank denies, insisting it never makes account decisions based on political or religious views. In 2023, a coalition of state attorneys general and financial officers publicly pressed the bank over what they characterized as politicized "debanking." BWF's six criteria don't score those disputes directly, but they explain the posture behind them: an institution this deeply wired into ESG and DEI frameworks is exactly the kind of gatekeeper conservatives worry about standing between them and their own money.
Rollback or Rebrand? Compare the Real Thing
To see how hollow the move was, set it next to a company that actually rolled back. Harley-Davidson scores a mildly woke 10/100 — because it didn't just rename a section. It dissolved its DEI function, exited the HRC Corporate Equality Index entirely, and scrapped its diversity spending targets. That is a 65-point gap between a genuine reversal and a wordsmithing exercise. When the billion-dollar commitments, the Pride campaigns, and the CEO council seats all stay exactly where they were, deleting a few nouns from a filing isn't a rollback — it's rollback theater. And it is showing up across the sector, as roughly one in five companies rebrand DEI under political pressure while leaving the underlying programs quietly running.
The Woke-Free Banking Alternatives
You don't have to bank with a 75. If the goal is to keep your deposits out of the DEI-industrial complex, BWF scores genuinely woke-free options in the non-woke banking and financial services categories. Two standouts: Old Glory Bank, a nationally available, explicitly patriotic bank that scores a 1/100, and America's Christian Credit Union, a faith-based, member-owned cooperative at 3/100 that pours deposits back into churches and ministries. For the full rundown, see our guide to the last woke-free bank in America.
The Bottom Line
Bank of America's 2025 "rollback" is a case study in why a headline is not a scorecard. The bank read the political room, changed the labels, and kept the billion-dollar commitments, the Pride campaigns, the HRC membership, and the CEO council seats right where they were. Until those come off the books — not just out of the annual report — Bank of America stays exactly where BWF has it: 75/100, extremely woke. If that is not where you want your money, the alternatives are one switch away.