Black Hat Turning Gray for Walmart (OPINION)

For years, Walmart’s been the villain. Low wages. Filthy stores. Cheap plastic wares sold throughout flyover country. Walmart destroyed Main Street America, empowered communist China, and along the way, gutted the homegrown middle class. And on and on.

Indeed, for the legions who love nothing more than to hate Walmart, the retailer will always wear the black hat.

But this year, Walmart has done a few substantive things to change its image, starting with its support of marriage equality. But it certainly didn’t end there.

The retailer stopped selling merchandise depicting the Confederate flag shortly after the June 17 church massacre in Charleston, South Carolina. And more recently, Walmart stopped selling the AR-15 semiautomatic assault rifle, used in mass shootings in Newtown, Conn., and in Aurora, Colo.

Add to that pay raises, a big push into e-commerce and recognition in Fortune magazine for its ongoing campaign to use renewable energy, and Walmart finds itself on a sustained run of positive public relations.

Contrast that with what happened to Subway spokesman Jared Fogle, The New York Times exposé on the dehumanizing work culture at Amazon.com, the FIFA soccer scandal, and the surprising fact that, at least by market value, Walmart — at least for now — is no longer the largest retailer in the world.

Walmart is too big and too powerful to ever be considered the “good guy.” People root for David, not Goliath. And taking a stroll through the aisles of its store on Pleasant Avenue in Springdale — and guessing that it’s probably similar to supercenters across the United States — it’s obvious Walmart needs to hire a few more janitors.

Even with Walmart’s chronic problems, this can be said with certainty — the black hat still fits, but it’s definitely a few shades lighter than it used to be.