I have observed over the past few months a rise in opposition to equality, diversity, and inclusion efforts across the private and public sectors. It is unsurprising that much of the rhetoric has been championed by far-right individuals and proponents of white nationalism. The more recent spate of attacks on DEI that have been promulgated by X owner Elon Musk and his site’s top influencers are an attack against what makes America great: our pursuit for equality and justice for all.
I will seek to expand on why the DEI critics are wrong and why those who support sustainable, equitable, inclusive, and authentically future-ready organizations need to stop the right-wing attacks in their tracks.
Many of the critics are unaware of DEI and the actual impact it has — with some individuals online assuming that DEI work begins and ends at applicants’ recruitment journeys. That couldn’t be further from the truth. DEI initiatives are ongoing and collaborative organizational efforts that support important ethical, moral, and social acts in a society that takes pride in justice and fairness. At the heart of DEI is the notion of belonging and working to undo centuries-old norms and rules that intentionally and unintentionally excluded underrepresented groups -– namely those who weren’t cisgender white men – from being active members of society.
Banking and finance institutions continue to discriminate against ethnic minorities in the United States. In 2023, Black families filed a suit against Navy Federal Bank, alleging that the bank racially discriminates against Black bankers. Opponents of DEI efforts have sued to block government-funded and privately-funded organizations from supporting new and rising small minority-owned and women businesses, claiming that those funding practices are discriminatory. Hello Alice, a private organization that supports over 1.4 million small and minority-owned American businesses was sued by America First Legal, citing the experience of a man who claimed he was the recipient of ‘reverse discrimination’ because he’s white.
Hello Alice and similar organizations — both public and private — exist to undo the work of a system that stifled the opportunities of minority businesses. They seek to make space for those organizations and help them thrive despite centuries of systemic and institutionalized oppression that intentionally inhibited their success. Through their work, they help to level a playing field that was originally designed with their exclusion in mind.
African American businesses have historically been excluded from broader society by legal efforts initiated by white Americans. Less than sixty years ago, Congress de-enforced Jim Crow laws that imposed segregation in American society. African Americans had limited access to white-owned shops and businesses, African American homes and neighborhoods were often more isolated and located further away from city shopping metros and public courts, and Black-owned businesses were subject to racist abuse. In the 1920s, the thriving Black Wall Street was burned down amid white riots. This followed a dark period in which African Americans’ resistance to racism and prejudice resulted in violence and white nationalist attacks. This period saw the mobilization and continued weaponization of the government against African Americans, setting back the progress of African Americans at a critical point in our country’s history. African American families lost their homes that they bought and paid for. It instilled fear – and anger – and there was no recourse.
As much as many might like to suggest, the ‘Red Summer’ wasn’t so long ago that its impacts wouldn’t be felt today. My parents and grandparents lived through Jim Crow era laws. It wasn’t as long ago as some people would like to think. Despite American chattel slavery having met its fate long beforehand, Jim Crow laws reminded African Americans that the society they lived in saw them as less than and undeserving of equal treatment, and in some instances, life.. Segregated schools, churches, access to public services, and homes were intentional. These physical acts most certainly had severe mental and emotional impacts on the people that they targeted.
Imagine being an African American child in the 1960s and being told that you cannot drink from a ‘white’ water fountain for no other reason than the fact that your skin color is different. Imagine being told that you cannot go to the biggest college in your state because you are Black. Imagine hearing those stories of your grandparents or great-grandparents who were not allowed to vote or faced racial discrimination at the polling place, something you too might experience. Imagine your grandparents and parents being unable to scrape up the money to send you to school because they had limited or no access to banks and earned significantly less than their white counterparts. Imagine being that African American child sat on a school bus that is flipped over by white American parents who are so angry about school integration that they are happy to see you injured or killed.
Even those African Americans who risked their lives for our country were subjected to institutionalized abuse. Scholars have uncovered archives from as late as the Second World War in which the US Department of Defense warned Allied Forces of their own African American service personnel across Europe, suggesting that African American troops posed a threat to Europeans’ safety. African American commissioned officers were subjected to abuse by their white inferiors. The units that were majority African American were considered potential security threats to the country they served. Today, while African Americans are overrepresented in military service, disparities remain in the diversity of leadership across the services.
Many people would like to say that slavery, legal discrimination, and segregation were ‘long ago’ but the unfortunate reality, is that it wasn’t. These intentional acts of discrimination and prejudice whereby the system – government, private institutions, and media were weaponized against people of color – excluded ethnic minorities were very real. Some of these trends persist today. And, unlike the direct benefit that reparations would provide, DEI initiatives positively impact everyone: well-strategized and well-executed DEI efforts ensure that as many people as possible have a fair shot an hearing about job opportunities and receive fair consideration for interviews, they ensure that candidates aren’t demanded information about non-relevant information such as their marital status and whether or not they have childcare responsibilities; they ensure that individuals with disabilities aren’t deterred from actively participating in the labor market; they enshrine ongoing and collaborative training to ensure that religious, ethnic, sex- and gender-minorities help shape how their organizations talk about them and include them in internal and external processes; and, DEI monitoring ensures that organizations are thoughtful and mindful of biases that may shift or develop overtime, and identify ways those understandings might be remedied. DEI is itself a compromise to create high-functioning and high-impact organizations that lead with empathy while fulfilling its business or organizational objective.
At recruitment, organizations might consider a host of options to support socially diverse institutions. This means organizations send job applications to groups beyond their personal networks; they conduct extensive outreach to community groups, alumni networks, career counselors, accessible networks, community development leads, and young professional networks to ensure as wide a net as possible. In the past, job opportunities were advertised to a limited audience: the networks of those who made hiring decisions and in close proximity to hiring decisions and power-making inside organizations. This meant that people who were traditionally underrepresented and excluded were already at a disadvantage.
During the interview process, organizations may restrict panels to a limited set of questions and may anonymize or remove any data about applicants’ education, address, prior employment, age, marital status, and disabilities. In the past, questions like, ‘Where do you live?’ or ‘What college did you attend?’ have been found to reveal information like socioeconomic status and can be used to reveal demographic information such as (presumed) race or family life – offering room for intentional or unintentional bias ahead of an interview. Questions related to marital status, disabilities, or age hold little merit concerning an applicant’s ability to perform a job, and thus, are often identified by some DEI experts as irrelevant and legally risky.
Leaders interested in supporting a healthy and diverse organization want to be mindful of the demographics of its employees to consider whether there are biases that may adversely impact employees — and ultimately, employee satisfaction and experience. Organizations that want employees to take pride in their workplace and to be passionate about what they do will invest equally in the people who power it.
Some organizations develop resource groups for their employees. These groups offer employees an opportunity to cultivate community, create informal development opportunities, and further enhance ‘belonging’ in their institutions. These foster a sense of belonging, signpost individuals to role models and mentors, and sustain a culture of equity. Scholars are still studying the impact of these groups, but mainstream human resource professional organizations champion the work these groups achieve in pursuing organizational equity and change. Opponents of it have not offered an alternative to address the historical inequities that racism and sexism have had on society and impeded the growth and opportunities of marginalized groups.
In the most recent instance, in which Harvard president Claudine Gay was forced to resign following congressional testimony and conservative criticism for alleged plagiarism, critics of DEI have weaponized the opportunity to make Gay an example of what they insist was a case of DEI failure.
This is particularly problematic because extremists have accused Gay of being a so-called ‘affirmative action hire’. This racist trope and attack on an academic administrator was made without proof. What is even more alarming is that members of Congress used the House of Representatives to chase the integrity and discipline the president of a privately-funded institution of higher-education that does not fal under the jurisdiction of their authority. Universities and their administrators are subject to the discipline of their governing boards, not the United States Congress, which, has, apparently too much time on its hands if it can investigate allegations of misconduct of a private university president, which is itsef a private personnel matter. There is no evidence to suggest that Gay was hired to fulfill some affirmative action objective. Those who have offered criticism have no insight into the Harvard recruitment process of its presidents or Gay’s formal employment record and recruitment file. It would seem that her critics made these attacks against her in bad faith and to weaponize what white nationalists see as a country evolving to fulfill its promise on pursuing equity and justice for all.
DEI is not the boogeyman that some in the current anti-DEI movement would like to pretend that it is. We have all benefited from DEI efforts. We have attended schools that have sought to increase the gender-pay parities, attracting highly qualified educators into our school buildings, seen professorships and higher education teaching opportunities extended to a more diverse range of individuals who have been traditionally excluded from mainstream education, we have benefited from better local economies whose governments have empowered women and ethnic minority small businesses with limited grants, and we have benefited from stronger and more diverse and representative military and police forces. DEI champions empathy, belonging, and collaboration – skills every innovative and forward-thinking leader should possess today.