Five years ago, I was amazed at the speed of adoption of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives in both academic and business spheres.
The mantra at the time was “diversity is strength,” and became the chief bullying point for academic boardrooms and corporate governance. DEI claimed that it was the solution to a made-up group of workplace and academic inequities. It promised that marginalized voices and underrepresented communities could find even footing, and was going to force their version of Utopia upon all so they could regulate.
Fast forward to today – with the slightest crack in the door, most businesses are running away from DEI as quickly as possible, and a surprising number of colleges and universities are running with them. Today, we have learned that DEI results in division, is highly politicized, and thus has become expendable for all enterprises.
I’ve always maintained that DEI was a thinly veiled mechanism to provide employment for recent college graduates with largely worthless degrees. Corporate America was the first to identify the boondoggle that DEI is, yet were hesitant to outright dismiss it because they feared a backlash.
While large investment banks were requiring DEI and its annual reporting (through consultants, with a price tag starting at half a million dollars), business leaders were devising ways to minimize the negative impact and stop the brain drain that DEI was causing. Just ask Bud Light how the Dylan Mulvaney DEI promotion worked for them, erasing 20% of its stock value in less than 60 days.
We are watching how Disney’s latest remake of “Snow White” rapidly disintegrates because it was not telling a story but was preaching a warped set of DEI-inspired themes. I’ve maintained that we get the opposite of what is legislated, and this is just one more data point that validates my theory.
From my experience, this is what I’ve learned about DEI:
- DEI is not accountable and does not have metrics to assess its performance objectively. Is it doing any good? Who knows?
- DEI breeds discrimination. That person looks like you, talks like you, so, no, you can’t hire them. Employment based on the color of your skin? Sounds like a century ago.
- DEI values physical attributes over non-physical. Turn on your television and tell me the last time you saw a couple that looks like you in any commercial.
- DEI pollutes the talent pool, driving the most talented employees elsewhere – specifically smaller companies where they don’t have to deal with DEI quotas.
- DEI negatively impacts performance.
- DEI places hiring preferences on one’s appearance, rather than their skills, experience and other qualifications, generally dragging down the performance of the entire team.
- DEI diminishes accomplishment and disincentivizes top performers. No, you can’t be “Employee of the Year” because you are not part of some artificially marginalized group, regardless of how stellar your performance was last year.
- DEI is a distraction to accomplishing the organization’s goals. With DEI, it’s not about being the best. It’s about being the best within a group of artificial goals. It’s no longer about making a difference in your chosen field of endeavor. It’s about doing that, all the while trying to satisfy a list of insatiable additional conditions and pre-requisites. We are probably the only capitalist country in the world to foist this upon our companies, to the dismay of our best and brightest.
- DEI is divisive. When the DEI office tells you what your next hire needs to look like, it echoes the actions of the Ku Klux Klan. They tried to tell us what our next hire would look like as well.
- DEI is about building little fiefdoms that are subservient to DEI objectives, no matter how at odds they are with the organization’s objectives.
These are the reasons that all kinds of organizations are walking – make that sprinting – away from DEI.
Some reading this column will accuse me of heinous crimes against equality, and of abusing small animals, neither of which has any basis in fact. I do believe in meritocracy. There are clear, objective measures in many fields of endeavor, and I want nothing less than the best. I deserve the best. As do you.
So many with the skill and the drive to be the next generation of the best are cast aside because of the division built into DEI. That is patently unacceptable.
This is why DEI is being dismissed.
