What is DEI?
There’s been a lot of hoopla recently about DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion). A clip of Pete Buttigieg from 2021 saying overpasses were racist was making its rounds after the Baltimore bridge collapsed, and it sent the Twitterverse into a spiral about how DEI is making companies worse. Now, I understand hearing that “highways are racist” might seem a little bamboozling when you’re hearing it for the first time, but I assure you if you Google Robert Moses it’ll be a little clearer.
Back to the topic at hand. Lots of acronyms are being taken out of context and weaponized once again to stir the supposed culture war soup. First, it was CRT (Critical Race Theory). Then woke (albeit not an acronym but a fun short little word to throw at people). Now it’s the ominous DEI. For folks who aren’t as tragically plugged into all of this, it’s a bit disorienting and does feel like people of color (POC) or the “woke liberals” are losing their marbles. All in short — folks who want to weaponize DEI to distract from actual issues at hand are making a big fuss out of something that, I believe, doesn’t really do much. Sometimes we just live in a society that sucks and things fall apart due to negligence and poor planning. I, Quancy Shrew, Inquisitive Investigator, will explain!
Non-Historical Historical Context
A majority of DEI initiatives were born around the summer of 2019 when we watched the horrific murder of George Floyd. People at work turned to their coworkers and were like “Can you believe this? How terrible!” and the Black coworkers were like “… sorry we’ve been saying this stuff happens and you’re just now realizing?” That made everyone else feel even worse about the whole situation cause they’re the main characters of the story, and thus they started churning out DEI and hiring these DEI experts.
Am I saying it was born out of guilt? PERHAPS. But in the time of something horrific and uncertain, people wanted to feel safer and seek understanding, and thus experts were hired for the first time in ages and actually listened to.
What is DEI (in delusional land)?
Now you can do the research yourself cause this is more of a deep dive into what it actually looks like in application. Essentially, companies hired a DEI expert (maybe tied it with HR, due to the deeply human component of DEI). This is where the rumors of “DEI hiring policies killing companies” come into play.
At best, in my humble shrew opinion, DEI is a way to implement policies, structure for accountability, and get honest feedback from everyone who works at your company. If a man is showing his dick around the office to all the women, the women should feel comfortable reporting to HR, and then eventually, the man gets fired and sent to jail and or shot directly into the sun. However, judging by all recent reports of workplaces failing women and children (see the new Nickelodeon documentary), I don’t think this has been the practice. DEI was essentially to come in, dissect the workplace and implement procedures and policies in place to ensure that there is transparency and accountability for bad actors. I have yet to see DEI be used as a way to shoe horn a bunch of minorities into a company. That would be insane. Who will the VP’s son work for then?!
What I think it turned out to be was simply a way to gather data to show to the world that you are mediocre at best.
Companies enjoy moving quickly. Gotta churn out profits as fast as possible. DEI is the total antithesis of that. Eventually as you dissect DEI at work and all the unfair practices, it does end up becoming the opposite of what companies tend to do. For instance, should companies recall their bad products if it’s harming a community? Maybe. If it’s harming a community full of Black or Brown people? Nah…who cares? They’ve done the numbers. It’s cheaper to settle a lawsuit than to recall. Flint, to this day, still does not have clean drinking water, and that issue is mostly gone from the collective modern memory. Things move too fast. We have a lot of other things to talk about! DEI takes a lot of work to implement a fair and good workplace for everyone, but it requires time and likely costs some money. Not a lot, but in times of a recession or profit generating, that is likely what they will cut.
What is DEI (in reality)?
DEI in reality, is a bunch of folks hired to filter employee complaints to leadership and HR. Administering relentless surveys. Creating ERG (employee resource groups) so that people have a place to complain to each other. Adding people of color into interview processes only to waste their time and to create the illusion of diversity in consideration but in reality the VP already wants to hire his golfing buddy.
DEI in reality, is a nice shiny webpage to attract “top talent” to their company. It makes you feel good to see all these people laughing and these nice pie charts on the page to show how much they value the 1 woman who sits at the VP level.
DEI in reality, is a bunch of one-pagers and PowerPoints that no one will read. For those learning and trying to better themselves, they’ll throw themselves at the wall cause once again they have to look at the little what is equity vs equality cartoon for the tenth millionth time. For people who don’t care, they just click through it to complete the certificate and go about their day.
DEI in reality, is just a department leadership will deploy when the workers are feeling bad. Oh no!! You didn’t get a raise this year and cannot afford to live? HR will do a training on resilience, and DEI will do another training on resilience for (insert your minority group here).
Now the people running these programs are usually smart and brilliant. But their skillsets are not utilized because it often means leadership needs to change. Policies need to change. No, you cannot give people more work and not a raise or change in job title cause you “want to wait and see if they can do the job.” But do they want to change? No. Points back up to the guilt factor. They just want to feel a little bit better and create the illusion that things are better. Often times efforts come off as performative cause they are. People don’t have time for change! We need to create profit for our shareholders!!!
Where do we go from here?
DEI isn’t completely useless. I think it’s a great start. It is slow moving though and there are people who are drowning. Lots of these things take time, patience and persistence. The most helpful I’ve found is that you are not alone and now there are organizations who are about what they are and will show up for you. They are rare, but exist! Safe spaces is also relentlessly misused but that is essentially what it is. It’s incredibly valuable to feel heard and have your experiences validated. You do not have to put up with bullshit at work. Sometimes you do to pay rent, but knowing that people know that your situation is fucked up helps you feel a little less crazy than others trying to convince you that you must be overdramatic.
Now if you aren’t buying into the whole DEI thing, fine. I think it would help to know that we are all inherently capable of being terrible people (intentionally or unintentionally). It takes time. But if you are confused as to why the world around you is so terrible, DEI is a wonderful tool set to begin digging into some of those questions. More often than not some hater in the past decided Black people didn’t deserve to take the bus to go to the beach so overpasses were invented. Is it terrible? Yes. Does it make you terrible? Depends on what you do next.
If you’re still not buying into it, then that’s also fine. Eventually we will all die. And when we do, do you want to walk around oblivious to the perils of your fellow humans? Because it “felt icky” to think about at the time? If you do, then that’s also fine. But humanity will always progress. Sometimes slowly. Sometimes we regress a bit but we will always move forward to better. Because capitalism has taught us for over 400 years that we need to be better. And eventually we will be better but in the right way that values kindness and compassion for our fellow humans and the world around us.
But also I’m a shrew. So who knows. I could be dead tomorrow or we could all die cause a black hole we couldn’t see coming swallowed our galaxy whole. There’s infinite possibilities. Choose the kind one.
You can also find Quancy on SubStack!
